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Rethinking Web Development
Dec16
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
So i read a couple blog items today and watched some respected bloggers talk about web development and their styles. You may be surprised to hear that i have rethought quite a few main concepts of how you should go about developing websites. First i read a great articles on the “myth” of no-scrolling. That translated is that in general developers try to fit everything in the first 768px from the top of the page, that is because of the general belief that users will not scroll your website because it is too much work. But as the article pointed out readers/visitors have gotten use to scrolling to find more on a webpage. Now i am not saying put important stuff below the 768px line, but that doesn’t mean people wont browse down the page either. If you have been following the web trends lately, you will notice there are some amazing footers out there that encompass a lot of information, there is a reason for it
. Also a couple of developers mentioned they do not use a wire frames when developing websites, which is something i have always regretted not doing. But their points were valid, if it takes you a long time, and you would end up with the same thing if you just started designing right off the bat then you are like us and you shouldn’t waste your time creating a wire frame. Now i am not saying throw the basics out the window, there is a reason they write about the basics in books they work for a majority of people, but what i am getting at is that do what works for you!
Summary:(if you think the above was a little too long to read)
Developing for the 768px fold isn’t fully necessary, feel free to put information under it, for example the footer is always a good place for important recap of information, even new info isnt banned.
Develop the way you feel most comfortable, if you don’t want to make a wire frame, DONT, just work the way you think is best for you!
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Starting a 2.0 business/service
Dec15
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
Lately i found out that i may get some free time on my hands so i decided to start a 2.0 service that i will use as a tool to create series of tutorials on how to start up a 2.0 service online. The very first step is coming up with the idea, now depending on your creativity this may be an easy or a hard task. Personally my head is always full of ideas and after i get them i have to use an elimination process to see if the idea is actually worth my time. Here are some points to run your idea against to see if you have a winner:
- Has it been done before, and if it has how can you beat the current service with a better presented feature list that narrows down the niche
- Can you do it yourself, or will you need to invest money in developers who specialize in the specific software development you may need. If you need outside help that may be costly, so that almost always means idea out.
- Do you feel passionate about it, and are you involved with the field enough to have an easy way to advertise it, and start a following.
- Is it worth doing it, are you expecting huge money returns fast, or do you want to do it as a hobby, and if money comes than it’s more than welcome to.
I have colleagues and online friends that run different ideas by me all the time, i wish i could have people run ideas by me all the time, i love taking them down analyzing them and improving them, feel free to email me at agrublev at the gmail, if i find the time i will definitely look into your idea and let you know if it can be done and if its worth it at no cost.
Trick: Think about what the web world needs and how you can accomplish it before you go to sleep, there is a 30% chance you will wake up in the middle of the night with an idea! It’s happened to me plenty of times!
So for this project i was thinking about what i want to give to the web development community, first i thought i wanted to make an online web editor that helps you write CSS and HTML code like DreamWeaver but better, because let’s just say i know quite a few shortcomings of dreamweaver that if i was coding a new editor i could fix and add some features that would really be worth checking out… problem is i don’t have the time to write such big software in my spear time. But then i thought, there isn’t a good way for developers to find the tools they need unless they read through countless paragraphs of blogs and read some good reviews on applications and utilities to use when developing websites. So my idea is to create a Free Online Tool Directory for web development. There people can post what tools they use, and rate tools that are already in the database. New applications that come out will be added with my reviews and then anyone else who feels passionate about web development can post. I came up with the name rather quick, fzilla.com. Here are some of my thoughts coming up with this name:
- All programs or services that have zilla have seemed to perform exceptionally well. (Mozilla, FileZilla, ShopZilla, FreeMusicZilla)
- fzilla.com is available
- f stands for free (or it can, it can stand for other things), and i want to offer free applications
- fzilla.com is really easy to remember
So thats how you start a 2.0 service, think of an idea that blows peoples minds(or is just a nice addition to the net), find a good catchy name, start thinking about ideas how to make it better than the original idea you had!
From here on out, expect step by step instructions on how i am going to set the service up. I will use ExpressionEngine for my backend because i think there is a lack of tutorials on the internet about ExpressionEngine although their documentation is phenomenal. Next tutorial will probably be how i’m going to design my logo, get ready from some napkin scans.
Edit: My previous post about choosing a hosting company can help you host that amazing domain you decided to name your service!
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Hosting Services Covered
Dec15
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
The Big 3
GoDaddy, 1and1, and Yahoo! Hosting are the three big ones i can name off the top of my head, but they are in order of size. What do they all have in common, they are not particularly of good quality and value. Yes they are cheap(except yahoo which i don’t have much experience with) but unfortunately you are underpaying and surely receiving the short end of the stick for it. I’m in no way saying don’t use them, i am not particularly certain in what situation you would really want to use them, because hosting most good php scripts may cause you problems.
Alternatives
If you still want cheap hosting but you want some actual value and quality go with HostGator or maybe even BlueHost, they are both decent hosting companies. But if you want quality and still a decent price feel free and check out the amazing MediaTemple, their service is amazing. I have used almost all of the mentioned hosting companies, and it has been a true pleasure working with MediaTemple, i cannot express how good their customer service is, and the quality of the product.
Price Chart as of Decembet 15th 2008
Name Price/mo Coupon
GoDaddy $5/7/15 Click Here
1and1 $4/5/10/20 Click Here
bluehost $7 Click Here
MediaTemple (mt) $20/50/750 Click Here
HostGator $5/8/13 Click Here
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Some changes you may have noticed
Dec14
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
Well if you haven’t noticed i’ve added some cool widgets to the sidebar, those would be the Browse widget which allows you to browse through some of the posts of interest. And also i added the Elsewhere widget to show you some other cool news in the web development world! Enjoy much more new stuff coming soon.
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Chrome Staying Popular
Dec12
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
Browsing through my google analitycs i can see that Chrome is definitely staying popular as around 8% of my visitors use it. That makes me pretty happy
the one thing that worries me is that 20% use internet explorer, and out of those 20% use Internet Explorer 6(if you are in the room right now you would see me jump back and pull out a silver cross… why you ask? because ie6 is the devil). I recently talked to some web developers who said they are starting to openly put up a “Your browser sucks, go here to get a new one” notice for all their ie6 users. Since i work for UCSB i don’t get the privilege of not making sites ie6 compatible… but that’s fine, i can live with it for a bit longer.
Btw guys, i interviewed Jason Putorti, none other than the lead designer/coder for Mint.com(awesome money management website) and ill be posting a Q/A in the upcoming weeks! Yay!
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Launch 2.0 almost complete
Dec12
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
Well you have obviously seen the new design but are wondering why some of the menu items are not working yet… it’s because of the crazy sickness i had to go through in the past couple of days :( and so i decided to leak the new version in by half launching it, there is still quite some work to be done on the rest of the pages
but the search works, and the register/login surely works! So thats awesome! Ohh yah and comments :D
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PSD to HTML
Dec12
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An actual user system set up in 2
Dec10
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
If you are staying tuned, and wanna about changes. I just created the whole user system. Login, signup, and log out all working. If you wonder why i am doing this, it’s simple in version 2.0 i will be uploading programs fonts and graphics that will require registration to download! Well as things are going well, if my sickness does not persist, i will most likely launch 2.0 this weekend!
Stay Tuned!
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Gmail Gets Tasks
Dec9
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
I just found out so i had to share! Get this, your favorite email client just got 10 times better, i have been trying to find good ways to organize all the crazy things i need to do in my life (work, school, gf, family, projects, blogging, development) and now i can finally use the app i almost always have open to do it all! I wish i could send out a big shoutout to gmail people, and thank them!
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Quick Update
Dec9
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
Well as i said in a previous post i am currently working on creating the 2.0 version of my website, today i made comments functional with a great layout. Also the search is almost functional. As something to keep you guys interested in my blog as i see that it may has gotten a little boring lately i will announce officially some of the great stuff i am considering to write around Christmas.
- A Complete Series of posts for Complete CSS beginners
- Set of Logo Design strategies and concepts
- And other great goodies on css and design that i think i can bring new advice about
Thanks for staying tuned, i’ll try and launch 2.0 within a couple of weeks (if not by the end of this week, wink wink!)
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Storm Update
Dec8
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
I don’t remember if i wrote about my experience with the Storm, but overall i love it. I have read a bunch of articles disagreeing, but yesterday i updated to the new software updates, and i have to admit the phone works twice as good! I didn’t even notice the lagginess the phone presented before, because i thought it’s a hardware unit full of software it runs in the background, but now it must of been decently laggy because i can already feel a huge difference in the way it performs… IT FLIES I TELL YOU! Anywyas, if the reviews made you not wanna get it, i assure you this is the time. If you have the $200 and you are with verizon you should do it, i love this phone!
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I smell something, i smell version 2.0
Dec5
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
I have been working hard lately to get a new version of the website going because of all my readers
so i have spent more time developing that actually posting :( i am sorry. But here is a preview for all you guys:
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Christmas Wish
Dec1
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
So it seems like i actually have 1 or 2 people reading my blog… how weird, well i wanted to stop by and quickly inform everyone (or possibly no one?) that there are some huge changes coming up. I am about to finish my classes and reduce work time so i will have plenty of time to spend teaching what i have learned over the years. The list goes something like this
- Better User Support
- Forums
- Wiki
- More Blog posts each week
- Questions from Readers answered, maybe a faq page
- And other fun informational material like fonts wallpapers and other amazing goodies!
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The importance of Titles in blog posts
Nov25
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
I found this great article, you should read it
http://www.graphicrating.com/2008/11/24/the-importance-of-blog-posts-title/
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Paint it black and forget it.
Nov18
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
Whacha mean Angel? I was just talking to my colleague about a little trick I like to use which helps me prevent errors from happening. What kind of errors am i talking about… well the most used case i find this useful in is Sprites, i have yet to make a tutorial on sprites because it would be really time consuming. But the basic idea is that sprites are cool hover effects by using the :hover property and the background positioning. Without further ado, the trick i am talking about is setting the background property to black to make sure that you know how big your element is whether you are actually applying a style to the element at all. It happens to all of us that we misstype a class or maybe think something is an ID when it’s a class… anyways paint it black and forget it means
background-color:#000;and preview to make sure you don’t make a silly mistake.Well that’s it for today folks
update: 11/18/2008
I just found a better way to do this! You use a class called fix and you apply it to the element that is you giving you problems
.fix { background:#0f0; border: 1px solid #f00; }
Best thing about this is that you can apply it to ANY ELEMENT because of the ability to apply multiple classes to any element.
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Oooh i want a drop cap in my website!
Nov18
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
This is a drop cap… basically the first letter of the article is huge
how do you do this… like so:
<span style=”float:left; padding-right:2px; font:bold 3em Georgia; line-height:1em;”> T</span>
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LoVe HaTe CSS RULE
Nov18
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
I just learned about this awesome rule so i thought id share.
If you didn’t know before (partially because i haven’t talked about it) it is a great practice to define all the 4 link states in your css to assure a cross-browser look and feel that you intended for your links to have.
So what is the LoVe HaTe rule?
a:link {color: blue;}
a:visited {color: purple;}
a:hover {color: red;}
a:active {color: yellow;}
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What doc type should i use, and what is a doc type.
Nov14
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
In brief i am no expert in doc types, they look like this
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">To understand what a doctype is you need to understand what XHTML is… unfortunately i do not have a lot of time so i will be brief. XHTML comes after XML which is a language to write your “own” language. Basically with XML you can write your own little version of HTML, hence XHTML is a version that was written by a bunch of smarter people than you and I. XHTML is used to make sure you write a cleaner code, using strict as your DOCTYPE will enforce a better level of coding that makes for a faster and cleaner website.
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ID or Class… both?
Nov13
Posted by agrublev in Angel Grablev
Let’s start with the basics, an ID can be used only once and a Class can be used as many times as you want. Also you can apply more than one class inside the
class="one two three”. Use id’s only when you are going for an element that is only used once (and even to be safe an element you will only use in one page). Otherwise just use a class, or multiple classes. For example a really good practice is to define the couple of colors you will apply at the begging of your css file like so.blue {color:#24faf7} .blueBG{background-color:#24faf7;}and do this for all the colors you will use, that way you don’t have to specify that same color all over the place (what if you want to change it). This is just like constants in programming, at the top of your code you declare a constant c = 10 and then if you wanna do the same calculations with a different starting value you just have to change it in one place!!!
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About me
Welcome to my Blog. My name is Angel Grablev, I am a Web Developer and i work as a software developer for UCSB. I have been professionally been developing websites for over 4 years, and I have been interested in web development since i was 7 years old.