Galide

HTML td cells not respecting the attribute width

2009-04-22T19:16:00.003+01:00

#results {
width: 24em;
table-layout: fixed;
}

table-layout: fixed will resolve the problem.

Sounds straighforward, but have been struggling with this for years until I found this article about 5 rarely used CSS properties on SitePoint.

Google Web Tool Kit

2009-04-19T20:15:00.003+01:00

I have been involved more in project management than development lately, but had the opportunity to look into GWT (Google web tool kit), and seriously considering using this framework much more systematically when we develop web applications, or simply administration panels.

1) Ability to program in Java
The beauty of this "framework" is that you use Java to generate your Javascript. You don't have to worry about the browser, or the actual HTML, the framework will generate everything for you.

This allows you to develop UIs very fast, and include this into a SCRUM process easily - and you don't need to invlove "front-end" designers at this stage, unless you define "front-end designers" as "programmers" responsible for the front-end.

2) Compatible with other Javascript frameworks
Javascript frameworks such as JQuery are great to achieve nice rendering effects, or get access to the DOM quickly, to achieve things that sometimes you wish CSS would allow you to do (such as selectors, which is unfortunately not supported by lazy browsers).

These libraries are typically used by front-end designers.

Conclusion
GWT makes the prototyping process much easier to manage.
- build your prototype using GWT, which will generate the general JS scripts responsible for the rendering / ajax interaction

- refine then your design / UI with JQuery

Testing :: in phases

2009-02-24T16:23:00.003Z

Was reading Matt's blog at Aroxo, and found an interesting little summary of how testing should be conducted before releasing a site live:

Test type	Description	How many people
Over-the-shoulder	The main sticking points in the system. Where the system confuses users. Start when functional testing at 80% readiness. Earlier with mock-ups also possible.	10-15
Task-driven testing	How well the system stands up on its own. Start when the major usability holes uncovered in OTS testing have been fixed.	Start with 20-30 keep growing invites to 100 or so
Goal-driven testing	End-to-end flaws across the system. Start when functional testing at 95% system readiness with a slick UI.	150-200
Beta testing	The marketing points for the site, highlights future developments. If there are enough users it may also reveal performance issues Start when the system is 99% ready.	250+ including members of the public

More information there >>

Google adwords :: new tips and technics

2009-01-06T12:35:00.004Z

It has been a long time since I last wrote about CPC, specially Google adwords.

Here are a few tips/tools I have recently started using a lot, with very positive impact.

1) Quality score

Quality Score is a dynamic variable calculated for each of your keywords. It combines a variety of factors and measures how relevant your keyword is to your ad text and to a user's search query.

This is a very important parameter, which can be used to troubleshoot the performance of each keywords, specially related to the content of the ads and of the landing pages.

I am usually targetting at 7.

run a report showing quality score for each keyword
identify each keyword which can potentially bring traffic to the site (significant volume of impressions) and highlight all keywords with a Quality Score <>
Verify that the ad copy contains these keywords. If not, create a new ad group for this type of keywords, and create a relevant ad containing the keywords in the copy
Verify that your landing page is optimised for this keywords (meta tags, h1 title, image alt tag, copy contain these keywords). If not, create a new landing page targetting these specific keywords

Note: this process can be very time consuming if you try to apply this to ALL keywords (specially if you have got 1000s listed...). This is why it is important to focus only on keywords bringing potentially significant traffic to the site.

Benefits: A poor quality score usually means that the ad will not be clicked as much as it could be (poor CTR), that conversion rate will not be as good as it could be. By improving your quality score, you ensure that the ad copy and the landing pages are optimised to some extents. Also, a good Quality Score will ensure that you pay less than competitors for a same position.

2) Watch out position 1-2-3 format for your ads.
If your ad is in position 1-2-3, it may be formatted differently by Google (see picture below)

You need to ensure that your ad still makes sense (right punctuation) in both formats.

3) Use the editor
The adwords editor is nice piece of software allowing you to manage your ads more effectively that for the google.com/adwords interface

4) Use the media planner
This is a tool I have very recently started using, and turn your CPC content campaigns into a real media buying tool. Use this tool to build a map of all the sites you want to advertise on.

5) Use Google Insight Search
It is a combination of Google Trend, and Google keywords suggestion tool, providing you with a good way to create your different adgroups. This tool would deserve a post itself, which I will probably add to this blog later on this month.

Web design process

2008-10-16T16:49:00.003+01:00

production tools/applications

2008-10-15T07:38:00.004+01:00

Had an interesting meeting with Mike Karliner yesterday. We went through some of the tools he is extensively using in his production process. Some were very familiar (such as subversion which we use as version control internally), some not. The list below gives a pretty good toolset for anyone looking into rolling a production process - and everything is open source:

1) Version control
Subversion: The Subversion project arose out of frustration with the limitations of CVS (Concurrent Versions System). Subversion is designed to be like CVS, but to fix its flaws. A key improvement in Subversion is atomic commits. This means that when you commit a changed project, either all the changes succeed or none, like a database transaction.

2) Version Control UI for windows
Tortoise: TortoiseSVN is a cool/efficient/friendly SCM / source control software for Microsoft Windows.

3) Project management / Bugs tracking:
Trac: Trac is a web-based software project management and bug/issue tracking system. It provides an interface to Subversion and an integrated wiki.

4) Data storage
FreeNas: FreeNAS will allow you to turn just about any computer in to a full-featured NAS, complete with a easy to use web-based configuration utility.

5) Server's/applications monitoring
Hobbit monitor: Hobbit is a monitoring solution for servers and network devices and allows you to write or use extensions to monitor just about anything that responds over a network connection. A central server controls and collects the monitoring and displays the results via a fairly easy to use web interface. It will track history and trends (via rrd) and provides a built-in reporting tool. If there is an issue (that you've defined), such as a down host, the interface will turn red and will performs any alerting actions that you've defined, such as sending an email or sms message.

6) Traffic analysis
Cacti: Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. This allows you to build up your own analytics tool, combining data at will, and building very custom reports.

7) External bugs tracker
Mantis: if you are deaing with clients, or have an external team of testers, this tool will let you track and report on bugs fixes and software updates.

"I am rich" iphone application

2008-08-10T19:53:00.003+01:00

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,399461,00.html

Buy something you don't need, at a cost you cannot afford, to impress people you don't like...

Someone published an application which basically does nothing - it just let people know that you are rich enough to afford buying it...

Which is a good pricing strategy after all, used by many companies. When I started writing my business plan, "experienced" people told me that I should not focus too much about the actual product: you don't care about the actual product, focus on your market, and how much you can sell your product/services for.

And if you get the right exposure, you can sell something which is worth nothing, at the highest cost! a shame the application was taken off the apple's website...

floating window working with resize event

2008-05-05T10:08:00.004+01:00

I spent a little while trying to figure out today how to get a little window sticking in the right hand-side corner of my browser, while resizing the screen.

Many examples are available out there, but found difficult to pick up a simple way to achieve this.

the best way I have found was this (suing JQUery code for DOM selection):


<script>
function findwidth(){
  ns4 = (document.layers)? true:false
  ie4 = (document.all)? true:false
  winW = (ns4)? window.innerWidth-16 : document.body.offsetWidth-20
  return winW;
}

function positionmydiv(){
  var myposition = findwidth()-$("div.mydiv").width();
  $("div.mydiv").css({position: "absolute", left:myposition});
}

$(document).ready(function() {
  $(window).resize(function() {
    positionmydiv();
  });
});

positionmydiv();
</script>

You then can use


</div class="mydiv" id="mydiv">My text here..... </div>

Anywhere in your code, the div will float nicely and adjust with resize.

forums: embedded link or links in signature?

2008-04-29T16:57:00.004+01:00

I recently participated to a thread on a SEO forum (http://www.webproworld.com/google-discussion-forum/68650-can-inbound-links-really-hurt-you-2.html), which spreads over 5 pages. I initially picked up the thread because it was featured on the newsletter sent by the site - a good bet that this thread would be read by a fair amount of visitors.

It is certainly not what people say in there which would justify spending more than a few minutes on there. So, is it useful to stick on there for links?

I targeted my blog, and checked the stats after a few days.

1) One page is outperforming the others: page 2 has been bringing 50% of the traffic so far. Why?
2) The only difference in page 2 is the actual links to the blog I have embedded in the post. the other pages have got a link to this blog, but only in signatures.

=> traffic wise, it is therefore more important to get an opportunity to stick a link to a site in the post itself, rather than relying on the actual link in the signature to bring traffic.

Note: we are talking about ~5/10 visits/day for 1 thread, not a wide scale experiment. But figures are relevant enough though and I think that a larger scale experiment would lead to the same results.

List of sophism. Do you mean syllogisms?

2008-04-26T17:40:00.006+01:00

When I started writing my post about SEO sophisms I realised that it was a bit challenging to find actual examples of sophisms.

I searched for "sophism list", "examples of sophism", etc .. but could not find a proper list of examples.

I switched to "my favourites sophisms", and found a page about paradoxes:
http://brainden.com/paradoxes.htm

On this page were listed 3 sophisms, good start..

"A slim crocodile living in the Nile took a child. His mother begged to have him back. The crocodile could not only talk, but was also a great sophist and stated, "If you guess correctly what I will do with him, I will return him. However, if you don't guess his fate, I'll eat him." What statement should the mother make to save her child?"

"Sophist: "Yes, greedy man gives his cash with sorrow. However, he doesn't have the cash with sorrow, so he gives what he doesn't have.""

"What is better than eternal bliss? Nothing. But a slice of bread is better than nothing. So a slice of bread is better than eternal bliss."

I then looked up in google for "A slim crocodile living in the Nile took a child", "Yes, greedy man gives his cash with sorrow.", "What is better than eternal bliss? Nothing", hoping to find other sites listing one of these sophisms alongside others... but not much success, these sophisms were hardly listed anywhere else.

Back to square one. On one hand Google could not find famous sophisms for me, but on the other hand I was convinced that I had been taught at school that the syllogism "Socrates is a man, all men are mortal, hence Socrates is mortal" was a famous one. How come didn't I come across this one in my previous research. I then searched for "hence Socrates is mortal" and found out that it was classified as a "syllogism".

I search then for syllogism to refresh a little bit my memories, and find out that syllogisms was a kind of logical argument used extensively by sophists.

I then searched for "syllogisms quotes", and finally found what I was looking for on http://www.thinkexist.com!

Since I have written the first post (which was more about SEO than sophists really), I started getting about 10 visits a day from people looking for a list of sophisms. These people are probably like me, looking for actual syllogisms, but simply don't use the right search queries.

So instead of directing them to a SEO forum, I thought I could write an other post directing them to the resources they are actually looking for instead. In short, doing a bit of SEO for good :-), and hoping that this post will rank better than the other one.

SEO: top 5 list of sophisms

2008-04-24T17:19:00.005+01:00

I recently participated to a thread in an SEO forum, and it struck me how many people in this fields are using sophism to try deceive people in thinking that they are search engines optimisation specialists.

What is sophism?
Sophism can mean two very different things: In the modern definition, a sophism is a confusing or illogical argument used for deceiving someone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism

Examples of sophism
"Whatever exists or does not exist exists"
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/richard-sophister/

Have a look at this text from plato: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/sophist.html
.. very similar to some SEO forums...

Sophism is used to prove something which is either not provable, or which you cannot prove yourself, or in the worst case scenario something which is actually false.

Here is a list of sophisms I came across:
1) Proving that inbound links can hurt you
'"Tries very hard to prevent site A from hurting site B" is a pretty clear indication that it certainly can happen otherwise there would be nothing to "try hard to prevent" now would there.'
Quoted from http://www.webproworld.com/google-discussion-forum/68650-can-inbound-links-really-hurt-you-2.html about whether inbound links can really hurt you or not

2) proving that you should care about keywords density
"There is much talk about the ideal keyword density of a web page. The bottomline here is that there is no thumb rule regarding the ideal keyword density in a website, mainly because the search engines change their algorithms frequently"
http://ezinearticles.com/?Keyword-Density---How-Much-Is-Too-Much?&id=401316

3) proving that you should care about duplicate content
"The solution? Don�t rely on duplicate content as your main method of driving traffic to your site. Should you avoid all duplicate content? Of course not. What kind of duplicate content is acceptable? Answering this question is easily another article in itself."
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/duplicate-content-penalty-how-to-lose-google-ranking-fast/1886/

4) proving that you should not use a dynamic site
"Dynamic Sites are Spidered Slower than Static Sites
Google in particular has made it clear dynamic sites are spidered slower than static sites. The reason for Google to do this are webmaster friendly (as I�ve recently discovered), dynamically generated sites can potentially have unlimited pages and so Google assumes a dynamic looking site (a site with URLs like dynamic-page.php?page=1) is big and slows the crawl speed. It does this to limit server load because if a dynamic site (any site) has millions of pages, Googlebot and the other spiders could cause the server to crash if they spidered too many pages at one time."
http://www.seo-consultant-services.co.uk/static-html-vs-dynamic-urls.html

5) proving that inbound links can damage your site (an other one!)
"While there are links TO your site, the majority of them are nothing more than a list of links to similar vehicle tracking sites - which are not considered to be the ultimate type of links, and in some casesis even considered a scheme or link farm, which Google specificallywarns against in Google's "Quality Guidelines - Basic principles", "Don't participate in link schemes designed to increase your site's ranking or PageRank ..." - ://www.google.com/webmasters/guidelines.htmland from Google's explanation of why your site might not be listed, "... certain actions such as ... setting up pages/ links with the sole purpose of fooling search engines may result in permanent removal from our index." - ://www.google.com/webmasters/2.html"

there are many more, but running out of time really.
http://searchengineland.com/070830-074852.php: this is a good list of SEO myths. Pick any of them, go on a SEO forum and check out what so-called specialists have to say about it - doesn't take long before digging out sophism examples -

Useful TIP: forums moderators are usually the most prolific users of sophism. That why SEO myths spread so easily.

SEO should get in bed with PR

2008-04-22T18:42:00.003+01:00

As a SEO consultant, I am often asked whether we can help companies increasing the exposure of their sites on blogs, online social networks or online news websites. I usually answer that increasing the exposure of a website is online PR, not SEO, and that it is not something I specialise in.

I came to realise this morning that the difference between online PR and SEO is very blur at the moment, and people feel that they need to depend on a SEO company to manage their online exposure.

This should not be the case.

SEO requires technical skills, in order to optimise the HTML of a site, format the content in order to make it semantically relevant for chosen keywords, and submit the site to online resources.

Online PR requires a good understanding of the business and a good network of relevant journalists/bloggers/media owners who will take on a press release and push it forward a large volume of viewers.

SEO and online PR don't share the same objectives

SEO's objective is to drive long term traffic, whereas online PR's objective is to drive short term traffic.

Now, if you are interested in increasing your traffic overall, the solution is simple: Get the 2 of them in bed together!

The picture below illustrates the concept. Instead of running SEO and online PR as two separate marketing strategies, SEO and PR should be combined in order to maximise return on investment.

The situation is a bit similar to the situation a few years ago when website owners depended on web design agencies to update the content of their website. Then came in content management systems, which now reconciles web design and web content management.

Companies should not rely on SEO agencies to run their online PR campaigns.

It is now time to consolidate SEO and online PR agencies, and release tools allowing PR agencies to combine their activities effectively with search engines optimisation. There is no such tools on the market at the moment.

I believe that someone coming up with such a tool would revolutionise the online marketing industry, the same way CMS revolutionised the web design market a few years ago.

creating a palette for your website

2008-04-08T18:06:00.006+01:00

I find it one of the most tricky part of the actual design process: defining your palette (or sets of palettes) for a web project.

A lot of theory is available about how to build your own palette, but unless you have done some serious studies in graphic design, pretty hard to get a good hand on the process.

Whoever you are using for the design of your sites (in house or external agency), try to ask how they came up with the palette next time you get some mock-ups... usually the answers are pretty vague.

I have tested many tools over the years trying to "automate" the process and always came across the same issue: too many choice! These palette tools give you 1000s of combinations to choose from, and you end up picking one at random (you have also websites offering selections of palettes posted by users, such as http://sa.pantone.co.uk/pages/MYP_myPantone).

Until I found this tool - the kind of tool which make you think "why did nobody else think about it before!".
http://www.degraeve.com/color-palette/

Upload a picture conveying the "look and feel" you have got in mind, and the tool will extract the palette for you.

The process of defining a palette for your clients becomes then so much simpler:
1) Ask them to provide with a few photos they would like to use on the site
2) Extract the palette for each of them
3) Ask them to select between the different palettes suggested

Google: Vertical search - secret weapon?

2008-04-06T13:33:00.008+01:00

Targeting profiles
I think one of the reason Google is providing a better search experience than other rivals is its ability to deliver very relevant results to specific profiles of searchers.
E.g. 1: businesses or individuals looking for local suppliers

If you search for "printers london" for instance, Google will combine results with google map, and display directly a list of local printers in the results page.

E.g. 2: definitions

If you are looking for a definition of a word or expression, Google will return a series of definitions in search results.

Always adding new "vertical" results.
And Google keeps adding new "vertical add-ons":

E.g. 1: people looking for information on a specific site (large portals)

If you are looking for a book on amazon, you can use their search box directly for Google search results.

E.g.2: Programmers looking for code snippets
This one was added only very recently. Just type in some random code, and you'll find files containing this code

Some articles pointed out that Google was upsetting large websites such as amazon with their embedded search bar:
"[Google] has absolutely crossed the line because it's so blatantly about commercialisation and not user experience."
Richard Gregory, COO of Latitude

I personally don't think that these features are driven from the marketing department. By improving its vertical results, Google improves the user's experience, and keep them on its results page.

This is of course a matter of concern to all publishers (Amazon complained about the search box, and got it removed for instance), who get their number of page views reduced, and consequently their advertising revenue. But Google's mission statement is to offer the best results to its users, allowing them to find the right product/service/content directly from the search results, and the addition of these "vertical features" are going in the right direction, keeping Google ahead of the game, and definitely improving the overall user experience.

webwise: dubious practices...

2008-03-26T22:23:00.003Z

Webwise is introducing a new service, allowing internet users to replace any ads displayed on a site with Webwise's ads instead.

Nice concept - it is pretty much impossible to compete with Google directly, trying to convince publishers to replace google adsense with your own ads. Google adsense pays too well, and publishers are not likely to switch.

But..we don't need to ask the publishers! if one controls the ISPs, one controls what is displayed on the screen of any Internet users. This is how China for instance ensures that no controversial information about Tibet or any other sensitive topic is available to chinese internet users. And that is how Webwise intends to replace Google adsense (or other ads) with their own ads...

I frankly don't like it. It's only fair to try to compete with the online advertising giants using any weapons available. But in these case:
1) There is a lot of possible confusion between the two services they offer (safe web browsing, and ads replacement)
2) It will have a direct impact on publishers revenue: when they replace an advert on a site with their own advert, they don't pay the website's owner a single penny!

There is probably a lot to say about these types of practices, using ISPs in this case to replace content, or in other case to track browsing data for instance.

CSS trick: center horizontal menu

2008-03-22T11:09:00.005Z

First time a came across this issue today, and then realised how common the issue was amongst front-end designers.

Issue: web designers tend to rely on cut and paste code when designing menus, without understanding fully what the actual CSS does.

If you google for "CSS horizontal menus", you'll find loads of valid examples.

e.g.: http://www.sovavsiti.cz/css/horizontal_menu.html

the trick is to use li {display: inline} in order to get the listed items aligned horizontally (li is by default defined as "block"). But if you then need to apply specific styles such as background, or padding (which you will probably need to make the menu look pretty), you are then stuck - display: inline prevents you from applying these types of style.

The recommendation from sovavsiti is to apply a float: left, instead of display: inline, which achieves the same effect (align menu items horizontally) while keeping the block property for display, which allows more styling options.

But this is where things start going wrong
The float: left property prevents you from using the align: center property, and you end up banging your head on the wall trying to work out how to modify the actuall css in order to center your menu => wrong approach.

The right approach (well, in my opinion any way) is to get back to the basics.
1) You cannot use float: left because it prevents you from centering your menu
2) You cannot use display: inline alone without loosing the ability to style your menu items with background images/colour, padding, etc ..

Solution: once you have described the issue properly, the solution is then straightforward: use span within the li to be able to apply the missing styling properties. Easy, isn't it?

An example is available at: strctlycss

Conclusion: it is often a matter of finding what the actual problem is. Once you understand exactly what your CSS does, and its limitations, the solution is then straightforward to find.

Accounting for small web design companies

2008-03-21T20:04:00.004Z

I recently decided to pay a bit more attention to our account, and start learning about how to use accounts for management.

And it is amazing the impact of understanding your accounts can have on your business, regardless your turnover.

And the benefit of using a web design business is that it is quite straightforward to keep your accounts in order, without the need for sophisticated accounting software - 3 spreadsheets are enough.

1) Bank statements:
Download your bank statements on a monthly basis, and keep them on one sheet. And flag each transaction with a category:
1.1 for debit transactions
bank charges, transport, entertainment, telephone/internet bills, office supplies, call handling/virtual secretary, hosting, domain names, events fees, online tools cost, cash, VAT (if you are registered) , suppliers cost (try to specify which type of service they provide, such as offshore development, accounting, translation, etc .. )
1.2 for credit transactions
invoice (try to write down the reference if possible), cash back

You may need some additional categories for odd transactions, but categories above should cover pretty most of your transactions.

Important Note: Try to keep business account separate from your personal account. If you buy a tube ticket, and need to record this as a business expense, use your business card, not personal account. You then have just to worry about the statement you download from your online business bank account.

2) P&L
This is how you find out if you are doing things right, or if production is costing you too much , if you are spending too much in advertising etc ...

2.1: Revenue
The revenue is the sum of all the credit transactions - cash back

2.2 Gross profit
revenue - sum of all cost related to sales (suppliers cost, call handling/virtual secretary) - deprecation expenses **

use a 25% ratio. If you have bought a computer worth �1000 this year, it is costing you �250 in deprecation expenses this year, and will cost you �250 each year for 4 years. Don't ask me why it is considered as a cost related to sales...still cannot figure that out.

2.3 Net profit
Gross profit - sum of costs + cash - cashback

----------------------------------------------------
If you keep this in order, it will save you loooooads of time in the long run. these are useful data, but you need a balance sheet to start running proper analysis about your business... which I will write about in the next post.

unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server

2008-02-29T11:40:00.003Z

I have been banging my head against the wall lately, trying to send emails through my outlook.

Whatever SMTP account I was using, I would always get the same error message: unable to connect to your outgoing (SMTP) e-mail server

And googling this error didn't help much. Most of the post were related to firewall settings.

My issue was slightly different: I have recently subscribed to 02 broadband, and was having this issue whenever I was using their wireless router. I disabled their firewall, nothing changed.

A quick call to their customer service department (which is excellent by the way) gave me the answer: O2 prevents access to any SMTP server except their own SMTP server!

and there is no way around it - if you need to send emails through SMTP, you need to use your O2 account. the only other alternative is to order a static IP address.

O2 is not the only ISP preventing people from connecting to other SMTP servers. I had the same issue with Wanadoo for instance in France.

The reason they give is that they want avoid spammers using their network for sending forged emails. But by doing so, they also create a lot of headaches for people like me, who spend hours trying to figure out why they cannot sent emails from their email client any more!

I must say that their customer service has been very useful though. They took my concern very seriously, understood the point I was making, and promised to follow up.
And for this reason alone, I will definitely stay with them. And I would still recommend using them as ISP, hoping that they will address this issue swiftly!

And in the meantime, hope that this post will avoid other users from wasting hours trying to figure out why they cannot send emails!

overcoming the minus 6 penalty

2008-02-03T11:57:00.001Z

A lot of things have been written about the minus 6 penalty/filter added by Google recently.

It is quite easy to demonstrate:
e.g.: we have very recently released a site (http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk), and I was checking the ranking of this site for some specific/unique titles.

"Segmenting Your Customers - Uncovering Hidden Value": This is a very unique title, which should get http://www.marketingminefield.co.uk/articles/segmenting-customers.html into position #1 straight away.

Instead, the page is ranked at position 6. It is clear that this position is assigned on purpose by Google (you can check yourself with other very unique titles for recently released sites), which is probably because this is the position the less likely to be randomly clicked on.

Google probably tracks the number of clicks on results it returns, and take this into account in the ranking algorythm. But provided that some people just click on first links without thinking about it, positioning the "on probation" link in position #6 gives Google more chance to test effectively if the link is actually relevant.

I think that it is just a temporary position. Google hasn't computed all data yet, and hold the site in the position until more processing has been done. Nothing really to worry about, it is in my opinion just a sign that google has crawled the page, but not asssigned a proper ranking yet.

Using Facebook as a promotion tool

2008-01-08T09:08:00.000Z

I am still trying to figure out the benefit of using Facebook really. The site can become quite addictive, but the actual "benefits" of using it are still a big mistery for me.

You can certainly hear from people you had lost contact with for instance. But there is usually some good reasons why you had not kept in touch with them in the first place. After catching up with them for a while, you soon realise that you will very probably loose contact again very soon..

I have started a group, GetBiz, to cover my activities with www.getbiz.co.uk.

I don't really want to invest too much time on this, since it is just an experiment. But maybe worth the try. Very much like keeping up with a blog really, with the ability to attract readers more easily through connections. The downside is that it is not as SEO friendly as blogs though.

Safari 3 - CSS hack

2007-11-30T08:33:00.000Z

A quick tip about how to set up a CSS rule for Safari (all versions) only.

Problem: The way Safari renders some fonts is different from IE or Firefox (exemple: courier).

For courier, the bold version renders well in Safari, but not in IE or Firefox. And I had to ensure that the font would be normal in IE or firefox, and bold in Safari.

The "#" hack doesn't work with Safari 3 beta, but is the one which is the most popular. The following post offers alternative hacks which work with all versions of Safari:
http://www.evotech.net/blog/2007/06/targeting-safari-30-with-css/

Note: the javascript one is probably the best bet
Safari is the only browser that supports the window property devicePixelRatio. So, similar to that old fashioned document.all, you can browser sniff this way:

<script type="text/javascript">
isSafari3 = false;
if(window.devicePixelRatio) isSafari3 = true;
</script>

Other solutions rely on the fact that some CSS properties are only supported by Safari at the moment (but may very well be supported in the future).

-------------------------------------------------------
Conclusion: only use safe web fonts. Once you start looking into using non standard stuff, you get into a lot of hassle....

Tidy up your CSS. Keep specificity in mind

2007-11-28T12:06:00.001Z

I had to clean up a large CSS file recently (actually made out of 5 different style sheets), for a large website. The CSS had become totally unmaintainable, and tackling the CSS from scratch was necessary.

This is a bit of a daunting task, and turned out very challenging. I ended up writing a guideline for this type of job, ensuring that I had a process available next time I have to do this again, or ask someone else to do it.

One of the most painful task was to solve conflicts. And I recently found a article summarising the issue very well:
http://www.htmldog.com/guides/cssadvanced/specificity/

- p has a specificity of 1 (1 HTML selector)
- div p has a specificity of 2 (2 HTML selectors; 1+1)
- .tree has a specificity of 10 (1 class selector)
- div p.tree has a specificity of 12 (2 HTML selectors and a class selector; 1+1+10)
- #baobab has a specificity of 100 (1 id selector)
- body #content .alternative p has a specificity of 112 (HTML selector, id selector, class selector, HTML selector; 1+100+10+1)

If you keep these rules in mind when you create your CSS file, you'll be able to structure it well, limiting the risk of conflicts.

If you have to assess an existing CSS document, pay attention to all nested document, and restructure first the CSS document in order to reflect this.

Other related articles & tools :: CSS specificity
- http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/
- http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/cascade.html: which also describes inheritance, etc ..
- http://www.rebelinblue.com/specificity.php: nice little tool indicating specifity calculation for each item of your CSS

online website benchmarking

2007-10-03T13:07:00.000+01:00

Just wanted to post a few tools I have been testing recently, and that I have added to our set of online tools when assessing websites:

http://juicystudio.com/services/readability.php
How readable is your website -

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
speed analysis

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
accessiblity analyser

http://www.urltrends.com
good SEO overview of a site

testing new developers (PHP, OO)

2007-10-03T10:44:00.000+01:00

It has been a real challenge in the past to find PHP developers with solid Object Oriented programming skills. I have come up with a test, which I think is pretty good at spotting potential weaknesses:

TEST:
Brief: we need a parser which will replace a list of keywords in the following text with links:
�welcome to my testing page. My <strong>website</strong> is about advanced Object Oriented Programming in PHP, and provides <a href="�/guidelines�" title="�guidelines�">guidelines</a> about how to become an expert in this area. I would recommend you to read �PHP 5 Objects, Patterns and Practice� before <span title="�guidelines�">browsing</span> further the guidelines section. This will give you all the basics you need to know before moving to more advanced techniques.�

Keyword 1: �my website� => replace with �<a href="�/link1.html�">my website</a>"
Keyword 2: �guidelines� => replace with �<a href="�/guidelines-home.html�">guidelines</a>"

Rules:
1) Case insensitive (�test� => �<a href="�test.html�">test</a>�) implies that �Test� should be converted to �<a href="�test.html�">Test</a>
2) If the keyword is already linked to a page, should not be parsed and converted to a new link
3) Remove html within the <a> tag

Requirements:
1) This can be coded using PHP4 or PHP5 syntax, but using object oriented approach
2) We will take into account:
a. Well commented code (with no typo errors)
b. Proper use of errors handling
c. Code structure
d. Proper use of regular expressions
e. Good use of inheritance: the class parser should be as generic as possible, and specific rules should be implemented using extension of the main class Parser for instance.
f. Good use of design patterns
g. Set of rules is incomplete: suggestions for new rules will be appreciated (example: only parse text, not tags attributes)

Extra: Ability to configure replacements � an interface should allow user to add/delete/modify keywords and links, and store the list of keywords and related links into the database (or text file), which are then retrieved by the parser.

let me know what you think?

sharing large files

2007-09-17T09:53:00.000+01:00

It has always been an issue to share large files for projects involving third parties - difficult to use emails for 50 Megs files, cannot expect everyone to be fluent with FTP, messengers/skype makes it a veeeeeeery long process to transfer files, and you usually loose version control on the way - The best solution so far was YouSendIt, limited to 100 Megs transfers though (free accounts).

Just came across a nice bit of software which may sort this out: http://www.collanos.com/

Free to download, it uses P2P technology, which is specially suitable for large files transfers. Worth checking out.