Happy Holidays Everyone!
Here’s a post on what you should do to recover lost data. From our Killersites Community Forum!
Disaster Recovery
So anyone lose data? I know you’re out there and likely more of you will.
In our case my wife had issues and then the OS would not start and we were offered a recovery service…Oooops… it was not an OS fix it was a factory settings recovery. HP builds in a partition with this ability. I always delete it, my wife did not. So it overwrote all her data in separate partitions I had created and restored the computer to one partition and lots of junk programs.
Aside from Data, my wife is a photographer and lost almost 10,000 images of the last 4 years. Ouch!
So I take charge (she is a wreck at this point) and visit my old friends at Snapfiles where I start studying recovery programs and choose one that sounds right and got 5 stars from them and 5 from users. Its name is Recuva. It is Freeware, easy to use and figure out in a hurry. It recovered (as far as we can tell) all of her photos off the disk, about 10,000 from our flight from Germany 2006 to a photo of my daughter and some brown bears from last week. Granted, all 10,000 are in one folder so she will have to sort through them all… but heh! It also can recover images from digital camera cards or video cameras as well as of course… written data. It blew me away for a Freeware. NOTE: it will recover what you tell it to or everything. So say images, it gave us all her photos, but also every dash, button, graphic, background found on her PC from every program, game etc. Bit of a mess that, but small price to pay.
Of course if you have a camera you know each time you empty it the name/number scheme repeats, you have duplicate names (likely in different folders) so now you have a mess. Enter SnapFiles with AllDup, again pretty easy to figure out and a 5 star freeware. It allowed me to specify folders, set up filters like all images have DSC in them, then it lists the image name and as a tree, all images found and where they are. In the case of images you can click on each and a side window will show you the image so you can compare. Then mark which images and choose to delete, trash, rename or move to another folder as you wish.
So I strongly suggest Snapfiles (snapfiles.com/freeware/) for your freeware needs, if you need it they likely have it as well as payware. And for disaster Recovery: AllDup and Recuva.
Oh, and check out there Back up programs like DriveImage XL so you don’t need those above and a external hard drive would be nice too, they are pretty cheap these days.
Written by: Kyle (LSW)
You can take a look and get involved with the original post and discussions here!
Thanks,
Jody
Killersites.com
Hey Everyone,
In this week’s forum blog, we look at a post explaining the difference between HTML and XHTML. From our Killersites Community Forum!
One of the most important cornerstones to Accessibility is using W3C Standards. That means you need to understand them as well. No small feet.
Clearly the first stop is the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) itself.
So what language to use? Short answer, whichever you prefer, but here is what you should consider. Below you will find some good links on these subjects.
HTML
Html is still a Standard and the newest version of HTML available. Some still believe that XHTML replaced HTML (something I believed 1 1/2 years ago as well) and HTML is retired. Wrong.
HTML 4.1 and XHTML 1.0 were both released in 1999 and are equal standards, niether better or worse than the other. HTML is fine to use and no reason not to.
What I would strongly suggest is that you however serve it with the Strict DOCTYPE. That is how it is meant to be served, that is pure HTML as it is meant to be written. But more on Strict and Transitional another time.
Also I strongly suggest you write HTML as close to XHTML as you can to get into the habit. This means always write in lower case, never should any element, attribute or name ever start with a capital letter, that should be avoided. Also be sure to wrap all attributes in “”, so rather than Border=1, write border=”1″.
XHTML
XHTML is falsely understood by many to be a later version of HTML that looks a little like XML (Extensible Markup Language). Wrong!
XHTML is a XML Language that is formatted to look like HTML. But being XML it requires lower case names and all tags must be closed including empty tags like
.
Now it gets complicated.
XHTML 1.0 – A very morphed version. It was created to “Help” us get used to XHTML ad XML. But it is very backwards compatible. It even carried forward that bad W3C habit of Frame, Transitional and Strict DOCTYPES. It is a very lax language you can even serve as HTML.
XHTML 1.1 – A step to real XHTML, very modulerized. No longer has Transitional, Frame and Srict DOCTYPE, it is simpy strict. It must be served as application/xhtml+xml.
XHTML 2.0 – Not released yet, this is not compatible with HTML at all. Must be served as application/xhtml+xmll.
Also such JavaScript such as document.write() will not work in XHTML served as XML, you will have to learn to create JavaScript with the DOM (Document Object Model).
You will also no longer be able to hide CSS in your pages as the SGML style comments no longer work (), nor can you use inline styles anymore. So all CSS must be in either external sheets or in the head using , this is more trouble then likey worth it so best to simply use external style sheets.
So that brings me to TagSoup.
Tag Soup is serving XHTML as HTML. You see when a page is requested it goes to a server with a “Header” that explains what language it accepts. HTML is served as text/html.
Now when I write a simple XHTML page, it is still being served as text/html. It is written as XHTML but served as poorly written HTML. This works with XHTML 1.0 but not the others.
The problem comes with serving XHTML correctly as XML. IE does not understand that and tries to download the page! So to work in IE you have to use “Content negotiation”. For instance a PHP script that says if it accepts application/xhtml+xml, if not it serves it to IE as text/html.
Also when served as XML, you can no longer use such things as for comments as that is HTML and not XML. I you use XML comments and serve it as HTML, those comments will show.
So at this point XHTML is not truelly supported. You can write XHTML but by servig it as HTML you loose all advantages like working with MathML or SVG.
So when it is all accounted for, the trouble of working with correctly served XHTML with todays browsers…. it is not really worth it.
If you are just doing a simple site with no need for SVG or MathML and such things, then it is fine and easier to use HTML, just do it Strict as it was meant to be used and keep coding as close to XHTML as you can with lower case and “” wraped attributes.
Written by: Kyle(LSW)
You can take a look and get involved with the original post and discussions here!
Happy Holidays!
Jody
Killersites.com
Hey Everyone,
Here’s some helpful info on a basic PHP system, from our Killersites Community Forum!
Basic PHP System: View, Edit, Add, Delete records with MySQLi
This is a revised version of my previous tutorial (http://www.killersit…eteadd-records/) which uses MySQLi rather than regular MySQL to connect to the database. MySQLi, often called MySQL Improved, has several advantages over regular MySQL, including support for prepared statements (which helps prevent SQL injection, a common security issue) and object-oriented code. I’ve also provided a modified view.php file that shows one way to do basic pagination.
I have also recorded a 8 part video tutorial (a bit over an an hour worth of video) showing how to build this system and explaining it as I go. It’s available in the KillerSites University (http://www.killersites.com/university – subscription required) under PHP > PHP CRUD Videos.
—
(Anyone with PHP knowledge is welcome to comment on the code. If there are issues I haven’t noticed, please let me know. Do realize that it is intended for beginners, so I didn’t want to do anything too advanced that might lead to confusion. Yes, I realize I could use OOP, or could separate some of these out into methods, etc. etc.)
OK… Here’s some code for you to play with. It’s a basic system that allows you to:
— view existing records
— edit existing records
— delete existing records
— add new records
Online demo:
http://www.falkencre…mysqli/view.php
Basically, just imagine that you are in charge of a sports team, and you want to keep a list of all your player’s contact information. The code I’ve created could be a starting point for that (it only includes fields for their first name/last name, but could obviously could be expanded to use more fields).
This is just a basic starting point for projects that require view/edit/delete functionality. I know it may seem a lot to understand at first, but read all the comments in the code — I try to explain what I am doing step by step. I’m also happy to help with any questions (please post questions in a new topic.)
How to create a system that allows a user to add/edit/remove data in a database seems to be a commonly asked topic, so I may adapt this into an actual tutorial at some point in the future.
DATABASE:
— You’ll need to create a database (I named mine ‘records’ but it can be changed) using PHPMyAdmin
— Save the included sql file on your desktop as a .txt file
— Once you’ve created the database, make sure the database is selected, then click the “import” tab
— Select the .txt file on your desktop, and import it into your database. PHPMyAdmin will create all of the necessary tables/import some test data for you to play with
Written by: Ben
For the test data and the rest of the post, click here!
Thanks,
Jody
Killersites.com
Hey Everyone,
The holidays are approaching and it’s starting to get a little hectic out there. Hope you’ve got most of your shopping out of the way! This time I’ve pulled a great discussion from our Killersites Forum Community on 2 very common CSS mistakes made by beginners. If you work with CSS, you’re sure to find this one useful!
Between Newbies posting here lately and spammers claiming to work for big companies but with absolutely shoddy code, it came to me the most common problems with people using CSS. Right off let me say that for newbies this should not be embarrassing, I suffered this problem as well when I started.
Basically, beginners are hesitant to use CSS, so they commonly try to work with it bit by bit. Wrong approach – just do it. This is usually seen when someone uses CSS just to effect fonts. Another form is tables with CSS. Yes you can do so but it defeats the purpose. Take this to heart, don?t go half way, just jump in.
Thinking it is HTML: Forget what you learned about HTML, this in not HTML it is CSS, another language. All to often you see beginners writing CSS like it is HTML. Just replacing the Font tag with a class name on every paragraph or such.
The idea is to use external style sheets. Every page is linked to this sheet, make a change to this sheet and every page reflects the change. By using styles inside of the tags, you add wasted code and have to make changes on every element on every page. If you merely define the paragraph tag than every paragraph will have that style, no need to ever ad class or ID’s
Do not mix, it just makes things confusing for everyone. I see many spamers with HTML attributes, inline styles in tags next to these with Block styles in the header and even a link to an external style sheet. These are god awful monsters to control. I am Webmaster of a site that is like that, the simplest changes will almost always break the site. Beware and avoid such sites and those who build them.
If you have any CSS, put it all in external style sheets and most any HTML attributes can and should be done in the CSS as well. Remember this is not HTML you are dealing with, do not just replace HTML attributes with styles in the code. If you are going to use CSS it will only bring and advantage if you learn to write CSS as CSS and not as a HTML attribute replacement.
Classes: Beginners always write classes, then you will see a dozen paragraphs with identical class names. Again this is due to this HTML style of writing we learned first and how we had to write fonts into everything. CSS is not that way.
With CSS you can and should use ID’s. Why? Well ID’s for CSS can also be used as reference points for scripts and internal links, you need not name extra elements. Also for instance you name the upper element with an ID
, everything in that ID can be defined specifically using that ID. So rather than 5 paragraphs with 5 classes, you need put define what a paragraph within an ID should look like. #content p { } will define any paragraph in a DIV named ?content? to have a specific style, any other paragraph in another section will not use that style as it is not in that ID.
This way you can use a default style for paragraphs, but say that paragraphs in you content are shown differently than paragraphs in a footer. By using classes, you are creating far more work for yourself. Simply create a default and then redefine any elements by adding it to a ID description. In this way define links found in one ID element to look different from links in another ID element.
Now this may seem a bit hard to follow, but keep it in mind. CSS is about minimize code. Ask yourself if you can not make things easier and smaller. A class can be used as often as you wish. An ID can be used only once per page. So use ID’s as often as possible, then when you go to use a class, ask yourself if it is really something you need. Ask yourself if you need to use it multiple times or if it is not easier just to say, anything in a element with this name should look this way. Why repeat 5 classes in 5 paragraphs when you can say that a paragraph in a element called ?content? should look this way, whether 5 or 25 paragraphs.
So in short as a review:
* Do not use CSS inline styles as a replacement for Font tags.[/*]
* Use external style sheets, do not mix HTML attributes, inline styles, block styles (styles in the head tags) and external style sheets. Just use external style sheets for all CSS and HTML attributes.[/*]
* Do not use Classes for everything. Use ID’s whenever possible. It is possible to create web sites with few if any classes at all.[/*]
* Define elements with a ID preamble to it so that those styles only go active when the defined element is in a specifically named ID.[/*]
Written by: Kyle (LSW)
You can take a look and get involved with the original post and discussions here!
Thanks,
Jody
Killersites.com
Hey Everyone,
Here are two good questions to ask yourself before you start any project, from our Killersites Forum Community!
Two questions that should form the basis of every project you start, every decision you make.
* Does what I want to do assist the user?[/*]
* Does what I want to do cause problems for the user?[/*]
The first should always be Yes, the second always No.
Will a sound effect when the page opens assist the user? Not likely?
Will a sound effect hinder the user? Likely yea, likely causing issues for screen readers and be annoying to most users.
Will a Flash thing-a-ma-jig assist the user? (Maybe, some argue it makes the site more interesting and pleasant)
Will the Flash thing-a-ma-jig hinder the user? (it may be an issue for those with cognitive disabilities or epilepsy)
These questions should always be staring at you. Every decision should start with them… the answers may vary between target groups or subjects so I will not say any more than you are creating a web site as a service, so nothing on it should block the user and everything on it should be designed to help them do what they came for.
There is a third question: “Does the site need this?” Sometimes the first two are not clear. Do weather or stock reports assist the user? Maybe, and if the site is based on that fine. But does a web accessibility blog need to show Juneau weather? or stocks none of you may be interested in? No, so though it may be of use to some visitors, it may be too much content and distracting to others… or they may feel the site is unprofessional and does not even know what it is about.
So ask your self those two questions, and if you are still not sure, ask the third and be honest. Think of a penny watching you and remind yourself that web sites are about the user and not the developer or owners ego. We build for the little guys regardless of who pays us.
Written by: Kyle (LSW)
You can take a look and get involved with the original post and discussions here!
Thanks,
Jody
Killersites.com
Hey Everyone,
This week on The Killersites Forum Blog, we take a look at a really insightful post from the Killersites Forum on how to create repeating sections of code on numerous pages.
Repeating Sections of Code On Many Pages
Question:– I’ve got a site with 100 pages and I don’t want to edit the
menu on every page.
Answer:– Form one page complete in the normal way with the menu and
check that it validates and displays properly.
Open up Notepad or a text editor (not Word) and cut the code that
repeats in every page completely (as much or as little as you want,
without doctype, html, head or body tags) and paste it into Notepad and
save as an “include” file called menu.inc. You then have only one file to
edit if the menu changes.
Substitute the code you have cut out with PHP code
in the main file and save it with .php filename extension instead of .html
or .htm.
Do the same with other main pages where the menu repeats.
You can use .txt, .php, .html or .htm for the “include” file but it
distinguishes it as an “include” file in your file list if you use .inc as the
filename extension and it’s even better if you put all “include” files in a
different directory/folder.
If you use a complete page as an “include” file with .html or .htm for the
filename extension the final processed page will have two doctypes, two
html tags, two head sections, etc. in an unusual place which is not a
good idea.
You can have different “include” files on the same main pages for header
and footer and even use “includes” for the parts of the head section that
repeat.
The PHP code needs to be processed by a server before the result can
be seen, either by the hosting service’s server just before downloading or
by a server like WAMP (which includes Apache) on your computer for
local viewing.
SHTML works the same way but the “include” file must have .txt
filename extension and the main pages have the code and the .shtml filename extension.
Check that your hosting service supports PHP or SHTML as free
webspaces provided by ISPs usually do not.
Stefan has 2 great video tutorials explaining exactly this in the PHP tutorials: PHP includes part 1 and PHP includes part 2 from the PHP Basics Course.
Not sure if this is in the videos – but it’s generally a good idea, especially if the site is set up with sub-folders, to use the absolute paths pointing to the include files, and for anything the include itself points to – that can save a lot of wondering why something suddenly isn’t showing up.
Written by: Wickham
You can take a look and get involved with the original post and discussions here!
Thanks,
Jody
Killersites.com
Hey Everyone,
So here it is!
The first of our Forum Blog series of insightful posts and discussions from the Killersites Forum Community. Similar to our “Ask A Web Nerd” blog series, this one will showcase some of the best and brightest forum posts and discussions. Enjoy!
Who Do You Design For?
This is a standard question for most of us, we design for your customer, that is the person paying us… but it it really so? Or is it just about the old stand in “Target Audience”? No, not really. We need to design for “The Customer”, the person who is going to your customers site. They are the target, they are the ones who will make the site a success or a flop. You have to design the site to meet their needs and that is where accessibility comes in.
But “Our Customers” do not always see that. Then you have to be good at selling it to them, that is my weakness. This was proven once more this last week. here is what happened:
I worked a year ago as a help desk type person for my district. One day in a meeting the representatives discovered I was a web designer and jumped at the chance for some free work for their services. My boss agreed, the help desk work was free to for them. Germany had just passed a accessibility law sort of like the DDA or Section 508. Requiring all Government offices to have accessible web sites. That was my Job, build a accessible web site, it took a year but it worked and it rates well with Google.
Now a decision has been made to build a Content Management system into it, so I spent two months working on that, looking for a good CMS. I found one I am happy with, easy to build into my site and easy to use. Only real problem I thought was that it costs money and it is only in English. As it turned out the only real problem was the editor it uses, XStandard. It is in fact a excellent editor for CMSs. It is made for web site using CSS layouts and formatting. So what is the problem you may ask? It does not offer underlining. That is what it comes down to really.
You see all formatting is handled in the CSS, all text sizes and colours, it was a finished site. But now with the CMS the employees of the organisation can and are expected to add, update and edit, or remove text on the ages for their section. That is what CMS is for. With XStandard they simply type in their text and add simple formatting and save, my CSS makes sure the pages text looks alike on all pages.
But these employees use MS Word. They have their habits and one of those habits is underlining text to make it stick out as emphasis. XStandard does not support this. So I simply explained that you do not underline text on the internet, that suggests a link and not emphasis. It will irritate the user when they click on it and nothing happens. Underline is also a visual indicator, a blind user has no knowledge of it and so the fact that that text is important slips by them. One should never use mere visual emphasis, that is why we have things like and that have a syntax meaning a screenreader understands and passes along.
This was a argument that was accepted, then simply dropped as unimportant as we do not have many blind users and no reason to make the site only for the blind and not the visual users. Well that was not my point, my point was simply that by using and you make the important text look important to visual users and sound important to those listening to the site. Besides those with say poor eyesight, or cognitive or reading weaknesses can find it very hard to read multiple lines of underlined text. the answer of course was that we do not have many disabled users…… so, I pointed out we do not know how many and I was hired to make the site accessible to all users! But the argument went on with the fact that the employees are used to underlining text in their paper based work and e-mails etc., we cannot simply forbid them to not use a tool they are used to. XStandard does not support underlining text, or colour changes, or text size changes. All that is meant to be done in the CSS, all XStandard does is allow for syntax, making text headers or quotes etc.. It does not allow users to choose formatting as that is done by the designer, that is what he is payed for. The employee simply needs to supply the content and make it logical using syntax.
Now I am told we cannot expect the employees to change the way they do things. Well why not? I built the web site to be used by “The Customer”, a design that causes no problems for “The Customer”. Now it is to be changed to suite the needs of a few employees who will rarely do anything with it anyways. The very person who hired me to make the site accessible is now having me make it so any employee can change any of the text in any way they like. They can justify text or maybe align it center (causing problems for dyslexics and other cognitive problems for instance) or align it right because they like it when every other of the 170 + pages is set left normally. They will be able to set text sizes at will in the HTML overriding my CSS and disallowing the disabled from changing the content to meet their needs by replacing the stylesheet.
I will continue to argue this until the job is done in hopes I can change their minds but see little hope. Those I am dealing with see the usefulness of the site for the employees to be more important than the usefulness of the site to “The Customer”. Should we expect our customer actually have to learn the rules that pertain to web sites? Should they have to change their habits to work in this medium? Is that to much to ask? No, I think not because the web site reflects the owner, how well the web site can be used by the user reflects on how much the owner cares about the user. If a web site is hard to use but looks pretty, that tells me that the owner cares little about the user and is on a ego trip.
If you are a designer/developer, remember you have to make your customer happy, but you are the expert and in the end it is your job to make “The Customer” happy so they keep using your customers web site. If you read this as a web site owner, remember you are offering a service or info or product to your customer and have to meet their needs, so if you really care about the user, then you should learn to use the tools you have to serve them better, not just make your life easier and to keep your habits. We developers Build our web sites for the “The Customer”, the end user. If we do not make them happy or they cannot use a site due to barriers, then we have failed.
Written by: Kyle (LSW)
You can take a look and get involved with the original post and discussions here!
Thanks,
Jody
Killersites.com