June 2007 Archives

[UPDATE: I stand corrected. Informed commenters point out that though the source was available, MT was never technically "open source". To quote Richard Blain, "I was misinformed" -V]

It's ironic, to me at least. When I first got interested in blog software, I heard that Movable Type was the one to beat. It was written in Perl, which was my language of choice; it was open source (so you could make your own modifications); and it was by many accounts the most advanced blogging software out there (but not without argument, of course, this is the Internet).

Five minutes after I discovered it, the company announced that their 3.0 version would carry a new, commercial license. Suddenly being Perl was useless, because I could no longer modify, fork, or crib from the code. I moved on, and finally settled on Wordpress.

Now, Movable Type is once again opening its source code. Thanks to Ben and Mena for contributing this code back to the community. Ultimately, open source software is not about the software, it's about the community of users, and we users appreciate it when the companies we support share with us. Keep up the good work!

Our friends over at A List Apart have been publishing pearls of wisdom for years, and here is the proof. These articles on CSS drop shadows are actually from 2004, but the techniques are still (mostly) valid today. You can probably dispense with the extra hurdles they went through to support IE for Mac, though. Does anyone use IE on the Mac anymore?

• CSS Drop Shadows - A great technique with minimal image manipulation.
• CSS Drop Shadows II: Fuzzy Shadows - An improvement on the previous drop shadow effect.
• Onion Skinned Drop Shadows - And finally(?), the onion-skin technique for CSS drop shadows, for those with subtle and refined tastes.

• Daily del.icio.us Links Script for Wordpress
  A Perl script for posting del.icio.us links to your wordpress blog on a regular basis. I'll look at the code later to see if it is any better than the service Delicious provides.
  (tags: perl webdev blog blogging delicious wordpress)
• WP Plugin: Gregarious › Vacuous Virtuoso
  This Wordpress plugin goes the other way, making it easy for readers to submit your site to various social bookmarking services. I think there are many others like this too. Have search for yourself.
  (tags: wordpress plugin digg blog blogging)
• Apple Safari 3 Public Beta. For Windows. Huh?
  Apple has released the beta for Safari 3. The shocker: now there is a Windows version. But why? More on this later.
  (tags: safari browser apple windows webdev)
• jQuery: » jQuery Dashboard Widget
  Finally a dashboard widget I might actually use! Browse the jQuery API documentation via a fast-access Dashboard widget - even if you are offline. Nice.
  (tags: jquery javascript widget mac osx api documentation dashboard)

As a webmaster, especially if you are a solo webmaster, it's hard to keep all the moving parts of the web in your head at once, let alone the detailed syntax of every HTML attribute and configuration option. It's vital to have the right references at your fingertips to get those details fast. These are eight references every webmaster should have on their quick bookmarks list.

• HTML 4.01 Specification - Because the XHTML spec says "just like HTML 4 except..."
• XHTML 1.0 (Second Edition) - Describes the differences between HTML 4 and XHTML.
• Cascading Style Sheets, level 2 revision 1 - The CSS Specification.
• HTTP/1.1 (RFC2616) - The HTTP spec, useful as a quick reference to HTTP status codes and official headers.
• JavaScript - Mozilla Development Center - Probably the best one-stop for Javascript references, including the DOM and a collection of articles on AJAX and DHTML.
• MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual - If you are building server-side applications, chances are very good you are using MySQL, in which case you will refer to this often.
• Internet Explorer Developer Center - If you build web front-ends, you probably spend a huge chunk of your time tweaking around the differences in various browsers. Hopefully Microsoft's docs on IE can help smooth things out.
• Apache HTTP Server Documentaton - Because you need it.

If Google's free search product is not customizable enough for your needs, perhaps what you want is your own private search engine. SOLR, a Java-based search app, might be for you. SOLR has a RESTful services API, scales way up, and allows "faceted" searching and custom data schema. Definitely worth a look if you are in the market for a custom search engine.

After you have walked through the SOLR tutorial, you may want to check out these deeper articles:

• Search smarter with Apache Solr, Part 1: Essential features and the Solr schema
• Search smarter with Apache Solr, Part 2: Solr for the enterprise Part two of the article on SOLR gives the dirty details of using SOLR in the real world.

(tags: solr search lucene Java webdev)

• Web Professionals portfolio and profile - Professional On The Web A portfolio directory for web agencies and freelancers. Build your showcase of projects, add tags for searchability. Users can tag and rate them, too. Potential clients can find your profile with a simple search. (tags: webdesign Design portfolio community)
• Improving Your Process: Web Branding Style Guide This brief article is possibly one of the most brilliant I have read recently. Describes exactly why you want a style guide and what it should encompass. I can instantly see how this could have been useful in past projects. Quick read, highly recommended. (tags: webdev webdesign branding)
• Blog Law » 12 Important U.S. Laws Every Blogger Needs to Know The title says all you need to know. (tags: blogging law legal copyright)
• Keeping Jargon Where It Belongs Another useful tip on writing for the web: watch that jargon! (tags: writing usability)
• Magnetic Blogging: How to Use Metaphors to Create Irresistible Content | Copyblogger Brian Clark has written another inspirational article to help you (and me) get better at that putting-words-together thing we do. (tags: writing blogging)
• Higher-Order JavaScript by Sean M. Burke. A JavaScriptish companion to Mark-Jason Dominus's Higher-Order Perl (tags: javascript perl webdev programming)

• The B-List: Hypothetical framework choices
  Some honest, no-hype talk about web application frameworks. A loose comparison of Django, Rails, and J2EE, but contains no detail, this is a high-level discussion. Fascinating read, esp. for me as a non-Java guy.
  (tags: django python java webdev)