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.
Mac OS X is better than Windows, Reason #435
28
Oct
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
16
Oct
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
06
Oct
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
28
Aug
On vacation in Beulah, MI, overlooking Crystal Lake.
Personally very proud of this picture.
Enable Clean URLs in Drupal 6.x
16
Aug
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–
23
Jul
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
27
Jun
Is anyone else interested in microformats?
11
Jun
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.
