Hi,
I just released and brand new course on the Javascript framework called jQuery. JQuery is a very popular Javascript library that many web designers will find themselves working with.
You can find about 40 minutes of free videos from the course here:
www.killerjavascript.com/beginners-jquery/
Thanks,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
Hi,
As you may know, I am a big WordPress fan and I use it on a few of my ‘killer’ sites. Anyway, I just discovered that the WordPress nerds have used the Google Gears project to speed up the WordPress admin user interface.
What is Gears?
Gears is basically a browser add-on that allows Javascript code to run much faster. To use Gears, you as a programmer, has to build it into your Javascript code (as the WordPress people did ..) and for people to benefit from Gears, it has to be installed into their browsers.
.. You can learn more about this in this video I just created:
You can install Gears (into your web browser) here:
http://tools.google.com/gears/
Please note that Gears works with Firefox and Explorer only.
I hope you guys find this useful.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
Hi,
Once in a while, I use email questions sent to me as the subject of an article, this time the question is about whether someone should use a Mac or a PC if they want to get into web design.
… I’m thinking of becoming a web designer and I was wondering if I would be better off with a Mac or a PC? Is there any advantage to using one over the other when building websites?
Thanks,
Jason
Short answer: there is no real advantage on either PC (Windows) or Mac when it comes to web design. Here are the two reasons why:
Outside of web design, some would argue for Mac and others for PC. I use both, but I can see how some might prefer one or the other. That said, prior to the soon to be released Windows 7, Mac has had Windows beat hand-downs … all things considered.
With Windows 7 coming out though, I’ve heard from many reliable nerd sources, that Microsoft has really improved things a lot.
… I will almost certainly be upgrading my XP box when Windows 7 comes out.
Conclusion:
If you are looking to jump into web design, you are pretty much free with regards to which type of computer to get. I would be making my computer choice based on other things, for example:
I hope that helps,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
I just updated to Firefox 3.5.2 in hopes that it might fix some issues I have been having with it on Mac. I can’t say if it has fixed anything yet, but I did discover something new: Firefox now supports the free Open Video Format.
What? Don’t we have Flash already?
Yes, we have Flash, Windows Media, Quicktime and others to embed video into our web pages, but in all those cases, we need to use an outside plugin. With this new video format, you just use plain old HTML!
Some details from Wiki:
As originally recommended by HTML 5, these browsers support Theora when embedded by the video element:
* Mozilla Firefox 3.5
* Google Chrome as of version 3.0.182.2 [1]
* Opera video build
–
Theora is the name of this free video compression format/codec and it produces video quality that is about the same as h.264 – the video format Adobe has decided to use to replace their own FLV format. So it should be pretty good.
To encode your videos into Theora, you will need to find a video encoder that does this. There are already several out there and I am sure more will come out over time … since already several browsers can play Theora videos. For now, you may want to try a video encoder that you can install right into Firefox!
Learn more about Theora.
Final comment
This is cool except for the fact that until Internet Explorer allows us to embed Theora … it’s a no go. Internet Explorer still has the vast majority of browser market, so we as web designers have to build within its’ limitations.
Thanks for reading,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
I’m a big fan of Firefox and it has been my primary browser for a few years now. That said, Firefox can never seem to get it right on the Mac – it always seems to have some problem somewhere.
At this time, I am using the latest release of Firefox for the Mac (3.0.13) and this release fixes some earlier bugs Firefox had that made it crash a lot. But in exchange, now the Flash player is not working to well .. it doesn’t seem to respond to mouse clicks and I have to use the keyboard to do things like play a Youtube video.
… The solution maybe to reinstall the Flash player, I still have to try.
The Larger Point
Maybe it’s me, but the consistent problems that Firefox on Mac has, is not something you see on Windows. Yes, Firefox on Windows seems to work just fine. The Firefox team should push a little more of that donated money towards Mac development.
Meanwhile, I’ll be using Safari on my Mac.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
I am posting this tip again because a lot of people seem to have a hard time finding the answer on the site … I am one them!
… I thought I posted this before, but non of my site searches came up with anything. Here is a common question:
Enjoyed the first video about building web sites. Very clear and to the point. I just have a difficulty since I’m using Mac 10.5.7 and I tried the Text Edit application but didn’t get the same results. I managed to save it to my Desktop as an html file and it did open in the browser but the code just appeared exactly as the code appeared in Text Edit rather than in bold with different font sizes (h6 or h4) or paragraphs and so forth. What am I getting wrong? Am I using the wrong application (SimpleText is an older Mac app).
If you are trying to create an HTML document using a Mac text editor (like Text Edit) and all you are getting is the code being displayed rather than a web page, watch this video on creating an html document with a Mac.
Hope that helps,
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
Hi,
This is just going to be a quick blog post, because I am still busy getting killersites.com up and running properly after an emergency server move I had to make.
The short story …
I had been using the same hosting company for many years and generally with not too many issues. But in the last year, things started to go downhill fast. The server was very slow (overloaded) and it went down way too often.
The last straw that broke my weak nerd-back, was a complete shutdown of my account by some pencil-necked twit who decided that killersites.com had too much traffic … so this no-nothing nerd suspended the account!
… You have to understand, I had been with these guys for 5-6 years, I’ve spoken to the founder/owner on several occasions and they used killersites.com as a feather in their cap:
‘… we proudly host killersites.com.’
So this unannounced shut down of the entire site was shall we say, vexing.
When it get’s that bad, it’s time to leave fast!
A quick threat of legal action got the site back up quickly, but I was warned killersites.com had too much traffic and I had to move it. So, I moved it to our own dedicated servers right away … within hours.
So why did I not change over to our own dedicated server years ago?
Answer: Configuration.
Killersites.com has been around for about 13 years now and it has a lot of old legacy stuff floating around. Specifically, we are talking about old Perl scripts and a couple of Java based web applications.
… Once you get these sort of things working, you’d best leave them alone. That hassle combined with my general laziness caused me to keep killersites.com sitting on the old server, even when some early evidence of trouble started to brew. You can’t underestimate laziness!
Continued trouble …
So as I write, I have still to get the old Java forum up and running again and the Perl based directory is not fully operational. The nice thing though, is that all the PHP based applications:
– WordPress blogs
– Newsletter script
– PHP based forum (to replace the Java created forum)
… migrated easily and are working fine. Once again, no hassles with PHP and I highly recommend you learn PHP as a web designer.
Bye for now.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
Hi,
Once and a while I mention things that fall outside the realms of web design and web programming; I only do so when I feel it is something important to point out.
The Giant Housing Scam
This time around, it is the giant fraud put forth by the US financial players … this whole housing bubble was a giant ponzi scheme and a new giant ponzi scheme is being engineered now. Check out this Rolling Stone article – it sums up what happened and what is gearing up to happen over the next several years.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/28816321/the_great_american_bubble_machine
Though Americans are going to get hosed the most (as they are now) the rest of the world will feel the pain of the scam as well .. as we are all now.
Stefan
I recently had this question put to me:
Hi Stefan,
I found your article while doing a search about sitemaps, so I figured I’d see what your take on it is.
I work at an agency that does small business websites, some as small as 5 or 6 pages, like an online brochure. I know sitemaps are useful, and help with SEO, but it’s part of our standard design to put text links to each page in the footer of each page. I think a sitemap page with 5 links on it is kind of silly, and a waste of space. Should we continue with the sitemaps or do the footer links suffice in those cases?
Thanks a ton!
I agree. Sitemaps are really useful when there is a lot of content in a web site – if you have a really simple site, it is probably overkill.
Hi,
In the following video I answer this question and more importantly, I go into the broader issue of the importance of learning the code behind the web pages – HTML and CSS:
Trying to build websites without a good understanding of HTML and CSS is like petting your cat’s fur the wrong way … it’s a recipe for disaster!
🙂
LEARN HTML AND CSS THE EASY WAY
If you need help understanding HTML and CSS, then my Web Design 1 video course will do the trick.
BTW, Golive has been effectively dead since 2008 when Adobe replaced it with Dreamweaver.
Thanks for stopping by.
Stefan Mischook
www.killersites.com
