Well I have offically launched with the new Wordpress 2.0 - it’s very nice. Not much you’ll see on the front end but vast improvements in the adminstration end as well as a few neat little tweaks. The upgrade has gone quite seemlessly (might write a post on how to do it..). Things also seem a bit faster as well, thanks to a new server box @ SKYBAX.
With all the great resources (primarily free) for webmasters one would think there would be a great catalogue of these resources in one spot. But then again it is the Internet and we must each have our own views of what is valuable. Well there goes the idea of a centralized bank of resources - long live diversity. Since stock photos are an essential part of web and graphic design. There are tons of stock photos agencies that offer high quality photos, however, the price is not always affordable especially when working on a tight budget or sometimes with no budget at all. The solution in this case is finding free stock photos something that isn’t always easy, in order to make this process easier I have compiled a list from other lists with sites that offer free stock photos: Read the rest of this entry »
Tony Marston has a wonderful acticle stressing the fact that Backwards Compatibility is EVERYTHING, Code Cleanliness is NOTHING. He highlights the fact of PHP 5+ causing havoc on applications written pre 5+. He cleanly exposes the misconception that this change and blatant disregard would break thousands of scripts running on millions of sites did not seem to phase these people one little bit.
Those people with legacy code that won’t run under version 5 can stick with version 4. They will then have plenty of time to rewrite everything ‘properly’ when version 6 comes out. Perhaps we could even fork the language into two separate branches so that those people with legacy code that they’re too lazy to upgrade can still run with a ‘dirty’ version while the rest of us can work with a cleaner, purer version.
While PHP 5 has been available for 18 months, yet has only been accepted by about 5% of web hosts. Why is this? Simply put, it is the fear of breakages in backwards compatibility. Hosting companies will not upgrade if it means upsetting their customers. He then goes into beautifully describing my thoughts on any application design:
One final word. Breaking backwards compatibility is not like breaking a promise, it is more like breaking a leg - very painful, and it puts you out of action for some while. So if you core developers promise not to break backwards compatibility with our favourite language, we, your customers, promise not to break your legs. Deal?
Not only do you have to balance your time between maintaining your site, generating traffic for your site, and of course creating new sites - you now have one more thing to add to your list of worries leeches. A Leech in the biological term is defined by Websters Online Dictionary as “Any of various chiefly aquatic bloodsucking or carnivorous annelid worms…” and on the Internet a leech is exactly that - a bloodsucker. The lowest form of Internet surfers, leeches take as much as they can when they are not supposed to. Leeches that you must be wary of include hotlinking leeches and password leeches. I’ve seen leeches consume upwards of 20 Gigabytes in an hour before anyone noticed something was amiss. Read the rest of this entry »
I was reading an article today on real time placement of advertising within dynamic consumer content (i.e. games etc…). In the article Fine-tuned ad technologies expected to advance in 2006 Brian delivers a convincing argument that days of blasting a commercial to a vast network audience and hoping someone out there responds.
Here’s the logic: Consumers willing to pay for TV on a cellphone tend to be more affluent, urban and tech-savvy than the average viewer. So why should they get the same ads as the average viewer?
Such fine-grained marketing has long been predicted for the digital age because of the demographic and behavioral tracking it enables.
Perhaps the idea’s ultimate extension appeared in the 2002 sci-fi movie Minority Report, when the main character, running for his life, is spotted by a billboard that proclaims, “John Anderton, you could use a Guinness about now!”
| First Row | data | data |  |
| Second Row | data | data | |
|
|||
Hopefully this makes the code a little cleaner:
[code lang=”php”]
| First Row | data | data | |
| Second Row | data | data | |
[/code]
Style sheets exist, above all, to enable the following principle to be put into practice.
Web pages should separate content from appearance.
As a developer this means that the information in your web site should go into your HTML files, but HTML files should not contain information about how that information is displayed. And you’ve probably guessed by now that information about how the pages should appear goes into CSS files.
You might wonder what advantages this conveys. Why go to all of this trouble? Just a couple of advantages might give you an idea about why this approach has long been considered beneficial in areas of document management that have been around a lot longer than the world wide web. So why should you bother to learn CSS? Why should you overhaul your existing site to jump on the bandwagon? You’ve learned HTML. You’ve just built your website. It looks just fine. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a piece I developed in order to have a custom border without using css and that a table must be used.
[code lang=”html”]
| First Row | data | data | data |
| Second Row | data | data | data |
[/code]
This basically creates a table that looks like this…
| First Row | data | data | data |
| Second Row | data | data | data |
I am going to work on this further - basically by putting in 1px columns on either side of the table so as to limit the download of extra images (it’ll cut down to 1 image for both sides instead of 2) as well as allow for unlimited flowing widths of each column… as it stands right now due to the limitations of html background specs the far right hand column has to be the width of it’s background image or else the border break at the top if too wide or is hidden if too short.
Ever needed to shorten copy to blurb or (cutline) a header? This code will append ‘…’ to a string if its greater than $Length. Just set that variable and $Str and your set.
[code lang=”php”]
$dataLength = 11; // Set this to the length of the string before clipping
$dataString = ‘The red fox jumped over the lazy dog.’;
if(strlen($dataString) > $dataLength){
preg_match(’/[a-zA-Z0-9]{0,’.$dataLength.’}/’, $dataString, $M);
$Output = $M . ‘…’;
}
[/code]
Now this is a simplified way to count per characters which may be great for a string or single line such as a header but you want to cut a blurb, try this:
[code lang=”php”]
$dataLength = 3; // Set this to the amount of words before clipping
$dataString = ‘The red fox jumped over the lazy dog.’;
$Words = explode(” “, $dataString);
$whileCount = 0;
do {
echo $Words[$whileCount] . ” “;
$i++;
} while ($whileCount < $dataLength );
echo “…”;
[/code]
“Crypto,” to use the all-purpose abbreviation for cryptography, cryptoanalysis, and cryptology, is cool. I never took a substantial math class past Algebra II, so I really don’t know jack about the mathematical foundations of intense crypto systems. But boy, do I respect those who do. So I let them take care of the encryption side of things - but when it comes time to use and break them - then let me loose and I’ll chatter away. I’ll give you a taste of the encryption how to - if you feel like reading, pick up Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon. Sure, it’s more than 900 pages of quasi-fiction, but it manages to tell a fascinating story while giving an incredible amount of insight into modern cryptography. Read the rest of this entry »