SiteCrafting Blah Blah Blog
Mar. 28, 2008 at 5:40pm
Change is Good
Normally government websites tend to be pretty dry and information-oriented, so I was expecting more of the same when I checked the Snoqualmie Pass traffic cameras from the WSDOT this morning. All the standard stuff that I've come to expect from years of checking the site before driving across the pass was there. However, there was one part of the site that gave me a good laugh this morning. Camera 2 was wiped out in an avalanche over the winter, but rather than a simple "Camera Unavailable" message that I've seen in the past, I saw this:
Read moreComments (3) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends by Mike Ash
Jan. 9, 2008 at 3:51pm
PHP Passes Homeland Security Test
Use open-source with more confidence
When meeting with prospective new clients, we tell them that SiteCrafting uses PHP and MySQL as the development platform. Invariably this leads some of them to ask us what PHP and MySQL are and if they are safe and fast. Sometimes, this can lead to interesting conversations, where we explain to them why we think PHP and MySQL are safe and fast.
Occasionally, there's a client who remembers reading an article 4 or 5 years ago about PHP 3 having some security issues. We refer them to current articles on PHP and mention our own experiences, but the latter argument can come across as "Because we say so," which isn't a good way to get the point across.
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Comments (0) | Posted in Odds 'n Ends, PHP, Security by Ken Foubert
Dec. 18, 2007 at 11:03am
Understanding Web Design at Alistapart = Holiday Joy
Being very fond of the analogy of web design/development-as-architecture, I was overjoyed with this article, by Jeffrey Zeldman, on Alistapart: Understanding web design.
There isn't much more to say; it's the usual web-design-isn't-just-looks,-guys, but very eloquently and effectively worded. The kind of stuff to put on the wall.
Comments (0) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Design, Odds 'n Ends by Anna Bjork
Dec. 17, 2007 at 2:56pm
Free Buttons
Depending on how well of a response I get I might be doing this more. Figured since the holidays are right around the corner and you all have been pretty good lately I could give you a free mini button set. :) Enjoy
Download Buttons
Comments (1) | Posted in Design, Odds 'n Ends by Michael Pierce
Dec. 4, 2007 at 11:41am
Facebook Beacon: Social Media Becomes Spyware
Advertising Gone Wrong
I've been a Facebook user for quite some time - even before they had the facebook.com domain. One thing that I absolutely love about it is the control they give you to limit what other people see about you. I've adopted a very serious set of controlls that limits only people I actually know to see anything about me. However, this is a false sense of security. Everything I post online that anyone besides me can access is inherently public. This is what initially drew myself and countless other people to Facebook.
However, their new advertising platform - Beacon - throws all this out the window. Beacon is a system that allows Facebook to track what you do on other websites. Let me reiterate that: Facebook tracks what you do online. They don't just track what you say you like on your profile, for example what movies you like; with Beacon they can track what movies you're actually renting.
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Comments (1) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends, Review, Security by Dave Poole
Nov. 28, 2007 at 4:16pm
Star Wars IV Animated ASCII Art
A blast from the past
In a recent The Code Project Insider email newsletter, there was a link to an animated ASCII art for Star Wars IV, A New Hope. This brought back fond memories of a bygone era, where I cruised the ASCII based bulletin boards on my trusty Color Computer, the CoCo, and played ASCII art games, such as Voyage of the Valkyries (a game written by my Keithley Jr HS teacher Mr. Leo Christopherson*) and Star Trek, on my school's TRS-80 Model 4, trash 80. I also had the experience of entering the code for several ASCII art games from a book, where I learned that the GOTO statement is very dangerous, especially if you put in the wrong line number.
Read moreComments (1) | Posted in Odds 'n Ends by Ken Foubert
Nov. 27, 2007 at 7:18am
Office Star Trek: TNG marathon
To nerdly go...
That's what we did a couple Fridays ago here in the office. Brian's wife Julie is an avid Trekker and was excited to plan a Next Generation marathon with us. And we definitely put her complete series DVD collection to good use. From about 5:30pm on we watched episode after favorite episode. After a pile of snacks, some great pizza, sharing Star Trek memories, 7 episodes, it was half past midnight and time to wrap it up.
Thanks to Julie for making the trek (ha!) up and for those killer communicator cookies. We'll definitely have to do it again sometime.
Pics after the break.
Read moreComments (5) | Posted in Getting Out, Odds 'n Ends by Kevin Freitas
Nov. 15, 2007 at 6:50am
DNS propogation explained
There's always plenty of tech-speak flying around among developers in the office. I certainly try to keep such language at a minimum when working with clients but sometimes it just works its way in there. DNS and other domain-related processes can be pretty confusing, period, let alone to someone anxious for their website to go live. So how to explain DNS propogation?
Comments (1) | Posted in Odds 'n Ends, Web Hosting by Kevin Freitas
Nov. 14, 2007 at 12:01am
Android: The REAL Next Gen of Web Apps
If the iPhone is web apps to go, Google and the Open Handset Alliance's new open source mobile phone API, dubbed Android, is The Joy Of Cooking Webapps. Once again Google has seen a good idea (packing a cell phone full of convenient little apps and widgets that sync with websites and external systems) and figured out a way to make it a great one.
Read moreComments (1) | Posted in Critiques, Odds 'n Ends, Software Engineering by Joe Izenman
Nov. 8, 2007 at 5:49pm
Windows Live - The Next Generation of Web Apps?
More like turn back the clock
So, I'm pretty much online all the time. I'm constantly looking for innovative applications and web services. I thought, "I'm going to have a look at what the 'big guys' are doing."
We all know Google is creating some pretty great web applications like their maps or spreadsheet apps. Seems decision makers at the big "G" have squarely set their sites on building innovative tools for web users. Surely, I thought, Microsoft has its plan and it's called Windows Live.
Read moreComments (0) | Posted in Critiques, Odds 'n Ends, Review by Brian Forth
Nov. 1, 2007 at 9:28am
Confessions of a n00b: Part 1
*web developers really like snacks*
Ahh.. where to begin? Greetings everyone. I'm Mandi and I'm wrapping up week 2 at SiteCrafting. I was informed that it might be interesting to get a new hire's perspective posted on the blog, and now that I'm here, Paul is no longer the new guy so it's all on me.
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Comments (3) | Posted in Odds 'n Ends by Mandi Webster-Martin
Oct. 31, 2007 at 2:48pm
Office Halloween costume contest
Fully one-third of the staff at SiteCrafting participated in our office Halloween contest today. Though we dressed up to win today's prize a few of us even wandered about the streets of Tacoma on our way to and from a party at local design and architectural firm BCRA. A software pirate, blogging ninja, head-crab zombie, and "J" blockhead walking down Pacific Ave. certainly drew a bit of attention.
Read moreComments (0) | Posted in Getting Out, Odds 'n Ends by Kevin Freitas
Oct. 12, 2007 at 1:23pm
2007 SiteCrafting Company Retreat
No One's Missing the Trust Falls & Human Pyramids
The SiteCrafting team spent the first weekend in October enjoying the Hood Canal area as part of this year's company retreat. Being as we suffer from a distinct lack of petty office politics and other Dilbert-esque characteristics, "company retreat" is not synonymous with "endless torture" for us here.
The getaway was designed to allow the team to take a break from the office routine and gain capacity to review and offer input on company strategy, successes and our roadmap for sustaining growth. As usual, our collective wit, insight and sarcastic humor made these discussions interesting, informative, motivating and memorable.
Read moreComments (0) | Posted in Getting Out, Odds 'n Ends by Sarah Freitas
Oct. 8, 2007 at 9:52am
Pirates != Web Developers
Unless they work here
Unless there's a Seahawks, Huskies, or Mariners game going on, it's pretty rare that I listen to the radio in my car, let alone anything on the AM band. Saturday was the exception as I was driving toward Seattle right after the Atlas Foundry explosion. I kept flipping between the local AM news stations, hoping to hear of any updates as I was just down the street visiting some friends about 10 minutes before the explosion. Hearing any updates required sitting through weather and traffic reports, as well as what seemed like an endless parade of commercials. One of those commercials hit upon one of my pet peeves.
Read moreComments (4) | Posted in Odds 'n Ends by Mike Ash
Sep. 18, 2007 at 4:02pm
Friday office creativity gets out of hand
Maybe next we'll break into song
Who knew a seemingly innocuous internal email would make for some good laughs and groans? I sure didn't when I invited folks from the office to join in a Friday after work pseudo-tradition.
Read moreComments (0) | Posted in Getting Out, Odds 'n Ends by Kevin Freitas
Aug. 10, 2007 at 2:19pm
Long URLs create interesting wrap-effect in Firefox
In the process of trying to figure out what in the world was wrong with my stylesheet, I went to W3 to validate it (and, although it is irrelevant to this post, I found my problem in a typo. Isn't it always a typo?) Since I am lazy about these kinds of things, I did the validation by direct input rather than finding and uploading the actual file, and something entirely odd happened: the URL bar contained something that looked like a solid black mess. After one forced shutdown due to being worried that something had gone wrong, I copied and pasted the content of the bar into a text document and lo and behold! It was the URL (a 34 000 word one, no less, due to the direct-input validation's method of incorporating all the CSS into the URL) and because of its length, it had wrapped over itself.
Read moreComments (0) | Posted in CSS, Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends by Anna Bjork
Jun. 14, 2007 at 5:26pm
The Usual [browser] Suspects
My search for the perfect web app testing environment yielded what I though would be a pretty ingenious setup. Stack up a couple Mac Mini's with a KVM and we could cover everything from XP to Vista and IE 6 to 7. The perfect solution, however, ended up being one Mini cheaper.
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Comments (6) | Posted in Odds 'n Ends by Kevin Freitas
Apr. 13, 2007 at 2:19pm
How To Run PHP Code In The Background
PHP Asynchronous Programming
If you have php code that would take longer than 5 minutes to run, what would you do?
You could update the configuration file for apache, or whatever web server you're running, to increase the amount of time a script page is allowed to run and then use php's ini_set("max_execution_time", seconds) to increase the amount of time php will allow a script to run.
Or you could use a session variable to mark the last position of the script and then use meta-refresh to start the script at the last position.
Or you could try an asynchronous call by using php's exec command.
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Comments (9) | Posted in From the Workbench, Odds 'n Ends, PHP by Ken Foubert
Apr. 9, 2007 at 4:36pm
Printing without the Dialog
One day, one of our clients came to us with a very unusual request - they wanted to be able to print something directly from the browser, but without displaying the usual print dialog box. I don't have much time in the webdev business, but I've never heard of this kind of request, and neither had anyone else in the office.
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Comments (0) | Posted in From the Workbench, Javascript, Odds 'n Ends, PHP by Dave Poole
Mar. 28, 2007 at 3:24pm
Back in the USSR
It's not a huge secret that I'm a rugby fan. There's a mystique about the rugby culture here in America. It's a lesser known sport in the US, and so when one rugby fan bumps into another fan, as they are prone to do, they usually spend a few moments swooning over the fact that someone else likes their sport. Just last night, I was out at JazzBones in my All Blacks jersey, and someone who I'd never met before started talking about rubgy with me. It was fantastic.
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Comments (0) | Posted in Odds 'n Ends by Dave Poole
Jan. 16, 2007 at 11:23am
Diary of a Developing Developer
Learning by Doing
I never had any idea how complicated, confusing, and involved the development of web sites and web-based applications can truly be. When I was younger, every once in a while I would look at a web page and click the "view source" option and think, "Wow, that really doesn't look too difficult to learn."
Little did I know there is so much more behind the code than what is seen in that one snapshot of HTML.
Read moreComments (2) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends, Software Engineering by Reena Hensley
Jan. 11, 2007 at 9:35am
Flexibility in foul weather
I'm working from home today mostly because Ma Nature dumped about six inches of snow on my house. In an area where an inch will shut down the city, this is a bit more serious. It really pays, however, to have a flexible employer so I don't have to brave the hills around town. The beauty of the web and digital communication is that it allows for these kinds of opportunities whether the weather, saving some fossil fuels, or even emergencies are concerned.
Read moreComments (0) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends by Kevin Freitas
Jan. 10, 2007 at 10:22am
The Dependability Challenge
Striving to be Exceptional
The gauntlet has been thrown down. We can't hide now...we must be exceptional.
While it is nice that we were recently recognized for dependabilty, I see it as more of a challenge. A challenge for us to do more, perform better, and have more satisfied customers.
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Comments (2) | Posted in Awards / Recognition, Deep Thoughts, Odds 'n Ends by Brian Forth
Jan. 4, 2007 at 3:35pm
Why the Best Advertising Just Might Be Free
or how you too can find a reliable professional who doesn't advertise
Last month, I was doing some major work on a house when I ran into a problem I couldn't handle. I needed a plumber, so I did what a lot of people do -- I turned to the nearest telephone directory. At the top of the PLUMBING section, I saw the name AAA++ Plumbing*, and promptly skipped right over it. (More about why I did that later). Read more
Comments (2) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Marketing, Odds 'n Ends by Scott Nelson
Dec. 15, 2006 at 3:15pm
Service in the storm
With all the storm-induced power problems in the Puget Sound area a few of us were able to make it into the office today. The area is a patch work of service availability -- I know of houses with power and phone but no internet access, some with no power but the phones work, and yet others with power but no phones. A stroke of service my co-worker Ken displayed today was brilliant in its simplicity but it probably meant the world to one of our clients.
Read moreComments (0) | Posted in Deep Thoughts, Horn Tooting, Odds 'n Ends by Kevin Freitas
Oct. 11, 2006 at 12:24pm
Welcome to Our Blog!
Welcome, and thanks for coming to the long-anticipated Blah Blah Blog! What you're going to find here is a rare peek behind the curtain at the inner workings of a leading Website and Web Application Development company. Our aim is to make this Blog different than the billions of other Blogs you could be reading. So start by expecting the unexpected.
For starters, we won't be afraid to reveal secrets or point out how we've learned from our mistakes. The main focus will be technology – but we'll also include proprietary Web tips & tricks, relevant business news, stories from the workbench, and more. Use the navigation on the right to get around, and check back regularly. Your category choices will grow as we add posts. And you never know what you'll find from day to day.
Comments (0) | Posted in Horn Tooting, Odds 'n Ends by Scott Nelson