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Blogs » Archive for July, 2006

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Jul 20, 2006 News Wire

by Kevin Yank

• Browser Comparison: Firefox 2 Beta 1, Internet Explorer 7 Beta 3, and Opera 9.0–Review on ExtremeTe
  One of the first of what will be many comparative reviews of the new generation of browsers.
  (tags: firefox ie opera)
• Five common PHP design patterns
  A detailed look at five design patterns that come in handy when building web applications using the object oriented features in PHP5: the factory pattern, the singleton pattern, the observer pattern, and the chain-of-command pattern.
  (tags: php programming)
• Building a Photo Tagging Site using ASP.NET 2.0, LINQ, and Atlas
  Microsoft Developer Divison General Manager Scott Guthrie, demonstrates the use of LINQ (the new inline query language for .NET) and Atlas (Microsoft’s AJAX toolkit) to build a tagged photo gallery in ASP.NET 2.0.
  (tags: asp.net .net ajax)
• What is the 1% rule?
  On any site that hosts user-contributed content, in general 1% of visitors will create new content, 10% of visitors will interact with (e.g. comment on) it, and the remaining 89% will simply view it.
  (tags: business)
• What Is Geronimo?
  A gentle introduction to Geronimo, Apache’s open source Java application server, which is actually simply a framework enabling you to combine your own selection of components to build a custom server to meet your needs.
  (tags: apache java opensource)
• XMLHttpRequest in IE7: …

Friday, July 21st, 2006 | Posted in Industry Links | 1 Comment »

I’m Manic for XPathmania

by Wyatt Barnett

Writing XPath can be a painful experience. But there are some tools to aid the developer in their struggles. One new one for Visual Studio 2005 users is XPathmania, an integrated XPath visualization tool.

Thursday, July 20th, 2006 | Posted in .NET | 2 Comments »

Jul 19, 2006 News Wire

by Kevin Yank

• Json.NET 1.1 released
  James Newton-King’s .NET library to ease communication between AJAX frontends and .NET web applications using JSON has been updated. The new version includes seamless XML to JSON translation.
  (tags: xml javascript ajax .net)
• Keep Sites Running Smoothly By Avoiding These 10 Common ASP.NET Pitfalls
  An excellent run-down of ten common mistakes made by developers that can hurt the security and performance of ASP.NET web applications.
  (tags: asp.net)
• Sun CTO: Incremental open-sourcing of Java is the way
  Components of the Java platform are expected to be open-sourced in time for JavaOne in June next year. Certain parts of the platform may take much longer to become available, however.
  (tags: opensource java)
• Why CSS Bugs Me
  John C. Dvorak sees problems in CSS. His language isn’t very accurate (e.g. his “cascading” seems to be CSS inheritance). Chief complaint: cross-browser inconsistency, which is improving quickly despite his claim that nothing is being done.
  (tags: css)
• ASP.NET 2.0 UrlRewriting Fix
  From a developer of Community Server, the popular ASP.NET blogging software, comes a work-around for the previously-reported erroneous 302 status code that can occur in ASP.NET 2.0, causing a site to disappear off Google.
  (tags: asp.net google)
• Leaving W3C QA Dev.
  Bjoern Hoehrmann, a longtime developer of tools like the W3C HTML Validator announces his severing …

Thursday, July 20th, 2006 | Posted in Industry Links | 1 Comment »

Suggested guidelines for responding to RFPs

by Andrew Neitlich

A former client sent me a request for proposals (RFP) the other day. I don’t know about you, but I cringe when I receive RFPs. I rarely win RFPs, for the following reasons:

- Generally firms send out RFPs even if they already have a preferred candidate in mind. They do so to appear fair and efficient to procurement or oversight bodies.

- Often the preferred candidate works with the firm to design the RFP, which makes my odds even lower (unless I am that preferred candidate).

- Sometimes firms issue an RFP when they have no intention of moving forward, but just want to collect some information.

- If I don’t have an established relationship with the decision-makers, my odds of winning are low — even lower than one divided by the number of vendors who respond.

- People generally hire me sole source, because they see my work or hear about me from trusted colleagues. So it is not worth the time to complete RFPs.

But now here is an RFP from a former client. Of course, that raises a red flag right there. My primary relationship with this client was with executives who have left the organization. So once again, I have some …

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 | Posted in Selling Web Design Services | 24 Comments »

The sales funnel

by Andrew Neitlich

Today’s post covers a basic principle in sales, but one that is always worth a refresher.

The “sales funnel” is a nice image for conveying the overall marketing and sales process. Imagine a funnel, with a wide top and a narrow bottom.

Your overall target market represents the top of the funnel.

Then gradually the funnel narrows as you have suspects, prospects (at various stages of hiring you), clients, and repeat clients.

The trick to an effective sales funnel is having it as wide as possible at all stages.

For instance, I get all sorts of inquiries thanks to my various websites. However, given the impersonal nature of the Internet, not all of these inquiries are serious. For instance, just last week the Training Director of a Fortune 500 cosmetics company contacted me to provide coaching to some of their top stars. I don’t have any previous relationships with this company, don’t know much about cosmetics sales (okay, I don’t know anyting about cosmetics sales), and am one of dozens of people the company is considering. So my odds of getting hired are relatively low. As a result, I need to have lots of inquiries like this coming my way to convert some …

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 | Posted in Selling Web Design Services | 1 Comment »

Jul 17, 2006 News Wire

by Kevin Yank

• Big Red Angry Text
  Ever build a slick, accessible content management system capable of producing pristine semantic XHTML only to see it filled with <font> tags? This cute trick gives the users responsible a shock, and hopefully some motivation to learn.
  (tags: html standards css)
• Ajax as a Remedy for the Cacheability-Personalization Dilemma
  An attempt to find another problem that AJAX can solve. Serve static (cacheable) content to every user, and make AJAX calls to retrieve personalized content. But should we rely on JavaScript for basic personalization features?
  (tags: ajax javascript)
• AJAX and Accessibility (section 508)
  PDF whitepaper from Backbase about accessibility of single-page AJAX applications that emulate the desktop GUI experience. In short, you can help keyboard and screen magnifier users, but screen readers can’t cope yet.
  (tags: accessibility ajax)
• The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs
  Some pretty unbelievable entries in here, but every single one is clickable and legit. Coincidentally, I’m about to spend a week in Tahoe with my girlfriend… Ahem.
  (tags: business)
• Quirky serifs aside, Georgia fonts win on Web
  (via mezzoblue) A mainstream newspaper publishes an article about which web typeface is the most fashionable? Surely this must be a sign to buy stock in something…
  (tags: design)
• Bill Odom and the State of The Perl Foundation
  Notes on …

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »

Atlas:UpdatePanel + Template = Really Darned Kewl

by Wyatt Barnett

I must say that ASP.NET Atlas, Microsoft’s free Ajax framework is pretty cool. Far and away my favorite feature is that it allows me, a Javascript challenged C# head, to build really slick, Ajaxy apps without leaving my server-side comfort zone. All that needed be done was write the application so that it worked within the normal ASP.NET lifecycle, events and parameters. Then slap some Atlas:UpdatePanels in there and let the framework do its thing.

Or so I thought. I tried to include those UpdatePanels in a templated control, such as a Repeater. And Atlas go boom. Now, this was not an insurmountable problem. One could always surround the entire repeater in an update panel. Or go back to classic, non-Atlas methods.Or actually learn Javascript and make your own plumbing. None of which are very appealing options.

Conveniently, the Atlas team also saw this as an fix-worthy issue. And, on 30 June, they released yet another CTP—creatively called the “Atlas” June CTP—to the public. It has a number of tweaks and bug fixes, one of which is near and dear to my heart:

UpdatePanels can be added to a page dynamically …

Monday, July 17th, 2006 | Posted in .NET | 3 Comments »

Second Life for a weekend

by Harry Fuecks

Had a free weekend to burn so rather than doing something sensible, like enjoying the great weather, decided to check out Second Life from Linden Labs, which has been popping up on more and more radars in the last few months, and just starting to reach the mainstream press.

It’s actually been running for over three years now but serious discussion as to it’s relation to real life, economics in particular, seems to have sparked wider interest.

While reading up on it, what really sparked my attention was seeing URLs like secondlife://Shamrock/17/163/99 on game related pages - that identifies an in-game location. Got me wondering if they’d found the magic recipe to hook up today’s 2D, text-based Internet with a 3D space. Further reading leads to LSL, a mini language for players to extend their environment which recently also gained an HTTP client, enabling Second Life mash ups. Was also generally wondering whether this is a prototype for what a 3D Internet might look like.

What is Second Life?

It’s an online MMORPG which, from my perspective, has some unique aspects that distinguish it from other popular MMORPGs like World of Warcraft.

For starters, there’s no objective: no single answer to “what’s the point?”. Calling …

Monday, July 17th, 2006 | Posted in Web Tech | 15 Comments »

Microsoft making progress…

by Harry Fuecks

So there I was looking for to put a name to the implementor this JScript “feature” and it seems Microsoft have come up with a better solution. ;)

Friday, July 14th, 2006 | Posted in JavaScript & CSS | 11 Comments »

Jul 13, 2006 News Wire

by Kevin Yank

• ClickTale
  Neat service, currently in closed beta, allows you to watch movies of your visitors’ interactions with your web site.
  (tags: design)
• Mozilla Firefox 2 Beta 1
  With anti-phishing, crashed session restore, WHAT-WG persistent storage, undo close tab, JavaScript 1.7, bookmark microsummaries, better feed support and more. As usual, you’ll need to tweak to get current extensions to work.
  (tags: firefox)
• Arriving at a definition of SOA
  Colin Adam explains how he arrived at a useful yet clear definition of Service Oriented Architecture when put on the spot by a room of business people. He then proceeds to rate some other definitions he has found on the Web.
  (tags: soa)
• Becoming more Agile : I’m learning TDD
  Karl Seguin is learning to do test driven development in .NET, and is chronicling the lessons he learns in his blog. A nice, pragmatic look at the subject that will be useful even if you don’t work in .NET.
  (tags: programming .net)
• Good News Everyone: VPC and licensing goodness ensue!
  Microsoft has made Virtual PC for Windows, the recommended method of testing multiple versions of IE on one machine, a free download. You’ll still need a separate Windows XP license to do it, however.
  (tags: ie)
• PHP statistics for June 2006
  A nice breakdown of PHP versions deployed …

Friday, July 14th, 2006 | Posted in Industry Links | 2 Comments »