Archive for the 'Code' Category
December 13, 2006
Free Open Source Search Tool from IBM and Yahoo!
IBM has released a free enterprise search engine, IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition. The engine includes some technology from IBM’s OmniFind product, so this is probably prositioned as an entry level introduction to their commercial product. It is a direct challenge to Google’s Mini search appliance, according to this story on CIO.com. Yahoo! seems to have contributed some interface design expertise for the management interface.
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December 12, 2006
Quoted in MSNBC.com Your Career Column
Eve Tahmincioglu interviewed me for her career column on MSNBC about how to get experience in IT when just starting out from school or after a career switch: The chicken-or-egg issue that is ‘experience’.
The main points I covered with Eve are that working with open source projects while in school and/or on your own time will help you to gain experience, build your professional network and develop compelling material for your resume. Something that didn’t get into the piece is that even if you aren’t going on the programming track in IT, you can still get experience in working with open source systems by installing and configuring them for pro bono clients or personal projects.
There is really no excuse for not having some practical experience under your belt with the wide availability of free software and systems to work with.
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December 5, 2006
Releasing CSS
O’Reilly Media has published a new PDF book (their Short Cut series) that brings us up to speed on IE 7 CSS support and how it differs from IE 6. Looks like a good resource if you want to make sure your design translates well into IE 7. Releasing CSS:
In an industry that communicates with terms such as “Browser Hell” and “browser wars,” a web designer can be excused for having some anxiety over Microsofts recent upgrade of Internet Explorer 6 IE6 to Internet Explorer 7 IE7. Web designers should ask the following questions:
- What problems does IE6 possess and what fixes does IE7 provide?
- What part of the Cascading Style Sheets CSS specification does IE7 for Windows support?
- How can web designers work around any problems that exist within IE7s support for CSS?
- While web designers are testing their designs on the latest browser, how fast will IE7 be adopted by their clients audience?
This Short Cut attempts to answer these questions to allow web designers a smoother transition to IE7 and, hopefully, an escape from Browser Hell.
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December 1, 2006
IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine
Here is some helpful information from the MS IEBlog about how to run IE 6 and 7 on the same machine.
IEBlog : IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine
This is really important for any web developer or designer since IE6 will be with us for quite a long time to come. The downside here is that it isn’t possible to run both browsers within the same instance of the operating system, which is why MS is offering a free virtual server with which to run 6 in parallel. Not ideal.
I’m surprised that MS didn’t foresee this need before they launched 7.
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November 16, 2006
Yahoo and Microsoft Adopt Sitemaps Standard
Does your site offer a site map for search engine crawlers yet? It just became a lot more compelling to offer one now that Microsoft and Yahoo have begun supporting it:
In alphabetical order, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to all support a unified system of submitting web pages through feeds to their crawlers. Called Sitemaps, taking its name from the precursor system that Google launched last year, all three search engines will now support the method.
Providing a sitemap according to the specification will make it easier for the search engines to rapidly index new content you add to your site.
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November 15, 2006
Coding Like 1995
From Gary LaBranche at Association Forum: 100 Million Served
There were less than 20,000 Web sites in the world in 1995, all with limited usability [Gary probably means functionality here. -dg]. In the spring of that year, I served on a team charged with developing a Web site for an association, and recall the debate about including a membership application. Half of the team argued that it was a waste of time and no one would ever apply for membership online. The other half argued, “What the heck, it can’t hurt.”
The joke was on us. Just five years later, online applications were the leading source of new members.
Everything looks pretty obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it? What bothers me today is not that people don’t recognize the potential of the Web (they do to a large extent) but that poor knowledge of usability and design impedes their ability to really take advantage of it. Given that it is feasible for almost any group to enable online payment for transactions, the competitive differentiator online now often comes down to how easy it is to complete the transaction (assuming roughly equal value of product, of course).
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September 8, 2006
Targeting Accessibility
A new court ruling you should be aware of that sets a precedent for web site accessibility:
The court held: “the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination in the enjoyment of goods, services, facilities or privileges, is that whatever goods or services the place provides, it cannot discriminate on the basis of disability in providing enjoyment of those goods and services.” The court thus rejected Target’s argument that only its physical store locations were covered by the civil rights laws, ruling instead that all services provided by Target, including its Web site, must be accessible to persons with disabilities.
…
The plaintiffs charge that target.com fails to meet the minimum standard of web accessibility. It lacks compliant alt-text, an invisible code embedded beneath graphic images that allows screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of the image to a blind computer user. It also contains inaccessible image maps and other graphical features, preventing blind users
from navigating and making use of all of the functions of the website. And because the website requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction, blind Target customers are unable to make purchases on target.com independently.
The irony here is that there is no good technical reason for not having a highly accessible web site these days. The limitations of Target’s site mentioned above are all old school design techniques that are quite simply out of date and unnecessary. Why they didn’t just update their site design instead of fighting a costly court battle is beyond me.
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July 25, 2006
Socialtext Releases Open Source Wiki
Socialtext has released an open source version of their wiki product. The open source version is missing some enterprise features that they reserve for the commercial product.
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July 17, 2006
Assessing Coding Quality of Potential Developers
I responded to a question earlier this week about how you can judge the quality of a web application’s code. The question was from someone who would be receiving the source code for the app in question once it was finished and they would be responsible for maintaining it after launch. How can you tell if the code is of high quality and easily maintainable if you are not a programmer yourself?
Here are a few things I would look for in this situation:
- The application provides helpful/friendly error messages to users when something bad happens. If they have put thought into error handling then they have probably done so throughout the application.
- They use a code versioning system repository for developing the application. Any programming shop who knows what they are doing should use a tool like this. If they are not, I’d consider them amateurs.
- Source code is well documented. Browsing through the code, you should be able to understand what each section does, even if you are not a programmer. If the comments are too cryptic or few, then it will be harder to maintain when they hand it off.
- The application uses classes for commonly executed operations. If the same bit of html has to be rendered repeatedly, make sure they have that pulled out into a single class rather than simply repeating the code over and over throughout the application. This makes maintenance much easier.
- They use unit tests. Unit testing can be somewhat challenging with web apps but can be done. Unit tests are a series of tests that will check that the application is functioning properly after a change is made (regression testing). I’d consider a shop doing this effectively to be very competent.
Some of those obviously require a coder to asses for you but at least you know some questions to ask that will get at whether the developers in question have good practices in writing code. It is no guarantee but will weed out the poorest candidates.
Here are a few books you may want to review if you want to learn more about good development practices:
(had an issue with my amazon links, list to be reposted later)
Also see Joel Spolsky’s reading list.
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May 18, 2006
AMS-CMS Integration Audio Download
You may recall that I did an audio conference a couple weeks ago with Wes Trochlil on the potential and pitfalls of integration association and content management systems. The session was very well received by our attendees at the live event.
I am pleased to now make the program available as a download: Understanding the Potential (and Pitfalls) of Integrating CMS and AMS Systems Audio Product. For $99 you will receive an MP3 file of the audio and a PDF of the slides. A sample of the audio is available in this post.
And here is a special one week offer to my blog readers: use this code when you buy the product and get 40% off! This code will be good until one week from today (May 24, 2006). Enter this code in the shopping cart to receive your discount: V823R4E1 Please feel free to share the code with anyone you think might benefit from this unique program.
Learn more about the audio program.
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