Recent Blog Posts
Blogs ยป Archive for May, 2006
Follow JavaOne 2006 online
If you enjoy working in Java like I do, there are probably few places you would rather be right now than at JavaOne 2006. Particularly hot web development topics at JavaOne this year include the newly-released JavaEE 5 platform for building enterprise Java applications more easily, and the associated updates coming in NetBeans 5.5.
But whether due to time, money or geography, not everyone can make it to San Francisco to bask in the Java love for a week.
Thankfully, you can follow the big picture from wherever you happen to be. All of the general sessions (i.e. keynote speakers and demos) are available for viewing via live and on-demand webcasts that are almost as good as being there (plus you get to skip the boring bits!).
As for the more focused technical sessions, most of them have published downloadable PDFs containing the slides for free download from the session catalog. You can also wait until the dust settles and the slides will be freely available with synchronized audio from JavaOne Online.
And if podcasts are your thing, PodTech.net is hosting a series of podcasts from JavaOne, including the full audio of all the general sessions. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated feeed for …
(php zurich) webtuesday.ch tonight
So this event is still going (after renaming to webtuesday.ch - final site updates still on my list). Actually it’s been a surprise success - there’s now a regular core of attendees and some fascinating technical points of view and experience.
Tonights meet up promises to be good, focused on scaling at search.ch and local.ch. By way of a teaser, part of the story at local.ch is how Bitflux used ext/curl the way you might use a database connection,. Christian also has a little more here. Will see if I can blog a summary later.
Think — How can this be used as a marketing opportunity?
Almost any event is a potential marketing opportunity. Of course, you don’t want to get tacky or annoying, as anything taken to extremes will backfire. However, you should always be asking yourself, “How can I turn this into a marketing opportunity?”
Recent examples from my own businesses:
1. Making a marketing opportunity out of something bad that happens to you. This week I invited subscribers to my newsletter to a free tele-conference about my most recent book. Lots of people came. But someone I managed to disconnect myself twice during the call. Guess how many books I sold after the call? (If your guess is higher than 0, you are incorrect).
So I wrote up a long summary of the call and sent it to subscribers on my list, as a bonus to those who couldn’t attend. That sold some books/programs.
2. Making a marketing opportunity out of something good that happens. Last night you may have seen Edner Cherry win the featured boxing match on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights. One of the trainers on my Boxing Fitness Institute website helped get Edwin into shape, and was in his corner. So that’s a great opportunity! I sent out a mailing to the newsletter list …
wxDebug
In possession of wxPython in Action and with an itch to scratch, hacked together wxDebug (thanks to Python hosting) - a front end for viewing Xdebug profiling output, the UI design being inspired by (but by no means as good as) WinCacheGrind. A screenshot…
The real mission was an excuse to do something a little more in depth with wxPython - this is some notes on that.
Python?
Figure something needs saying here, given I’m usually waffling on about PHP plus the fact Sitepoint has yet to make Python a “first class language”, despite Django…
First disclaimer: I’m no master of Python - self taught, used for mainly hobbyish stuff. Criticisms / amendments appreciated.
Python is a general purpose (vs. PHP which is designed for web apps) dynamic programming language. It’s roughly the same age as Perl but, cutting a long story short, only started picking up widespread popularity in the last 5 years (I guess). Recently somewhat ruffled by the rise of Ruby / Rails.
There’s a lot one can say about Python but really it’s value is best indicated by some “external lifesigns” like…
- Google has enough of it’s code written in Python that they figured they’d better hire the creator.
- Microsoft felt …
__halt_compiler() - how nuts?
Simon blogmarked PHP’s new(ish) __halt_compiler function which, according to the packet;
… halts the execution of the compiler. This can be useful to embed data in PHP scripts, like the installation files. Byte position of the data start can be determined by the __COMPILER_HALT_OFFSET__ constant which is defined only if there is a __halt_compiler() presented in the file.
It may or may not be an elegant solution (it’s certainly relatively simple) but it does have a very valid use case - to allow PHP applications which install themselves from a single script, all related pieces (other PHP scripts, CSS, HTML, images, etc.) being packed at the end of the script in a binary form.
The prime example is Ilia’s fudforum - if you download a recent version, you’ll see it makes use of this - simply run the install.php script an it unpacks everything from there. Greg mentioned __halt_compiler as well a while back, in conjunction with all the stuff he’s been doing on phar archives.
Anyway - personally don’t find it so nuts. And consider the opportunities for building job security ;)
Otherwise noticed Sara Golemon has a book coming on writing PHP extensions - much needed. Also a related note Bruce Eckel has …
Yahoo! UI and DP Libraries Updated
Yahoo! has announced the first updates to the Yahoo! UI Library and the Yahoo! Design Patterns Library (see JavaScript Libraries and Patters: Yahoo! Does AJAX).
As expected, the update to the Yahoo! UI Library introduces a handful of new JavaScript-powered user interface components. Most notably, the library now includes components for generating mouse- and keyboard-accessible hierarchical menu systems based on semantically-correct unordered lists in the HTML code.
More unexpectedly, the UI library now includes some valuable CSS code in addition to the JavaScript wizardry. CSS Reset smooths out the many differences between the default styles applied to HTML elements in current browsers, thereby providing a common baseline for you to apply your own styles to. CSS Fonts provides predefined font family groups and font sizes that work reliably and consistently across current platforms.
Finally, and this is a big one, CSS Page Grids drastically simplifies the task of CSS page layout by offering a set of seven reusable, stretchy, two-column page layout templates with headers and footers. Each column can be further divided into vertically stacked sets of sub-columns using <div>s with a set of predefined grid classes for various percentage widths.
Although Yahoo! does not provide any, it would be very practical to …
AJAX Gotchas
Alex Bosworth has compiled a list of “gotchas” that new AJAX developers seem to fall prey to on a regular basis. He has also posted the list on a wiki so that readers can contribute their own common AJAX pitfalls.
Among the list of gotchas was this gem that lends greater weight to my recent coverage of character encodings:
Ajax uses UTF-8. Normal forms are sent using the encoding of the parent page. Thus a SJIS encoded page will default to sending form content encoded in SJIS. Ajax submitted forms on the other hand will be sent as UTF-8. If for some strange reason, UTF-8 is not the character set of choice for the server, this will require a solution such as the server recognizing and translating UTF-8 responses to a desired character encoding.
For PHP developers especially, where limited out-of-the-box support for UTF-8 keeps many sites on single-byte character encodings, this issue could cause nasty surprises indeed. For example, if you want to add the ability to submit a form via AJAX and keep the standard submission method as a fallback, you could potentially end up having to support two different encodings for that submitted data!
The MOD Squad in “Thank You For Smoking”
This weekend my wife and I saw the movie “Thank You For Smoking,” a hilarious film about a tobacco lobbyist and his brilliance at pushing tobacco.
What does this movie have to do with web designers?
Well, Nick Naylor, the main character, gets support from a Mastermind Group, which is a strategy I’ve encouraged everyone on Sitepoint to use. A Mastermind Group is a group of 3-6 complementary professionals who meet regularly to discuss business issues, exchange ideas, and get support.
In Nick’s case, his Mastermind Group is made up of lobbyists for alcohol and guns. They call themselves the MOD Squad, or Merchants of Death. It doesn’t sound funny here, but it is funny in the film. Don’t post criticisms of this example until you see the movie, okay?
Anyway, if you want to see a visual example of how a Mastermind Group can work and support what you do, see this movie. Even if the characters are fictional and meant to be parodies, the example is a good one.
So pick a few complementary professionals (graphic designers, IT support, marketing consultants, small business attorneys, bankers, etc) and meet to help each other out and get support.
How to write a good response to a client/customer complaint
I got quite frustrated with my experience with Yahoo!’s Overture advertising service yesterday when loading up terms for a new site. I don’t know if you agree with me, but I find Google’s advertising interface much, much, much easier to work with than Yahoo!’s.
So I filled in a customer feedback form and sent in my complaint to Yahoo! Mostly I did this to vent, as I didn’t expect a response from a huge company like Yahoo!. Most companies don’t respond anymore to individual online complaints.
Yet Yahoo! responded with a terrific, personalized letter. (Had I known I’d get a response, I would have provided much more detailed feedback). I print the response here, because it is an excellent example of how to respond online to a complaint. I still like using Google much more, but at least I’m not going to cancel my Yahoo! account and stop advertising (which is where I was at yesterday). Notice how they cover in detail my issues, apologize where appropriate, explain their service, and give advice about things I can do better.
Here is their response, printed here as a template you might use for your sites or even clients:
Dear Andrew,
I sincerely apologize for …
Using Plugins in Your App
Rails plugins can help you do all sorts of things. Installing them is a lot simpler than you might think, deploying them is easy, and they’re a neat way of packaging and reusing your own code.
Nuby on Rails has posted part one of their Complete Guide to Rails Plugins. Definitely worth checking out if you’re not familiar with the Rails plugin architecture.
Stay tuned for the build your own plugins walk through.
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