February 2004 Archives

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CSS tooltips

Feb 1

Create tooltipsA ToolTip is a descriptive text box that appears when the mouse pointer is held over a tool, button or other object using the technique demonstrated at madaboutstyle.


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Web design

Spidey sense

Feb 2

Here is a useful online tool called Spider Simulator (does'nt work properly on Mozilla), it reminds me very much of the Web Page Analyzer by Andrew King. Except it also gives your web page a rating on other things such as keywords and meta tags, these tags are useful to meta type search engines such as metacrawler


Filed under:
Web design

TV adverts 1980's style

Feb 3

x-entertainment has a list of old American 1980's commercials (Mediaplayer format), most of them didnt make it to the UK, but im sure I remember a few. (Doublemint, Speak and Spell).


Filed under:
Misc

Blogging within the workplace

Feb 4

Richard MacManus of www.readwriteweb.com envisages widespread use of web blogging within the workplace this year. The reason for this is that he along with many others (including me) believe that blogging could be used to fill the void of communication found within many medium to large corporations.

The quote below reminds me very much of the current situation within my workplace:

"One project team often won't know what another project team is doing, even though there may be a lot of knowledge they could share that would be mutually beneficial and therefore benefit the company as a whole."

Where I work we are currently attempting to tie project team blogs together into a departmental intranet, it is hoped that this will open up communication channels and produce the project awareness that is dearly lacking.

We will only discover the fruits of our labour within the comming months. However I am slightly dubious on how much information will be freely broadcast across departments as similarly suited teams struggle for supremacy.


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Misc

Fireblank 8.0

Feb 9

Keeping all things consistent Mozilla have decided to launch the latest point release of Firebird with a new name, its now called Firefox.

I guess we can expect future releases to contain the word 'fire' or be related to fire, such as Phoenix. For now I will simply refer to the browser as Fireblank, or just Fire, I can't yet decide?

To be fair the browser is not really launched as Mozilla do mention on their site.

"While this software may work well enough to be relied upon as your primary browser, we make no guarantees of its performance or stability in its pre-1.0 state and it should not be relied upon for mission- critical tasks...."

Filed under:
Mozilla

Reduce your Spam

Feb 10

I’ve recently noticed that many websites have what looks like JavaScript ‘gobbledegook’ at the base of their pages. On further investigation I’ve come to discover that this is in fact a JavaScript function that encodes / obfuscates your html source.

This encoding is useful by helping to prevent nasty email harvesting robots from plucking out your email address from your websites mailto tag. (Which it would otherwise use for spamming purposes).

You could write your own encoder or use an online encoder; a popular encoder can be found at hiveware.com just type in your address hit the button and it will return you a piece of javascript that you can then cut n paste into your web page.

Other links:-


Filed under:
Scripting

Costly Valentines day

Feb 14

All the local restaurants cash in on Valentines day using the 'set menu' method.

I decided to take my wife out for a Valentines day meal, we sat down to eat only to find that the usual menu was replaced for a 'special valentines' menu. Which oddly enough comprised of only one set meal, thats fair enough but it was the usual optional set meal at three times the usual price. Nice one!!


Filed under:
Misc

Building Apache

Feb 15

The following article explains how to build, install, configure and maintain a basic Apache build on a Linux based platform.

This is a very old article but the content is still useful for reference.


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Become an Internet radio DJ

Feb 17

Listen to amateur internet radio stations using the free destiny media player from Pirate Radio Network. Or pay $39 and download their Internet Radio broadcasting software and become a DJ within minutes.

Ive listen to a few stations using the RadioDestiny player but alot of them seem to be broadcasting at low bitrates (10 kpbs).

I checked out one of the Radio station's websites this site must win the crap design award for 2004. Dont take my word for it have a look frankievradioshow.com


Filed under:
Misc

PHP and Large Websites

Feb 18

Aaron Crane of gbdirect has written an article expressing his experiences of using PHP in large scale websites.

The article focuses on the well known fact that many php based sites are difficult to maintain due to the combined presentation with business logic. It also highlights the difficulty of using php in large group development projects and that the language that was created for its simplicity is offten more complex than most when using it to create large websites.


Filed under:
Scripting

Free Stock Photography

Feb 19

I've been busy adding to the list of 'free' stock photos in my links section. These are online photos that are totally free to use. Sure you could use google image search but are those images totally royalty free?

The quality of the links differ from amature photography to almost professional looking portfolios. When I get 'round to it I will rate them to show the most useful resources.

Please report any broken links!


Filed under:
Misc

More TV Nostalgia

Feb 23

After looking up an old British Kids TV programme called "number 73" I discovered links to more TV nostalgia from the 1980's. So here they are for future trips down memory lane.


Filed under:
Misc

Sing us all a song

Feb 24

I saw this a couple of months ago but forgot the link, now ive found it again so ive blogged it for reference.

Its a funky flash application created by Erik Bunger for the Swedish radio station Sveriges Radio.

Just type in the words you want and press the sing button and the words will be sung back to you from a database of song clips.


Filed under:
Misc

Textpattern 1.0

Feb 25

Is it time to move over to a new type of CMS?

This month sees the release of the long awaited CMS app called Textpattern by textism.com author Dean Allen.

Looking at the application sreen grabs the frontend looks very similar to Movabletype with added features including secure articles / areas and rss feed subscription for visitors.


Filed under:
Web design

ASCII Generator

Feb 29

Create a fancy ASCII logo using this online ASCII generator just type what you want to appear select from the range of over 135 font styles and hit the button and then just cut n paste it where ever you want.


Filed under:
Misc