Archive for January, 2008

Don’t you hate it when you print a web page, only to have a bunch of extra junk that generates several pages worth of ads, RSS icons, and navigational links? What a waste of ink (it costs you $8000/gallon, you know).

Computers aren’t really suited for reading long documents, so it’s common to print overly long web pages for later reading. I do it now and then, though I mostly try to read things online (I’m not going to sit through a 40-page eBook though). Plus, if you’ve penned the ultimate guide to removing grape jelly stains (or whatever, it’s hard to think-up good examples), people will want to print it out to refer to in the future.

What you need is a print stylesheet. No website should be without one. (more…)

I’ve read a lot of blogs in 2007. More than any other year probably. 2007 is the year I really got into blogging, and discovered social media sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. As a result, my list of subscribed RSS feeds has exploded and evolved.

My favorite blogs are about blogging, web design, and really anything about the internet. I also read some non-tech blogs (e.g. Harry Potter / fantasy blogs), but not as many as internet-blogs.

So what blogs about blogging did I enjoy the most this year?

• Blogging Bits
• Blogging Experiment
• Blogging Pro
• Blogging Tips
• Blogsolid
• Daily Blog Tips
• North X East
• Pro Blog Design
• ProBlogger
• Skelliewag
• Vandelay Design
• Weblog Tools Collection
• The Wordpress Podcast

Keep up the good work, everyone!

AJAX, or Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, was probably the most-hyped web programming technique in the last two years. It’s no surprise, as it enables you to do a lot that couldn’t have been done just a few years ago.

AJAX is being used in more and more places, often when it doesn’t need to be…and when it shouldn’t. With all the talk about how you can use AJAX for everything, the real question is when should you.

You should use AJAX in places where it will improve the user experience. One example is with polls. Why should a full pageload be required just to vote in a poll (or view the results)? That’s a waste of your users’ time, and a waste of your server resources.

Do not use AJAX for loading your main content, though. It’s not a good idea. I’ve seen a few sites that have tried it, and it doesn’t work that well. You have to come up with extra solutions for search engines, because they can’t understand your JavaScript trickery (you thought the dreaded “text-only version” link only applied to Flash sites? ). You also cause problems for people using some browsers (Safari, IE5, etc).

Basically, you want to use AJAX for things where an extra pageload would be irritate the heck out of everyone. Suppose you have a star-rating system, like on Netflix. Wouldn’t it be horrible if you had to sit through a page refresh every time you rated a movie? Use your own judgment.

Here’s something interesting to think about: Should you simplify the design of your search fields? Looking at various sites, like IMDB and Amazon, I’ve noticed that a lot of sites feature drop-down boxes allowing you to pick what areas of the site to search (in the case of Amazon, Books, DVD, Electronics, etc). Here are a couple of examples:

Then there are sites that move this feature to an “Advanced Search” page.

There are two arguments about this:

1. It makes it easier to find things by offering more power up front.
2. It confuses people to have too many options.

I kind of like having the extra functionality within reach when I’m searching, but that doesn’t mean everyone else does. However, I absolutely cannot stand sites that force you to make a selection, rather than having an “all” option. It’s not like it’s difficult to create a search system that can look in all areas at once.

What do you think? Is it better to have the dropdown, or not? Why? Of course it really depends on the website, and the audience.

Looking for some AJAX scripts? MiniAjax is a gallery of “nice looking simple downloadable dhtml and ajax code.”

The one-page site shows 62 (to date) entries for various useful scripts. There are star-rating systems, modal dialogs, heatmap generators, poll scripts, tabbed interfaces, and more. Thumbnails make the site easy to browse.

If you’re looking for a specific type of script, or if you just want to see what’s out there, be sure to take a look at MiniAjax.

It depends. Theoretically, the less images on a page the better, as your pages will load faster (and put less strain on your server).

There are two types of images. There are template-level images and post-level images. Template-level images exist in your blog’s header/footer/sidebar template, and therefore appear on every page on your site. Post-level images are part of your content, and they belong to an individual posts.

In your template, you should have as little images as possible. When you create a design, you want to keep the essential images to a minimum. Use tiles, well-optimized image blocks, etc. As of this writing, this blog’s design consists of two images (the logo and the tiled edge image). Once you have your mock-up of the design, figure out the best way to break it up. You want as little images as possible, and you want to keep them as small (as in kilobytes) as you can. (more…)

• AOL Kills Netscape
• Daily Blog Tips: Best of 2007
• Collection of Web 2.0 Navigation Menus
• The Best of Skelliewag in 2007
• A gallery of premium (i.e. “paid”) Wordpress themes.
• Converting New Visitors Into Repeat Readers
• What Makes Me Stumble and Digg Your Post
• How do people react when you tell them you’re a blogger? Lorelle VanFossen shares her story.
• Pro Blog Design in 2007 and Beyond
• SimplePie Almost Dies
• Blogging Story: What is RSS?
• Top 20 WordPress Themes of 2007
• Free Blank Logo Templates Designs and Vector Images
• Can you make it to the Digg front page in twenty posts or less? That’s the goal of The Digg Experiment. Is it possible to go from zero hits to the front page in the time it takes to write twenty posts? Let’s subscribe, and find out.
• In Wordpress news, WP 2.4 is being skipped. Instead, we’ll all have to wait for Wordpress 2.5 in March.
• Have you seen the ads? The “Graffiti CMS” (a commercial CMS which isn’t even available yet) is running ads dissing Wordpress. In addition to the ads Charles Stricklin has seen, I’ve noticed ads (on my own site, even) that say “Wordpress is not a CMS.” Maybe I should add their domain to my AdSense account’s Competitive Ads Filter.
• How To Get Worthless Adsense Clicks

I was looking at Technorati yesterday, just checking for links to Webmaster-Source. According to Technorati yesterday, the large blog about the publishing industry, GalleyCat, was linking to me. Yeah, right.

First of all, I’d have noticed an increase of traffic. Second of all, I ran out and checked. Technorati pointed me to GalleyCat’s main page, so I went there and poked around. I viewed the source, and used Firefox’s find tool…and didn’t find anything (of course).

I checked again today, and the entry in Technorati’s blog reactions was gone.

Why does Technorati do this? I always find a listing saying I have an inbound link (the reaction entry always points to a blog’s main page, never an actual post). So I go over and check, only to find nothing there. What the heck is going on?

No one actually likes waiting. Some of us are just better at it than others.

The internet seems to be a parallel reality where time passes differently, slow at times, fast at others. Web pages seem to take eons to load, no matter how fast your internet connection is. I remember having to wait more than a minute for most pages to load (that was back when I had dial-up). Nowadays I have a DSL connection that generally runs in the 700k-900k range. It’s a lot faster, but not fast enough. Sure, some pages load lightning-fast, but others still seem to crawl along. While they’re not taking over a minute to load, it sure seems like it.

While you’re using the web, time flies by overly quick. It seemed like it was taking an hour for that video to load, but it was really only five minutes. So why is it four o’clock? Oh yeah, you logged-on to World of Warcraft for a few minutes… But how does that come-out to be an hour?

Do you get what I’m saying? (more…)

Visionary is this month’s highlighted Wordpress theme.

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