Facebook Redesign: the Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent
Posted by Beth Still on October, 25th 2009Facebook rolled out their latest web design on October 23 and already a group called “CHANGE FACEBOOK BACK TO NORMAL” has rallied. But then, no one expected the change to be welcomed by 100 percent of FB users even though FB claims that they based their decision to make it on user feedback. And, hey, there are just some people who hate change of any kind.
Facebook has introduced the ability to toggle between News Feed (self-explanatory) and Live Feed, which is the same real-time feed from your friends to which you’ve become accustomed. Facebook uses a new algorithm that bases the News Feed sources and stories they display on your past history on the site and how much attention the stories have received from your friends. Kind of like Amazon’s “if you like that you might also like this” and “people who bought [...]
DotNetNuke CMS
Posted by Beth Still on October, 21st 2009DotNetNuke has chosen Europe’s winners of the OpenForce Community Choice Awards just in time for the OpenForce Europe Conference that was held October 19-20. The awards honor the best web design created using the DotNetNuke platform. Interdigital won the award this year for best Overall Site and Best Informational site. Structure Sonores (www.structuresonore.eu) won for the Most Creative/Original Site, and Le Bazar de Wally (www.lebazardewally.com) for the Best eCommerce Site. Both websites are quite impressive.
The conference is a two-day, multiple track professional developers’ conference held in conjunction with the Software Developer Network Conference and includes speeches and demonstrations by expert software developers from the DotNetNuke community all over Europe, Asia, and Africa as well as representatives from DotNetNuke Corporation. Users attend the conference in order to expand their knowledge base, network and share best practices, tips, and information. In addition to [...]
2009 PHP Barcelona Conference
Posted by Beth Still on October, 20th 2009Hey, all you PHP Developers: it’s not too late to get your tickets to the 2009 PHP Barcelona Conference—it will be happening October 30-31 in, of course, Barcelona. It is a two-day event with three simultaneous sessions all day each day. The conference motto is “Interesting sessions for smart people, with a touch of practicality”. This is the third year for the event, and it promises to be bigger and better than ever, PLUS it is being held in one of the more beautiful cities in Europe.
Rasmus Lerdorf, a Danish developer, created PHP in 1995 in part to track how many people were visiting his website(s). He considered it to be the “fastest and simplest tool” for creating dynamic web pages for your web design. It has evolved into a widely used scripting language that is well suited [...]
Worms in the New Apple OS
Posted by Beth Still on October, 16th 2009Wow, Apple patrons are NOT happy with the OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard, and who can blame them? Problem #1: apparently it has a bug that causes it to EAT YOUR DATA. Not all the time, just if you log in as a guest after upgrading from Apple’s previous OS (Leopard-10.5). And not ALL of your data, just whatever is stored in your home directory, like documents, music, etc. And to make matters worse, it seems to be totally random and hard to reproduce, which make it practically impossible to debug. Oh, and another thing: the previous version (Leopard 10.5.1) exhibited the same problem. So that means that Apple was aware of this problem before they trotted out Snow Leopard and not only did they NOT fix it in Leopard, they let a whole new release go out with the same bug. [...]
WordPress Web Design and Fresh Content
Posted by Beth Still on October, 14th 2009If you have a business but have not yet dipped your toes in the blogging pool, it is definitely something worth considering. Incorporating a blog into your web design can be very beneficial to your business because you will consistently be providing fresh content for prospective customers to find in web searches. Blogging allows your customers to get to know you as a person and gives you the chance to express your passion for what it is that you are selling. It can give you a real competitive edge if you can show readers that you are an expert in your field. Blogging is a good way to incorporate personal customer service into your website by talking about issues and questions about your product or field. Your customers can leave tips, comments, links to compatible sites, etc. on your blog, which may [...]
Spotting a Phisher
Posted by Beth Still on October, 13th 2009The October 7 FBI arrest of 33 people for phishing, (the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication, per Wikipedia) has caused web design companies and users to become more conscientious about the possibility of their email accounts and websites being hacked (accessed without authorization). Once your email is hacked, there can be a domino effect that will impact other areas of your online “life”.
The fact is, many people use the same password or variations on a password for all or most of their online accounts like social networks, banks, IMs, etc. This makes a phisher’s work a whole lot easier; it’s like giving him/her the master key to your front door and all of your safes and vaults.
In the arrest of the largest group [...]
Windows 7 – Save the Date
Posted by Beth Still on October, 13th 2009The buzz among the web design community and those who have had the privilege of playing with beta versions of Windows 7, is that it is a vast improvement on Vista (okay, not too hard to accomplish) and even has the potential to win XP lovers over. Microsoft has apparently worked out a lot of the bugs that were prevalent in Vista and makes it look all pretty to boot.
Some enhancements of note:
• Improved search functions (faster, more accurate)
• Speed of programs and internet browsers
• Photoshop editing software
• New ways to manage and organize applications, open documents, and Web pages
• System stability
• 40 new fonts
In the U.K., users will have to choose which Internet browser they want to use via a “browser ballot” screen. This has all come about because of a lawsuit in the EU brought By Opera against Microsoft; they purport that the bundling [...]
Agile v Waterfall Method of Software Development
Posted by Beth Still on October, 11th 2009For a long time, developers have followed the “waterfall” method of software development in various forms. The “waterfall” method is a chronological software development method in which progress is viewed as flowing progressively downward (like a waterfall) through the phases of conception → initiation → analysis of requirements → web design → development/coding → testing → installation → maintenance. Each phase must be completed and signed off on before proceeding to the next step. The theory behind the waterfall method of development is that it is easier to fix bugs in, for example, the design phase rather than in a later phase. It also assumes that by the time the project reaches the developers, it is pretty much perfect and ready to be coded as written.
In 2001, Agile came up with a different way of looking at projects in an effort to deal [...]
Twitter – What is it Good For?
Posted by Beth Still on October, 8th 2009When I first started hearing of “Twitter”, I wondered who in the world would (a) be interested in what I was doing every second of the day, and (b) take the time to blog up-to-but-no-more-than 140 characters about what they were doing every second. First I started hearing of celebrities (admittedly “B” and “C” list) who were tweeting to their fans who signed up as “followers” and apparently WERE interested in the minutiae of their favorite celebs’ lives. And by minutiae, I mean things like “I have a rash that is driving me crazy”, or “I am about to eat a tuna fish sandwich and maybe a couple of chips”.
I still couldn’t wrap my mind around the concept. Still couldn’t see it catching on. I now see that I couldn’t have been more wrong. Admittedly, I use Facebook’s “What’s on your mind?” application occasionally and am [...]
Opera Browser 10.0
Posted by Beth Still on October, 5th 2009My curiosity about the Opera Browser has been piqued by the buzz about the release of Opera 10.0, released this month. So I decided to investigate it myself and see if it lives up to the hype. It is billed as “the smallest and fastest browser in the world” and is a product of Opera Software in Oslo, Norway. In this article I’m going to discuss the buzz, the specs, and the press releases. After I have used Opera for awhile, I’ll be writing about how it differs from other browsers and giving my opinion on it.
The licensing fees and banner ads have been removed, and Opera is now a free download. Per the web design W3Schools, the newest features are:
• Opera Turbo – Enables fast browsing on slow connections
• New visual tabs and sleek design – Opera introduces a resizable tab bar [...]