Sunday-Edition

I’m not sure this is a real news-flash, but this weekend I was talking to someone about my job when I realized that being a Web designer was no longer “sexy.”

Back in the 90’s I’d relish the opportunity to tell people what I did. Back then it was “so cool” to be a Web designer. Now that I think about it, the further back I go the cooler it was.

And not only did others think it was cool, I actually did all sorts of sexy/cool work. Flash intros, creative “play-spaces”, lots of fun “meet the Web team” projects, and all sorts of interesting and off-the-wall paid work also.

Oh and we drank beer on the job while playing Unreal Tournament at the “request” of our CEO at one job. Can’t beat that!

Yep, Web design in the 90’s was all about “fun”, “sexy” and “cool.” Not so anymore. At least not for this Web designer.

Why do you think that is?

I think it’s because I actually know what I’m doing now.

Look at what it takes to create, what I think anyway, is a great Web site: Usability, goals, standards, information architecture, best practices, accessibility — these things aren’t really sexy.

Don’t get me wrong, there is still a whole lot of “sexy” and “cool” in Web design. It’s just that those sexy moments are less frequent.

That’s probably a good thing. It could be argued that “sexy” and “cool” played a huge part in the whole .com crash of the late 90’s. I do kind of miss those days, but I think the change has been good, for all of us.

Experiment with your user logs to measure how successful your site is at adding new readers and retaining your regular customers.†Any good business has to know who its regular customers are and how the new customers are getting their information. From this research, you can then build lasting relationships and form new ones for long-term website growth!

If you are like most webmasters or bloggers, you are constantly searching for fresh ideas to add content to your website. You are already well aware that adding more pages to your site will enhance your search engine rankings. You realize that you require more keyword phrases to find their way into searches. The question arises as to where to find ideas that appeal to your visitor traffic. The answer may lie in your own visitor traffic logs. Read the rest of this entry »

Why does failure matter?

It’s a funny thing. After almost twenty years of drawing a paycheck for creating software, people generally want to hire me because they want me to duplicate the successes I’ve had. The model seems to be “do the things you’ve done successfully before, and you’ll be successful now.”

My experience is that this has never worked on its own. Success in software development is at least as much about avoiding failure modes as it is about “best practices.” I conjecture it’s because software development on a commercial scale is so hard that almost any mistake will sink a project if left uncorrected or even worse, actively encouraged.

With that in mind, I’ve taken a little time to jot down some thoughts about situations where I’ve personally failed. I’m not going to tell you about some theoretical anti-pattern, or relate some broken thing I’ve fixed. I’m going to share things that caused me to leap from the deck of a burning boat to avoid drowning.

Some of them, in retrospect, would be comical if it wasn’t for the human misery, damaged careers, and money wasted on failed projects. Or worse, in my opinion, the opportunity cost of putting good people to work on things that never end up delighting the world. I weep for what might have been. Read the rest of this entry »

Every DBA needs to transfer data between tables. This is the kind of task that comes up all the time. Not only do DBAs need to know how to transfer data between two tables on the same server, but they will also need to know how to do it from one server to another. This blog entry will look at a number of different methods to transfer data from one table to another. Read the rest of this entry »

During the ’90’s it was forgotten that technology is a service industry where growth is linked to the economy; rather, tech stocks were treated as end products for which demand was unlimited.

Creating a user-friendly website can be a little bit like cooking chicken. If over-cooked, nobody really enjoys it — in fact they just look forward to clearing the palette with something else. If under-cooked, we end up in the hospital with salmonella. OK, perhaps our site won’t send anyone to the ER, but it could certainly make them leery about coming back for more! If cooked properly however, it will be a nice all-around experience for all, and our friends will be begging for the recipe.

So how do we cook the perfect web-site? Well, honestly, perfection is perhaps a little bit high of an expectation, but we can get nearly there if we follow some basic rules. Oops, I used the ‘r’ word (I see you all grimacing). Sorry, let’s change that to principles! Or maybe super-fun-happy-guidelines. Ahhh — much better. Read the rest of this entry »

On Infinity and Beliefs

In an infinite universe, with infinite space, attributes and possibilities, it is absurd to imagine that one may know anything at all, for to know something amounts to arriving at a finite conclusion,and this is infinitely impossible. Yet in an infinite universe embodying infinite possibilities, the act of knowing is also infinitely possible, or so the optimist will hasten to offer. But if it is both infinitely possible and infinitely impossible to know something, then how can either notion be a possibility? Read the rest of this entry »

Every software application can conceptually be broken up into three layers: the front end, which consists of the user interface and application controls; the middle tier, which consists of the code; and the back end, which consists of the database, data structures and other assorted gremlins.

When building software, the trick is to design in such a way that when you place these layers one on top of the other, the parts fit exactly. This is far more complicated than it sounds, and fairly difficult to do at the best of times. But don’t let that discourage you - a number of tools are available to assist in this process…and one of the better ones is called a functional specification.

A functional specification can substantially simplify and streamline the process of application development. Intended to describe how a piece of software works, it provides a ready reference for software developers and aligns large and disparate development teams to a single goal. In the process, it provides technical clarity on how the different components of a particular applications are to be designed, implemented and integrated with each other, and (if used correctly) significantly reduces the time and cost component of any development exercise. Read the rest of this entry »

Balancing the pros and cons of the two most popular means of building web applications

When it comes to Web development these days, you have a lot of options. Many of these methods involve preprocessingóthat is, embedding code into HTML pages with special tags that signal to a preprocessor that they contain code, and that it should do something with it. Much like a CGI, this code is then run on the server, and it returns some content, which then assumes part of the shape of the resulting HTML page sent back to the browser. Both the open source scripting language PHP and languages within Microsoft’s ASP.NET framework fall into this category; JavaServer Pages (JSP) and Perl/Mason operate this way as well.

In this weeks weblog post I’ll focus on PHP, the technology Oracle has chosen to incorporate into its products, and ASP.NET. I’ll overview the various strengths and weaknesses of each, discussing in particular those areas that will help you make your decision on which to go with for your development project. There are a lot of factors to consider, and different projects may appeal to a different technology. In conclusion you’ll find a point-by-point comparison in terms of price, speed and efficiency, security, cross-platform support, and the advantages of an open source solution. Read the rest of this entry »

Functionality

Above all, a website has to function correctly. The HTML, graphics, JavaScript, CGI, forms, etc. must be seamlessly integrated and display properly on a wide range of computer systems and browser software.

Designing for the web requires expert knowledge of several programming languages and an ongoing commitment to education in order to stay current in this exploding field.

True interactivity requires both client-side and server-side technology. All forms, search functions, e-commerce services, etc. must be backed up by extensive CGI scripting and database integration. Read the rest of this entry »