Monthly Archives: October 2005

CSS

Posted on October 30, 2005 | 3 Comments

I’ve never been a big fan of CSS. No real reason, it just seemed like such a PITA. And it is really, let’s be honest.

BUT

I’m working on a site for a client and they want it mostly CSS. More search engine friendly and all. I know enough CSS to fill a shot glass. Prefer other things in my shot glasses, but my CSS knowledge will if needed fit there.

My buddy Tom used one of our co-workers’ books on CSS, and said it had helped him with his immediate need. So.. off to the local B&N I went.

The local B&N actually has a really good section for computer books, I was impressed, and had I not been in a hurry to get back to the house and get working, I woulda stuck around a while.Seeing as I was at a book store I couldn’t come away with just one book, especially if the one ended up not be the one I need. So I picked up the O’Reilly offering on CSS as well. They tend to be pretty good books.

I am well on my way to really digging CSS. It certainly takes some getting used to but it sure is nice once you get going. This site I’m working on is pretty easy to tweak when I need to change a color or nudge something to the left. I’ve really been missing out.

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Posted in ColdFusion, Consulting, CSS, Web Development, Work

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Search Engine Friendliness

Posted on October 29, 2005 | Leave a comment

A client of my client recently had me make their site Search Engine friendly. Was quite an interesting project. I had never really looked into SEO, and SES stuff before. Gave me a chance to get a little insight into how the search engines work in relation to dynamic sites.

We used <cf_fake_url> to accomplish the ses conversion. It actually made the transition quite easy. A few pages required some tweaking with how they pass variables but otherwise it was a simple matter of changing all <A href> tags to use page.cfm/var/value/var/value. Worked rather well I must say.

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Posted in ColdFusion, Consulting, Web Development, Work

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Macromedia MAX

Posted on October 27, 2005 | Leave a comment

I couldn’t make it to MAX this year. Which bites more than it normally would because, this year MAX was in Orange County. A month after we moved. GO figure. Next year, assuming Macrodobia even has MAX it’ll probably be in som god forsaken place… Fargo or something.

Any how the good news is that the keynotes and main speaches are all captured on video. Very very cool Macromedia!

If nothing else, check out day one, Ze Frank. You might remember him as the guy from the “How to Dance Properly” video

As an aside, I found this on Forta’s blog. Kinda neat to see the trials and tribble-ations of a new convert to CF.

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Posted in Adobe MAX, Web Development, Work

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Types of Web Developer

Posted on October 25, 2005 | Leave a comment

In my travels I’ve come across three types of Web Developer. Actually web developer is too specific, programmer is more general of a term.

  1. The one who thrives on working in a small environment
  2. The enterprise IT programmer (seems to be the most common)
    1. A subset of this programmer is the politician.
  3. the guy who is so bleeding edge, he’s dangerous.

At my previous employer we had all three.

The Type 2

Myself and two others fell into category 2. We liked programming, liked having some guidelines. liked having process. We liked using source control, and really liked not having too much access to production. We saw new technologies as ways to make things better as well as ways to make ourselves more marketable. We didn’t see new technologies as the next thing we have to try, whether it makes sense or not. That’s the type 3 programmer.

Type 2 programmers, share what they know and are as likely to be at their desk coding as they are at some one else’s helping with a problem.

The Type 1

These programmers love the small “web shop” environment. They don’t want source control. They shun process. They tend to find a niche, and settle. This is not always the case. Some Type 1′s are closer to type 3′s. They love new challanges, love creating something new for some one new. From what I’ve seen there are a pretty even distrobution of these Type 1s. We had one at my last job. Hated having a process, fought tooth and nail. Loved talking about the days when he coded right on prod. Of course “those days” weren’t spent working for a large enterprise IT Organization. They were at a small shop with one programmer.

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Posted in Technology, Web Development, Work

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