As for Chrome itself, it’s a really nice browser. Google has an uncanny knack for building applications which are fast, light, and smart. The search/address field is a very well done. Type whatever you want in there and get a list of likely matches. If nothing fits, hit return and go search for it. When you start using it, you wonder why this wasn’t the way it was at first.

Being able to turn any tab into a launchable desktop application is also great. It means I can now retire Prism from my Windows machine as Chrome does a better job - especially on GMail, Google Docs, and so on - go figure.

The minimalist interface gets in the way in some cases - like trying to figure out how to manage bookmarks. And if you’re used to the features you can end up with in Firefox once you load up all your add-ons, Chrome may be a downer. Because it does what it does - it does it fast and reliably, but that’s all it does.

But that isn’t bad. Use Firefox when you need your add-ons for downloading video or inserting BB-codes into message boards. Use Chrome for your web applications where you want them launched fast and you don’t need anything else getting in the way.

The one huge, huge problem with Chrome … it’s Windows only. Of course, this makes sense given the market share of That Platform. But still. The ‘Net runs on Linux and most of the best design work is done on the Mac. The opinion-makers don’t like on Windows 24×7. I’m sure Google will correct this.

In summary, Chrome is the ideal browser for accessing web-based applications (version control, project management, email, billing systems, and so on). It’s worth a shot and, while it may not take market share away from Internet Explorer, every user who can be lured away from it can be considered a “win” for web designers.

No related posts.

If you’re doing code development on a Mac, especially if you’re bouncing onto your web server a lot, there are a lot of little commands and passwords that you need to keep track of. SSH passwords, SVN passwords and accounts, commands for SVN, Rails, Apache, mysql, etc. This is on top of the snippets of text for running the Mac itself and all the various signatures, quotations, recipes, contact information and other endless pieces of data you not only need to store, but be able to quickly retrieve but paste quickly into a browser, email, or shell window.

Enter “ShoveBox“, a great little menubar utility which keeps all this stuff close at hand. There are a lot of clipboard managers, but ShoveBox’s “Organize” window makes the difference. It allows all the clipping to be organized and colorized any way you like. This makes it real easy to track down that Subversion command for creating a branch you only use once or twice in six months - and then just drag-paste it into your terminal window.

Also, unlike many pure clipboard applications, ShoveBox allows you to create blank notes and put whatever you want in them. This is very useful when the text you want to paste is a combination of things - maybe some subversion commands follows by some Ruby on Rails commands - or maybe a signature for a BBS with contact information and a whitty quote.

Twenty-five dollars may seem a little steep for something like this, but the aggrivation it can save over the course of a few months is worth it. And there’s always the chance to get it at a bargain on one of the many Mac software daily sales.

No related posts.

No related posts.

No related posts.

Related posts:

1. Adult Content Mambot This weekend I'm releasing a little Mambot for Joomla/Mambo that...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

So what is so great about the new version? For starters, they restructured the admin console so it is cleaner, works better, and even looks better. A nice subtle use of fade effects around status messages so you are sure to notice the information confirming any updates you made.

There is also now a WYSIWYG editor included, so there is no need to know any HTML code or tag structure. While not a big deal to webmasters it will be to end-users who may not be so technically savvy. The editor
also now integrates with the upload manager, so its much easier to add pictures to articles.

WordPress retains the same general ease of use and flexibility as the prior versions. The URL and content structure are yours to arrange and configure as you see fit. And it is all pretty easy to manage.

The handling of comments is well done too. The system does a pretty good job at flagging likely spam and queueing it for moderation. There also mechanisms and plug-ins to hook into external spam-fighting services. So as your blog grows in popularity you can beef up security. 

WordPress 2.0 is solid enough that you can build all kinds of sites on top of it, including commercial ones. This is a boon to web developers as it means you can produce nice looking, full-featured sites in less time and then allow clients to manage their own content. Development time will mainly focus on configuring and installing themes and plug-ins.

Speaking of plug-ins, here are a few that are worth checking out:

Counterize - a nice statistics package which tracks hits and visitors, and plenty of options for displaying these within your template.

Kimili Flash Embed - if you intend to have Flash in your content, this is a must have. Note that there are Flash-based video and music players, so using these gets around the messy issues of those “other” media plug-ins.

Google Site Maps - generate site map .XML files for better Google searching.

PXS Mail Form - put up a contact form in 10 seconds.

Random Quotes - a nice thing to add to a blog is bits of wit and whimsey, this plug-in is database driven.

No related posts.

TraceWatch is different, though. To begin with, it is easy to install. Un-zip the archive, set up a database, run a simple install PHP file and it’s done. Overall it has a flexible installation scheme which allows for multiple instances of the script to co-exist, handy when running multiple sites off a root folder.

Integration with your web site is also very convenient. There is a code generator on the TraceWatch site which will generate either the JavaScript or PHP code to use. There is also the option to record URL parameters or not when recording activity. This gives the webmaster control over the level of granularity to be collected. Both the JavaScript and PHP code worked well, though the JavaScript did seem to conflict with a Flash object wrapper on one site. Otherwise there were no problems.

The thing which made me take notice of TraceWatch was the clean and well-organized data display. One the main output page you are presented with information on traffic, page activity, referrers, bots, browsers, countries, and a by-day distribution of traffic activity. Each chart can be viewed by day, month, or all - independantly. This is really convenient as many web logging packages force you to view everything together in one mode. TraceWatch lets you switch your depth of field on the fly for each set of data.

For every statistic there is drill-down, right down to viewing each visitor associated with a specific value. There is also a record of Latest Visitors, including the navigation paths they followed, and how long they stayed on each page.

Lastly, there is a complete path analysis. This allows the web designer to see where people went on their site based on various starting points. This gives a level of information beyond simple hit counting which can be highly valuable.

Rounding out the package is a nice administration page which the database to be pruned and maintained. Compared to other web tracking scripts, the administration on TraceWatch may seem sparce, but it really has all you need given how well structured the package is. There just isn’t much else you need.

All in all this is a well written and documented product. It is only at version 0.234 at the time of this writing, so there are some things which need work still. For basic web statistics that are easy to read and understand, this is a very nice system.

While TraceWatch is not truly open-source (the core code is obfuscated and there are terms of use which are more or less in place to protect the author), there is no license fee to use it.

Product Name	TraceWatch
Developer	Arash Dejkam
Web Site	http://www.tracewatch.com/
Price	Free

No related posts.

The product is supported by the devleoper, Dominey Design by email and a forum on their web site. There is plenty of well-written documentation both in a PDF format manual and on the web site. The online documentation includes several examples implementations, how to animations, FAQ’s, There is also a nice little community of people who use the product who have contributed to the offering with back-end scripts, desktop applications and applets, and more to help make using SlideShowPro easier and more effective.

Be warned, though. This is a Flash MX 2004 component - not a standalone application. The component needs to be put into a Flash presentation (.SWF file) and then hooked into the web site as such. This means the developer needs to know enough Flash to put together a basic presentation.

I have used this product in building a couple of sites and the flexibility of SlideShowPro lends itself quite well to CMS use. All one needs to do is point the component at the desired XML file as a tag parameter and it is possible to access any gallery in the catalog. Or with a little more JavaScript, start SlideShowPro at a specific slide in an album. For one Mambo-driven site it was little more than a 5 minute job to write a “Mambot” to access a SlideShowPro album.

SlideShowPro is a hidden gem and clearly one of the most cost-effective, and stylish, ways to integrate image albums into a web site of any kind.

No related posts.

Simple Machines Forum more or less breaks the rules. It’s new, still on release 1.05, and not all that well known as compared with the flagship BBS’s packages like phpBB, vBulletin, and ikonBoard. But they got a lot of things right the first time. Enough to warrant serious attention by anyone looking to install a forum.

For starters, SMF is fast. It runs on PHP and mySQL While a relatively new player there are enough well-designed skins for the system to make adoption and integration into a site pretty straightforward. Likewise for plug-ins, I was surprised by just how quickly this product has had a wealth of add-ons developed for it. This is likely due in part to how well thought out the system is to begin with. It’s easier to write add-ons when the core code is well structured and the places to hook in functionality are obvious. There’s even a bridge to the Mambo CMS available.

The best part of SMF for the webmaster is the ease with which add-ons and themes are installed. Everything is handled through a nice upload interface. No logging into your web host and unzipping and moving things around by hand. No hacking of individual files like some BBS’s require you to do. Just browse to the .ZIP file, upload, and enable. The system is even smart enough to recognize when you need a special FTP access to do that upload (like on some shared hosts) and provides a way to temporarily input the over-ride user/password to enable the package to be uploaded.

And there are converters; at the time of this article there were converters from 4 major BBS systems into SMF available, as well as 3 more converters for variants of those systems.

All in all this is one of the best thought out forum systems available. If you are considering installing a new forum, SMF is definately worth a serious look.

No related posts.

All that being said, WordPress 1.5 is probably the best combination of features, ease of use, and good looks out there. The installation is one screen. Just upload the files, rig a database, hit the install.php URL and you’re basically done. There are dozens of great looking skins and just as many plugins. Everything from shopping carts to hit counting is available.

Installing themes and plug-ins isn’t as easy as on a system like Mambo, where there’s a built-in installer system. You need to upload files, edit scripts here and there, and generally know something about how to move around the directory structure. So it’s not for the inexperienced. Once you get something installed, though, it ties into the admin panel nicely and you never need to bother with the nitty gritty again.

The bottom line on extensibility is that WordPress and its developer community give you a lot to work with. As long as you have some rudamentary Linux/PHP skills you can make your blog stand up and do amazing tricks.The authoring system is nice and streamlined. You can even author by email. One nice thing is that any entry can belong to multiple categories. Some systems limit you to one. A lot of CMS’s could learn from this as very often it is desirable to have an article belong to two parts of a content structure.

You also have flexibility in how you encode your URL’s. You can chose to have mod_rewrite just put up category/article_name for the path. Or you can embed year, date, or a list of other parameters. It all depends on how frequently you expect to post and how you want your structure to look. Again: WordPress’s flexibility really shines here.

There are a lot of bloggers available now. Some have more powerful features than Word Press, some are more advanced technically. But WordPress really seems to have hit the “sweet spot” in terms of allowing a webmaster to quicky put up a nice looking, full-featured blog, that any client can run with a minimum of instruction.

No related posts.