Become a better web developer in 5 minutes
Written on August 8, 2010 at 8:41 pm, by Al
Firebug
If you’re not using Firefox for web design, you really – really – should be. Besides being standards-compliant and supporting thousands of useful plugins, it also supports Firebug. Firebug lets you dig into your coed in real time and try out edits and changes as well as giving you a whole range of debugging tools. What’s more, Firebug also supports Yslow a Firebug plugin from Yahoo! thyat’s pure gold. It gives you accurate readouts of your page download time and has built in tools for getting more code and minifying images by using All Smush It to reduce image size without degrading quality.
Filezilla
FileZilla is an open-source FTP client which supports sFTP. FileZilla is stable, easy to use and fast. Don’t pay for an FTP client when FileZilla is available.
Snippets
Every time you write a clever line of code, discover a unique new tool or find an elegant way to write something you should save it. In the future this will save you more and more time as you go on. You should try and keep your snippets up to date and replace them as you find better alternatives. At the very least, consult a site like CSS Tricks which has a massive, ever-growing collection of freely available web design snippets.
Frameworks
Consider looking at using a framework. In CSS BluePrint is a fairly well-known standard for preventing yourself from writing repetitive code. Perhaps you’d rather use something simper? There’s plenty out there. I use a modified version of WhiteBoard CSS for WordPress, a framework which I add to with snippets I collect.
What does the client need?
The most important thing in my experience is to balance a client’s needs with your desires and their intentions. What I mean by this is that if a client needs a website selling microwaves they need it to sell, you’ll naturally want it to look fantastic and so will they, but you will be doing a better job by making a website that works rather than one that lives up the imaginary ideals of what a ‘good website’ is in your head. A good-looking, well-coded website that sells nothing is a bad website.
Alternatives to Microsoft Office
Written on August 8, 2010 at 2:15 pm, by Al
You won’t hear any disagreement from me if you say Microsoft Office is good. It’s great, it has a vast amount of features and once upon-a-time most people seemed to have a copy of it. Not often legal ones, but you either had it or you didn’t.
Today Microsoft office is expensive. Amazon.co.uk has the Standard edition at £283.27 at time of writing. That’s a lot of money, especially if you don’t use it every day.
Here I have some credible alternatives to Microsoft office that are hassle-free and cost-free:
Open office org
Open Office.org (the ‘.org’ is included for legal reasons) is my personal favourite. Developed with help from Sun Microsystems, but still open source and completely free, Open Office.org offers you a seamless switch over from Microsoft Office. With alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Access, you’ll still be able to open regular Office documents, work on them save them and read and edit them again in Microsoft Office. Open Office hasn’t always been the quickest application, but it is becoming faster and more streamlined with each release.
IBM Lotus Symphony
Lotus is based on an earlier version of Open Office, but branched off in a slightly different direction. It’s not as intuitive as Open Office but it’s free and again works with Word documents.
Google Docs
Google is becoming a contender in many fields, but the one benefit to using Google Docs is the ability to keep your work in the cloud. Just sign up for a free account and you can write and edit documents and spreadsheets from any computer in the world.
The interface is more spartan, the options fewer – to get more, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid version – but it’s utterly usable.
You can also work live with other users on documents, making real-time revisions and updates by selecting which documents to share with which users.
In today’s varied internet ecology, paying for expensive products when you can get free, legal equivalents is just unnecessary.
Best iPhone apps for work
Written on April 17, 2010 at 8:38 pm, by Al
The iPhone is undoubtedly a polarising device. It probably has more fans than detractors (or at least I like to think so), but it is primarily seen as an entertainment oriented phone, pretty much the polar opposite to the Blackberry.
So I thought I’d highlight some of the most useful tools it can provide for business.
Scheduling with Calendar and Google Calendar
I use Google Calendar not because it’s incredibly good-looking, but because it has great methods for subscribing to other applications and systems. The iPhone can subscribe to Google Calendar and sync dates and events back and forth. The magic part is being able to sync Google calendar to other apps, meaning that you can make a date on your iPhone and see it appear across your workflow (mine appear in Lighting in Thunderbird). You can add as many calendars as you like.
http://www.google.com/calendar/
Syncing files with Dropbox
Dropbox is a file-sharing program that uses peer-to-peer technology to synchronise the contents of folders across different systems. You can use Dropbox to sync files between your own PCs (or Macs) as well as choosing to share folders within your Dropbox folder with other people. The iPhone part comes into play when you download the Dropbox app and are able to view copies of your files on your iPhone. Handy, no? You can also view, download and restore files from the Dropbox website.
Dropbox is free for a starter account and gives you a whopping 2gb. If you invite friends to Dropbox you’ll get an additional 250Mb per person.
The Google App offers a quick portal into it’s services. It’s by means revolutionary and there are more complete apps for accessing Google services, but it has killer speech recognition (ie. It actually works) and a pretty icon.
The Google App links in to many of its services and can prevent a tiresome login each time you need to access a service.
2do
My favourite todo list app, mainly because you can link it without having to subscribe to an expensive system. Version 2 is on it’s way soon, with even more features. Add tasks, lists (collections of tasks), multiple sections for different types of task and sync free with Toodledo.
The interface is not only extremely good-looking, but allows for drag-and-drop, sorting, sharing and different views.
Tabs are used to great effect to separate sections and the application icon can display the number of tasks falling into a category you select.
The official website lists far more features than I can here: http://www.2doapp.com/en/2Do/tips.html
What email program do I use?
Written on April 15, 2010 at 3:18 pm, by Al
Web browsers come in different shapes and sizes, (‘What’s a browser?’) but fewer people are aware that they have a range of choices with email as well.
There are just as many email programs as there are internet browsers.
Microsoft Outlook
Most Windows users will be familiar with some form of Outlook. As part of the office suite, outlook offers reliability and a full suite of editing tools to control your emails. Outlook also has calendars and tasks functionality.
Microsoft Outlook isn’t free though. If you run Windows 7 or Windows Vista, you’ll have a copy of Windows Mail which is essentially a very cut down version of Outlook. If you have XP or previous you’ll have Outlook Express. If you do want to buy Microsoft Outlook you can buy it standalone or as part of the Office Suite, either way you’ll be looking to part with more than £70.
Thunderbird
Thunderbird is my email client of choice. From the same teams that runs Firefox, the world’s most popular internet browser, comes Mozilla Thunderbird. Just like Firefox, Thunderbird is free, and simple to set up.
Version 3 was released earlier this year and whilst not as fully featured as Microsoft Outlook, it is gaining features, including tabbed browsing through emails and a very fast indexed search that lets you specify dates and other conditions to filter through results. Thunderbird will also run on pretty much any platform, including Windows, Linux and OSX. An official Mozilla plug-in Lightning provides calendar functionality to rival Outlook’s.
GoogleMail / GMail
Google Mail is a slightly different approach to email. Rather than encouraging users to set up email programs and download mail to their desktops (though of course you can) Google tries to entice you to use it online so you can access it anywhere in the world.
Rather than using folders, Google has tags for your email to help organise things as well as a range of other features, including filters to process mail automatically when it arrives, beer goggles to stop accidental emailing immediately after a gentlemen’s snifter of sauce and many more experimental features besides.
Personas for Firefox
Written on January 11, 2010 at 12:53 pm, by Al
If you’re up to date enough to be running the new Firefox 3.6 release candidate, then you’ll be able to take advantage of a groovy new feature, Personas for Firefox.
Personas are basically skins, but with a better system for installing and previewing them it’s become a breeze to switch what clothes your version of Firefox is wearing.
Please note: The new release candidate may not yet be entirely stable or compatible with your plugins. if that’s the case, just wait a few weeks until Firefox 3.6 is released officially. If you’re impatient like me though (I’ve had no problems with this Firefox release), get downloading, the links are below.
Get the new Firefox release candidate here: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.6/whatsnew/
Get Firefox Personas and the personas plugin for faster switching here: http://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/
Grooveshark – free, legal online music
Written on January 9, 2010 at 6:10 pm, by Al
I sometimes get a little tired of having to have my iTunes library on each computer, when I just want to chuck on some music and get on with work I go to Grooveshark.com and choose some music from their library.
Even better, is Grooveshark radio – simple select a song or songs you like and then hit the radio button, Grooveshark will then create a playlist based on the songs you have selected and you can either ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ songs as you go along, refining your playlist predictions.
Try Grooveshark out at: http://listen.grooveshark.com/
Get Quickbooks free
Written on January 9, 2010 at 8:52 am, by Al
Nope, it’s not a con – refreshing isn’t it? I’ve been using this for the past 6 months and it’s been fantastic, due to my being more organised, I’ve actually made more money!
Quickbooks from Intuit is a remarkably useful accounting program and if you’re a small business with 20 customers or less, you can run Quickbooks for absolutely nothing. You will need to upgrade if you gain more than 20 customers or suppliers, but it’s a great way to start off and personally, I’ve not reached that many yet.
Download the UK version at http://quickbooks.intuit.co.uk/accounting-software/quickbooks-freestarter.jsp
Digsby
Written on January 9, 2010 at 8:46 am, by Al
If you’re anything like me, you have a wide array of ways to network and chat with your friends and contacts. From email, web-mail and private messages, to Facebook wall posts and Twitter to real-time chatting on Windows Live Messenger and online messaging systems like Facebook and Google’s chat.
Digsby collates all of your networks into one easy way to log in and communicate from one interface.
You need to create a Digsby account which then stores all your login information. They claim their servers are secure, and I’ve not had any problems over the past few months I’ve been using Digsby.
Another very nifty feature is to generate a widget to place on your website or blog that lets you chat in real-time with visitors to your site.
It’s still a relatively new program and seems a little bandwidth-intensive when checking POP email, but the development continues to progress rapidly and new fixes are being applied all the time.
Check out digsby at: http://www.digsby.com/
How to recover deleted files
Written on January 2, 2010 at 12:35 pm, by Al
Ever deleted something you really wish you hadn’t? Most likely you were trying to clear some space or do some organising. We all have at some point, but few people know how to recover lost documents, or treasured family photos. Luckily, if you’re very careful you should be reunited with your files in no time!
There are two things you need to bear in mind – maybe three if you’re a person who panics a lot.
1. Don’t panic
That wont help in the slightest.
2. Don’t do anything else
There’s a very good chance that the files are still on the harddrive, but you can’t see them because they have been marked for overwriting. Each thing you do after you have accidentally deleted your file runs the risk of overwriting the file on the computer. So do as little as possible. Don’t change any other files or switch off your system. If you’ve been careful you’ll have an un-deletion program all ready installed – unfortunately no operating system comes with this facility built in.
3. Run or install a program to recover your file(s)
If you don’t already have a program installed, you’ll have to grab one now. Your best bet is to install on a secondary drive or even better on a pen drive so it’s independent from your system and can’t overwrite the very files you’re trying to recover!
If you have followed steps 1 and 2 carefully, any program you install should have a good chance of recovering your files. Some programs you might want to try include:
NTFS Undelete http://ntfsundelete.com/
UnDelete Plus http://undelete-plus.com/front-page
What’s [in] a browser?
Written on January 2, 2010 at 9:05 am, by Al
If the above is a question you’re not sure of the answer to, then why not take 5 minutes to stop and improve your internet experience?
An internet browser is what lets you navigate the web and view and interact with websites and web applications. Some people are peripherally aware of browsers, though they may not be familiar with the term, others have a decent idea of the differences between the options available to them.
Here, for your delight and delectation is a quick run-down of the most popular options:
Internet Explorer
Most people’s first experience of the web comes through using Internet Explorer. This browser is included with Microsoft’s Windows operating system and new users often [wrongly] presume this is their only option for browsing the internet.
Many people are using an out of date version of Internet Explorer, which means less compatibility with modern websites as well as more security vulnerabilities. If you don’t want to change browsers, the very least you should do is update to the lateste version, Internet Explorer 8.
Download the latest version of Internet Explorer at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/
Firefox
Pretty much the most popular browser overall in Europe, used by approximately 47% of people online, Firefox is fast, strong and easily adaptable. If you currently use internet explorer, Firefox can import all your bookmarks and settings to make the transition seamless.
You’ll find many addons for Internet Explorer also have Firefox versions, so it is unlikely that you’ll encounter any problems at all in switching over. Best of all, Firefox has a massive repository of addons that you can install in one click: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/
Download firefox at http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/firefox/
Opera
Opera is a browser with a rich history, originally created in 1994. Over the past few years Opera has become totally free, eliminating the browser adverts that originally came with it. Opera has long been standards compliant, adhering strictly to internet design protocols, but remaining user friendly and fast.
Download Opera at http://www.opera.com/
Safari
Safari comes pre-installed on Apple computers. Versions are available for Windows computers as well. Safari performs well, though lacks the range customisable features in Firefox and Opera.
Download safari at http://www.apple.com/safari/
Google Chrome
Chrome is the most recent addition to the web browser market, created by Google. Chrome has a slightly different modus operandi to the other popular browsers and is optimised for fast speed with web applications, most notably Google’s own online office and email applications.
Whilst Chrome is probably the fastest browser on this list, it is still in its early stages and lacks the ability to customise it to any great extent.
Download Google Chrome at http://www.google.com/chrome