Design By Tim

Vincent de Lau wrote a great article on HOW-TO Import the MaxMind GeoIP Free Country CSV file into MySQL and save diskspace.

The process consists of a few steps.

• Step 0 is to download the CSV file from the MaxMind website.
• Step 1 is to make a MySQL database and set up some tables.
• Step 2 is to import the CSV file into MySQL
• Step 3 is to optimize the data
• Step 4 is our final clean-up step

Now for those who want to do this the non CSV way - follow every step but grab the CSV2SQL converter. After running the CSV file from MaxMind through this app you will then have all the sql code you could ever want (I think when I went through the steps it was somewhere around 64k queries).

To be prepared for this exercise make sure you visit the MaxMind website and get yourself a copy of the MaxMind GeoIP free country CSV. Save it in a location where you can find it again and unzip. http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country

Recently I have been developing form validation in JavaScript. Due to the development environment I have learned some new techniques that I am fine tuning in my validation process.

Here are my requirements for this JavaScript to work:

• Reusable across multiple forms.
• No bloat, bandwidth intensive or memory hogging.
• Easy to implement.
• Not required for the site to operate but allow for required fields.

These are features I would like to use or see:

• It should be able to customize on-the-fly dialog for messages.
• It would be nice to have “skinable” dialog for multiple languages or use the same validation for mutliple locations.
• Multiple case scenarios adding custom cases or ability to add “modular” (plug-in) abilities for validation.

The goal is to have an optimized solution that uses reusable elements to eliminate the need of creating client side validation scripts again and again for each project. In short I want a flexible JavaScript form validator. And since I won’t be able to use any of this in my day job I think I will give you a free shot of form validation. Please post your own methods and uses I would love to have variations and thoughts on these methods.

Preperation
The usability is often determined by a good information architecture, clear and intuitive visual design and well designed functionality. One of the main arguments to enhance markup using unobtrusive JavaScript is to improve the usability of a Web page by supporting these usability attributes. This attempt of this script will be to enhance the usability of a Web page by allowing the form designer to not worry about the script rather the layout and presentation to the end user.

I would love to see this done without any frameworks used however - if one must - I will accept jQuery, Prototype or any other major JS framework freely available.

I’ve been asked on several occasions to spill the beans on my development environment. Sadly, it’s probably not the easiest setup - but it works for my stubborn mind.

• I use PHP Eclipse, ScITE, and PsPad for editing (I’m sorry Dreamweaver but you have sadly lost the battle)
• I love CuteFTP (it’s the cuteness obviously)
• XAMPP on Vista (don’t get me started - this will have to be another post)
• Subversion - because everyone isn’t perfect
• Firefox - if you need the link… come on
• And a horde of other products and since I’m not being sponsored by any of them then you’re on your own.

As you can probably tell by the majority of my posts I primarily develop in PHP (and proudly support Code Igniter). PHP has many of features built-in, along with often-cited criticism, and one I happen to agree with, is the inconsistent naming of functions. Thankfully, PHP.net has excellent documentation, including many user-contributed notes, examples and other comments. The key is to quickly access this documentation, which I find is invaluable to my productivity.

One tool that helps me is the DevBoi Firefox extension. Once installed, you will also want to install the PHP addon package. You can then access DevBoi either from the Tools menu, or press Ctrl+F9 (Linux/Windows). This will load DevBoi in the sidebar of the browser, and if the PHP package isn’t already selected, do so from the dropdown list. This will present you with an exhaustive, alphabetically sorted list of all the PHP functions. Double click on one to bring up that function’s documentation in the current browser tab window. Some hints: Ctrl+Click on the function will open it in a new tab, pressing any character will bring up the list of function names at that point in the list (b => base64_decode()). There are probably some other tricks that I’m missing—read the documentation. Bonus: Along with quick access to the PHP function reference, DevBoi is bundled with HTML 4.01/XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.1, Javascript 1.3 and DOM 2. Other addon packages include Ruby on Rails, XUL and there are more on the way.

Another great tip for quickly accessing the PHP documentation is to create a Firefox Quick Search bookmark and assign it to a keyword. The one I set-up is utter simplicity:

Name:        PHP

Location:    http://www.php.net/%s

Keyword:     php

Description: Search PHP.net

If you prefer something printed and handy on your desk, have a look at I Love Jack Daniel’s PHP Cheat Sheet, available in both PNG and PDF formats. There are a number other versions of this idea available around the Web.

John Chow dot Com is holding another evil blog contest. He’s giving away a 24″ wide screen LCD monitor and a signed copy of the best selling book, The 4-Hour Workweek! Find out how to enter here. The contest is being sponsored by The Million Dollar Wiki. Use coupon code JohnChow to save $10 on a page.

Today has been a revolutionary day for me. I love when simple things just work as advertised and revolutionize the job at hand saving time (so I can spend more time writing about how they saved me time). I am by no wise affiliated with these tools so I receive no kickback for the glowing review I’m giving them.

Tool #1: Xenu’s Link Sleuth

This tool checks Web sites for broken links. Link verification is done on “normal” links, images, frames, plug-ins, backgrounds, local image maps, style sheets, scripts and java applets. It displays a continously updated list of URLs which you can sort by different criteria. A report can be produced at any time.

• Simple, no-frills user-interface
• Can re-check broken links (useful for temporary network errors)
• Simple report format, can also be e-mailed
• Executable file smaller than 1MB
• Supports SSL websites (”https:// “)
• Partial testing of ftp and gopher sites
• Detects and reports redirected URLs
• Site Map

Tool # 2: Clickie

Clickie is a handy utility that will add 2 new features to the context menu (right click) of Windows Explorer:

• Copy Path Name: Copies the path of the selected folder or file to the clipboard (as text). You can then paste it wherever you need it. Some software need the name and path of a file and do not provide any way to browse. In such a case, Clickie becomes very useful and will save you a lot of time. NEW!! This feature now works when several files are selected.
• Open MS-DOS Prompt: Opens a DOS window in the selected directory. Using Clickie, you don’t need to crawl to the directory you want to work in.

Works on Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, 2000, XP or later. Available in English, French, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, German and Italian (setup will be in English or French).

Note: for those using Vista there is a similar feature already built in. A hidden context-sensitive menu or right click menu or shortcut menu that contains Copy as Path menu item or command. Copy as Path, which appears as menu item both for files and folder right click menu, as the name implied, will copy or grab the full path or shortcut to the file or the folder with just one button press and one click. Copy as Path is useful when user want to know the full path or actual location of a file or folder located deep inside a tree of directories or network file share, but want to avoid the hassle to traverse or navigate the path, or avoid having to manually copy and paste from address bar and type the file name.

To use Copy as Path, first user need to reveal the hidden context menu (right click menu) items. To display the hidden pop-up context menu items, simply holding down the Shift key, then right click on the file or folder. You will see the Copy as Path now appears as menu item available for selection. Once you click on Copy as Path, you can paste the full path to the file or folder in your destination application.  Right click context menu without and with hidden menu items (appear only when press Shift key while right clicking).

While looking around for usage and performance examples of application configuration should come from a database or file system. I found an interesting example between the pros and cons of each. So whipped out the trusty IDE (PHP Eclipse) and whipped up this simple addition to the core of CI.

Since my code view seems to be crapping out at the moment I will link to the amazing code on the official wiki.

Some days I just amaze myself - other days everything else blows me away. Out of the ever amazing Adobe Labs, comes Kuler - a color choosing, creating, designing, modifying, mixing, matching web application that makes choosing a color scheme way too easy.

 kuler is the first web-hosted application from Adobe Labs designed both to stand alone and to complement Adobe® Creative Suite® software. Built using Adobe® Flash® and ActionScript 3.0, kuler is all about color: color for exploration, inspiration, experimentation and sharing.

Additionally, thanks to the joys of the Apollo framework, you can download Kuler as a desktop application. PLUS!… you can also grab an RSS feed of the most popular or highest rated schemes. Beware of my drool on the site!

I always find it quite difficult to build myself a site, so doing it this way—out in the open—works for me, it helps get me motivated. In the past I have called this process a live redesign but wouldn’t be so brave as to put myself through that again.

First, though, some kind of project overview so I have at least half a clue of where I am trying to get to:

What is it for? This is essentially a business blog and it’s long term goal is to generate business, pure and simple.

Why no design for the launch then? I am not actively seeking new clients at the moment, so any kind of design seems superfluous to my needs right now. It’s all about search engines and fellow geeks at this stage, and both can cope without a design for a while I am sure.

Who is my target audience? Well if you’re here then I guess you’re my target - really no direction here at the moment.

It’s a bit of a double edged sword really, my name is reasonably well known right where it needs to be but I have been known to get a bit vulgar and argumentative at times. I wouldn’t ever try and hide that from any potential client (I couldn’t anyway), that’s me like it or loathe it, but it isn’t necessarily all I am, nor all you get when you hire me to do a job (unless requested).

I have no ambitions to see this site featured on showcase sites, though it’s always nice (maybe I’ll give myself an award or something). No, if it’s possible I want the content to drive the site, not the design; we’ll have to wait and see. I might one day change my mind and which point I will plead like the beggar that I am for pointless votes to generate traffic.

That’s roughly it, for now…

I hate it - when I took my blog down originally it was plagued with the nasty stuff. Now that I put up some of the older posts I seemed to have grabbed all the comment spam with it - so I am terribly sorry to anyone who has to read this nasty stuff… I’ve got askimet running but it hasn’t learned my comments are spam yet… so please give me a break while I knock out all this crazy time wasting spam.

While this is clean and simple I really need to get this theme worked out - anyone has ideas I’d really appreciate them!