Application Development, Technology, Web Content Management, Web Development, Browsers, software, Tools

Tools for Troubleshooting Web Sites and CMS Systems July 28th, 2010

Over the years I’ve learned that sometimes trouble comes where you least expect it.

Content Management Systems (CMS) have many different touch points: the physical servers, the server software, connections between servers, the Internet pipe to the user, and the end users’ computers are all involved. Any number of these could be a potential trouble area if there are issues. There are a number of fantastic tools to help isolate bottlenecks, and anyone involved in using, deploying, or maintaining a Web site should be aware of them because it will just make life easier.

Technology, Usability, Web Content Management, Web Development, Webcast

Why Could Your Content Management System Implementation Fail? June 30th, 2010

Are you about to invest in a new CMS? Or are you struggling to salvage your current system? So many CMS implementations fail, don’t let it happen to you.  In this live Webinar, I explored the reasons why so many fail, and focused on how to make your CMS work for you.

If you missed it, check out the slides on Slide Share, below, or listen to the recording.

Technology, Web Development, Browsers, CSS, HTML5, JavaScript

Learning All About HTML5 June 25th, 2010

So one of the latest and greatest buzzwords in Web Development Land is “HTML5″ and some folks may be wondering exactly what the deal is. Long story short, it’s a work in progress, it’s being created in the open, and it’s features are being tested by browser vendors already. Mozilla, Apple, Google, Opera, and Microsoft all have their efforts going at the same time, some of them with overlap, some of them without. Finally, there are features which can be reliably used today. There’s plenty of information out there if you’re looking.

Application Development, Web Content Management, Web Development

Transcript of SharePoint 2010 Chat with Product Team Members (public) June 18th, 2010

On May 17th three members of the SharePoint product team participated in a Live Q&A session about SharePoint 2010.  I didn’t see the content posted anywhere yet, so below is the transcript.  SharePoint 2010 Web Content Management topics are covered multiple times!  Enjoy!

Technology, Web Content Management, Web Development

Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Conference: Part Three – Unified Page Editor April 30th, 2010

The second session I attended at Sitecore’s North America Dreamcore 2010 was for the Unified Page Editor on the Developer Track, presented by Kerry Bellerose, VP of Product Management.

To recap some highlights:

Application Development, Technology, Web Content Management, Web Development

Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Conference: Part Two – Sitecore Intranet Portal April 29th, 2010

At the North America Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Developer and Partner conference last week, the first session I participated in was for the Sitecore Intranet Portal, part of the Developer Track.  I’d like to share some interesting points from that session:

Application Development, Social Networking, Web Content Management, Web Development, ASP.NET, Microsoft, Social Networking, twitter

Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Conference: Part One April 28th, 2010

Last week two colleagues and I were fortunate enough to be able to attend the North America Sitecore Dreamcore 2010 Conference in Boston. The volume of information and quality of speakers was astounding, so it’s going to take a little while to digest and distill it into something that can be managed and talked about easily.

The Sitecore management team literally braved the elements and an angry planet (referring to volcanoes and such) to get to Boston, so kudos to the whole team are in order.

Out of the shoot considering the “live” nature of a lot of conferences these days I thought it would be interesting to share some links and tips that surfaced during the conference from around the Web.

Application Development, Technology, Web Development

Mobile and App Testing Tools April 23rd, 2010

As the count of mobile devices multiplies, so does the difficulty in checking your web apps and mobile apps against them.  Here’s an excellent collection of testing tools to help you wade through the mountain of devices as needed.  The example applications range from the iPhone to the Blackberry to the Android and all the way back again to the Palm OS.

One of note to many will be the iPad Peek that lets you see how a web page will render on the iPad.

Hat Tip: SpeckyBoy

Web Development, Browsers, HTML5, IE9, Microsoft, MSIE, Video

Promising but Controversial IE9 Platform Preview Released at MIX10 April 15th, 2010

By now news has spread around the Web that Microsoft announced the Platform Preview of IE9 at MIX10. Our own John Sutton was there and touched on it in our blog here. Reactions around the Web have generally been positive, but there’s been some criticism about the marketing machine, their test results, the features they’re touting, the platform restrictions, and even the fake browser UI that’s been slapped on the thing.

It’s important to realize if you evaluate it that it’s just an early preview and the user interface is, generally speaking, not even there!

Insight Article, Web Development

The Emerging Online World: Brave Perhaps, But Not So New April 14th, 2010

At the Shakespeare Association of America’s annual conference two weeks ago, I participated in a workshop called “Shakespeare 2.0″ that attempted to describe the essential methods that Shakespearean scholars use, and how those methods will change because of emerging online technologies. Two questions arose that might be of interest outside this field: first, what is unique about scholars and what they do? Second, what is so special about Shakespearean scholars?

In working to build Web sites, I’ve worked with several different kinds of professionals, and I’ve observed that the three groups that I’ve gotten to know the best – journalists, diplomats, and scholars – work in very similar ways, at least when it comes to publishing things. Their traditional editorial processes usually include these elements:

Interaction Design, Technology, Visual Design, Web Development, Flash, Full-screen mode

Flash Full-Screen Mode April 7th, 2010

The release of Flash Player 9 has given Flash Developers the ability to view the Flash in full-screen mode, whether it be a movie or the Flash Animation itself. Here are two great examples of Web sites utilizing the full-screen mode to display something other than a movie: Nicola Walbeck and Waterlife. On a large monitor, the experience of a full-screen mode is something very engaging and eye-catching, at a quick glance, people can easily mistake it as a screen saver.
There are pros and cons when considering full-screen mode:

Web Content Management, Web Development, JavaScript, jQuery, Sitecore

Avoiding jQuery’s noConflict() Mode with Prototype and Sitecore April 5th, 2010

The brevity of the Prototype JavaScript library’s $() (i.e. the “dollar” function) is without a doubt a handy tool and easy to type over, and over, and over again. It caught on quickly as JavaScript frameworks took off and John Resig’s jQuery library used a version of it from the start as well. Of course, this had issues where from time to time both Prototype and jQuery might show up on the same Web page.

The pros and cons of loading more than one JavaScript library over HTTP is of course a whole other article in and of itself. Please always consider the implications of such a move. It’s all about page weight and performance.

jQuery has been the JavaScript framework of choice at NavigationArts for quite some time. It has, for as long as I can remember, featured a method called noConflict() which returns control of the $() function to whatever it was previously defined as. What does that mean? Well, in jQuery, $() is just an alias to the jQuery object, so it removes that alias. It’s done this way:

Application Development, Technology, Web Development, AS3, Flash, iPhone

Flash on the iPhone March 31st, 2010

Ever since the first release of the iPhone, people have been eagerly wondering when Apple would provide a Flash plug-in. I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought the iPhone would be the perfect platform for the interactive nature of Flash.

From this article a while back, it seemed it would never happen because of Apple’s licensing issues about third-party applications, which dismayed many Flash Developers.  It appeared the only way to develop iPhone Apps was to download the software development kit and learn Objective- C.

Much has changed since then….

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Web Development, HTML5, IE9, Microsoft

Microsoft MIX10: Day Two March 18th, 2010

Day two at MIX10 and the information overload continues:

Keynote Highlights:

IE9 and HTML 5

IE9 has true support for HTML 5 including HTML 5 video. Reduced processing capacity required for JavaScript and HTML 5 video. The demo provided was truly amazing. The demo ran on Windows 7. This made me wonder what the performance would be like on older versions of Windows as well as other OS platforms.

Information Architecture, Interaction Design, Technology, User Experience Design, Visual Design, Web Development, Microsoft, SharePoint2010, Silverlight

Microsoft MIX10: Day One March 17th, 2010

There’s a lot going on at MIX10, here are my thoughts on day one:

Keynote introduced the design and development community to the new Windows phone. The interface is interesting. As with most new concepts, there are some good things and some bad. Also introduced the Pivot Control for Silverlight 4, which uses content type attributes and values to help winnow down a large set of similar content types down to a narrow set.

Application Development, Insight Article, Interaction Design, Technology, Web Development, ASP.NET, ViewState

Dynamic Web Controls in ASP.NET March 16th, 2010

ASP.NET’s ability to populate controls into pages at runtime is a very powerful feature. Instead of knowing exactly what the structure and content of a page is at compile time, webpages can be made to be more programmatic, adjusting to situations on the fly. There are certain amazing things that can be done with CSS, such as controlling the styling and positioning of webpage content, but an ASP.NET programmer can literally add and remove controls on the fly as they see fit.

Interaction Design, Technology, Web Development, Flash

Flash Beyond the Web February 17th, 2010

Adobe Flash was developed to be an interactive platform. For the longest time, we’ve seen it mostly on the web, whether for aesthetic animation purposes or to provide rich interactivity. This YouTube video provides a glimpse into the future use of Flash as a way to create a “Living Surface” that steps out of the web and into the real world.

Although the video provides little background information, a little Googling reveals that it was developed in an ActionScript framework known as FIVe3D that was developed by Mathieu Badimon. You can see other exmaples on the FIVe3D website

Just imagine the possibilities: interactive walkways at the mall where shoppers can interact with storefront displays just by walking in front of them, or play areas that interact with children as they hop and run around.

Application Development, Web Development, CSS, JavaScript, performance

Shinkansen for ASP.NET-based CSS and JavaScript GZIP Compression February 10th, 2010

I recently saw an innocent enough tweet about something that just happened to be exactly like something I’d been looking for for quite some time: a server-side ASP.NET CSS and JavaScript file concatenator and GZIP utility called Shinkansen. It’s from Milan Negovan and it’s hosted over at CodePlex. Looking over the documentation, it looks easy enough to set up and configure. He’s blogged about it here.

User Experience Design, Web Development, Browsers, CSS, JavaScript

JavaScript-CSS Compatibility Layers to Save You Some Money? January 25th, 2010

Andy Clarke recently wrote about a new CSS JavaScript compatibility layer called IE-CSS3.js. The library allows users to write CSS using pseudo-element selectors, and have it work natively in IE8 via JavaScript. The JavaScript parses the linked CSS, and dynamically adds rules to the document. This means that the shortcomings of the browser’s CSS display methods can be automatically overcome by creating custom CSS with JavaScript. All users will thus see the same thing. Great.

Internet Strategy, User Experience Design, Video, Visual Design, Web Development

Learn More About the NavigationArts’ Team January 19th, 2010

Leo Mullen:

“Our strategy practices is designed to help our customers look around the corner a little bit and understand what’s coming and help them to prepare for that.”

Insight Article, Web Development, Business Decisions, CMS, content management, integration

Integrating External Applications: The Hidden Costs January 11th, 2010

So you are at the beginning stages of your new content management system (CMS) implementation project.  You are finally going to get rid of the very painful, homegrown content management system you are currently using.  Your head is filled with dreams of eliminating all of your manual processes and replacing them with fully automated integration points between your shiny new CMS and your entire hodgepodge of legacy systems.

Video, Web Development

CMS Evaluation January 7th, 2010

“When NavigationArts starts doing a CMS evaluation what we really have to focus on is why we’re there. What is the evaluation is really meant to uncover, and what the toolset is to answer that question. Is it a distributed publishing model? Are there a lot of users that have to get in, do you have a Web team? We have to get to the actual need.”

Video, Web Development

Web Standards Based Development January 5th, 2010

“When we’re talking about Web standards we’re not just using the technologies such as JavaScript, CSS, and HTML. We’re also talking about using those technologies correctly.”

“We’re talking about maintaining that separation between the presentation, and the content, and the behavior. And then also we’re talking about where those sorts of technologies interact with content management and application development on the back-end on any sort of website or Web application.”

Application Development, Web Development, ASP.NET, Chart

ASP.NET Chart Control December 3rd, 2009

This is technically old news, but because this control doesn’t ship with Visual Studio .NET, it’s easily overlooked. This is a graph/chart control that’s easy to use and is pretty powerful. It’s sub-par compared to any custom controls that you can build in Javascript, but if you want something that’s quick and gets the job done, this control does the trick.

Web Development, image optimization, performance

ImageOptim Image Compression Tool November 19th, 2009

Most of the time the tools used when creating and compressing images for the Web do a good job, but some of them leave behind some excess metadata that can increase the file size while providing no particular benefit. In particular, I’m thinking of Photoshop’s “Save for Web” functionality when it comes to PNG images.  There’s a number of command-line tools that can be used to help with things like this, but ImageOptim (for Mac OS X) wraps them into a handy GUI to make handling them easier.

Application Development, Web Content Management, Web Development, ASP.NET, Video

.NET Brightcove Video API Integrates with Sitecore November 19th, 2009

So a follow up to my post on Professional Video Services, here’s something I just found.

Web Development, CSS, JavaScript, Microsoft, MSIE, Web Standards

IE9 Standards Support Work Underway, To Support Rounded Corners! November 19th, 2009

So Microsoft is starting to release information on the next release of Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE), IE version 9. The IE team posted on their blog about the ongoing progress … but it covers everything from some of the performance profiling that they’re doing (which is an interesting read), to their current performance in the Acid 3 test, to some of the new Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) features that they will be supporting.

Interaction Design, Web Development, chrome, Google, operating systems

Google Unveils Chrome OS November 19th, 2009

Google announced their Chrome OS a few months back, but today they held an event to show off the first screens and explain some more of the concepts behind it as well as to open-source the project in advance of the 2010 release date. Engadget has more coverage of the event (including a gallery of screens).

Application Development, Information Architecture, Internet Strategy, Social Networking, Visual Design, Web Content Management, Web Development, Video

Professional Video Services for Businesses November 11th, 2009

An unlikely source for cutting edge technology news of course, but USA Today has an interesting article discussing the future of online video for businesses. They point out that video has a huge and critical future for most everyone doing business online these days, and there’s several major players coming in that exceed the offerings by such commonly known entities from YouTube and Vimeo.

Specifically, pay services targeted for businesses include:

Application Development, Web Development, JavaScript

Google Releases Closure JavaScript Tools November 9th, 2009

This past week the “almighty” Google released what looks like a very interesting set of Web Development tools for JavaScript development. It’s a set of tools they’ve created to build rich user interfaces and increase the performance of the scripting involved.

The release consists of the following:

Web Development, Front-end Engineering, history, HTML

Brief History of HTML and HTML5 Looking Real November 9th, 2009

Just some random bits for those interested in the state of the HTML world.

First, there’s a great post and discussion over on Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Mark Web site on the origin’s of HTML’s IMG element. I knew that Netscape and Mosaic were credited with the expansion of the World Wide Web as we know it by making it a graphical environment as opposed to one that was pure text. What I didn’t know was that Netscape’s, then Mosaic’s Marc Andreesson was the one who actually posted first suggesting the IMG element. That was 1993.

Fast forward to today, and we have the Web’s creator, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, commenting on the progress of the newest proposals to extend HTML, HTML5. There’s certainly plenty being said about HTML5 these days if you look for it. But purists might appreciate Tim Berners-Lee chiming in.

If I discuss HTML5, I guess I have to mention my article that was published a while back in Dr. Dobb’s via InformationWeek, “HTML5 Starts Looking Real“. Check it out.

Web Development, cloud computing, explanations, Video

An Introduction to Cloud Computing November 6th, 2009

CNN has posted a simplified explanation of what Cloud Computing is and published this handy explanation video.

Visual Design, Web Development

@font-face and OTF, EOT, and SVG Fonts November 4th, 2009

Jonathan Snook has written up a guide on how to implement custom fonts with more browsers than we have gotten accustomed to talking about in the past six months. Since the release of Firefox 3.5 and Opera 10 everyone has been excited about using @font-face even if the target would be the latest versions of most browsers.

Web Development, programming, ruby, ruby on rails

Ruby and Rails Ecosystem Whitepaper November 2nd, 2009

The folks at InfoEther have assembled a whitepaper describing the current state of the Ruby and Rails ecosystem.

The Ruby and Rails Ecosystem is a very large and robust community of companies, entities and individuals. This paper is meant to be an educational introduction for the layman, investor or business executive.

Social Networking, Web Development, Messaging, Mozilla, Raindrop

Mozilla Raindrop Aims to Help Filter Signal from Noise October 27th, 2009

The Mozilla Labs team has announced that they’re working on a new project named Raindrop which aims to gather up the various messaging sources that people get input from (email, Twitter, messaging apps, etc.) and then filter them to only what’s directed at the actual user (eliminating spam, messages to other users, etc.).

Raindrop Demo and Explanation Video

Application Development, Information Architecture, Web Development

Knowing When to Say "No" October 21st, 2009

Something to think about….

Steve Jobs gave a small private presentation about the iTunes Music Store to some independent record label people. My favorite line of the day was when people kept raising their hand saying, “Does it do [x]?”, “Do you plan to add [y]?”. Finally Jobs said, “Wait wait – put your hands down. Listen: I know you have a thousand ideas for all the cool features iTunes could have. So do we. But we don’t want a thousand features. That would be ugly. Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features.”
-Derek Sivers, president and programmer, CD Baby and HostBaby (from Say NO by default)

Social Networking, Web Development

Web 2.0 Applications October 10th, 2009

Ever tried to keep up with all the differing Web 2.0 applications out there? Yeah, me either. But just in case you are trying, this blog has a set of them already collected for you.

Web 2.0 Applications

Application Development, Visual Design, Web Content Management, Web Development, performance

Web Site Performance Software October 6th, 2009

At NavigationArts, the client-side development team focuses heavily on optimizing the performance of Web pages and how fast they load. Some of the leading research in the area is from the likes of Yahoo! and their front-end engineering team.

Application Development, Web Development

Build Applications for iPhone and iPod Touch Using ActionScript 3 October 6th, 2009

“Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.”

Web Development

Google Maps API v2 or v3 September 29th, 2009

For those of you who deal with mapping functionality, I’ve worked with both Microsoft and Google products for this. My app of choice is Google Maps (although when going down this road, you have to sacrifice some level of control for their efficiency optimizations – this is usually a very reasonable trade-off). Anyway, Google came out with v3 for its API this year, which has some slimming down of its codebase, and probably has some back-end improvements on their server as well (although I’ve seen mixed reports on v2 vs. v3 latency).

Web Development

Web Analytics in Flash September 16th, 2009

“Adobe Systems said it would buy the Web analytics software company Omniture for about $1.8 billion, giving the maker of content-creation software a way to let marketers monitor the effectiveness of such content.”

NY Times.

Web Development

IIS and OTF Fonts September 12th, 2009

To enable OTF fonts (CSS3) in IIS you need to register the MIME type.

Extension: .OTF
MIME Type: font/otf

Application Development, Project Management, Web Development

Waterfall vs. Agile vs. The Real World September 11th, 2009

In a nutshell, the “Waterfall model” to software development consists of taking a project from design to implementation in one single pass; the “Agile model” consists of very short iterative cycles.

Web Development

eCSStender 1.0 Released September 8th, 2009

From the release notes:

eCSStender does nothing on it’s own, but it facilitates the use of eCSStensions developed by the community. Some eCSStensions do simple things like reduce your dependence on proprietary CSS extensions like -moz-border-radius; others push CSS beyond the spec and pave the way for future iterations of the language.

Social Networking, Web Content Management, Web Development

Future of Content Management September 3rd, 2009

Julian Wrath has asked those of us interested in the world of CMS to comment on the “The Future of Content Management.” While I’d like to presume I know what the future will hold in that world, I’d like to express where I hope that it’s going.

Web Development, HTML, mobile

HTML5 from the Mobile Perspective July 23rd, 2009

So there’s an interesting article over at Cloud Four which takes on the HTML5 discussion from the standpoint of the mobile market.

Interaction Design, Social Networking, Usability, User Experience Design, Visual Design, Web Development

Audio and Video Standards in HTML5 July 1st, 2009

Ian Hickson on the HTML5 spec and why it will not contain language around what codec browsers should support for the <audio> and <video> tags (emphasis mine):

I have therefore removed the two subsections in the HTML5 spec in which codecs would have been required, and have instead left the matter undefined, as has in the past been done with other features like <img> and image formats, <embed> and plugin APIs, or Web fonts and font formats.

Web Content Management, Web Development, Flash, Video

Flash and Flash Video June 30th, 2009

I have this question asked to me atleast once a week: what’s the difference between Flash and Flash Video, or do you need Flash to play a Flash Video. I found a nice article that articulates the difference.

“The thing most users don’t understand is the difference between Flash and Flash Video. Flash is the interactive part of the process, which allows the creation of the player that is designed to interactively manipulate the video: stop, fast-forward, rewind, etc.

Flash Video on the other hand, is just the video file that the Flash SWF file plays, using the Flash Player. SWF files may include video content that has been imported from FLV or F4V files, or may merely reference external FLV/F4V video files which the SWF file will play back at certain pre-defined or user-input intervals.”

Web Development

Fixoutlook.org Campaign for Better HTML Email June 25th, 2009

So I’m often grateful that NavigationArts doesn’t do a lot of HTML marketing emails. Web development is difficult enough, dealing with Web browsers’ differences, much less having to deal with different email clients, Web mail clients, and now, apparently, Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010. With Outlook 2007, Microsoft dropped support for Internet Explorer rendering of HTML Emails in Outlook, and they’re continuing the practice in 2010.

Web Content Management, Web Development

Web Applications with Web Standards Front-end Development June 18th, 2009

Two years ago, I had the unique opportunity to contribute with some incredibly distinguished
industry names on a book about Web Standards-based Web development. The book, called Adapting to Web
Standards, is of course available from Amazon.com and other retailers … and some of it is available for free, online.

Web Development, CSS, Front-end Engineering, HTML, JavaScript

The Road to Front-end Engineering November 6th, 2008

Opera has been on something of a roll lately (at least on the development front). They recently released a bundle of research into the “state of the web” as it is from their MAMA (Metadata Analysis and Mining Application) search engine, and a few months ago started a wonderful set of educational resources for front-end people with their Web Standards Curriculum.

Web Development, CSS, Front-end Engineering, HTML, JavaScript, user interface

Professional Front-end Engineering September 2nd, 2008

Yahoo!’s Nate Koechley recently posted slides and audio from a presentation he gave on Professional Frontend Engineering.

Yahoo! is a big site, and it works really well. As an example of cutting edge excellence in modern browser technologies, you’d be hard pressed to find many better examples today. Their mail application alone is an exceptional example of modern browser-based Web applications in action. Additionally, their YUI libraries are exceptional.