Daniel Hardy

Everyday it seems like I hear about another company pushing a new Open Source agenda. Today Download Squad had a great article about Reddit going opensource.

This is an amazing step for a web site.  To my knowledge no other popular site has opened their codebase on this level.  Sure there are lots that have open API’s but this is a very very different thing than letting someone access your data through a cloaked application layer.

Instantly closed source proponents have deemed this an ill fated move on the basis that anyone can now read the rating algorithm and there by diminish the sites value by “gaming” the system.  I disagree whole heartedly with this idea.  Sure people will try to deconstruct the algorithm and utilize it for their nefarious agendas but the community will respond quickly by writing a better algorithm.

A great example of this principal can be seen with Linux.  Every piece of code in the operating system is available to anyone who wants it yet it continues to be the most secure operating system out there.  Perhaps Firefox is a better example as it hits close to home and has a large user base(according to the W3schools.com it has almost 40% market share ).  Again anyone can review the code and find exploits.  This happens all the time but because there are 100’s of eyes reviewing the code these exploits are fixed almost immediately by the community.

Overall I think this is a great move on Reddit’s part.  I also believe we will continue to see a large increase in the number of organizations deciding that Open Source is a viable business model.

Today I was educating myself on a new format for creating slide shows called “S5“.  It is an open format that can create slide shows using XHTML/CSS and Javascript.  These shows can intern be run in any modern browser making them truly platform independent.  For the most part the standard is extremely well thought out and holds a great deal of promise.

In my research I found a great tool that will convert a RSS feed into a S5 presentation.   Give it a shot and see how flexible this format really is.

Yesterday a friend of mine showed me a great dynamic comment system being used over at deadspin.com . After seeing it in action I decided it would be fun to implement something similar on my site (even if I rarely get any comments). I have whipped up a bit of Javascript and tweaked my template a bit to support it. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think. If it gets decent reviews I can great a tutorial on how to easily implement it on a typical Wordpress theme.

I have been working on various forum validation techniques lately and came across a simple idea that seems to make a lot of sense. You can read more about it here. The basic idea is that you include a hidden form element. If this element is filled in then it is probably a bot that doesn’t understand CSS or Javascript. When handling this submission you know that you can ignore it.

Making logos accessible is actually much easier than many make it out to be. It is important to make your logos accessible as you want them to have a strong search engine presence.

For this tutorial you will need to have a basic understanding of XHTML and CSS.

First comes the HTML. Generally your logo is nested in the header like this.

<!--HTML Code-->
<div id="header">
<a href="home"><img src="yourlogo.jpg" alt="COMPANY NAME" /></a>
</div>


To make this more accessible and for it to degrade gracefully we really want to eliminate the “img” element and in turn use a text elements like this

<!--HTML Code-->
<div id="header">
<h1><a href="home.htm">YOU COMPANY NAME AND ANYTHING ELSE</a>
</div>


In the above case if a user views the page un-styled they will simply see an H1 header link with the name of your company and any other text you place inside. This allows search engines to read the actual logo in plain text and assign this text an important value (first H1 elements are seen as important). It also improves mobile device structure as many of them don’t like images.

Now we can use CSS to make the image based logo appear where we want it and more importantly how we want it (image). We only need to style two elements, the ‘H1′ and ‘a’ tags.

/*CSS Code*/
#header h1{
width:auto;
height:auto;
text-indent:-9000px; /*This removes the text from the screen*/
}
#header h1 a{
width:300px;
height:100px;
background:transparent url('path/to/your/image.jpg');
display:block; /*This is critical*/
}


In the ‘H1′ element you will notice that we gave it a text-indent of -9000px. This moves the the text far enough off the left side of the page that even with the largest monitor it is not visible. By doing this we ensure that pesky text doesn’t sit on top of our beautiful logo.

The next unusual piece you will find in the CSS is under the ‘a’ element. “Display:block;” renders the ‘a’ element as a block level element allowing it to have a fixed width and height.

Now you have a beautiful logo that degrades seamlessly and is extremely accessible both to humans and search engines.

Great web app. to test and validate just about every aspect of a web page in one single shot. This includes things like validating HTML/XHTML, CSS, Feeds, etc to testing for accessibility and SEO problems.

Very handy, check it out

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First off the thoughts below are constructed around stereotypes.  If you are against stereotypes then there is no need to read on ;)  In my opinion stereotypes can be a useful tool in interacting with people.  The catch is to not let stereotypes impact your ability to give someone a chance.  Now on to the good stuff…
I have met a lot of types of designers in my life.  Many of them have had a common thread even though their fields of expertise have been wildly different. This thread is an air of arrogance.  This is not to say that all or even most of them have this trait, but instead that a large “per capita” ratio does.  I have often ponder why this phenomenon occurs and today I came up with my own hypothesis.   Design is intoxicating, particularly a successful design.

In a broad definition design could be viewed as an outward expression of a solution to any given problem.  The important part of this thought is that it is outward.  This is to say that the audience(customer) can see the design in action, be it an interaction or some graphics that build a “feel” or “attitude”.  This is in contrast to something like development where the user doesn’t see or consider the results of the hard work (unless it is broken).  As a designer when the application is a success it is easy to take it personal.

Think of if in terms of “buzz.”  Most of the time when people talk about how great a product is they say things like “It is so easy to use” or “I love the way it looks.”  Rarely do you hear someone discuss how well it was developed or how there isn’t any bugs in it.

Even when the reverse happens and a product is deemed a failure it is often blamed on the design, not the construction.

The interesting part is that none of it would be possible if someone didn’t have the amazing amounts of knowledge to build it (be it by code or content).  This alone should humble any designer.  But some how this concept continues to be lost on many in the design community.  Perhaps it is because many designers have never taken the time to learn how to develop the rest of the items needed to make a great application.

Since I made the jump to Ubuntu there was only one program that I have really missed, Notepad++.  I used Notepad++ for all of my coding from XHTML to PHP with CSS in between.  Granted I am no where near a master coder but I had grown a custom to its lightweight nature, great language highlighting and most of all the ability to fold the code.   I tried running Notepad++ in Wine for a while but there are several problems with that.  The biggest of which is Wine makes it difficult to access network folders.

When I initially made the jump I spent several days trying out various programs but never found one I liked.  Since then I have been doing all my coding with gEdit.  It has worked but doesn’t provide the best highlighting and has no support for folding.

Today I was missing Notepad++ and thought I would go out and look at it’s site again.  Low and behold I completely missed a key piece of text in all my other visits.  It turns out Notepad++ is based on Scintilla, a GTK+ application.  I quickly checked the repository and was able to successfully install it in a matter of minutes.  It is fairly similar to Notepad++ but with out all the shine.

Overall I am not a happy man, funny how such a silly thing can really lift my spirits.