Winnipeg Web Design
a winnipeg website design company.
a winnipeg website design company.
Wednesday, December 9th, 2009
Reading time: < 1 minute
Recently, as I was reading some older articles on good programming characteristics, I got to thinking specifically about web developers. The role of a web developer is critical for any website project or application, so I turned my questions to Twitter to get some input. The responses I got were overwhelming and filled with different opinions and advice. I saw this as a great opportunity to discuss what the development community thinks makes a great web developer. Let’s take a look at the findings!
Posted in Software, Web Dev. Links, Web Programming | 15 Comments »
Monday, July 6th, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 3 minutes
Please be sure to realize that hacking the add-ons could cause Firefox to stop working. Please be careful!
I in no way think this is the best way to get add-ons to work, but if there is no version for Firefox 3.5 and you can’t live without it why not give this a try.
The other day, I upgraded my Firefox browser and was sad to see a bunch of my add-ons were not compatible. One of the add-ons happened to me my indispensable RSS reader (Sage). I then read that there is a way to hack it into behaving.
It isn’t necessary that the plug-in does not work in Firefox 3.5; it may just be that the developer set the max version so something like 3.0.* which doesn’t match 3.5.
The way to fix this is to try and set the max-version for Firefox to 3.* which means any Firefox 3 version.
Here are the steps on how to go about this:
Voila, you know should have a working add-on. This may not work with all add-ons but happened to work without a hitch for “Sage”.
Posted in Software | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009
Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes
Yesterday I proceeded to download the newest version of my favorite browser (Firefox). Firefox 3.5 has many improvements such as speed, security, and features.
I was proudly telling people to upgrade via Twitter and Facebook, when someone made a great comment. It stated,
“I don’t want to hear about Firefox advances! Not until I know IE has caught up! Slow down FF!”
Now, I still enjoy the neat things that Firefox is doing, but seeing IE6 fade into the oblivion would make me more excited. Frankly, Firefox 3.5 is light-years better than IE8 – never mind comparing it to IE6. Remember we as developers can’t really use the new features until it works across all browsers anyways.
Here are the latest browser statistics according to W3Schools,
IE – 41%
Firefox – 47.7%
IE8 – 4.2%
IE7 – 21.3%
IE6 – 14.5%
3.0 – 44.3%
2.0 – 2.9%
Is there a reason that pretty much all Firefox users upgrade to the newest version, and IE doesn’t? Well I think there are a couple reasons:
Will Microsoft ever learn from their mistakes? Maybe they should focus on their operating systems…
Instead of dwelling on the negatives, let’s focus on some of the cool new Firefox features!
Have you ever found it annoying in the past when you go to view a sites web source and you need to copy and paste a URL just to check it out? Firefox 3.5 now converts these URLs into actual links that you can click on. It is such a little thing, but should save me a TON of time!
Private browsing is a nice security feature that Firefox has added. When you select this mode (Tools>>Start Private Browsing) no history will be recorded. This is a feature that mirrors in some ways what Google Chrome did with its “incognito window”.
Perhaps the most talked about feature is the dramatic improvement in performance. We as internet surfers don’t read the web, we SCAN. We are creatures that want information as quick as possible, and nothing is ever fast enough.
Firefox’s new “TraceMonkey” JavaScript engine keeps the JavaScript executing at top speeds.
This feature allows Firefox to determine your location using your IP Address. It will then allow websites to tailor their sites depending on what location you are browsing their site from.
Flickr is one site that has already implemented this. It determines your location and then shows photos from other people in your local area.
Firefox 3.5 now supports @font-face which allows a designer to add a fancy font to an element using CSS. Remember IE is still trying to figure out the box model, so they haven’t added this feature yet.
HTML 5 is also the new standard projected in the near future. Firefox likes being ahead of the curve as you probably have noticed. HTML 5 includes audio and video tags, along with supporting the <canvas> element which essentially is a drawing surface.
I hope this review of Firefox 3 has encouraged you to upgrade, and if you are on IE6 maybe it is time you upgrade?
If I missed any neat features please leave a comment below.
Posted in Software | 5 Comments »
Friday, June 19th, 2009
Reading time: 2 – 2 minutes
I normally don’t review programs that I have downloaded, but I feel XRefresh is one of those programs that will make your web development work flow that much faster.
The sole purpose of XRefresh is to refresh the browser as you modify source files. I hope you can see the benefits of this. The following are the steps you take to get it working:
The main purpose for this is when coding PHP locally you can have it automatically refresh to save you the same of switching windows all the time. Save what you’re doing in the IDE… look at the other monitor and have your change. No need to ALT-TAB and then hit Refresh!
One problem I have seen so far is that if you are changing a CSS file, something goes wonky with the images. If you have a solution for this please share it in the comments!
I recommend you get this software and try it out for yourself. Let me know what you think of it in the comments.
Posted in Software | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, November 26th, 2008
Reading time: 3 – 5 minutes
A couple days ago I installed Dreamweaver CS4 and have been pleased with some of the upgrades I have seen. The following are a couple:
This is a nifty feature to keep from having to open lots of tabs for each one of your files. Dreamweaver now has the smarts to detect includes and dependent files in your HTML / PHP files. For example if you open up a PHP file that includes a header, footer and links to some CSS and JavaScript. Instead of opening these files they are automatically shown and allow you to easy switch between them.
Related files header.inc.php, and footer.inc.php are automatically shown
Ever get lost in your code and are not sure what styles you all have and what styles are actually applying. Dreamweaver now has a nice code navigator that pops up and shows you details of what styles are applying to an element. It combines all the CSS files you have included and tells you exactly what selectors and properties are applying.
This is something that really frustrated me in CS3. Creating JavaScript was not real easy as no code hinting or debugging mechanisms where really installed. CS4 fixes all those problems though. This of course is because of the huge boom related to JavaScript with the introduction of JQuery and the AJAX technology.
Dreamweaver now supports code completion for JavaScript
The problem I sometimes have with these huge IDE’s is that the window in which you have to code is small. A lot of the interface is full of clutter such as handy drag-n-drop functionality that I never use anyways. Really the only reason I consider using an IDE is for code completion and code highlighting. I’ll leave all those drag and drop features for the newbie’s.
CS4 addresses this issue nicely by letting us define what type of workspace we want. This can be a coder, web designer, or an application developer. It then adjusts are workspace so that it gives us only the functionality we need to complete our job.
So do I think Dreamweaver has fixed everything? No. One big thing I wish they would do is allow for textmate (Mac OS only) like snippet entry. Something like typing – for [TAB] to get a for loop is much handier than typing it out every time. I guess we will have to wait for that!
If you really want to try this feature out, the closed to a windows alternative I have found is the E-TextEditor.
Let me know what you think. Dreamweaver CS4 an improvement or a step backward?
Tags: dreamweaver
Posted in Software | No Comments »
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