Joe Sak

I want you to get on with your business.

Monday, November 10th, 2008 | Design | No Comments

And not waste time learning complicated software.

I want you to get on with your business.

And not waste your time dealing with buggy crap that breaks all the time.

I want you to get on with your business.

And not waste your time waiting for me to resolve your issues.

I want you to get on with your business.

And not waste your time worrying about your web site’s performance.

I want you to get on with your business.

And not waste your money in lost sales due to customer frustration.

So stop wasting your time and contact me. I’ll be glad to have your business, and you’ll be relieved to be getting mine.

Real World Rails Project, Part 1.5

Monday, November 10th, 2008 | Programming, Projects, Ruby on Rails, Web Development, Websites | 1 Comment

This is design iteration 1.5 of my first real world rails project. Read part I here.

In this iteration I added drag and droppable table rows and a pricing table for the pricing page.

Since I haven’t figured out how to update the db with the new sort orders reflected after the drag & drop action, this is not considered iteration 2.

Enjoy:

http://screencast.com/t/9bBPFCF3xp

My First Real-World Rails Project part I

Saturday, November 8th, 2008 | Programming, Projects, Ruby on Rails, Web Development, Websites | 3 Comments

I’ve decided to make a video series of my first real project in Ruby on Rails. My love of programming has been rekindled by this amazing language. It’s very true Rails was developed for the new Web. The conventions and defaults built into the framework are true genius and make any project simple, fun and agile. I can respond to any change in scope at any stage of development and give my customers a competitive advantage.

I can truly value Customer Collaboration over contract negotiation now.

Enjoy:

http://screencast.com/t/rGDhWbVru

Ruby on Rails will Save Web Development

Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 | Code, Programming, Ruby on Rails, Web Development, Work Stuff | No Comments

I’m investing time to learn Ruby on Rails and guess what? I’m becoming happier by the page.

Ruby on Rails is built on, emphasizes and aides developers in working according to the principles of the Agile Manifesto. I’ve never read anything more inspiring than those 12 principles. Rails has made it possible to skip functional specs, comprehensive documents and all the other garbage that stops us from delivering working software to our customers that gives them a competitive advantage.

Rails allows you to respond to change rather than try to avoid it. Face it: clients change their minds. They forget to tell you some detail until the last week of development. They decide they don’t like their original ideas and want to try something new. In order for them to remain competitive, we need to be able to adapt and respond to those changes. So if you can’t control clients and stop this from happening, why would you continue to beat the dead horse? You write pages and pages of functional specs, scope docs and project plans. But I’ve never seen a single project completed without a change to any of those. It just doesn’t happen. Rails makes it easy to work with change, rather than constantly trying to figure out how to avoid it (you can’t).

Rails makes it possible to work and grow in a dynamic and competitive world. As I learn more, I’ll post more. Until then, I suggest you try Rails and see for yourself how much better your work can be.

Five Simple Tips to taking Better Photos

Friday, October 31st, 2008 | Cameras, Life, Photography | 1 Comment

As some of you may or may not know, I have a photography hobby. Because of this, I’ve been asked by a number of people to give some easy advice on taking better photos, specifically with Point & Shoot cameras. Now, I’m not a professional, just an amateur hobbyist, but I do know a few things you can do to improve your photos, even if you don’t have a fancy schmancy lens or expensive camera.

› Continue reading

Mac OS X is better than Windows, Reason #435

Tuesday, October 28th, 2008 | Design | 1 Comment

Mac OS X Finder handles long file names much better than Windows Explorer does. If you have a long list of similarly named files, OS X makes it very easy to tell, at a glance, which file you want without having to expand your window. It adds ellipses in the middle of the name, allowing you to see the beginning and end of the file name.

Windows, however, adds ellipses at the end of the file name, making it impossible to distinguish between file names.

Screenshot:

How Mac OS X Finder handles long file names

The usability improvement implied in this simple touch is unmistakeable. It’s these small details that can improve your app. Always think about how a feature, used in a particular way, can hurt or help your users.

Fix IE6 Flickering CSS Background Hover

Thursday, October 16th, 2008 | Design | 1 Comment

So you’re most likely a web developer, looking for an answer to this problem on Google.

You’ve tested your web site in the major browsers. IE6, IE7, Firefox and of course you built it in Safari first. It’s looking immaculate. You’ve even fixed the IE6 disappearing background problem. But what you don’t understand is why your images are flickering when you rollover them with the mouse. Assuming you used the CSS background sliding door technique and the Image Sprite Map Technique, this Java Script will take all your problems away:

try { document.execCommand(“BackgroundImageCache”, false, true); } catch(err) {}

Your problem is that you most likely have “Every visit to the page” selected in Internet Explorer’s “Check for newer versions of stored pages:” option in the Temporary Internet Files Settings. This script is a workaround for that. If you don’t have that setting checked, keep searching google!

SEO for Enliven has been Successful

Monday, October 6th, 2008 | Improving Code, Programming, SEO, Semantic XHTML, Web Development, Websites, Work Stuff, XHTML | 1 Comment

Bunmi told me recently that our sister company, Enliven Software, has been getting regular business and sales through online visitors who did a search on Google.

I’m proud of this, because I wrote the XHTML that’s been helpful in optimizing enlivensoftware.com for robots like googlebot to understand the site and return it high in the rankings for search results lists.

How did I do it?
 
Header tags, Title attributes and Cross-linking, oh my!

Use the proper hierarchy of Header tags in your code. On the home page, H1 belongs to your logo and company name. H2 belongs to the main headline of the page and maybe your company’s motto if you have one. H3 and H4 can be headers of sections, like News or Events.

On your subpages, make your logo/company name a regular anchor tag linking back to the home page. Now H1 goes to your page name and H2 becomes a sub-header for dividing content. H3 and H4 can still designate page sections. It helps if your H1 matches your Page Title

Then you should put titles on those tags and on your navigation menu links. Hell, you can even put titles on divs! These titles should differ from the text in the tag itself. For example, you could have a link named “Events” and its corresponding title could be “Calendar of Events at Company ABC”. This is cross-linking and keyword density rolled into one swift move without overloading the user with too much fluff in the words they see.

Also, a good friend of yours can be the ABBR tag. It’s the tag you use to define abbreviations. In a real-world example, here’s the code I used for the logo for the new MHSAA web site we’re working on:

<h1 id=”logo” title=”Michigan High School Athletic Association”><abbr title=”Michigan High School Athletic Association”>MHSAA</abbr></h1>

Now Google and other robots will know what MHSAA means. That should help in future searches. It also helps that their domain is mhsaa.com.< You can submit your sitemap to google and use webmaster tools and google analytics, as well.

So these are simple ways you as a programmer can help your company and clients succeed in SEO. Don’t forget that you should start with a kick-ass writer, too.

Paradise in a Picture

Thursday, August 28th, 2008 | Design | No Comments

On vacation in Beulah, MI, overlooking Crystal Lake.

Personally very proud of this picture.

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/