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Blogs » Archive for July, 2005
Some key questions to ask your clients when designing quality sites for them
It is my experience that many web designers have a terrific opportunity to shift from being web designers to being marketing consulting for their clients.
Most web designers are in fact supposed to be marketing consultants, responsible for helping clients attract more customers to their sites and get more business. Coding languages, design principles and other skills are only the tools to achieve that result.
I know this to be true for two reasons:
1. Your clients perceive you to be part of a marketing solution, not a web design solution. If you don’t agree, ask them what they want their web presence to do for them.
2. I can’t code even a line of HTML or any other language, yet get paid lots of money to help clients improve their web sites. In fact, I make more money than most web designers, primarily because I take a marketing strategy focus.
So, please be sure you are asking these questions of your clients any time you get hired:
1. Who is your customer?
2. How do they make a buying decision?
3. What are their key criteria for buying your product/service?
4. How do they hear about you?
5. How do competitive products/service position themselves compared to yours? Is …
AJAX and PHP
I was excited to read the AJAX: Usable Interactivity with Remote Scripting article by Cameron Adams in the hope of finding out out a lot more about AJAX, particularly how to actually use it! The article is very good, but is written as a usability guide rather than a technical howto about how to use AJAX within your own applications. Granted, I haven’t looked much, but tutorials for making use of AJAX with PHP seem to be lacking (do you know of any good ones?). So I went to Google and searched to see what I could come up with, hoping I’d find some kind of stuff Ruby has.
The first thing I came across was SAJAX which looks pretty good, although I didn’t stop to have a closer look. Next I found a PHPBuilder tutorial, which had some links in the comments, one of which was CPAINT.
I downloaded CPAINT because it looked very interesting and designed with PHP (and ASP) in mind. Reading the documentation that comes with the download, this does seem to be true. It even provides functions to generate the XML. It is certainly something I will look at again in the future if I ever decide …
IE7 Beta 1 release date set
Internet Explorer 7 Beta 1 will be released at the same time as the first betas of Windows Vista (née Longhorn) and Longhorn Server, Microsoft announced Friday. The magic date is Wednesday, August 3rd.
What new functionality will be in this first beta of Microsoft’s updated browser remains to be seen, though tabbed browsing and RSS are near-certainties. Beyond that, Microsoft is simply touting “developer platform advancements”, which could mean anything. Hopefully some of the promised design features such as CSS2 fixes and PNG transparency will be in there.
PHPScript
Whilst I was doing some research for my PDO entry on Wez Furlong’s website, I found out about PHPScript:
PHPScript is PHP’s own ActiveScript interface. In practical terms, this means that you can use PHP from within any application that can host ActiveScript engines.
This is something I’d not heard of before - has anyone used this in any of their own software?
Securing an RSS Feed
While Kevin has pointed out some important issues in regards to Greasemonkey - I found this new concept for securing an RSS feed an invaluable tip.
Joe Gregorio wanted a way to syndicate content for himself and appears to be onto a method. With some tweaking perhaps this could also be explored as a way to distribute paid content to a restricted audience…?
W3C seeks feedback on CSS3
CSS3 has been in the works for years, with so many new features and refinements that the specification had to be broken down into thirty modules. Most of these modules are slated for completion over the next year and a half.
By the roadmap, one of the modules that has the longest way to go is the Backgrounds & Borders module. Responsible for a whole range of enhancements, from multiple background images to image-based borders, this module is responsible for overcoming many of the limitations on visual design that currently exist for CSS applied to semantically-correct (X)HTML code. Still at the working draft stage, the module is slated for completion before the end of the year.
To this end, the W3C has put out a call for CSS-savvy designers to provide feedback on several issues affecting the module. Some of the ideas already proposed for discussion look very useful indeed, so if you’ve got a stake in CSS3 (and let’s face it, every Web designer does), get in there and have your say!
New Webmin Release Worth a Look
For those familiar with Webmin - they understands it administrative value on Unix workstations and servers (including Mac OS X). Especially if you need to administer multiple systems.
For the unitiated - I wrote on Webmin a while back and explored its capabilities as a powerful root-enabled sys admin tool.
The new updates hit on all cylinders for me as I deal with several servers at once in my own webmin usage - including with LDAP.
Highlights of updates include:
- Improved Postfix mail queue management
- Ability to edit and/or drop multiple tables (and databases) at once in MySQL and PostgreSQL
- Clustering tools including deploying printers to multiple servers at once (good for servers that produce print reports along with electronic distributions - important in some regulatory environments)
- Handy LDAP enhancements such as multiple user and group deletions and multiple user and group unlocks
- Read-only access option for allowing in users who may need to review webmin configurations but do not need editing rights
- Sped up the performance of searching and reviewing system logs - nice when dealing with very busy servers.
If you have intensive sys admin needs or want to explore more powerful options than the traditional Unix control panel solutions - Webmin is worth a test run. Best …
May the Task Force be with you
The Web Standards Project now have a JavaScript arm. It’s called the DOM Scripting Task Force, and I can’t do better for a description than to quote the manifesto:
[QUOTE]At the moment JavaScript suffers from outdated, uninformed, and inaccessible development methods which preclude it, and therefore web development in general, from attaining its full potential.
The WaSP DOM Scripting Task Force proposes to solve this problem by the adoption of unobtrusive DOM scripting, a way of thinking based on modern, standards-compliant, accessible web development best practices.[/QUOTE]
The Scripting TF (as it’s affectionately known) is there to further the cause of good DOM scripting, in the same way that the WaSP’s Dreamweaver Task Force helped Macromedia to make Dreamweaver more compliant with web standards and the WaSP themselves have done with web standards generally. If you’re reading this then you’re likely to already agree and probably preach the message that the TF are propagating, but the more the merrier, I say. There are lots of good people on there, and me as well. :-)
Introduction to PHP 5 PDO
Hi! I’m David Mytton the new SitePoint PHP Blogger and I am going to be writing for this blog for at least the next 3 months. I am going to try and focus on technical posts to provide some useful code and information about new (and old) features in PHP, so hopefully it will be a good learning experience for myself and readers.
A little bit about me:
I have written several articles for SP in the past, mostly reviews or interviews and I have also had a few articles published in International PHP Magazine. I am also the author of Invision Power Board 2: User Guide, a new book for IPB due out very shortly. In addition to writing for print, I also write commercial and open source PHP software through my limited company, Olate, in the UK.
Aside from computing, I do scuba diving and fencing (yes, with swords!).
If you have any ideas for posts for the blog, please get in touch. There is a box on the bottom left of this post “Suggest a Post” which allows you to do this.
Anyway, onto the main post…
[u]Introduction to PHP 5 PDO[/u]
The new PHP Data Objects (PDO) have been covered in a …
Welcome our New Blogger!
SitePoint is pleased to announce the appointment of its new PHP blogger, David Mytton, who brings a mix of practical and academic experience to the PHP blog.
Please welcome David to the PHP blog, feel free to send suggest posts on topics that are of particular interest, and check back for updates as David takes over the reigns of Dynamically Typed!
:)
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