Archive for May, 2008

This is yet another web-related topic that gets people arguing. Not quite as bad as “Mac vs. PC,” it really gets some people going. Which is better, a fixed-width layout, or a fluid one that resizes to fit the browser window. Unlike some people, I say that it depends on the project, and that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution (though I do lean slightly toward fixed-width layouts). Besides, if we all agreed on standards for everything, we wouldn’t have anything to argue about..

Both sides of the argument have their pluses and minuses, and generally I would say “go with what best suits the instance.” If you want a certain look, which will require vertical tile images, and other images of specific width, you may need to go with a fixed-width layout. If you want as much control as you can get over the look of your design, or if you need your content area to be a specific size, go with a fixed layout. (more…)

If you’re serious about blogging, I strongly advise you to avoid using Blogger, WordPress.com, or *shudder*, LiveJournal. The first thing you should do when you start a blog is get a domain name. At $7-$10 per year, it’s not going to empty your bank account, and it will be a good investment. (Not to mention that people will take you much more seriously if you have your own domain) You could point your domain pretty much anywhere. You could use it with your Blog*Spot or WordPress.com blog, but I would advise against it. While Blogger and WordPress.com are most likely the two best “free blog services” available, they’re limiting in terms of what you can do.

If you pay for a cheap shared hosting account (1and1 has a $3.99/mo plan, which is good for a beginning blog), and install a copy of the free WordPress blogging software (that’s WordPress.ORG, not .com!), you gain much.

By hosting your blog yourself, instead of relying on a free service, you gain the ability to customize your design in ways impossible with the free services, to use WordPress plugins, run your own ads, and you’re not dependent on the service. If WordPress.com decided to charge a subscription fee instead of providing the free service they’ve provided, you’d have to pay or abandon your blog, pretty much. What if they changed something about their service, and you didn’t like it? (An example would be adding a big, forced banner ad to the top of your blog.)

If you’re using a free blog service, you can still make the switch to a self-hosted blog. WordPress has the ability to import posts from Blogger, WordPress.com, LiveJournal, and a few others (including RSS). However, you can lose some data in the transition. Depending on which service you use, you may or may not be able to keep the comments on your posts, for example.

Free blog services are great for personal blogs, and experimenting with blogging before deciding to commit to it, but if you want to run a serious blog, I highly recommend going with a self-hosted WordPress installation. At the very least, if you have a tight budget, get a domain and point it to your free blog. That way, if you decide to go the WordPress route, you will be able to move and keep your readers and backlinks.

Once again, I’ve been skimming through the design galleries and looking through notes and bookmarks in search of noteworthy designs. This time around, I’ve put together a collection of light designs. While more graphic-heavy designs may look great, simplicity and whitespace can go a long way as well.

Without further ado, 32 Lightweight Designs:

31Three

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Net Neutrality is very important. For both website operators and the average user. It’s a much-talked-about subject, though far too many people have no clue what it means. Despite the somewhat boring name, Net Neutrality is something that everyone (who isn’t the RIAA, the MPAA, or the big ISPS) wants. Let me try to explain what it is…

An “un-neutral” internet is what is called a “tiered internet,” meaning not all data packets are equal. On a tiered internet, ISPs may speed up, slow, or totally block traffic depending on its origin, destination, or type. Your ISP could stop your from using BitTorrent, slow down your transfer speeds when your accessing YouTube, or redirect you to Yahoo when you try to access Google. Or they could insert some ads of their own into web pages as they travel between server and client. Why would they do that? Money. By blocking BitTorrent, they would prevent you from using as much bandwidth. Redirecting one site to another? They might do that if they were paid enough.

While tiered internet traffic is annoying enough for the end user, it’s even worse for the websites. Let’s use YouTube as an example. They’re already paying for their servers to have access to the internet, right? Well with a tiered internet, a few ISPs could decide to block, or slow down, access to YouTube, unless YouTube were to pay them a bribe to let them through. Insane? You bet.

The concept behind Net Neutrality is “all traffic is equal,” meaning “no tampering with packets as they travel through the tubes.” A simple enough concept, but an important one that needs to be enacted. After all, be don’t want the internet to be like this, do we?

• .org owners facing 10% hike in registration fees this fall - The company that operates the .org TLD has informed ICANN that registrations fees will be going up later this year. Why? Profits, probably.
• 20 Types of Freelance Work Identified and Explained - Ten freelance contract “types.” A humorous post by Skellie, or Skelliewag.org.
• One pixel notched corners as used by Google Analytics - A tutorial on softening the corners on boxes with a bit of CSS and imagery.
• Creating a YouTube Video Tabber - How to make a “video tabber,” like the one seen in Adii’s original Premium News theme.
• 25 Beautifully Colorful Websites Part 2
• Elements of Design, an interesting design gallery I’ve mentioned previously, has added a new category of design elements. Footers Design Showcase.
• What Makes Someone Leave Your Website?

How good is your domain? Take the test and find out!

How Short is the Domain?

Give yourself one point if it’s 16 characters or less (excluding the TLD), two points if it’s 10 characters or less, and three if it’s under 7 characters.

Got .Com?

If your domain has a .com TLD, you score another point.

Is it Brandable?

Does your domain sound like a brand name, like Yahoo or Toyota, or is it an unwieldy mess like “ExpertWebProDesignServices.com”? Take three points if you’ve got a brandable domain. (more…)

DNS updates are a pain. They test your patience as you wait “up to 72 hours for your changes to propagate,” and often you need to know when it’s done. If you’ve ever moved from one web host to another, you know how tricky it is to make the transition seamless. You have to get the site working on the new server, put the active copy of the site into maintenance mode, then update your DNS settings, and hope everything works out fine.

In case something goes awry, it’s a good idea to be there, ready, when it happens. That’s where DNS Pinger comes in. Just enter your domain name, along with your email address, and the service will automatically ping your site every three minutes. You will receive an email alerting you the minute the DNS update is complete.

Internet Explorer, a.k.a. the Web Designer’s Plague, unfortunately, isn’t available on the Mac. Many will say this is a good thing, but for designers, or anyone who makes many changes to their template, Internet Explorer is pretty much mandatory for testing. So many people use IE that you can’t afford to have too many major bugs in the behemoth browser.

There aren’t many options for the large amount of Mac-using designers. To test a site in IE, your choices are pretty much limited to either using a PC, or using a virtual PC setup, like VMWare Fusion. If you have a PC on hand, good for you, you’re covered. Otherwise, you’d probably go for VMWare fusion, which costs $80 plus a $189 Windowss XP license. (Or you could just get the WinXP license and use the BootCamp software Apple provides with OS X 10.5) Rather pricey, though, isn’t it?

Luckily, there’s another option out there, albeit a buggy and hacked-together option. It costs $0.00 though, so who cares if it’s a little buggy?

IES4OSX allows you to run several different versions of Internet Explorer on your Mac, for testing designs, or using sites that refuse to work in your preferred browser. It’s a little buggy, it relies on X11, and it takes up a bit of CPU power. But it seems to render pages correctly the same as IE does.

So if you’re not using a Mac yet, here’s another reason to switch…

I was working on a project recently that required a color picker. It didn’t take long for me to find Colour Lovers’ free DHTML Color Picker. It’s easily the best color picker script out there (that I’m aware of).

The script is fairly easy to set-up, looks great, and it’s license-free. Colour Lovers hosts the script on their servers for your convenience, but it’s easy enough to download the JavaScript and CSS files if you prefer to keep things on your own server.

The picker works well in most browsers, and it works much like the picker in Adobe Photoshop. It’s fairly hackable too, if you want to customize it a little. Theoretically, you could take-out the RGB, HSV, and CYMK forms if you put your mind to it, for example. The script makes it easy enough to integrate into most forms (though I had to play around for awhile to get it working just right for me).

This is a good script, and well worth looking at if you ever need a color picker.

Tempus Fugit, or “Time Flies” in Latin, is a very appropriate thing to say now. Lately, I’ve been busy. Since getting back from a bowling tournament out of town (don’t ask what my scores were…), I’ve been busier than ever. In addition to blogging every day, I’ve had a bit less time on the computer, I’ve still got to finish the school year, and to top it all off I’ve been doing some freelance PHP work.

Now, I wouldn’t shaft my readers by putting Webmaster-Source on hold, if you’re afraid of that. Even if I had even less time than I do now, I wouldn’t stop posting here. (You can stop holding your breath now.) I’d just, as I’m doing now, put other, more personal, projects on hold. (At least school work will be out of the way once the summer comes.)

If you don’t mind my badly-formed XML, </preface>. Now that I’ve filled you in a bit, let’s get to the fun part..

I would like to know a little about your blogging habits, and time-saving techniques you use to get your online stuff done faster. (Then again, maybe I should just look at LifeHacker more often…) I think we can all benefit from sharing said information.

Here are some things I do: (more…)