Web Dev Notes

Remember back in April when I became the new writer for Web Dev Notes? I started off by introducing Joomla, PHP-Nuke, phpBB and PHP. I even recommended some cool software like the ALT-Tab Replacer, Virtual Desktop Manager and the Firebug plugin for Firefox. After a slow start, I finally got my big break when my article Formatting Text in Wordpress started to bring in steady traffic!

In my early Web Dev Notes days I stuck to covering more technical topics such as how to insert CSS on your website or how to create your first PHP page. However, after testing out the use of humor in posts like the Top Ten Stupidest Joomla! Administrator Tricks and When will GoogleBot index my Brain I discovered that this unique approach was actually quite well received! I also realized website marketing and SEO was a very popular aspect of web development so I decided to venture into this area with posts like The Battle for Traffic - SEO vs Content, No Contacts, No Money and Validate Your Website for Better SEO!

Of course, even though I would later discover that marketing and SEO would be a very popular topic on my blog, at the time I had no idea yet! Looking at my stats, the posts about PHP were the most trafficked so I decided to cover this area more extensively! In May I introduced some great web development resources and then discussed the relationship between PHP and a Web Server/Browser in order to build a solid foundation before diving right into PHP for the rest of the month. I then covered how to comment PHP code, the debate over using Print or Echo, how to use variables, how to use concatenation with variables and variable naming conventions. Using this introductory material, I was then able to go even deeper and cover topics like using arrays, if/else programming logic, nested IF/ELSE conditional statements, and PHP Loops. Since the topic of loops is already an extensively covered subject, I decided to make my articles sound unique by naming them, “The magic of WHILE Loops“, “The incredible FOR Loop Multi-Tasker“, and “The FOREACH Loop Love Affair with Mr. Array“.

In order to stay informed, I subscribed to many RSS feeds relating to my topic. In so doing I noticed that Digg and Google were two very popular topics. I decided to explore these subjects a bit with articles like, “List of Google Hoaxes“, “Who’s Digging You?“, “Google’s PageRank Explained by Phil Craven“, “Declare Warr on Digg Doondles!“, “I Hacked Google and Stole Their Robot lolol“, and “Are Your Archives Burying You Worse Than Digg“. These articles continue to bring in traffic to this day!

During the month of June I was taking a course on Interface Design so decided to cover similar topics on Web Dev Notes. I began by discussing the advantages of using personas during development and then decided to list nine causes of software error before discussing software quality and the three general principles of quality assurance. I introduced the subject of human/computer interaction and demonstrated how good design can help us better interact with computers. In fact, making the interaction between humans and computers as easy as possible is an important goal of improved user interface design. I also mentioned that building the right product is even more important than building a product right.

It was around mid-June when I also began to notice how well my SEO, blogging and marketing tips posts were doing! I therefore decided to write about the guaranteed way to generate incoming links and conquering the crowded niche! I also wrote about some issues I was having with trying to follow my own advice when I noticed my trackbacks were being kidnapped and asked if it were possible if my bullets were killing them! Not wanting to stray too far from the very roots of web development, I also introduced the Pixel Groovy website, discussed how to created animated favicons and threw in 21 CSS tutorials answering frequently asked questions.

During the month of July I continued to cover a lot of marketing topics. I created a new Top 11 Posts section and asked if people thought linking to other sites increases incoming traffic. I also started to learn a great deal about blogging and realized that my very own archives contained in itself the power to help WebDevNotes succeed. I therefore stopped considering old posts like dirty socks thrown into a laundry bin, and instead began viewing them as cornerstone content that should be linked back to frequently so that new visitors could access my best content easily.

Upon making this realization, I began offering my visitors some blogging advice with the help of Lolcats to make the posts more fun and easy to read. For example:

Don’t let Chihuahua’s hold back your website! Start working with the purrrrfect partners and plot your plan for success. Make sure you plant the seeds for success early and listen to feedback so you can feed your readers a happy meal. Make good use of article directories and other marketing techniques and never forget the secrets to writing a successful blog!

In conclusion, to those who say linking to old content is difficult, I beg to differ! Don’t let those archives go to waste

One of the tricky aspects of PHP is that each time you make any sort of request on the web page, the web browser will then open a connection to the web server, which will then process the request and send back a response. The connection to the server is then closed. This makes web programming different than other types of programming in the sense that you will need to use sessions in order to keep track of the state of the application. You will need to constantly reload and update these variables and pass them on as the user continues browsing the page. I’ll talk more about sessions and sessions variables later this week. The first thing that is important to understand is what is going on behind the scenes!

1. First things first, the user opens up his/her browser. This you will soon find, is actually the source of much evil and many headaches as no one browser will interpret your web page the same.
2. Next, the user types in the address to your website, or clicks a link to access your website. In so doing, a name server will then direct your browser to the server hosting your web page.
3. The server hosting your web page will receive the request and retrieve the page that was requested by the browser.
4. Since the page the server retrieves is a .php page, the server will compile the page using a just-in-time compiler that in turn generates the HTML code which is what is then sent back to the browser which made the initial request for the page.
5. Lastly, the broswer receives the HTML code and displays its interpretation of it, which will often vary from browser to browser.

Users viewing your page will not be able to see your PHP code. This is because the server compiles the code and generates HTML which is sent back to the user. Because all of this takes place server-side, the user can only view the HTML source to your page.

That’s right, you can now search the web from the comfort of your living room if you have Nintendo’s new Wii gaming system! The final version of the Internet Channel powered by the Opera web browser was released April 11th and will be available for free until the end of June. You can read the full details at Nintendo Club.

This is not the first time that Nintendo and Opera have teamed up. In June 2006, the Opera powered Nintendo DS Browser was released in Japan, though it is still not currently available in North America.

While Internet Explorer and Firefox remain the most widely used browsers online, Opera may be making a move as they march into new territory. Opera has recognized that the computer is no longer the only device connecting to the internet. As more devices come online, we may see an increase in the popularity of Opera as they continue to explore innovative ideas to compete with the established dominant browsers.

Firebug is a plugin for Firefox which is a must-have tool for any web-developer. With Firebug you can edit, debug and monitor HTML, CSS and JavaScript live in any web page. That’s right, you can edit your page live while visiting it! If you aren’t always editing your website from the same computer its very possible you won’t have a local copy. This means making small adjustments or tweaking a CSS files involve uploading the same file to a web-server hundreds of times in order to test and verify the results. Firebug makes this process so much easier. Just edit your website live until you are satisfied, then upload the final changes to your web-server so that all visitors will see the changes.

Firebug also gives you some other very powerful functions. We’ve all been frustrated with elements on our page not lining up properly because of some problem with our CSS file that we have yet to identify. Firebug will actually show you visually all of the offsets, margins, borders, etc, that you have set so you can easily identify the source of any problems.

Another great function is Firebug’s network activity monitor. Firebug will not only tell you how long your pages take to load, but will break this down between the elements on the page which therefore allows you to identify any bottlenecks slowing down your site!

If you are writing any JavaScript for your website, you will also love Firebug’s debugger, which lets you pause your script at any-time to check the state of anything set in the code, such as the values currently held by variables.

If I haven’t convinced you yet that this is a great tool that will speed up your web-development, then visit http://www.getfirebug.com/ now to find out even more about Firebug. Take a look at the screenshots which show Firebug at work!

I think Opera is taking over the world. Everywhere I go, I see an Opera Browser.

Web enabled mobile phones, PSP, Linux, Windows….everywhere. Not sure if its true but I was told that CSS renders the best on Opera. This is because one of the founders of CSS is also the Opera Founder. Hang on, I check….

hmm not sure, but it seems that the Opera Browser offered the first implementation of Cascading Style Sheets back in 1998. Thats seems to make sense. Anyway, I like the Browser…..its very clean and has a small footprint on my HD.

Arnold

This upgade should actually be considered a security patch.

The march of users to Firefox should have been wake up call to fix the security problems associated with IE. IE7 does look great, but all its achieved is parity with Firefox 1.5, although with improved CSS support. On the heels of its release is a much better Firefox version 2. The spell check feature is a blessing. I love it. Although like everyone else I was using the Google Search field as the unofficial spell checker. On my development laptop I cannot install IE7 as a Web App I am forced to use is not compatible. However I can run it virtually in VMWare for testing.

Actually didn’t want to buy VMWare Workstation, so I use the free VM Player, its much better than MS Virtual PC. I created my XP OS in Virtual PC, then opened it in VM Player because the VPC OS Image in compatible. I have to say that VM Player does an much better job than Virtual PC. So give this a try. After jumping through this hoop I installed IE7 and not have a platform to test on for Web Development. After all that, I went to Microsofts website to find the link to add to this article, and do not seem able to find the free version of Virtual PC, sorry. It did find a newer product for Virtual PC for Mac, but with Bootcamp or Parallels, I am not sure I would buy this if I were a Mac user.

Thanks

Arnold