Mad Web Skills

Eric Meyer has written an informed piece about how styling forms with CSS is the bane of our existence. Okay, well maybe that’s a bit extreme, but we’ve still got a long way to go until we can fully control the appearance of our web forms (without the use of javascript, that is).

While on the subject of forms, Pixel Acres’ FormBuilder PHP class can definitely make things easier. Usually when time is not on my side, its all too tempting to just chuck a form into a table and be done with it, but now I can get it all done just as quickly, and fully CSS no less.

Technorati Tags: web design

Okay, I get it. Macs are awesome. After reading Ryan Carson’s Our Office 2.0 Experiment over on Vitamin, and the long list of comments from other Mac users, I decided to play the John Hodgman role and spin it Windows style (although a lot of my suggestions are open source and also available on OSX).

Note: Prices are in USD.

Notepad++ is my preferred choice when it comes to all-round text editing. Along with plain txt files, it supports full code formatting, code completion and hex editing all in one open source application.

Blumental’s WeBuilder is a great little code editor, and is a decent Dreamweaver replacement for a fraction of the price. I still kinda use an old copy of Dreamweaver just because over the past 6 years or so it’s become somewhat of an extension to my very soul, but over time I can see myself using WeBuilder more and more.

I agree that Fireworks is probably the cheapest and most adequate graphics program, although, like Keith at Blue Flavor, I still use Photoshop because that’s what I have and am most used to. I have an old Fireworks licence, but every time I try to familiarise myself with it’s strange, foreign ways, I hit a minor stumbling block and go back to Photoshop. I’m also keeping my eye on Pixel and Paint.Net. They’re both a little immature for production use at this stage, but with time, I can see them both being fierce competitors to the almighty Adobe.

For storage and backup, I just use a plain internal hard disk drive, backed-up to another separate hard disk via a little script that runs as a Windows scheduled task in the middle of the night. Once a month (or more accurately, whenever I remember to), I burn off a DVD of the backup and take it to a different address. I can’t see the value in paying $99 for online storage space, when a local drive does the job much faster.

I use WeBuilder/Dreamweaver’s inbuilt FTP when working with code, and FileZilla for everything else, although personally, I prefer SmartFTP (and for $36.95, it’s worth every cent).

I use Trillian Basic for IM, although I don’t use IM so much any more. When I’m away from my main PC, I use Meebo.

Mozilla Thunderbird works great for my email. To control spam, I use Google Apps for Your Domain and just use Thunderbird to collect my mail from there.

I’m not a big calendar user, but Google Calendar comes with Apps for Your Domain, so that’s what I use and it serves me well. It will be better when Mozilla’s new calendar integrated with Thunderbird gets finished.

I also use Thunderbird for my address book, although sharing contacts isn’t a big issue for me at this time. I’m not sure what’s out there for Windows in the shared address book space. Comment if you know of something suitable.

Finally, I mostly use OpenOffice.org for my word processing / spreadsheets / presentations / etc. It’s awesome and the price is right.

I hope this helps other Windows users (or even OSX users) who may not be aware of some of these applications, and I’d love to hear your feedback on what you use and/or recommend.

Bulletproof HTML: 37 Steps to Perfect Markup – Many people think that simply knowing your HTML tags is enough to call yourself a web designer, however I don’t think you can truly call yourself a web developer unless you at least fully understand these fundamental principles.

Although right now you couldn’t tell by doing an update check, Firefox 2.0 is ready and waiting for download, Secret Squirrel style.

At the moment, I’m playing the “OMG! My extensions don’t work any more” game, but its not too bad. All my vital ones are working (Super DragAndGo, ColorZilla, FireBug, Greasemonkey, MeasureIt and Web Developer are all good to go. Tab Mix Plus has a dev build that works quite nicely); it’s just the non-essentials that will have to play catch-up (I’m looking at you, Aardvark and CSSViewer).

Overall, I’m very pleased with the new Firefox so far. Many people have said that this release was not worth a point-five upgrade, but honestly, what does the version number matter. I wouldn’t care if it was called Firefox 1.63333333. It’s still heads and shoulders over IE7, purely on the extension functionality alone.

Technorati Tags: firefox

There are just a couple more things on my mind after writing about the events of Web Directions 2006.

During the afternoon on Friday there were some more prize draws (door-prizes and the such) during which I was the lucky winner of a free ticket to next year’s SXSW 2007 in Austin, Texas. This is the be-all and end-all of events and I was absolutely wrapped. My head soon filled with the possibilities of meeting my favourite web rock stars. My envious new-found peers congratulated me at the after-party. I felt that buzz for a good week or so after the event, desperate not to let go.
Unfortunately the prize did not cover flights or accommodation, and after adding up the associated costs (which is quite large compared to the actual value of the ticket), the buzz started to dampen. I’m pretty confident my employer will not foot the bill for this trip, nor can I afford it myself, after having just built a new home. I’m still thinking about my options, but at this stage I’m unlikely to be able to attend. Very sad.

The after-party was at the Pumphouse, Darling Harbour (thanks to the fantastic dudes at SitePoint) and was a rip-roaring hoot (that’s a good thing). I wasn’t sure how the drinks worked at first. Were they free? Cheap at least? Oh, you need to get these drink cards from SitePoint peeps. Is there a limited number? Do we get one each? I sucked up to initiated conversation with as many SitePoint-shirted folk as I could find, and soon found my self with a stack of cards which ended up doing me for the rest of the night. I even had two left over when they raised the lights at 11pm.

Slightly miffed at the early conclusion to official merriment, we began the march to whichever pub would take us, being lead down the Sydney streets by John “El Capitan” Allsopp. After a while walking I decided to head back to the hotel before the wife decides that I’d been stabbed or some other paranoid scenario that we love our wives for.

Thanks go to Travis Hensgen and Douglas Davey for being my makeshift posse during the conference. If you’re ever over my way, gimme a hoy and we’ll catch up for a frothy amber beverage or three (and that goes for anyone else I met at WD06).

Technorati Tags: wd06