Usability & SEO are doing ok, time to invite Content to the party
Tuesday, August 19th, 2008 | Design | No Comments
http://www.artemisphere.com/posts/30-you-dont-need-seo-usability/
Enable Clean URLs in Drupal 6.x
Saturday, August 16th, 2008 | Design | No Comments
So you installed Drupal 6.x and the Clean Urls options are grayed out with an ambiguous link to the drupal clean URL handbook.
It makes no sense to you. You’ve searched Google. You can’t find anything. You’ve figured out at least that you need to rewrite something in the .htaccess file. (it’s a hidden file - enable hidden files in OS X or enable hidden files in Windows)
If your .htaccess file looks like this:
AddHandler php5-script .php
then follow my instructions. If your .htaccess has a ton of stuff in it, try this out instead
Test if mod_rewrite is enabled
Add these two lines to the bottom of your .htaccess file:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule .* http://drupal\.org [L,R]
Visit your website. If you are redirected to drupal.org, mod_rewrite is enabled.
As long as that’s in working order, just erase what you did and replace it with this:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
#Rewrite current-style URLs of the form ‘index.php?q=x’.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
That’s it. Go back to the Clean URLs settings page and you should be able to enable it.
ATTN: All DNN Developers–
Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 | Design | No Comments
I’d like to know when you plan on learning web standards, XHTML and CSS. It’s 2008, and there’s no excuse for a module that costs money–PHP-based CMS’ have a wealth of free, high-quality modules–to have poor layout techniques ( tables and span tags everywhere ), amateur of CSS and crappy admin screens.
I’m calling on the DNN Core Team to encourage web standards and learning professional HTML and CSS, instead of half assed lazy HTML/CSS generated by IDEs for programmers who don’t care to learn. To the Core Team’s credit, they’re getting close with DNN 5.
I’m urging the operators of SnowCovered.com to give careful evaluation of submitted modules for: professionalism, web standards, UX design, simplicity and value. A lot of crappy vendors are ripping people off on your web site with terrible modules, outdated code, bloated features and lazy admin screens. Stop letting it happen.
The leaders in the DNN community need to step up and show people the way. Start by Getting Real (also mentioned on the DNN blog recently, a good sign) and learn what matters: making your web site easy for your customers to use–visitors and editors / administrators.
Hopefully, www.dnngallery.net can be a push in that direction, even if Cuong Dang has a strange affinity for Khoi Vinh ;-P
I’ve been writing elsewhere
Friday, June 27th, 2008 | Design | No Comments
Hi. I’ve been writing for my company blog a lot more lately.
Thanks.
Is anyone else interested in microformats?
Wednesday, June 11th, 2008 | Design | No Comments
I’ve taken up an interest in microformats. In my opinion, any technology and language that can make machines understand our content more is very cool. I’ve always been fascinated by computers since I was a kid, always knew I wanted to work with them.
I’m absolutely amazed that we can accomplish intimate detail and precise understanding in computer languages, and share it all across the globe within seconds.
DotNetNuke Core Team all up in my Grill
Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008 | CSS, DotNetNuke, Improving Code, Programming, Skinning, Web Development, XHTML | No Comments
Man, I’ve been getting quite a bit of attention from the DNN Core Team the past couple days.
I just wanted to say I appreciate the feedback and I’m interested in the advancements and improvements being considered in upcoming versions of the platform. Thanks for putting up with my candor and overt angst in these past few bitch posts.
I’d be particularly interested in knowing about any plans to move forward with .Net 3.5 and its ability to allow designers to define all the HTML in the controls. I’d like to see DNN reach the point where all rendered HTML is controlled by the front-end engineer, and we can achieve W3C compliance and simpler control over themes and content generation.
DotNetNuke Default.CSS: Seriously??
Monday, June 2nd, 2008 | Artemis Solutions Group, CSS, DotNetNuke, Improving Code, Programming, Ranting, Skinning, Venting, Web Development, Work Stuff | 14 Comments
Here’s another one of the myriad of reasons that I am displeased with DotNetNuke as a web development platform:
The “default.css” included with all installs of DNN has this (and more CSS for other stuff like it) in it:
H1
{
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica;
font-size: 20px;
font-weight: normal;
color: #666644;
}
H2
{
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, Helvetica;
font-size: 20px;
...
(I think you get the point)
Excuse me, DotNetNuke core team, but isn’t stuff like this up to the Designers and Developers? Why are you including a default stylesheet with definitions for HTML elements that would be used by Web developers? I can’t tell you how many times default.css has left me absolutely baffled about the smallest details not being quite right according to our design specs because it has these random “defaults” in it. It’s not up to DNN Core team to define my font families, sizes, and colors. And seriously, stop using pixel font sizing.
It’s becoming clearer to me almost on a daily basis, that DNN is not the right CMS for a professional Web shop to be using. They probably have this default.css for people who don’t make skins or know anything about Web development. And if you remove default.css, it completely hoses all the Admin pages and Control Panel. It takes way too much time and effort to figure out what’s removable and what’s not, and you always end up surprised when some random element isn’t positioned or styled correctly later on down the road.
It’s time for us to move on to a CMS that gives the developer full control over the theme, and not put a bunch of defaults in it that you can’t get rid of.
Dear Internet: Learn how to Spell
Sunday, April 27th, 2008 | Design | No Comments
Even second graders can get this right, yet somehow the distinction between the words “lose” and “loose” is completely lost on Internet users.
Here it is, the concrete definition as understood when I was seven fucking years old:
“lose” means to have lost.
“loose” is when you sleep with the head cheerleader.
Got it?
So tired of seeing this bullshit on every forum and message board and yahoo answers page I come across.
Why DotNetNuke is Terrible
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 | Design, DotNetNuke, Improving Code, Programming, Ranting, Usability, Venting, Web Development | 1 Comment
I really could go on and on about this, but just a few notes.
1. Forced Registration to Download their Software
When you go to DNN’s web site and sister sites, like the new DNN Events site, the first thing you have to do before you can download anything is register an account. Now, it’s not all bad because it’s free and I guess they just want to track popularity (ever heard of Google Analytics?), but the registration process takes too fucking long. I registered an account to download the new Events Module beta about 10 minutes ago and still haven’t received my “verify your account” email. Sorry, DNN team, I’ve now lost all interest in your beta.
Not only that, but it’s not clearly obvious you have to register. They bury the instruction to register in their rather long and boring content. If I go to wordpress or drupal’s site, I see big freakin links to download (no registration required of course). It wouldn’t be so bad if they had a big link that said “Register and Download” but no, of course they don’t.
Which leads to my next point,
2. They really don’t support or discuss usability and accessibility
DNN modules and the DNN platform itself are so hard to use. Their website is hard to navigate, most of the icons don’t make sense, and the forums are cluttered and don’t work in all browsers. You can’t make a post in their forums in Safari. Sorry, Safari users, outta luck. Get firefox, I guess. No one seriously talks about how to make the admin screens and layouts of their modules more functional, faster, and easier to understand.
Most of the modules we have to buy (another point) are riddled with awful and outdated front-end code, and have the absolute worst Admin screens.
3. You have to pay for most of the modules
Now this isn’t that bad. I mean, a software developer’s gotta make money, and some people run their business solely off of DNN modules, right? Ok, but step up your game and make a module worth paying for. Refer to point #2.
More later, I have to get back to work.
My Fingers are going to be Bloody
Saturday, March 29th, 2008 | Design | No Comments
Don’t drop your iPhone on cement!
It still works, I can answer calls, go online, touch the screen anywhere, but I might also get shards of glass in my hand. Oops.
Well now I have a legitimate excuse to buy a 3G iPhone this summer. (besides the fact that it’s going to be awesome)