Archive for November, 2007

Firefox Plugins for Web Designers.

firefox-logo

Firefox is the Web browser of choice for most web designer’s, because it is fast and it sticks to the Web standards better than say IE6 or IE7.

That said, Firefox has a bunch of other features that makes it attractive to Web professionals. One of the big ones for me, is the ability for anyone to add to Firefox’s core functionality by way of plugins.

Add-ons/Extensions

My only complaint about Firefox plugins is that the Firefox nerds don’t call them ‘plugins’! Instead they use the terms ‘add-ons’ and ‘extensions’. Besides that little issue, Firefox plug-ins turn this nimble Web browser into an important tool for Web designers.

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Why ASP, ASP.NET, JSP, Ruby and Cold Fusion Suck .. for web designers.

I’ve been asked many times (by web designers) about what programming language they should learn so that they can build database driven websites. My short answer is of course: PHP.

That said, I felt a little more detail was required: why do the competing technologies (ASP, ASP.NET, Ruby etc …) suck compared to PHP … in that regard?

From the article:

The article’s title (I admit,) will get some people little miffed at me. But, what can I say, the truth hurts!

Seriously, this statement is valid and is worth talking about because there are a lot of web designers out there who are considering the leap into building dynamic (database driven) web applications. And with so many choices (ASP, ASP.NET, Ruby etc …) it can be very frustrating when trying to make that choice.

Of course, I believe (and know) that PHP is the choice language/technology for web designers. But why are the other technologies not a good choice for web designers?

You can read the rest at killerphp.com:

Why ASP, JSP and Ruby suck for web designers

Thanks,

Stefan Mischook

www.killersites.com
www.killerphp.com

Use the ‘80/20’ rule to make your web design better.

Back in about 1906, Vilfredo Pareto created a mathematical formula to describe the not so equal distribution of wealth in his country; he figured out that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth.

I’m sure Pareto thought that sucked pretty bad, needless to say, he had no idea how good they had it back then!

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Setting the Price for Private Web Design Training

Many of my best articles come from email questions put to me by readers.

In this case, we have someone asking what to charge for private web design training.

The email:

i’ve been a member of your newsletter for years .. BIG FAN!

i recently met a guy that owns/founded an SEO company here in New York that works from home and is VERY successful/wealthy… he asked that i teach him photoshop and flash cs3.

i have NO IDEA what to quote him.

He wants to learn basic image manipulation in photoshop and then learn buttons, headers, and small PowerPoint like presentations in flash.

So minimal actionscript, tweening, and movie clip galore!

I assume i would charge him hourly….

i have an associates degree from WEA in interactive media about 5 years web design experience, and have been a flash developer for a fortune 500 company for just over 2 years now…

Can you help me come up with a good price to quote…keep in mind he may outsource work to me in the future so i need a strong price now so i can make real money later on, but not scare him away..

PLEASE!

THANK YOU!
Tina

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