Firefox Download Day

So today (Tuesday, June 17, 2008 ) is the official release of Firefox 3, and to mark that day Mozilla is asking everyone to download it. You can even make a pledge (not of the monetary type) that you will do so. And I did make that pledge. And I do intend on downloading the browser. But I wonder something…what about those people (like myself) that tend to install with apt-get. Will those downloads count? Or what about the fact that some will download it once and install it on many machines?

Ah, there’s the rub when trying to tally up numbers for Linux. And it’s the age-old battle for Linux to gain respect. But this time, should Firefox break (or create – I don’t know if anyone has actually set a record for this yet) the record for most downloads in a day, it should at least give some credence to open source software. I realize Firefox Download Day isn’t something Linux can claim because there are plenty of people who will download Firefox for Windows and/or Mac. But hopefully those delightful developers will have a means to keep track of which versions are downloaded. It would be meaningful to know the percentage of users who download for Linux, Windows, and Mac. Why? (1) Most of the Windows users I know no longer use IE for browsing…they use Firefox. A huge amount of Windows users would show Microsoft that their browser is the horrible wreck that it really is. (2) It would give an indication of how many Linux:Windows users there are.

In the grand scheme of things one would easily think that there should be far more Windows Firefox downloads than Linux downloads. Why? Well, if what most of the media says is true, Windows outnumbers Linux something like 3 gajillion to 1. That being the case, the ratio of Windows:Linux Firefox downloads should reflect that. I would like to see things even out a bit here. I can’t say I would like to see the tables turn and have the Linux:Windows ratio of Firefox 3 downloads be Linux’ 3 gajillion to Windows’ 1. Because I would much rather Windows users be using a much more safe and secure browser than IE.

I have tried pretty much every browser known. From Lynx to Flock to Opera to IE to Firefox to Konqueror to Safari to Camino…you name it, I’ve tried it. Of all those browsers Firefox is hands-down the best. The more people that use Firefox, the better the interwebs will be!

So, in the name of all that’s good, fair, and open source…make sure you add your download to Firefox 3 Download Day to help set the record straight!

Highly superior gifts for the Linux geek

1. Lockpick Tool Set – I’m not giving you any suggestions for how this might come in handy.
2. Ubuntu with Support – If you’re a true believer, and money is no object, you not only can give a copy of Ubuntu to friends or family, but spring $250 for a year’s desktop support to completely win them over.
3. Daisy MP3 Player Kit – It’s Cracked Open before we crack it open!
4. Giant penguin – I think this is self-explanatory.
5. Star Theater 2 – Creates a home planetarium on your walls and ceiling. BABE MAGNET.
6. Storm Hawk – PDA-based real-time weather forecasting and monitoring system that delivers weather info for your surrounding (250 miles) area. Expensive, but very handy — it could even be a lifesaver — and super-geeky.
7. The Design of Future Things – Donald A. Norman, a Computer Science prof at Northwestern University has written this new book about what’s wrong with the design of emerging products like “smart” cars.
8. Basic Black Tee – It’s very slimming.
9. Screaming Monkey Slingshot – I like the looks of this little guy. It makes annoying sounds and is capable of flinging random objects at The Man…or maybe just your coworkers.
10. USB Mini Lava Lamp – It’s a lava lamp — and it plugs into your computer! Awesome.

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

10 common Web design mistakes to watch out for

When you start designing a Web site, your options are wide open. Yet all that potential can lead to problems that may cause your Web site to fall short of your goals. Whether you’re building a commercial Web site, a personal or hobby site, or a professional nonprofit site, you’ll want to keep these issues in mind.

1. Failing to provide information that describes your Web site
Every Web site should be very clear and forthcoming about its purpose. Either include a brief descriptive blurb on the home page of your Web site or provide an About Us (or equivalent) page with a prominent and obvious link from the home page that describes your Web site and its value to the people visiting it.
It’s even important to explain why some people may not find it useful, providing enough information so that they won’t be confused about the Web site’s purpose. It’s better to send away someone uninterested in what you have to offer with a clear idea of why he or she isn’t interested than to trick visitors into wasting time finding this out without your help. After all, a good experience with a Web site that is not useful is more likely to get you customers by word of mouth than a Web site that is obscure and difficult to understand.

2. Skipping alt and title attributes
Always make use of the alt and title attributes for every XHTML tag on your Web site that supports them. This information is of critical importance for accessibility when the Web site is visited using browsers that don’t support images and when more information than the main content might otherwise be needed.
The most common reason for this need is accessibility for the disabled, such as blind visitors who use screen readers to surf the Web. Just make sure you don’t include too much text in the alt or title attribute — the text should be short, clear, and to the point. You don’t want to inundate your visitors with paragraph after paragraph of useless, vague information in numerous pop-up messages. The purpose of alt and title tags is, in general, to enhance accessibility.

3. Changing URLs for archived pages
All too often, Web sites change URLs of pages when they are outdated and move off the main page into archives. This can make it extremely difficult to build up significantly good search engine placement, as links to pages of your Web site become broken. When you first create your site, do so in a manner that allows you to move content into archives without having to change the URL. Popularity on the Web is built on word of mouth, and you won’t be getting any of that publicity if your page URLs change every few days.

4. Not dating your content
In general, you must update content if you want return visitors. People come back only if there’s something new to see. This content needs to be dated, so that your Web site’s visitors know what is new and in what order it appeared. Even in the rare case that Web site content does not change regularly, it will almost certainly change from time to time — if only because a page needs to be edited now and then to reflect new information.
Help your readers determine what information might be out of date by date stamping all the content on your Web site somehow, even if you only add “last modified on” fine print at the bottom of every content page. This not only helps your Web site’s visitors, but it also helps you: The more readers understand that any inconsistencies between what you’ve said and what they read elsewhere is a result of changing information, the more likely they are to grant your words value and come back to read more.

5. Creating busy, crowded pages
Including too much information in one location can drive visitors away. The common-sense tendency is to be as informative as possible, but you should avoid providing too much of a good thing. When excessive information is provided, readers get tired of reading it after a while and start skimming. When that gets old, they stop reading altogether.
Keep your initial points short and relevant, in bite-size chunks, with links to more in-depth information when necessary. Bulleted lists are an excellent means of breaking up information into sections that are easily digested and will not drive away visitors to your Web site. The same principles apply to lists of links — too many links in one place becomes little more than line noise and static. Keep your lists of links short and well-organized so that readers can find exactly what they need with little effort. Visitors will find more value in your Web site when you help them find what they want and make it as easily digestible as possible.

6. Going overboard with images
With the exception of banners and other necessary branding, decorative images should be used as little as possible. Use images to illustrate content when it is helpful to the reader, and use images when they themselves are the content you want to provide. Do not strew images over the Web site just to pretty it up or you’ll find yourself driving away visitors. Populate your Web site with useful images, not decorative ones, and even those should not be too numerous. Images load slowly, get in the way of the text your readers seek, and are not visible in some browsers or with screen readers. Text, on the other hand, is universal.

7. Implementing link indirection, interception, or redirection
Never prevent other Web sites from linking directly to your content. There are far too many major content providers who violate this rule, such as news Web sites that redirect links to specific articles so that visitors always end up at the home page. This sort of heavy-handed treatment of incoming visitors, forcing them to the home page of the Web site as if they can force visitors to be interested in the rest of the content on the site, just drives people away in frustration. When they have difficulty finding an article, your visitors may give up and go elsewhere for information. Perhaps worse, incoming links improve your search engine placement dramatically — and by making incoming links fail to work properly, you discourage others from linking to your site. Never discourage other Web sites from linking to yours.

8. Making new content difficult to recognize or find
In #4, we mentioned keeping content fresh and dating it accordingly. Here’s another consideration: Any Web site whose content changes regularly should make the changes easily available to visitors. New content today should not end up in the same archive as material from three years ago tomorrow, especially with no way to tell the difference.
New content should stay fresh and new long enough for your readers to get some value from it. This can be aided by categorizing it, if you have a Web site whose content is updated very quickly (like Slashdot). By breaking up new items into categories, you can ensure that readers will still find relatively new material easily within specific areas of interest. Effective search functionality and good Web site organization can also help readers find information they’ve seen before and want to find again. Help them do that as much as possible.

9. Displaying thumbnails that are too small to be helpful
When providing image galleries with large numbers of images, linking to them from lists of thumbnails is a common tactic. Thumbnail images are intended to give the viewer an idea of what the main image looks like, so it’s important to avoid making them too small.
It’s also important to produce scaled-down and/or cropped versions of your main images, rather than to use XHTML and CSS to resize the images. When images are resized using markup, the larger image size is still being sent to the client system — to the visitor’s browser. When loading a page full of thumbnails that are actually full-size images resized by markup and stylesheets, a browser uses a lot of processor and memory resources. This can lead to browser crashes and other problems or, at the very least, cause extremely slow load times. Slow load times cause Web site visitors to go elsewhere. Browser crashes are even more effective at driving visitors away.

10. Forgoing Web page titles
Many Web designers don’t set the title of their Web pages. This is obviously a mistake, if only because search engines identify your Web site by page titles in the results they display, and saving a Web page in your browser’s bookmarks uses the page title for the bookmark name by default.
A less obvious mistake is the tendency of Web designers to use the same title for every page of the site. It would be far more advantageous to provide a title for every page that identifies not only the Web site, but the specific page. Of course, the title should still be short and succinct. A Web page title that is too long is almost as bad as no Web page title at all.

These considerations for Web design are important, but they’re often overlooked or mishandled. A couple of minor failures can be overcome by successes in other areas, but it never pays to shoot yourself in the foot just because you have another foot to use. Enhance your Web site’s chances of success by keeping these design principles in mind.

Happy Web Development….

courtesy @TechRepublic

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)

Why developers should check out ColdFusion 8

Adobe ColdFusion 8 (CF is a force to be reckoned with in the application server space. I’ve been using ColdFusion for 10 years, and I haven’t seen the community this excited about a new release in a long time. The recent release is by far the most compelling version since they moved to the Java platform — and possibly even the most compelling version ever.

There is a long list of new features and enhancements in CF 8, but in this article, I’m just going to focus on five of my favorites.

Server Monitor

The Developer and Enterprise Editions of CF 8 offer the highly anticipated Server Monitor feature. This might be the single biggest addition to ColdFusion, since it blows away anything I’ve seen on any other server platform.

Using the beautiful Flex-based Server Monitor interface, you can now watch requests move through a live server. You can see exactly how much memory a session or an application is using, what the template cache is doing, and which threads are taking too long to run.

You can also drill down into live requests and see which individual tags or method calls are slowing things down. It’s immensely powerful to watch the monitor and immediately tune your code in response. Is a query getting executed a lot? Cache it! Is a tag or function causing a bottleneck? Now you know exactly what line of code to optimize. Want to write your own code that runs in response to a hung thread, low JVM memory, or anything else? The monitor API will let you.

Exchange integration

It’s incredibly easy to integrate CF 8 with Microsoft Exchange. With a few lines of code, you can add events to Exchange calendars; add and remove attendees; manipulate tasks, contacts, lists, and more.

Love it or hate it, Exchange is such a staple for many IT departments that the ability to interact with it — or even build your own full-blown interface to your Exchange data — is a big boon to a lot of businesses that use ColdFusion.

AJAX capabilities

Another hugely popular addition in CF 8 is a large set of built-in AJAX functionality. By using simple tags or JavaScript functions, ColdFusion will handle all the chores for creating great AJAX-based applications. CF 8 makes these things a snap: autosuggest, related select boxes, dynamic content updates, and EXT-based datagrids.

One of the coolest features is the ability to create JavaScript proxies for server-side ColdFusion Components (CFCs). You can call a method on the proxy, and under the hood it will make a call to the corresponding method on the CFC. All the work of translating data to and from JavaScript Object Notation, converting ColdFusion datatypes into JavaScript types, and protecting against hack attempts is all handled for you by the ColdFusion server.

There’s even an excellent AJAX debugging window that shows everything that is going on. This probably has the biggest “wow” factor for the new release, since developers of any skill level can whip up a jaw-dropping AJAX application in minutes.

Image manipulation

CF 8 takes image manipulation to a new level. Adobe added more than 50 new tags and functions for dealing with images. The capabilities include simple things like resizing, getting image sizes, and converting images, as well as virtually any image-based task you can imagine. This includes drawing, adding text, and adding effects such as blurring, antialiasing, and rotating.

Performance

The best improvement in CF 8 is that it’s really fast. The development team really outdid themselves in this area. Depending on the application, it can be up to 10 times faster than CF 6 or CF 7. Some processes, like CFC instantiation, are an eye-popping 23 times faster than CF 7. So even if you upgrade to CF 8 and don’t use any new features, your application could easily triple or quadruple its performance on the same hardware. This is quite a compelling reason to upgrade.

Great extras

I’m only scratching the surface of all the amazing new capabilities in CF 8. The list goes on and on to include: generating ATOM and RSS feeds with one line of code; zip file manipulation; built-in Flex Data Services; ColdFusion administrator enhancements; and PDF and PDF form generation. There are three additional benefits to using CF 8 that I will briefly cover.

CF 8 lets you integrate with .NET objects as easily as you can currently integrate with Java objects. The .NET assets can be remote, which means you can use them even if your ColdFusion server is running a UNIX-based OS.

Adobe supplies a series of nice plug-ins for the Eclipse IDE that work with CF 8. This includes simple things like built-in ColdFusion docs, automatic generation of CFCs (including ActiveRecord, Data Access Objects, Beans, etc.), and wizards that will generate a full-blown AJAX application. It also includes a full debugging perspective. In conjunction with the free CFEclipse plug-in, this makes Eclipse the standard IDE for most advanced ColdFusion developers.

CF 8 gives you the ability to do your own thread-based programming. If you have a long running task, you can fire off another processing thread and forget about it; or you can trigger multiple threads to speed up a process and then join them back together and continue.

Download a free edition of CF 8

CF 8 Developer Edition is free, so I urge you to give it an honest look. I believe existing ColdFusion users will find a lot to like in version 8, and new users should try out this application server.

What do you think of CF 8?

Now that I’ve shared my thoughts about my favorite features and enhancements in CF 8, I want to hear what you think of this release. What features do you like the most in CF 8? If you aren’t using CF 8, what features pique your interest enough to give it a look?

fetched from blog4aurobindo(blogspot)