posted by steve | Category: Random Rants, Useful Items That I Forget

I have an app that I use to manage my web bookmarks.  The app enables me to categorize bookmarks and use them cross-device, from anywhere (it’s hosted).  I’ve been using the application for several years and each time I click one of the bookmarks, that click gets recorded into a database.  As time goes by, the most popular bookmarks in each category rise to the top as they are used more and more. However, this [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Useful Items That I Forget | 15 Comments »

Virtualbox (or its Guest Additions) have this annoying habit of automatically keeping the clock in sync with the host, regardless of the settings that one tries to implement within the guest itself.  For example, in a Windows 7 guest that I’m trying to use for consistent screenshots I need to set the clock to specific dates.  However, as soon as I set it, Virtualbox changes it back. Here’s how to change it: vboxmanage setextradata “<vmname>” [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Random Rants

Reading a BBC News article today, “Facebook Denies Losing Users” starts the wheels turning.  Two firms are attempting to measure Facebook’s usage and user growth.  One firm (Inside Facebook) is saying that Facebook lost users in May, while another (comScore) is saying that Facebook saw a 21% growth in the U.S. in May. While I don’t really care if Facebook gained or lost users, I do question how Facebook gains that many new users in [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Random Rants

I recently (well, ok, several months ago) moved the authoritative DNS for this domain, braingia.org, over to a new hosting provider.  Actually, this was quite a shift for me.  For the previous 9 years I’ve managed the authoritative name servers for the domain myself using BIND, with everything running happily and smoothly. However, I’m no longer managing as many servers and therefore I had no (easy) way to provide redundant DNS for the domain.  With [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Random Rants

Web page design, more specifically, the information architecture of a web site, needs to be planned carefully.  Too often menus and layout are placed on the site based on one person or group’s idea of what visitors want rather than a thoughtful and thorough analysis of what the visitors themselves want and need. When planning the information architecture I find it helpful to consider the three W’s:  What, Why, and When. Why is the visitor [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

It’s always exciting to receive a box on my doorstep with the first copy of a book.  Rather than wait for the publisher to send the promotional copies I usually spring for a copy of the book from Amazon or B&N.  This time it’s the second edition of JavaScript Step by Step that arrived just yesterday. And today the first errata arrived for the second edition.  It appears that somewhere between the first pass and [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Random Rants

  I got it, finally, today, while writing a chapter for the Second Edition of JavaScript Step by Step.  The browser *is* the OS. This epiphany came to me as in the following manner: I was writing a sentence about JavaScript libraries, “These libraries take difficult tasks and make them easy when programming a JavaScript-centric web application.” (Note that sentence still needs to be wordsmithed). In any event, I originally wrote “…JavaScript-centric application” but then [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Current Projects

      I received some notes from my agent over the past few weeks.  Two of my books, JavaScript Step by Step (Microsoft Press), and Beginning Perl Web Development (Apress) are selling well.  The JavaScript book has outsold any of my other books.  Some of the other books that I wrote and co-wrote were done under Work-for-Hire so we don’t get to see the same sales reports on those. The Perl book was is [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Random Rants

When I started working with small- and medium-sized businesses to help them create web sites (circa 1995), I encountered some level of difficulty in convincing business owners of the value of a web site.  “Why would I need that?” and “The Internet is a fad” were two common themes among the naysayers.  Even today I’m amazed by the number of small business in my area that aren’t on the web… at all. However, some business [...Read more...]

posted by steve | Category: Random Rants | 4 Comments »

            I’ve been working with some individuals who are new to the process of managing a web design project.  By “the process” I mean all of those elements that need to be thought out, discussed, (sometimes argued about), and decided with the end-user prior to the opening <html> tag being written.  Things like color scheme, navigational elements, the number of pages required, content areas, “what happens when someone clicks here”, SEO, header/footer elements, domain name, [...Read more...]