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Updating my Web Design Toolbelt

I’ve just embarked on a new project and I thought it was time to update the tools I use, just to streamline things a bit and make sure development is as easy as it could be.

First up is the editor.  As a recent Mac convert I needed something to take the place of Notepad++, my Windows editor of choice.  Well that was fairly easy, I had a look round and kept coming across Text Wrangler, BBedit’s little brother, and its fantastic.  In fact it easily surpasses the usability ot Notepad++.  Could I find a replacement for my favourite FTP client, SmartFTP as well?  Again its a resounding yes!  Initially I started using Transmit, the award winning Mac FTP client, and yes, I can see why its award winning.  In fact it’s as easy to use as finder and shares much of the functionality.  Eventually though (read 30 days trial ran out) I moved over to Cyberduck ftp which actually comes close to matching the functionality of Transmit, and only falls slightly short in terms of stability and usability.  But its free and unlimited, which suits the tightwad in me.  There is also the integration with Text Wrangler, which means that if you open a file in Text Wrangler, through Cyberduck, saving the file will save it on the server, which really streamlines the ediitng process.  Text Wrangler itself offers saving over FTP but you will always need a fully featured FTP client at some point.

The next items I added to my toolbelt were FireFox extensions.  I already had the Web Developer Toolbar, which, if you don’t use it, is simply astonishing.  It just makes everything you could ever want to do so simple.  I simply could not live without it.  Iw as dissapointed to learn that the eyedropper mode of color zilla does not work on Mac, which means I’ve had to drop that from my toolbelt, which is unfortunate as it was really usefull.  I thought it would be worth seeing what else was out there, and boy am I glad I did.

The first extension I came across is called Fangs.  Fangs does a great job of visually interpreting the output of screen readers.  This is a must have if you care about accessibility, of course to be used in conjunction with this article on accessibility.  Next I came across an extension called View Source Chart, which visually formats source code by grouping block elements and their children together and highlighting them in colour.  It may sound fairly trivial but it really helps you find errors quickly.  You simply would not believe how much of a difference using this entension, in conjunction with the highlight block level elements feature of the Web Developer Toolbar, makes debugging your HTML.  Especially if you use dynamically generated code from a CMS, Forum of Blog.

In addition to these tools, I use the Gimp for images, Safari for testing and IE on a seperate Windows Machine for testing.  I also tend to use the superb script.aculo.us scripting library and a set of key PHP classes that I wrote a good while ago and have been serving me well.  Theres also a whole host of bookmarks that I’ve got that help me out with colour schemes and commonly used layout techniques, including my own.
Whats your development environment like?  Any tips for a recent Mac convert?  What can’t you do without?  One thing I will say, however, is that I simply cannot get a working PHP/MySQL/Apache environment working on my machine, and I’ve tried everything.  Anyone with a familiar experience?

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Too Web 2.0?

I feel like I’ve been forced into writing this post.  Its not quite against my will, but not far off.  This is a bit of a reality check for all you Web 2.0ers out there.

When I first heard about the Web 2.0, I loved the idea.  It seemed like the web was being given back to the users.  The teccies became enablers, which is the way it should be.  The everyday man started contributing in new and amazing ways.  Wikipedia and My Space were born.  Fantastic.  Theres only one problem, the everyday man on the street doesn’t know what the Web 2.0 is.  This poses two problems for the budding Web 2.0er.

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It’s all in the name

I’ve noticed a bit of a change in the way websites and services are naming themselves.  There seems to be a shift from the original keyword laden names (often at the expense of typability) to the memorable and catchy pronounceable “non-words”.  This dawned on me as I was thinking of a name for a site I would eventually like to launch.  I thought of the obvious, none available and then I thought, hey, all the best sites have names that aren’t really words, but they sound like they should be words.

This got me thinking.  Why?  I’m sure many will point to google, which is derived from googol, which means ten to the power of one hundered.  Thats a really big number, so big that I can’t even fit it in my brain.  Thats a very logical approach to naming.  The key difference between the naming of Google and the naming of sites these days is choice.  Back in the early days of Google (in the pre-google name days) there was a vast choice of domain names out there.  Dictionary names were ten a penny, you could pick up acronyms and short domains, no problem.  Quite why Google went for a slight variation is something I can’t tell you, I presume its down to the fact that Google is less harsh than Googol, also the fact that if you stored a Googol worth of data, thats a finite amount.  It implies some form of limit and restriction.  Not something we currently associate with the Google server villages.

Anywho, try and pick a name that makes sense, is pronounceable and is relevant in a fairly popular market.  Its not easy.  Also try and pick up a pronounceable “non-word”, thats certainly harder than it was a year ago.  Quite frankly I’m beginning to fear a night of random key presses at my favourite registrar.  I wouldn’t mind were the domains actually being used, but many aren’t.  Some are for sale (at ludicrously high prices, and therefore not practical), some are parked and some are spam domains.  Isn’t it about time icann reclaimed some of the domains?

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Looking for a new RSS reader?

Theres an excellent post over at download squad that summarises a previous post covering their readers favourite RSS readers. If your looking for a new reader, for whatever reason, web based or desktop, I’m sure you’ll find something of interest over there.

My personal favourite is netvibes, although I don’t use all the functionality they offer (for example, I don’t have my gmail or box.net configured). I just like the basics of reading feeds.

Read

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Hiring a web developer? Equip yourself first and don’t lose out

Web developers are the mechanics of the 21st century. They perform some voodoo magic under the hood of your site and everything comes up rosy, right. Right? Well no, not always. There was this technique mechanics used to use to make an engine sound smoother than it really was, they used to put sawdust in the oil. Sure it used to run fine for a few miles but then BANG! It would lose most of its engine all over the side of the road. The entrepreneurs out there who are looking to hire a developer may end up with a bum deal. How can you prevent this? Read on…

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Diigo social bookmarking and annotation service launches

The social bookmarking and annotation service that I previewed a while back, diigo, has finally launched officially.  I would recommend checking it out for yourself.  From what I’ve seen they’ve cleaned the interface up a bit since my last visit and added some functionality, and it looks pretty good.  Lets hope they live up to the potential I touched upon in my preview and how they deal with the threat of google notebook.  Check it out for yourself.

 diigo social bookmarking and annotation

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Why accessibility should be about stopping screenreaders

This is a bit of a rant about the current state of accessibility in the web.  I constantly hear people go on about accessibility and making sure that users who rely on screenreading software can access the information on the site.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but they seem to be missing the middle bit, the reason why some users need screenreaders in the first place.  My argument would be that some of the users who currently rely on screenreaders, probably wouldn’t need it if sites were designed with true accessibility in mind.

More after the jump… (more…)

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Versioning the Web

So we all love the Web 2.0, just look at the pastel colours!  And we think we all know the Web 1.0, but what happened in between and are these versions an accurate representation of the life history of the web?

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The one thing you can’t buy

Theres a saying (and a song!) that says that money can’t buy you love.  Now we’ve all seen those “massage parlours” in certain cities around the world so it may not be strictly true.  Of course your definition of love is all important here, money can buy you certain types of love, but not the type that you can live with.  So where on earth is my point here?  Well quite simply, if you’ve got a startup throwing money at marketing isn’t going to cut it.  I’m sure many of you have seen the Supernova 12 and are aware that over 100 startups applied, thats alot.  So how are these companies going to gain success?  I’m sure that one of the points you picked up on regarding the Supernova 12 is the huge amount of investment they have received.  These aren’t back room one-man-band organisations, they are big with momentum and cash behind them.  With that comes advertising, marketing and promotion.  Whats this got to do with love?  Well not much, really, its more about another emotion that we tend to keep fairly close to our chest, and thats trust.

I’ve written previously about how contextual and CPC advertising has opened up new revenue streams and I’ve also written about the frightening amount of information some sites (and more specifically organisations) hold about you.  I mentioned in the previous article that many of these organisations gather your information in somewhat covert means, their advantage is that they are established with popular services.  The problem with the start-ups is that they don’t have an established user base and they don’t have the popular services.  This may seem obvious but when you think about it, theres a fairly substantial hurdle to overcome.  Remember that this is all about personal information, information that you don’t necessarily want to give away, and you certainly don’t want to give it away without getting something good in return.  This is somehing that has only recently occured to me.  Now that many people, coincidently the same people who are at the cutting edge and go for startups, are aware that their information is valuable there is a growing reluctance to hand it over.  Surely this is another prime reason as to why advertising which requires little or no commitment is more often than not the driver behind web applications.  There is also an increasing number of services which offer up a large chunk of their service for free, and then tempt you in with that little bit extra…

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