Category Archives: Code

On Launching and Marketing a Redesigned Web Site

Posted on by David
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There was an interesting thread last week on a list I subscribe to about how to best launch a major web site redesign. I ended up writing a white paper in response on how to best prepare for a web site launch from a technical standpoint: Five Critical Steps for a Successful Web Site Launch.

There was also a discussion of whether you should market the new site in advance or launch it quietly without fanfare. In my view, the decision should be driven by your overall goals and confidence in your timelines.

If the new site is the embodiment of a major initiative, making a splash with the launch may be in order. However, if you are not highly confident in your ability to stay on schedule, the soft launch will ameliorate a lot of potential risk.

Finally, when you do market the new site, focus on the new value it provides to visitors rather than the fact it is new. This sounds obvious but it is easy to lose sight of after the organization has invested so many resources in the effort.

The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability

Posted on by David
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Nasty little cross-site scripting attack via PDFs hase been discovered: Chris Shiflett: The Adobe PDF XSS Vulnerability.

Any site that has PDFs is vulnerable. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t compromise the server of the web site. The attack can gain access to the site visitor’s computer by passing some code in the URL referencing the PDF on a site. The post I link to provides info on how to upgrade your own computer and what you can do on the server side to prevent this from being used.

Outlook 2007 to Use Word for Rendering HTML E-mail

Posted on by David
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According to SitePoint, Microsoft Breaks HTML Email Rendering in Outlook 2007:

That’s right. Instead of taking advantage of Internet Explorer 7, Outlook 2007 uses the very limited support for HTML and CSS that is built into Word 2007 to display HTML email messages.

Egads! This will be quite a boon for newsletter designers, once they figure out what will work in Word 2007. It will be a horrible pain for the rest of the world. Given Word’s atrocious history of HTML mark-up, I shudder to think what hoops designers will have to employ to get decent rendering.

Perhaps my traditionalist preference for plaintext will come back into vogue.

(Spotted via Simon Willison.)

Bernard Golden on Amazon's Computing Services

Posted on by David
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Bernard Golden, a noted open source guru, posted an excellent summary of what Amazon is doing with on demand computing services: CIO Blogs – Amazon: Books, DVDs and … Infrastructure?

Amazon’s role in this is truly amazing. It has in stealth created a vision of a new style of computing, delivered in market-appropriate, market-transforming fashion. I’m astonished they’ve turned in this direction (what, single-handedly creating ecommerce wasn’t enough?), but believe they’ve limned one path forward for the IT industry.

Read the whole post to learn more about how Amazon is striking out into a blue ocean.

Google Deprecates SOAP Search API

Posted on by David
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Google has deprecated their SOAP Search API. This means that people who already have keys to use the system can continue to do so but no new ones will be issued. Ongoing support of the SOAP API is questionable as well. Google suggests that people now use their AJAX Search API. Here is a good discussion (read comments and follow links) of concerns about how the AJAX API is not a complete replacement for everything that was available in the SOAP API.

Update: Here is another interesting post, Beginning of the end of for open web APIs?, that is worth checking out on this issue.

WYMeditor

Posted on by David
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Here is a new WYSIWYG editor for use in web-based content management interfaces: WYMeditor. It won’t give your users true “what you see is what you get” views of the content they are editing but it does enforce strict adherence to XHTML markup. If you have to have highly structured content then this might be a good tool to add to your system.

Spotted via Gadgetopia.

Free Open Source Search Tool from IBM and Yahoo!

Posted on by David
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IBM has released a free enterprise search engine, IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition. The engine includes some technology from IBM’s OmniFind product, so this is probably prositioned as an entry level introduction to their commercial product. It is a direct challenge to Google’s Mini search appliance, according to this story on CIO.com. Yahoo! seems to have contributed some interface design expertise for the management interface.

Quoted in MSNBC.com Your Career Column

Posted on by David
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Eve Tahmincioglu interviewed me for her career column on MSNBC about how to get experience in IT when just starting out from school or after a career switch: The chicken-or-egg issue that is ‘experience’.

The main points I covered with Eve are that working with open source projects while in school and/or on your own time will help you to gain experience, build your professional network and develop compelling material for your resume. Something that didn’t get into the piece is that even if you aren’t going on the programming track in IT, you can still get experience in working with open source systems by installing and configuring them for pro bono clients or personal projects.

There is really no excuse for not having some practical experience under your belt with the wide availability of free software and systems to work with.

Releasing CSS

Posted on by David
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O’Reilly Media has published a new PDF book (their Short Cut series) that brings us up to speed on IE 7 CSS support and how it differs from IE 6. Looks like a good resource if you want to make sure your design translates well into IE 7. Releasing CSS:

In an industry that communicates with terms such as “Browser Hell” and “browser wars,” a web designer can be excused for having some anxiety over Microsofts recent upgrade of Internet Explorer 6 IE6 to Internet Explorer 7 IE7. Web designers should ask the following questions:

  • What problems does IE6 possess and what fixes does IE7 provide?
  • What part of the Cascading Style Sheets CSS specification does IE7 for Windows support?
  • How can web designers work around any problems that exist within IE7s support for CSS?
  • While web designers are testing their designs on the latest browser, how fast will IE7 be adopted by their clients audience?

This Short Cut attempts to answer these questions to allow web designers a smoother transition to IE7 and, hopefully, an escape from Browser Hell.