» Smart Phones, Web Design, Google or whatever
Web Design
Web Design, likley a lot about what you should and should not do in web design from a coding and design standpoint as relating to usability or “web site common sense”.
10+ Powerful Mod Rewrite Rules
Feb 10th
I saw this online today and its got several exciting MOD REWRITE Rules I’ll use on a regular basis. Below, I’ll list some of the rules you can find on this excellent post, then give the link.
The author has MOD REWRITEs for basic redirect, remove www. from your URL, block an IP address, strip Query Strings, set a default image and more!
Go and read 10+ Mod_Rewrite Rules You Should Know.
Cool Website Design – Smart USA (the Eco Friendly Car)
Sep 22nd
I saw a commercial for the Smart (the unbig, uncar) tonight and hit their website for a nice surprise. Its not the best website ever, but its home page is super-interesting. If you don’t like it you can visit the Smart’s eco-friendly high mpg full website.
I don’t often write about websites, but this one is just pretty cool. I think for its intended audience – the group of car buyers that would want an eco-friendly, small, inexpensive automobile that for as little as $12,490 – the website is probably right up their alley. However, at 41mpg you may be more impressed with its 85% recyclability (just toss it in with the aluminum cans when done?)
I’m not writing about the technical marvel of the site or excellent usability here, but simply entertaining design, take a look.
Smart USA Cool Car Website
Get Dreamweaver 8 Working On Windows 7
Sep 6th
UPDATE: This did NOT get rid of the problem I had with disappearing passwords! However I do seem to be able to edit images properly. What (OBVIOUSLY) did fix the problem was upgrading to Dreamweaver CS5.5!
This post may be able to help get rid of the issues with changing images in the dialog box, but forget about the issue with lost login info! Do backups (Manage Sites > (select a site) > Export… and that will create a *.STE saved site definition file, like ExampleSite.com.ste) of ALL of your sites in a separate folder, when the login for a site is lost just go to Manage Sites > Remove the site that’s lost its info. Manage Sites > Import and navigate to your saved *.STE file and select it for import. Dreamweaver will re-connect your site, rebuilding the cache if you have that selected. Note its also handy to have these *.STE file definitions for when you upgrade, it makes things easier!
After my last post on Dreamweaver 8 working on Windows 7 
back in January 2011, I’m finally posting an update.
I’ve been using Dreamweaver 8 on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit actively for some months now, but with some minor aggravations. Here are the problems I encountered running Macromedia DW8 on Win7 64-bit (Home Premium):
- cannot change images in Design View by right-click on the image, clicking Source File…, then navigating to the image (more details)
- Dreamweaver seems to randomly lose FTP username and Password, necessitating site definition backup usage for each site (given time and enough usage). You should back up all sites once, but these backups shouldn’t be necessary for regular use.
Taken from Microsoft Answers (answer by Shinmila H – Microsoft Support): Dreamweaver 8 (studio 8, 2004) worked for 2 days on my 64-bit Windows 7 system
From your problem description, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with your computer. You just need to install the 8.02 patch to make Dreamweaver work.
Here’s a trick to install 8.02 patch of Dreamweaver on Windows 7 machine.
1. Download the file from the link below.
http://www.adobe.com/support/dreamweaver/ts/documents/kb400150/DW802_unwrapped.zip (link not LIVE any more on Adobe site)
2. Unzip the installer to a folder which can be easily located.
3. Now run a command prompt in elevated mode.
To do so,
a) Go to start and type cmd in the search field.
b) Right click on cmd from the list and choose run as Administrator.
4. Navigate to the saved folder where patchpackage.msp file is located and type in the following.
msiexec /update patchpackage.msp
5. Press Enter.
6. The patch will begin to install.
By now you should have successfully installed 8.02 patch.
Trying the above, I almost ended up giving up, because I was prompted for Macromedia_Dreamweaver_8.msi which is not on my PC or install disks. Let me add more detail, since I’ve probably got an unusual installation … I have Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) and originally I purchased Dreamweaver MX 2004, which I later upgraded with the Dreamweaver 8 upgrade, so I don’t have a “normal” Dreamweaver 8 install to begin with. Next, I searched the DW8 Upgrade CD (the one used to upgrade DW MX 2004 - see details), and my Windows 7 Hard Disk to no avail. There are a number of Sharez and Warez sites that popped up when I searched Google for Macromedia_Dreamweaver_8.msi, but staying LEGAL is not an option for me – its a REQUIREMENT.
So, I just finished the install with the error message that Macromedia_Dreamweaver_8.msi wasn’t found, but then Dreamweaver worked and now I can edit the images just fine. I’ve backed up all of my site definitions (with login, password and local paths) and hopefully will not need them for regular Dreamweaver use!
In other words, if you have a LEGAL installation of your Dreamweaver 8 and cannot find Macromedia_Dreamweaver_8.msi, then you may be able to get the update installed correctly anyway. Time will tell!
OTHER OPTIONS
I did see other options which included installing Sun VirtualBox, but that would mean uninstalling and re-installing DW8 (and MX 2004 in my case). Then if that didn’t work I’d need to re-install DW MX2004, then upgrade it again to DW8 after uninstalling VirtualBox.
Another option was upgrading for about $80+ to Windows 7 Professional.
Dreamweaver 8 on Windows 7
Jan 27th
Does Dreamweaver 8 work on Windows 7? Let’s see.
First off, I have to install Dreamweaver MX 2004, because my Dreamweaver 8 is an upgrade. The installation went off with no errors, so let’s run DW MX 2004 and see if it works.
DREAMWEAVER MX 2004 WORK ON Windows 7?
Well, it did for me in this short test. I installed, looked up my (very old) serial number and completed the install and ran DW MX 2004. I set up a website and made some minor edits to a couple of pages on the site and everything went smoothly.
Now its time to move onto DW8, I won’t bother with many settings in DW MX 2004 because Dreamweavwer 8 should change many of the options and settings so there’s really no reason to spend a lot of time getting the GUI the way I want, importing and adding snippets etc.
DREAMWEAVER 8 WORK ON Windows 7?
It almost in my worked on my initial test, but here’s what happened. When I have images on a page and I right click in Design View, and select Source File to change the image it won’t update. 
I can type the image name in the dialog box and that works. Oddly enough, in the Relative To dropdown box, if I change the value (Document or Site Root), then I can change the image through the dialog box – but that’s aggravating. Obviously more testing is needed. I didn’t check this functionality in DW MX 2004, so its possible the issue was there also.
Another interesting thing is that running the Program Compatibility wizard seems to do no good, although it tries to load Windows XP SP2 compatibility. Since the DW8 worked on an XP SP3 computer, I tried Windows XP SP3 compatibility, but just got a message that it didn’t work. Even trying to save its Program Compatibility’s “Try recommended settings” option fails with “Incompatible Application – Detected”.
DOES DREAMWEAVER 8 RUN ON WINDOWS 7?
Well, mostly up to this point it works, but clearly more testing will be needed. I guess its time for me to re-read Dreamweaver 8 and Windows 7 and try some of the suggestions.
PHP URI/URL of This Page in Address Bar
Nov 16th
Sometimes PHP_SELF doesn’t do what I need when I’m trying to programmatically find the name of a web page on-the-fly on certain dynamic sites I’ve worked on. for example, I might want to show or hide Adsense, or banners or something based on the page’s name. In these case sometimes this PHP $_SERVER variable works very nicely…
<?php
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];
?>
Here’s an example of typical usage:
<?php
if ($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] == “/south-carolina.php”) {$kontera = “hide”;}
?>
… which hides Kontera on this page. Some site I work on use .htaccess and Apache rewrites to make dynamic URLs out of dynamic URLs. In these cases REQUEST_URI can be a life-saver.
SEO and the Importance of Choosing Keywords
Oct 29th
For SEO, the importance of choosing keywords for your web site cannot be over-emphasized enough, in my opinion.
WHEN TO START CHOOSING KEYWORDS
Hopefully you started considering your keywords for your future SEO efforts when you were deciding what domain to buy. If not, stop posting, writing or adding pages until you give keywords some serious thought! You’ll see why I say that below.
WHEN TO STOP CHOOSING KEYWORDS
Stop choosing keywords when you are going to take your website down, stop blogging, when you want your traffic to drop, when you have too much money and other things that essentially mean DON’T stop considering your keywords until you are done with your website and want to kill it, or want it to die away.
SEO KEYWORDS EXAMPLE
So let’s consider a fictional web site owner who lives in a small town outside of a large city or heavily populated suburban area, Feerkle’s Auto Repair and Maintenance Shop. So this fictional website owner buys feerklesautorepair.com and focuses SEO efforts on the keyword phrase “Feerkle’s Auto Repair”. Time passes and the new domain gets into the search engines and lo and behold Feerkle’s Auto Repair is first on Google and Yahoo!
A year passes and our fictional owner gets 2 phone calls from people that found his web site, and in each case he finds that his great work got him some word-of-mouth advertising that sent a couple of people to the internet looking for Mr. Feerkle’s Auto Repair shop.
Feerkle gets a little discouraged and calls his buddy at AAA Windshield Replacement and Brakes. His buddy explains that he had to start referring people to other mechanics in the area because he got dozens of calls each week. Feerkle asks what he did special on his website and his buddy replies that someone advised him that “windshield replacement” and “brake repair” would be pretty good keywords for his business, if he didn’t mind doing a lot of windshield and brake work.
THE SEO LESSON?
CLICK TO ENLARGE
The story of Mr Feerkle demonstrates an interesting and powerful SEO lesson – it doesn’t matter if you rank #1 if no one searches for what you are ranking for – even if its on Google and Yahoo where you rank so well.
Software like WebCEO and Wordtracker (and others) can help you figure out what get’s searched for the most and has the least competition> That being said you may already have an idea of who your competition already and you can check the search engines yourself to more information.
WHERE TO PLACE KEYWORDS FOR GOOD SEO
Now everyone knows the only place you need to worry about keywords is in your keywords META tag, right? Wrong. As a matter-of-fact, though the keywords META tag isn’t completely dead its not as important as it used to be. Places to work your TOP keywords into include your HTML title tag, META description tag, your page headers (h1, h2, etc…), your content, your ALT tags, TITLE tags, domain name, folder name, and page names, not necessarily in order from most to least important. If you run a blog you also have categories and tags to consider.
Remember when you are placing keywords, that they need to be easily read by people as well as search engines. A web page with a h1 header like “Windshield Replacement, Auto Repair, Brake Repair” is probably going to be more confusing than a h1 header of “Auto Repair” with a h2 “Windshield Replacement” and another h2 header using “Brake Repair”.
SEO: Tweeting about 15 Sites for Learning and Mastering
Oct 26th
A tweet I twote earlier…
A great link sent to me by a great friend… 15 Sites for Learning and Mastering SEO http://bit.ly/7W92Q8
Good SEO thanks to WordPress and blind luck
Now, this post to add more meat to that post. I love SEO and don’t normally have the time to read about it much. When I do its a quick look at an SEOMoz article or maybe something from Matt Cutts’ blog or some other relatively short snippett of information to add to or fine-tune my SEO skills. I’m no great SEO Expert, but I do get into the Search Engines, and its an important part of building a website. A website that is not AT A MINIMUM Search Engine friendly is a useless use of money.
I’ve been trying to learn good, solid SEO for about the past 8 years. Often its in response to a question a client asks or to a challenge issued by someone that asserts something I don’t agree with.
At any rate, the point is that this link is a good place to start (or continue) for anyone wanting to learn to master (or continue learning to master) SEO… 15 Sites for Learning and Mastering SEO. Check out some of these sites, and sign up for a newsletter or two.
The sitepoint website also has some great SEO articles and resources: http://search.sitepoint.com/?q=seo&submit=Search
CSS – Order and Unordered Lists
Oct 5th
Unordered Lists
No bullet:
ul.nobullet { list-style-type: none; }
