Bug and task management with Trac

Trac is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. Trac uses a minimalistic approach to web-based software project management. Our mission is to help developers write great software while staying out of the way. Trac should impose as little as possible on a team's established development process and policies.

Link:
http://trac.edgewall.org/

MachForm is only getting better

MachForm is a form building application that you can run on your own servers, totally under your control. What is does is take all the work out of creating, styling, processing and collecting forms and form results. After reviewing many like services, I must say MachForm is above them all and with the release of version 2 its only getting better.

Whats new:

• Email Autoresponder
• Better, Prettier Email Design
• Fully Customizable Email
• Revamped Entry Manager
• Columns Display Preference
• Entry Viewer
• Printer Friendly
• Forward an Entry
• Submission Review
• Full PHP Embed Code
• New CAPTCHA option
• SSL Support

(read more)

Another thing that I use to judge an application is developer interaction. The developer for MachForm is a super nice guy that is highly responsive to his users and their issues and ideas.

Link:
http://www.appnitro.com/

Also, check out the demo's:
http://www.appnitro.com/demo/

Even more jQuery plugins

Accessible slider:
http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/...


Coda Popup Bubbles:
http://jqueryfordesigners.com/coda-popup-bubbles/



Charts using canvas and jQuery:
http://www.filamentgroup.com/lab/...



Flexgrid:
http://webplicity.net/flexigrid/

MySQL 5.1 coming with fixes and performance upgrade

Among the advances in 5.1 are partitioning, events scheduling, row-based replication and disk-based clustering. They are fairly standard features already offered by rivals IBM, Oracle and Microsoft, but they should help MySQL compete in environments where performance and the ability to scale are critical.

"One thing we're really most proud of is, frankly, we fixed a lot of outstanding bugs in 5.0," Urlocker said. "So 5.1 has not only greater reliability, but a performance increase of 20 percent. It will be more in some cases and less in others, but there's a significant performance boost and scalability enhancements."

Link:
http://www.cio.com/article/333613/...

Google App Engine

Google App Engine gives you access to the same building blocks that Google uses for its own applications, making it easier to build an application that runs reliably, even under heavy load and with large amounts of data

So they can get at your data and know everything about your website.

Dynamic webserving, with full support of common web technologies, Persistent storage (powered by Bigtable and GFS with queries, sorting, and transactions), Automatic scaling and load balancing, Google APIs for authenticating users and sending email, Fully featured local development environment.

Seems powerful enough.

Google App Engine packages these building blocks and takes care of the infrastructure stack

Nice

During this preview period, applications are limited to 500MB of storage, 200M megacycles of CPU per day, and 10GB bandwidth per day. We expect most applications will be able to serve around 5 million pageviews per month. In the future, these limited quotas will remain free, and developers will be able to purchase additional resources as needed.

That's pretty large.

Link:
http://googleappengine.blogspot.com/

Magento seems to be a promising eCommerce package

Magento is a new professional open-source eCommerce solution offering unprecedented flexibility and control.

Magento was designed with the notion that each eCommerce implementation has to be unique since no two businesses are alike. Magento's modular architecture puts the control back in the hands of the online merchant and places no constraints on business processes and flow.

This application looks extremely promising. The resulting interface is nothing short of professional. I was working with Zen Cart but really need to sit down with Magento to see if its mature enough to replace it.

Link:
http://www.magentocommerce.com/

10 things IT needs to know about Ajax

The introduction of any new Web technology will affect a network's infrastructure in ways that range from inconsequential to earth shattering. Ajax is one of the more disruptive new Web technologies traveling across networks today. To help you minimize future surprises on your network, we've outlined the 10 things you should take to heart about Ajax.

Link:
http://www.networkworld.com/...

Microsoft's Rich Signature (undocumented)

In this article I'm going to try to provide documentation for the undocumented Rich Signature produced by Microsoft compilers. I'm not completely sure when this signature was introduced, I wrongly believed that I had been introduced with Visual Studio 2003, but I was shown that it is present even in VC++ 6 executables. So, I guess this signature has been introduced with that compiler. Information about this topic is non-existent (seems strange, but it's a fact). Thus, most readers probably don't know what I'm talking about.

Link:
http://ntcore.com/Files/richsign.htm

All about URL rewriting

A few sources for good information and help on rewriting URLs.

• Mod_Rewrite Wizard: Using this tool you can transform long dynamic URLs into short static URLs. Enter your dynamic URL and click Start.
• An Introduction to Rewriting: The Apache server’s mod_rewrite module gives you the ability to transparently redirect one URL to another, without the user’s knowledge. This opens up all sorts of possibilities, from simply redirecting old URLs to new addresses, to cleaning up the ‘dirty’ URLs coming from a poor publishing system — giving you URLs that are friendlier to both readers and search engines.
• mod_rewrite Tips and Tricks for Apache .htaccess: A nicely compiled list of tips and tricks.

Also check out my blog post 'See what htaccess can do for you'

10 AJAX Effects to Boost Your Website’s Fanciness Factor

Here’s a collection of 10 powerful – yet easy-to-implement — AJAX effects to supplement your web page’s interface. These were picked using a “bang for your buck” methodology; meaning that these effects were chosen specifically because they provide high-impact effects with very little effort in installing and using them.

Link:
http://sixrevisions.com/rapid-development/...

How Search Engines Work

Amazing Photosynth Demo built on Seadragon

Slimbox, the ultimate lightweight Lightbox clone

Slimbox is a 7kb visual clone of the popular Lightbox JS v2.0 by Lokesh Dhakar, written using the ultra compact mootools framework. It was designed to be small, efficient, more convenient and 100% compatible with the original Lightbox v2

Link:
http://www.digitalia.be/software/slimbox

Lightbox v2:
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/

Masked Input plugin for jQuery

This is a masked input plugin for the jQuery javascript library. It allows a user to more easily enter fixed width input where you would like them to enter the data in a certain format (dates,phone numbers, etc). It has been tested on Internet Explorer 6/7, Firefox 1.5/2, Safari, and Opera.

A mask is defined by a format made up of mask and placeholder characters. Any character not in the placeholder character list below is considered a mask character. Mask characters will be automatically entered for the user as they type and will not be able to be removed by the user.

Had it working in less than 5min and it works like a charm. jQuery just keeps getting better for me and has a promising future for Veign's Web Development.

Link:

Regular Expressions tutorial

Regular expressions are very useful. If you have to deal with text at all, you will find them indispensable. In programming, they can be used to verify user input (e.g check an email is valid), sanitize input (make sure the user only used allowed characters), remove sections of the string (remove all non-alpha-numeric characters) and . And not just for programming! You can use regular expressions in many text editors to edit the current file. You can use them in the grep command to find very specific lines, or in the sed "stream editor" to edit out bits of a file..

Link:
http://.../Regex_tutorial_for_people_who_should_know_Regex

Can code this simple cause an IE script error?

I have some code that when run on a webpage and the user attempts to print will cause a script error. The page has no scripting and only a DIV tag with a class name of tags

Test page with only enough code to be a valid page:
http://www.veign.com/sandbox/tag/

Does this cause a script error when you choose File -> Print in IE6?

Its be confirmed on by a fellow MS MVP. IE6 can't handle a class name called tags - causes a script error when printing.

jQuery API

A compact and well presented site of the jQuery API. Not only do they provide the function description, but offer more samples of usage over the jQuery website.

Don't forget to check out the jQuery plugins website for some very cool things:
http://plugins.jquery.com/

API:
http://remysharp.com/jquery-api/

How to recognise a good programmer

I believe that good developers are always passionate about programming. Good developers would do some programming even if they weren’t being paid for it. Good programmers will have a tendency to talk your ear off about some technical detail of what they’re working on (but while clearly believing, sincerely, that what they’re talking about is really worth talking about).

Too true.

Link:
http://.../how-to-recognise-a-good-programmer/

Google introduces an Apps tool for sending forms via e-mail

This morning, Google unveiled an intriguing new collaboration feature that lets users embed forms in their e-mails. It involves the company's existing Spreadsheet platform, and it could be a new tool to expand its online apps' user base.

Link:
http://.../Google_introduces_an_Apps_tool_for_sending_forms_via_email

How to fix PNG opacity in IE6 (IE PNG FIX)

You know that one browser that has only a vague association with modern web standards? Yeah, Internet Explorer. Wouldn't it be great if it supported stuff like translucent PNGs?

Well, now you can add decent PNG support to IE5.5+ on Windows with no changes to your website HTML source code. This script will add near-native PNG support with full alpha opacity, with only one line in your CSS file, that applies to all tags and also background images!

This was just implemented in a project or mine that uses lots of high quality, transparent background, PNG files. Added it in about 2min and it works like a charm.

Link:
http://www.twinhelix.com/css/iepngfix/

In case you want another option check out this IE PNG Fix. Implemented just as easy but seemed to cause issues with img tags that use the vertical-align css property.

Graphic Designer Contracts Agreements Forms & Web Designers Contracts

Contracts and forms for designers are an important part of any design business. No matter if you are a graphic designer or web designer, a solid contract or good pre-project questionnaire can make every project go smoother.

A good contract can go a long way. Not only does is provide you, the designer/developer, a level of protection but it forces you to properly define the project and deliverables. This way both parties know whats expected of them and the client knows what they will be receiving from you.

Link:
http://.../graphic-design-contracts-agreement-forms-webdesigner/

MachForm is the best form creator around

I blogged about pForm last week saying how great it was for creating some very stylish forms on an easy to use, free, online service. It would seem that there is a commercial version available that takes pForm to the next level, called MachForm (same company).

From the dev:

MachForm is an intuitive, browser based, self-hosted HTML form builder program. Designed as a modern HTML form builder, it makes use of the latest web technologies like AJAX, CSS, and Javascript to provide a fluid browser based experience

What does MachForm do:

• Drag and drop interface
• Numerous field type selections
• Ultimate Spam Protection
• Easy form manager
• Email integration
• MySQL database integration
• Form validation
• Export data to Excel or CSV
• Password protected form
• Limit one entry per IP address

Some things that could be better:

• The tooltip could be a floating tooltip. The current one could widen your page if you pull the form into your design - happened to me.
• Give the ability to create your own groups of fields (like the address block). What I was looking for was to create a block for Phone numbers (phone, mobile, fax) under a single block. If/When this gets added it will make this tool extremely customizable.

Basically, I will be using MachForm to create all forms in the future. I may provide the plumbing but having the interface done is a huge savings for me.

Good Job!

Link:
http://www.appnitro.com/

10 Principles Of Effective Web Design

Usability and the utility, not the visual design, determine the success or failure of a web-site. Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has established as a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. After all, if users can’t use a feature, it might as well not exist.

We aren’t going to discuss the implementation details (e.g. where the search box should be placed) as it has already been done in a number of articles; instead we focus on the main principles, heuristics and approaches for effective web design — approaches which, used properly, can lead to more sophisticated design decisions and simplify the process of perceiving presented information.

Link:
http://.../10-principles-of-effective-web-design/

Free Advanced DHTML Color Picker

Once we’d modularized the color picker code it made sense to offer it to others to use on their own sites and projects. So here is the code to get our Color Picker working on your site for free. (We’ll even host the files)

Very nice. I wish I had a project to use this in.

Link:
http://.../free-advanced-dhtml-color-picker/

How fast does your website load for your visitors?

The Full Page Test loads a complete HTML page including all objects (images, CSS, JavaScripts, RSS, Flash and frames/iframes). It mimics the way a page is loaded in a web browser.

The load time of all objects is shown visually with time bars.

You can view the list of objects either in load order or as a hierarchy. The hierarchy view allows you to see which objects are linked to in for example a CSS file.

Every test also shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects.

Link:
http://tools.pingdom.com/

pForm is a great online form builder

pForm is an online form builder that assists in building a form with some great effects and a very professional look. When you are done with building the form you can down the html code to use it on your website.

This is probably one of the better form builders around.

Link:
http://www.phpform.org

Great collection of Lightbox scripts

Link:
http://www.designwalker.com/2008/01/lightbox.html

Data Visualization and Infographics

Some pretty amazing data visualization techniques:
http://...data-visualization-and-infographics/

Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages

If you're doing any kind of internationalization in your project stick with the ISO 639 approved language codes.

Link:
http://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

A look back at the technology of Wolfenstein 3D

Raycasting is a rendering technique to create a 3D perspective in a 2D map. Back when computers were slower it wasn't possible to run real 3D engines in realtime, and raycasting was the first solution. Raycasting can go very fast, because only a calculation has to be done for every vertical line of the screen. The most well known game that used this technique, is of course Wolfenstein 3D.

If you're into gaming and want to see the game that started the first-person revolution then this is a pretty interesting read.

Link:
http://student.kuleuven.be/~m0216922/CG/raycasting.html

IE7 JavaScript library

IE7 is a JavaScript library to make Microsoft Internet Explorer behave like a standards-compliant browser. It fixes many HTML and CSS issues and makes transparent PNG work correctly under IE5 and IE6.

Link:
http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/

See it in action:
http://ie7-js.googlecode.com/svn/test/index.html

Amazon enters Database ring with SimpleDB

Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time. This service works in close conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), collectively providing the ability to store, process and query data sets in the cloud. These services are designed to make web-scale computing easier and more cost-effective for developers.

Pricing:

• $0.14 per Amazon SimpleDB Machine Hour consumed
• $0.10 per GB - all data transfer in
• $0.18 per GB - first 10 TB / month data transfer out
• $0.16 per GB - next 40 TB / month data transfer out
• $0.13 per GB - data transfer out / month over 50 TB

Link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html?node=342335011

Javascript games programming library

Scott Porter made a popular library for creating Javascript Games, called the Javascript Gamelib. It provided relatively simple routines for animation, sprites, collision detection and control. It meant games programmers could concentrate on designing games for websites instead of spending time rewriting the basic building blocks.

Link:
http://.../javascript_gamelib/javascript_gamelib.shtm

An Unofficial Guide to the URL File Format

Sample URL file:

[InternetShortcut]
URL=http://www.veign.com/
WorkingDirectory=C:\WINDOWS\
ShowCommand=7
IconIndex=1
IconFile=C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\url.dll
Modified=20F06BA06D07BD014D
HotKey=1601


Full URL file spec:
http://www.cyanwerks.com/file-format-url.html

Simple charts with a Google API

http://chart.apis.google.com/chart?
cht=p3&chd=s:hW&chs=250x100&chl=Veign|Hello

That's it. One line in an IMG tag and you get the above image. Now that's easy.

Link:
http://.../embed-charts-in-webpages-with-one-of.html

API Link:
http://code.google.com/apis/chart/

Does your browser pass the ACID2 test?

The ACID2 test is a test page to help browser developers test their browser to web standards.

My Quick Test:

• Firefox 2 - fails
• IE6 - fails bigtime
• Opera 9 - passes
• Safari (win) - passes

Link:
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

What is ActiveX (used in some websites)?

An ActiveX control is essentially a simple OLE object. Originally, ActiveX controls were called "OLE controls" and used a .ocx file extension. This was actually the second-generation component architecture. The first generation was the Visual Basic Controls (.vbx). OLE controls were renamed ActiveX and continue to use the .ocx extension. ActiveX controls enable a program to add functionality by calling ready-made components that blend in and appear as normal parts of the program. They are typically used to add user interface functions, such as 3D toolbars, a notepad, calculator or even a spreadsheet.

Read the full article:
http://.../introduction-to-activex-part-one.aspx

Add a survey or poll to your website

Poll:
Easy-Poll.com let you quickly and easily add a poll to your website. They store the results and you manage the poll through your account with them. Although you lose some control over the poll having all information passed to them, this is a drop-dead easy solution for the non-developers out there.
http://www.easy-poll.com

Survey:
LimeSurvey is probably the best open-source, PHP, survey script I have found. Its highly customizable and can handle most kinds of surveys you want to put up with ease. The down side, and there is always a down side, the admin area is kinda confusing and non-intuitive to use. Once you get past the admin area you will probably find that LimeSurvey works great. (oh and they have a very nicely designed website)
http://www.limesurvey.org/