Category — Blogging

Ajax is all the rage for web development these days.  For some reason, it seems that an obligatory part of using Ajax is sporting a snappy little spinning dohickey that lets people know when stuff is happening.

Ajaxload is a neat little service where you can easily make your own animated Ajax load graphic with custom color designs.  Its free and quite easy to use.

My geekness approves.

Here’s an example:

If you develop web pages, and are at all concerned about consistency between FireFox and IE, you must read this post!

I have used the Web Developer plugin for FireFox for quite some time.  It is a lifesaver when you are developing web pages, as you can easily see all of the styles and markup that is being applied to a specific area of your page.  The problem is that it only works in FireFox, leaving IE out in the cold.  Since IE is the real pain in the rear when it comes to Web Dev, the lack of a similar tool has been a major PITA.

Well, a two hour witch hunt for an IE only CSS bug lead me to scour the net for something to make the pain go away!  The fix?

IE HTML Element Spy, an IE7 Add-On.  I LOVE THIS TOOL!!!

It works a little differently than Web Developer, but it really gets the job done.  I litterally spent the last 2 hours trying to debug a DIV that wouldn’t line up with the top of a page.  It was completely impossible to find out why – the thing worked fine in FireFox, but not IE.  Installing IE HTML Element Spy lead me right to the problem – a burried IE only CSS rule that put a 30px padding at the top of the sidebar.

Voila!  Problem solved.

So, 2 hours and not a single clue using my own powers of debugging versus 2 minutes and a fix with IE HTML Element Spy.  Which would you prefer?!  Yeah, me too!

Download that puppy now!

Frackin’ IE.

For those of you who like to make and edit WordPress themes, this bit of information on how to keep your theme upgradeable is extremely cool.

While many people like to make WordPress themes from scratch, one of the best ways to get the most bang for your buck is to use someone elses hard labor to your own benefit.  There are a ton of talented theme developers out there, and if you are going to use a classic three column design, why would you want to start from scratch.  Lots of great themes exist in the open source realm that make excellent starting blocks for your own work.

There is a bit of a problem though – the theme that you are basing your work off of is likely still changing and getting better.  How can you base your own theme on another, and still be able to seamlessly upgrade the base theme without having to do much work on your own?  Use a Child Theme, thats how!

Simply by adding the following line:

Template: **name of base theme here**

to the header of your style.css file, you can use all of the files of the base theme, and simply have whatever you put in the child theme override the styles, etc. of the base theme.

For more information, check out this article on ThemeShaper.

My brother was philosophizing about cheap clients on his blog.  He is spot on with his commentary.  I’m writing this as unfortunate proof that the sickness in not unique to the animation industry.

How is it that people can be this stupid?

Check out this advertisement for a web design job.

What the heck is his person thinking?  Hmm.  Let’s see.  I have to come to their office, train their sorry butt (because that’s really what they mean by “work with me on this”), and then I have to make 500 pages for their website.

OK.  Project understood.  Now, how much do they want to pay me for this?  UNDER $100!!!!!!!

UNDER $100.  Not even a hundred.  Under that.  Because, at $100, we’d be talking $0.20 a page, which is clearly too much to pay for my services.

Wow.

For anyone wondering, a half way decent website is going to cost you several thousand dollars.  Throw in e-commerce, and it is going to be more.  If you are flexible and willing to use open source stuff and are not a crazy design Nazi, you might be able to get it done for $5-7K.  If you want something that looks unique and professional, it will cost more.

If you want it based on a Content Management System so that you can update it yourself, it will cost even more.

If your site is worth having (financially), then its worth spending money on.  You don’t open a store and expect to do it with $500.  Why would anyone think that they can do it on the web?  ESPECIALLY if you are selling something!  At least with a store, people can come in and look at what you have, see who you are and make a decision to buy from you or not.  On the web, all they have to go by is your site.

Which site would you trust with your personal information? This one:

or this one:

Design matters.  Professionalism matters.  A look of legitimacy matters.  And, all of these are going to cost money.

Oh, and please don’t take this rant as evidence that I think I’m the best web specialist in the world.  Clearly I’m not.  I can’t design worth crap.  Yet, even I’m $250 an hour at my rack rate.  Do I do a lot of web work?  Yup, going on 15 years now.  Why would anyone expect to spend less on their online “entity” than they did on legally setting up their business?  Many lawyers are way more expensive than $250 an hour.  Find a web specialist than can command the same rate, and you won’t be sorry.  If you don’t, your site may look like this:

Anyway, I’m off my soapbox.  Sorry for all the suds.

I can’t believe I’m going to break my blogging hiatus with an esoteric post on how to fix an annoying error when upgrading to WordPress 2.5.1.

But, I’m going to…

For those of you who have upgraded WordPress only to have the following error flash across your screen:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function wp_register_sidebar_widget() in xxxxxxxxx/blog/wp-admin/includes/dashboard.php on line 32

when you try to log into the WP-ADMIN dashboard, there is a simple cure – IF you happen to be using the K2 theme for your blog.

The problem is that earlier versions of K2 used their sidebar system, which required you to disable widgets for WordPress.  Well, the new admin screen doesn’t like that one bit and it makes it so that you can’t log in.

What’s the cure?  Simple – remove the K2 plugin from the Active Plugins option in the database.

How do you do that?  Log into phpmyadmin and go to the wp_options table and select Browse.  Look for the active_plugins entry (mine was option_id #39) and click the pencil to edit the entry.

The entry will probably look something like this:

a:3:{i:0;s:0:"";i:1;s:19:"akismet/akismet.php";i:2;s:29:"disable-wordpress-widgets.php";}

What you need to do is delete out the disable-wordpress-widgets entry, or it may be named widgets-removal.php or something similar instead.  How do you do this?  Simply remove the quoted call to the php file, and the "i" and "s" entries immediately prior to that call.  So, in my install, the entry above becomes:

a:3:{i:0;s:0:"";i:1;s:19:"akismet/akismet.php";}

It looks much more complicated than it really is.  Once that entry is gone, you can go back to the wp-admin section and log in without a hitch.

As an aside – the latest versions of K2 have a checkbox in their theme options to handle this problem.  To avoid the issue, I’d recommend upgrading K2 first, then upgrading wordpress to 2.5.1.  OR, for those who are reading this prior to the WP 2.5.1 upgrade (if there indeed are any!) – simply use the wp-admin plugin screen to disable the "disable wordpress widgets" plugin before you upgrade.  Then, this will all be a moot point. 

I warned you it was esoteric.

Anyway, you can read more here: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/164296

You can also handle this a different way by reading this entry as well.

If you use WordPress a lot like I do, you’ve no doubt noticed the shortcomings of TinyMCE, the default WYSIWYG text editor for writing posts and pages.  I’ve looked into replacing it in the past, but never came up with a viable option that didn’t cost a bunch of money or that wasn’t a headache to manage.

Today in my web travels (researching how to write a Webservice with PHP) I came across FCKEditor, a free text editor that seems to have a lot more going for it that TinyMCE.  I began to look into how I could incorporate it with WordPress when it hit me – DUH, someone has likely already done this work.  So, I googled FCKEditor and WordPress and sure enough, a kind gentleman by the name of Dean has made a plugin to marry the two together.

It’s as simple as downloading his plugin and activating it.  Within 2 minutes, I was writing this message to let everyone know the good news.

So far, FCKEditor seems to be exactly what I wanted – more power over my WordPress posts with less hassle to do it.  It’s what I was hoping for with Contribute CS3, but I’ve already let you know how that went.

Here’s a quick screenshot of it:

In fact, it has it’s own image upload manager, which is really great.  I used it to put up that image and it went so much smoother than it would have been otherwise – between using the WordPress option or FTPing it myself and copying the URL, getting the capitlization correct, etc.

So, two thumbs  for now.  I’ll let you know more as I discover it!

UPDATE:

Here is a picture of the full editor – just so you can see that it isn’t as "limited" as the pic above suggests…

I’m in the process of potentially redesigning this blog, and I came across an interesting study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about line length and reading. This report states that while a long line of text increases reading speeds, people tend to prefer shorter lines. To borrow from the conclusion of the study:

Conclusion

The best available research suggests that users will read fastest if the line lengths are longer (up to 10 inches). If the line lengths are too short (e.g., two and a half inch columns), the line length probably will impede rapid reading. Users tend to prefer lines that are relatively short (about four inches).

While the study doesn’t go any further, I feel like it leaves me with a sort of conundrum. People prefer the shorter lines, but things like pictures, YouTube videos, etc. are best done with a larger content area. Then, add to this the desire for a multi-column design for a pleasing segregation of similar content, things become even more problematic.

Also to be considered:

1. Older PC’s have smaller resolutions
2. Most newer monitors are wide screen (because they can get more screens per sheet of material, equaling a lower cost)
3. Most newer machines have higher resolutions
4. Some people prefer a fluid center (grows as they increase the browser size)
5. A static width site provides better overall design options for visual impact

What’s the magic formula for a pleasing design with a flexible layout for varied content and overall ease of use for the reader? Who knows! There seems to be no general consensus. If you search the net, layouts are all over the place. Content is king, but the king’s accommodations are widely varied.

Three column, content to the left is a newer take on things, but it just seems a bit weird to me – does anyone ever look all the way to the right? Most major news companies go with the standard three column design with centered content, but then they have a ton of information that clutters up the flow, much to the detriment of conveying information in my opinion. Oh well, they are free, right?

Leaving the old standbys for a second, we can venture into the world of more free form site design. These sites are more focused on overall visual design and can look pretty cool. Unfortunately, they tend to primarily have highly static content – get it to look good once, and then never touch it again – or they at least feature visual content like pictures over text.

If I take the lessons that I learned with this current theme (forever captured here for the sake of posterity), I realize that there are a few things that I’m looking for in a new theme. First, is a wider column on the right. That small column, while helpful in keeping the overall width down, really cramps my style. It won’t hold a standard 120 pixel width banner and the type has to be so darn small to get things to fit. Second, I would like a larger content space to accommodate larger photos, but the line length study makes me second guess this desire. At a current 4.5 inches, my site is already past the 3 – 3.5 inch range that readers seem to prefer. And, lastly, I think I would like something a bit more light and open. The current design is a bit blocky and has more of a closed feel. Ideally, I’d like to see that open up a bit with some sections flowing into the general background.

Can I take all of that stuff into consideration and come up with a new design that is worth changing to? Honestly I don’t know. When I look at the themes of people who are a lot more talented that I am in the fields of programming and design, I really don’t see anything that is particularly compelling. The one thing I do know is this: when and if I find the right structure, I am certainly not above ripping it off! All with due props, of course…