Archives for Month: December 2009 ::
How to Network Vista and XP Computers Together
Posted on :: Dec 29
Want to connect your new Windows Vista machine to your existing XP box? It's not rocket science, but it's not quite as simple as you might expect. To help, I've provided a step-by-step guide to connecting your Vista machine to your XP computer.
Mozilla: Firefox Mobile Will Solve Content Problems
Posted on :: Dec 18
Native apps for pushing Web content are as old as smartphones, but Web apps are now exploding. Mozilla hopes Firefox Mobile will help smaller innovators.
Jay Sullivan, vice president of mobile at Mozilla, recently told PC Pro that the Firefox Mobile browser on Nokia's N900 will be released for Android and Windows Mobile next year. With improved Javascript engines, Mozilla hopes that mobile content developers will return to the Web and mobile browsers for delivering mobile content, rather than re-packaging it in multiple Web apps across a range of different mobile platforms.Mozilla: The "the web will win" over app stores
Posted on :: Dec 18
Mozilla believes that its new Firefox Mobile browser could wean developers away from developing for platform-specific app stores and onto developing cross-platform apps powered by JavaScript and HTML.
Mozilla is starting to take mobile seriously. It is set to release the first version of Firefox Mobile (codenamed Fennec) on Nokia’s N900 handset shortly, with versions for Windows Mobile and Android due to hit handsets next year.
Will Google become a hardware company in 2010?
Posted on :: Dec 17
First, Google was preparing to launch its own Google-branded smartphone. Now, there’s a Google laptop on the way?
That’s the plan, according to TechCrunch.
Cross-Engine Keyword Richness
Posted on :: Dec 16
The importance of keywords and phrases in domains, subdomain, folders, & page names
What impact do keywords in the domain have on placement in search engines? How about if they are in the subdomain or only in the page name; or what if they are not there at all? Website Magazine looks at the top three search engines to determine if including keywords matters (and if so, where) in the fight for search result page real estate.
The search term we used to analyze the importance of search terms on placements was “Bakugan” – a Japanese anime TV series, popular children’s game/toy and movie. While not a immensely well-known term, the word “Bakugan” has a global monthly search volume on its own of five million with a low estimated cost per click (at Google). We’ve only looked at three pages (30 listings) of results on the most popular search engines (Google, Yahoo!, and Bing). What we learned (consider it the synopsis) is listed below.Mango Blog :: Comments RSS Feed Mod
Posted on :: Dec 16
I had found this topic on the mango Blog Forums where a user was asking about Comment Feeds for Posts.
Well Laura had posted some great code to use for it and I downloaded it myself and tweaked the code to add a new property to the <mango:PostProperty> Tag call commentslink.
Here is the code currently available in a zip file with a readme and all the code neccessary to implement the Comments RSS Feed Mod.
Improve your JQuery :: 25 Tips to help you
Posted on :: Dec 16
In this Very extensive and long article/Tutorial, I'm going to give you some reasons as to how to and why you shouldimprove your JQuery Knowledge and Scripting.
jQuery is awesome. I've been using it for about a year now and although I was impressed to begin with I'm liking it more and more the longer I use it and the more I find out about it's inner workings.
I'm no jQuery expert. I don't claim to be, so if there are mistakes in this article then feel free to correct me or make suggestions for improvements.
I'd call myself an "intermediate" jQuery user and I thought some others out there could benefit from all the little tips, tricks and techniques I've learned over the past year. The article also ended up being a lot longer than I thought it was going to be so I'll start with a table of contents so you can skip to the bits you're interested in.7 reasons why you really should learn jQuery
Posted on :: Dec 16
In the last 2 or 3 years, we have all experienced the comeback of javascript. A language cursed in many ways, for its lack of consistency across browsers, slow runtime performance and poor tooling (debugging). The revival of Javascript is hard to miss though, given the jungle of frameworks and effects libraries that are becoming available. Even browser manufacturers are jumping on this trend by delivering javascript engines that dramatically speed up javascript execution. Javascript "2.0" seems to be the fuel for the next generation of web applications.
For long I have more or less ignored this whole trend. Most developers have enough new things to learn already, and javascript is often not the top priority. The fact that there are a lot of different frameworks (MooTools, Dojo, Prototype, jQuery, etc) does not make it any easier either.
Below are my 7 reasons why you should learn a javascript framework, and that the best one to learn about is jQuery.
HTML 5 Event Attributes
Posted on :: Dec 15
Standard Event Attributes
HTML 4 added the ability to let events trigger actions in a browser, like starting a JavaScript when a user clicks on an element.
Below are the standard event attributes that can be inserted into HTML 5 elements to define event actions.
New : New event attributes in HTML 5.
HTML 5 : Tag Reference
Posted on :: Dec 15
HTML 5 improves interoperability and reduces development costs by making precise rules on how to handle all HTML elements, and how to recover from errors.
Some of the new features in HTML 5 are functions for embedding audio, video, graphics, client-side data storage, and interactive documents. HTML 5 also contains new elements like <nav>, <header>, <footer>, and <figure>.
The HTML 5 working group includes AOL, Apple, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Mozilla, Nokia, Opera, and many hundreds of other vendors.
Note: HTML 5 is not a W3C recommendation yet!
HTML 5 : The web is evolving
Posted on :: Dec 15
The web is constantly evolving. New and innovative websites are being created every day, pushing the boundaries of HTML in every direction. HTML 4 has been around for nearly a decade now, and publishers seeking new techniques to provide enhanced functionality are being held back by the constraints of the language and browsers.
To give authors more flexibility and interoperability, and enable more interactive and exciting websites and applications, HTML 5 introduces and enhances a wide range of features including form controls, APIs, multimedia, structure, and semantics.
Work on HTML 5, which commenced in 2004, is currently being carried out in a joint effort between the W3C HTML WG and the WHATWG. Many key players are participating in the W3C effort including representatives from the four major browser vendors: Apple, Mozilla, Opera, and Microsoft; and a range of other organisations and individuals with many diverse interests and expertise.
Note that the specification is still a work in progress and quite a long way from completion. As such, it is possible that any feature discussed in this article may change in the future. This article is intended to provide a brief introduction to some of the major features as they are in the current draft.
iPhone compatible multi-column CSS liquid layouts
Posted on :: Dec 11
I've put together a series of website layouts that use percentage widths and relative positioning, and they work with all the common web browsers including Safari on the iPhone and iPod touch. They're also 'stackable' so you can use multiple column types on the one page. This makes the number of possible layouts endless! Follow the links below for the demos and more detailed info:
The 4C’s of Web Failure
Posted on :: Dec 8
Website design and development are highly technical fields. But even the most seasoned professionals can sometimes completely miss the mark, creating sites that fail to fulfill their value-generating promise. And, more often than not, this failure is caused by a lack of low-tech strategic thinking and analysis.
In a rush to launch sites, we can forget to examine four foundational topics: culture, customers, cost, and complexity. When poorly managed, any one of these can become the root cause of Web failure.
In this two-part series, we will examine the 4 C’s of Web failure and how to avoid them to improve your chances of seeing a positive return on your Web development investments.Creating a reusable message style in Photoshop
Posted on :: Dec 4
As a designer, I have a massive collection of layer styles and gradient styles that I refer to in order to speed up my design process. I started with some free styles I got from Designer Folio and have added a ton of my own styles to the list based on projects I have worked on.
One style that has always been missing was something that looked like an error message that you might find in many css frameworks. Typically these look like solid blocks of color with borders on the top and bottom. Granted this is not a difficult thing to design but it is time consuming and when your quickly changing up a design it can really bog you down. At least it does for me. You can always short cut the design by adding a stroke border all the way around but that's not always what I want to show a client.
New Google Analytics Code For Better Load Times
Posted on :: Dec 4
Google Analytics has recently announced a new asynchronous tracking code that can "optionally" be replaced with the old one.
The new code does not block the website while it loads which will improve the loading times.
It also aims to provide more accurate results as it can be installed inside
<head></head>tags (rather than before the</body>tag) and will be able to collect data from visitors that quit the webpage before it loads fully. This way, "any possible tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript not being fully loaded" are also eliminated.