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Blogs » Archive for August, 2005
Microsoft releases second Acrylic preview
Microsoft has posted the second pre-release version of Acrylic, the powerful but difficult-to-use vector/raster drawing application that is the successor to Creature House Expression.
In addition to significant performance improvements and a few new features such as XAML export (XAML is Microsoft’s new language for describing user interfaces that includes support for vector graphics), Microsoft has done some work on the user interface in an effort to improve usability. After playing with this update for a few minutes, however, I’d have to say the UI remains this product’s single biggest weakness.
Ars Technica has reported that the XAML export feature signals a retargeting of the software for use in Windows Vista UI development, and has been renamed with this release to Windows Presentation Foundation User Experience Design Tool, but I’ve been unable to find anything to corroborate this seemingly improbable claim. As far as I can see, the codename Acrylic is still the only official name for the product, and it continues to be pitched as an application for combined vector/raster illustration.
Online maps get flashy
Flash smartypants Paul Neave has taken the public APIs of Google Maps and Microsoft Virtual Earth and built his own Flash interface to browse the satellite imagery offered by both of these services. And, may the JavaScript gods forgive me, it’s far smoother and more pleasant to use than either of the services’ respective Web interfaces.
For now, it lacks the flat maps, local search features, and other useful bells and whistles of the Google and Microsoft originals, but as a demonstration of what is possible with Flash as a frontend technology, it’s very effective. In particular, the ability to rotate the view is something that is a long way off in pure DHTML interfaces.
I wonder how long it will be before some enterprising folks attempt to produce a 2D clone of Google Earth in Flash. I’d be surprised if Google didn’t buy out such a project, were it to come to fruition.
‘DOM-foolery’ with Images
Last week we were dealt a little design challenge in an otherwise straight-forward site mock-up — the presentation called for the ‘content images’ to have rounded corners.
In the past, there wasn’t much choice: you made a nice framing template in Photoshop, dropped your picture behind it and exported your new image.
The most obvious problem in this approach is that, although the image itself is considered ‘content’, the decorative corners are a mere ‘designer’s whim’ that is only relevant to the current look and feel. If the client decided that the next redesign should be ‘hard-nosed & corporate’, we would need to either re-author every image or, since no-one likes making work for themselves, more likely just grin and bare it. Neither are particularly attractive choices.
Thoughts on compensating your team of designers/developers
A reader asked about best ways to provide bonuses to developers. I’m not a big fan of bonuses. First, it is hard to be objective about how much bonus a developer or designer should get (as compared to salespeople, investment bankers, and others who make a measurable, specific contribution). Second, people tend to become entitled about bonuses, and grow to expect them every year without fail.
So here is an ideal compensation ladder:
1. People should start out as contractors, and get paid on time and fairly for quality work. Increasingly, right or wrong, like it or not, we are moving to a freelance economy. Most people start here to prove their worth.
2. Good contractors earn the right to become employees, with benefits and a salary. Only bring an employee on if you are sure that you will use 100% of their capacity, flexing up and down with a pool of contract labor.
3. Good employees get favored with many non-cash benefits: pick of best assignments, flex time, getting thanked in a variety of personal and appropriate ways, being part of a fun culture, contests, mentoring by more experienced designers/developers, etc.
4. Core employees — those who are essential and who provide consistent, …
The WordPress Security Update
Stefan Esser over at the PHP Security Blog is not happy. He’s just written a blog posted titled WordPress - developers totally nuts claiming that only hours after releasing version 1.5.2, the developers patched some additional security flaws and re-uploaded the download file without labelling it any differently. Stefan had previously contacted WordPress about security flaws in their product and had contributed some patches. The end result, according to Stefan’s claims, is that many WordPress users who downloaded the pre-updated version 1.5.2 will still be vulnerable to known and published security exploits.
Amusingly, it appears that hours after the blog post went live, Stefan renamed the post’s title to ‘WordPress - irresponsible silent tarball update‘ without notice.
A similar rant about WordPress security by Martin Geisler can be found on his blog. His advice: “Remember to upgrade any installation you might have”.
Dougall Campbell, a developer for WordPress, responds to what he sees as a campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt against the 1.5.2 release. Dougall admits that the first downloadable archive to be posted on wordpress.org didn’t contain all the security fixes they intended to include, …
Yahoo’s Mindset: A New Era
Yahoo’s Mindset, currently in Beta and part of Yahoo’s research labs, shows us where the future of search may be.
Through a slider bar, Yahoo Mindset allows searches to choose their mix of commercial search results vs. informational search results. Try running a search for “san diego hotels” and slide the bar around to see how this affects rankings.
On on end, you’re presented with sites specifically allowing you to search for and book hotel rooms. On the “researching” end of the spectrum you get visitor guides and hotel recommendations from the local newspaper, and tourism related Websites.
The future of search results may therefore be to fold: commercial & informational, with two sets of completely different Websites being listed in the Top 10, for the exact same keyword, depending on how they relate to what the searcher wants.
How to fire a client
Last blog, a reader asked how to fire a client.
First off, firing clients is a good and natural thing. You should periodically review your list of clients and figure out which ones to de-emphasize. You do this as your own work and company progresses, as you get better clients, and as you learn which clients aren’t worth the effort.
If they want you to work with them after you have decided to no longer serve them, there are two primary to handle this:
1. Raise your rates with this client to be worth your effort. Explain to them that you are getting busy, have raised your rates to be more competitive and in line with your value. Then see what they do. In general, it is always very smart to put an offer on the table that a client has the choice to refuse. That way, you are not the one pulling the plug.
2. Have a conversation with your client that goes like this:
- I appreciate your business.
- My firm is evolving in ways that won’t be able to serve you going forward.
- Here are three firms that can handle your needs (ideally competitors that will suffer by having this client, …
Best way to find talented web designers/developers
In a previous blog, Nerveman asks about the best way to find strong developers and designers, presumably as part of your firm or as contract talent.
There are three ways I’ve tried, and the third works best for me:
1. Word of mouth. I ask people I know for referrals. This actually works less well than I had hoped, because colleagues have different needs, standards, and project types than I do.
2. Trial and error in sequential order. In this approach, I look at lots of potential designers and portfolios, go through lengthy interview process, and hire one for a job. If the person works, I keep working with them. I don’t like this approach for coders because if I pick the wrong person for a big job, I am in a tight spot. However, it has worked well for designers, since I can see from their portfolio if they have done similar work, their style, etc.
3. Trial and error in parallel order. In this approach, I create a small job and hire 3 to 5 people to do it. Whoever does best in terms of professionalism and quality gets the big job. This has been a foolproof way to find good people. …
PHP 6.0 Ingredients
In other news over the weekend, Rasmus posted his personal wish list of features for PHP 6.0. Comments in the SitePoint Forums about the proposals have largely been positive, with some caveats. Web hosts are concerned about backward-compatibility problems, mentioning that the break in compatibility between version 4.x and 5.0 is already proving a great problem, whereas the backward compatibility break between 5.x and 6.0 is set to be even greater.
Something that I have been very keen to see in PHP for a long time is proper support for character encodings including UTF-8. Currently, PHP has no internal Unicode support, though conversions can be done with the mbstring extension (sadly not enabled by default) or external tools like iconv. Writing a Web application that uses UTF-8 for its content can be difficult due to PHP’s assumption that all characters are one byte.
The php.general post itself contains the wish list, and its replies contain even more information and suggestions. Among the suggestions are a complete removal of register_globals and magic quotes - which, as you can probably guess, I think is a terrific idea. I am …
Google insider launches SEM blog
Just a quick one via Matt from the airport on my way back to Melbourne…
Matt Cutt’s, one of Google’s famous Webmaster-liasons now has his own blog which gives lots of insights into Google’s thinking on spam, indexing issues, etc:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/
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