Firefox 2 review

Seems every tech blog in the land has picked up on the hot release of the week - Firefox 2.0. I heard a lot of good things about it while still in Beta and I finally got round to giving it a spin today.

IE7 also saw a new release this week but got a lot less attention/praise (unless you work for Microsoft) as it didn’t offer much extra compared to RC1 which I already had installed. Opera’s latest release has impressed as it’s the first browser to pass the Acid2 test.

So is FF2.0 worth the download. Well if you haven’t got Firefox at all it’s an obvious yes. Once you’ve tried Firefox for a couple of weeks you’ll find it a frustrating experience to try and browse the web with anything less. However, I am sure I’m preaching to the converted so I’ll focus on What’s New in 2.0.
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ZDNet Upgraded!

Today saw the launch of ZDNet.co.uk’s re-design. ZDNet was already one of the leading Technology News and reviews websites but this update makes it potentially the best by quite a margin.

There are many many new or improved features but what stands out for me are:

1) The first and most noticeable difference is the new look. Gone are days when a large percentatge of users were using 800×600 displays on a dial up modem. The new wider format site makes better use of the space available on the higher resolution displays. Allowing more content and less scrolling. There is also more video content. The new design really takes advantage of what the technology the modern user has access to. It’s also cleaner fresher look making it easier to read and navigate.

2) Cutting Edge community features. The user involvement in the site is one of the best improvements. Built in-house the content management system allows for more user interaction and community tools than any other UK business site. Write a profile, create and maintain a blog. Clip any article and it is made a bookmark in your account area for easy reference and viewers of your profile to see. Comment on other user’s blogs, create a review on any article or product feature. There are also forums and many other features. The beauty of it is the way it all seems to link together in an intuative way.

There is also enhanced search and many other features to play with. Check out my user profile here.

There’s lots to play with but of course the core of what made ZDNet so good to start with is still there - the excellent editorial and Whitepages.

Check out the homepage or take a tour.

Event: Flickr Scavengerhunt 4

Today was the 4th Flickr London Scavenger Hunt.

Organised by user Paul aka Blech and friends - We met near London’s Liverpool Street Station.

I didn’t know exactly what to expect. It all seemed a bit vague and mysterious from the listing on Upcoming and the odd post I had read about it on flickr. Secret envelopes, teams, assignments etc. However, me being me, I signed up to join anyway. After receiving a Flickrmail confirming this morning I eagerly set out (camera in hand).
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www vs non-www (301 redirect)

Most sites are accessible through either http://website.com as well as http://www.website.com. If anyone gave you a URL without the www would you assume that the same domain with a www would take you do a different site? Of course not. However, search engines are not always that smart. They may see http://fromthefrontend.co.uk and http://www.fromthefrontend.co.uk as two different sites.

Why is this a problem? Well it could have a negative effect on your search engine ranking. The “two sites” maybe viewed as a duplicate entry or you may have in cases promoted a www version and in others a non-www version without noticing and thus your efforts are diluted.

The solution?

Redirect traffic from your non-www to your www url (or visa versa). There are many ways to redirect a page - meta refresh, an info page advising to go to the correct url etc. But in this case your best option is the 301 redirect.

There are 2 main reasons
1) It is search engine friendly and will preserve your exisiting ranking
2) Most webhosts do not enable you to direct traffic for www and non-www to different destinations so you couldn’t put an info page or metta refresh in place to redirect the traffic
3) Using the wrong method can get you BANNED from google as Business.com discovered. Check out the full story on webpro

Fortunately the 301 redirect is easy enough to implement. You will need to be able to use .htaccess files (i.e using a Linux server running Apache and the Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled).

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Responsibilities as Designers/Developers

This post was prompted by reading a feaure by Andy Rutledge in .net magazine. First let me start by saying - it was an excellent column. If you haven’t read it already I suggest picking up a copy of .net as it’s a particularly good issue this month.

I digress, the article discussed Back end Developers not keeping to standards or producing poor quality work. He suggested that developers that do not understand semantics and correct use of html and css should be fired! The entire article was very strong, but I think this was necessary to get the point across.

What I wanted to comment on was the admonition for front-end designers to report bad programmers to the boss if they are producing bad code or messing up your standards compliant code because they don’t understand correct mark-up. In fact Andy said we were obligated to do so.
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Ask the Guru: Custom 404 (and other error) pages

What happens when a user is sent a link to your site (or manually types your URL) there’s a typo? What happens if you have a broken link on your site? What happens when a search engine brings up results for your site but it’s for a page you’ve removed?

The visitor is presented with their browsers (or webhosts) ghastly 404 page with no link to the correct page. The chances are the visitor may not bother to try and strip the URL down to your domain and search for the page, they’ll just close you page and look else where.

What can be done to avoid this? A custom 404 page! And example can be seen at MyPetsite.co.uk/ - enter anything random at the end and the custom 404 page will appear.

The .htaccess technique.
This method is designed to work on an apache server with html pages.

This technique can also be used to create different error pages for 403 - forbidden, 401 - unauthorised, 501 - Unable to connect to server etc. However, if simplicity is what you are after than you can have all such errors can be directed to the same page.

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Molly’s Geek Dinner

I’ve just come back from my first ever Geek Dinner and feeling pretty chuffed. I got to meet some of my idols and other great Geek minds.

For me stars in the IT industry are bigger than sports/music/movie celebs so imagine my delight at meeting the 1st lady of the web - Molly. I was trying to prepare myself not to expect too much as no one could live up to the reputation Molly has (take that as you will). To my surprise Molly was even better in person. Larger than life and with great charisma and presence (and her photos don’t do her justice, she is the FireFox ). On top of that is of course that great mind that Writes article after article of pure genius. Despite her celebrity she was incredibly approachable and friendly and I managed to keep my foot out of my mouth for a full 15min conversation.

Above is a picture of me with Molly. I think she could have held my attention all evening. Although, I’m sad that she’s leaving tomorrow, at least it won’t be too long before she graces the UK with he presence as she’s returing in January. Until then I will avidly read her new column in DotNet magazine (.net).

Also attending was The King of Webbie Podcasts Paul Boag. Another very approachable and friendly guy and some one you can tell fully believes what they preach on their website. Look out for his interview on FEE (From the Front End) soon. I unfortunately missed my photo-op with Paul.
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Ask the Guru: How do I make text flow around complex images

In the the first of FFE’s (From the Front End’s) “Ask the Guru” features we look at shaping text so it flows nicely around images, even if the user is viewing your page with a different text size or browser than you.

Guru: Well a valid question asked have you!

Here we see an example (click any of the example images to view the XHTML page):

Download the example files here

There is not 1 but 3 possible solutions!
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The Interviews

I am pleased to announce that from next week I will be starting regular interviews with front end heros/heroines.

The interviews will mostly be in the format of mp3 Podcasts which you can listen to directly on the site or download to you MP3 player etc.

Some interviews will be text only. I hope to add some video interviews or screencasts too.

I will try to announce who will be interviewed a few days in advance when possible.

Upcoming Interviews:

Reinette “Ray” de Villiers
Graphics: The Beautify of Design

Paul Boag
Design Principles, Boagworld and Podcasting

Also confirmed is Michelle “Mish” Maudsley (who will be joining Ray to discuss The Beauty of Design) and James Dose who will be giving on finding work as a freelance.

Still waiting on a few to confirm before posting.
If you are interested in being interviewed by FFE (From the Front End) Please add comment or email me.

Update My Flickr!

You may have noticed that I have my Flickr feed on the right-hand-side of my blog. If you would like to submit a image for the site, whether it be of yourself or something of interest. Please try to keep with the theme of the blog i.e. keep it clean people.

To submit your image email a single photo to flickr@fromthefrontend.co.uk

The subject line of your email will become the image title. The body of your message will be it’s description. If you want to add tags then add create a new line in the email body and start it tags: followed by any tags you want to add.

Depending on the quality of the images I may occasionally do a feature on the best images submitted.

=Dave Long=