Tom Doyle :: TALK

According to Market Share, the release of Firefox 3 has helped the much loved browser break over the 19% market share barrier. They reckon the release grew its worldwide use by as much as 4%, mostly at the expense of poor old Internet Explorer.

Apparently over the same period, Apple’s Safari browser has seen its market share rise to over 6%.

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Adobe released a press release today, stating that they are teaming up with search industry leaders, namely Google & Yahoo! to “improve search results of dynamic web content”.

Adobe have given Google & Yahoo! access to the Adobe Flash technology to allow them to improve their ability to index flash files/websites.

So what does this mean for us, the search engine optimisers and web developers? Well at the moment, very little it seems. We’ve all known for quite sometime that Google has been able to follow links and index some content from within a flash flash file. At the moment, all this does is give Google and Yahoo! insider information on how they can get to information, previously unavailable from within the flash file.

Will it make a difference? Will flash websites now have a better change of being indexed? In my opinion, I don’t think this will ever happen. Flash just doesn’t offer the flexibility that plain text based HTML does. You’ve a lot more scope within plain HTML than Flash to optimise your website.

It’s an interesting development, but not one I see making a huge difference for a long time.

We’ve been working on a project for a couple of months now, it’s a pretty standard website with the only major piece of coding being the used car search.

The client was already a signed up member of CarZone and really had no need to ditch them because the system worked quite well for them. However, what they did want to do was integrate the search more into their website so that they make it easier to use and get more content on their website.

On approaching CarZone, they gave two ridiculous integration options that in my mind are beyond belief.

Option 1 was to template a hosted solution on CarZones server. This wasn’t a goer for us because the site also had a Content Management System. So if anything changed, like the navigation or special offer etc. we would have to provide them with a new template each time. Obviously this didn’t make sense at all for the client.

Option 2 was for the results to be provided in an iFrame. Of course in my opinion, the further away from iFrames the better. We all know about the compatibility issues surrounding them, never mind the the fact that they can be quite restrictive in terms of layout etc.

After much consultation with CarZone, I was left feeling quite disappointed and badly treated when I tried to find other integration options. They refused to take simple suggestions on board that could have made this an easy integration for both parties. Even waving money in their face didn’t make a difference!

I was told, even after insisting it wasn’t, that the iFrame was an adequate solution. I’m sorry, but from a professional developers point of view anything to do with iFrames is not a solution. Maybe it is for beginners - but certainly not for pro’s who can do other things in a similar timeframe, yet have a much better solution in the end.

What’s really sad is that in this day and age, with all the hype about Web 2.0, one of Ireland’s leading websites can’t make the simple transition to providing basic xml feeds for their clients.

Come on CarZone, be a bit more creative instead of just sitting back and taking your clients money! Start providing a value add!

Another handy little tool for all your developers. IETester is a nicely presented tool for checking how your website(s) look in legacy IE browsers and of course the latest IE 8 beta!

Download and more information here:
http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage

Due to its continued growth, 2bscene are currently seeking a PHP developer to work with us!

If you are interested in this position, please email your CV and examples of your work to info@2bscene.ie

I read an interesting article today that was brought to my attention through the Enterprise Ireland mailing list forum. The full article can be read here >>

Sadly, I have to say it comes as no surprise to me that SME’s have lost their faith in web designers. Let’s face it, for years, especially in the late 1990s, web designers were “creaming it” so to speak. A simple brochure website set you back over £15,000.

Nowadays, it’s just not the same. A similar website would set you back on average €2-3k. You can get cheaper than this of course, but it’s like everything else, you get what you pay for.

One of the differences nowadays is that there seems to be a lot more students / part timers / graphic designers doing websites. And the way I feel about that is, if you want to get a cheap and nasty website, go one of those. But if you want to get something back from your website… talk to professionals!

I’ve just installed Internet Explorer Beta 8 and I’m a little disappointed to say the least.

Although it runs a lot quicker than previous versions, namely IE7, it has actually “broke” a number of websites.

So here’s my list of sites so far that IE8 has borked in their attempt to compare more standards compliant.

This site at least…. and ….
www.revenue.ie
www.recruitireland.com
www.argusrentals.com
www.eircom.net
www.rte.ie
www.goldenpages.ie
www.irishjobs.ie
www.paddypower.ie
www.2bscene.ie (My god, I know IE7 broke a lot of sites, but not this bad!)
www.blacknight.ie
www.redflymarketing.com
www.carshowonvid.ie

From my little research this morning, the only sites I see that are not falling foul to th new IE8 are those that are basic in design or those that are legacy HTML websites, i.e. non standards compliant (don’t take that out of context! There are standards compliant websites without any issues, but they tend to be prety basic in design).

I’m hoping that the actual release will have addressed all these issues.

As expected, FireFox does nto have any of these issues… why can’t Microsoft follow their lead?

A lot of new users of WordPress will end up downloading ready made themes for WordPress to make it look a little bit different from the rest. One theme in particular has been going around for some time and is quite popular for a lot of WordPress users. The theme is called Blix

Since the release of WordPress 2.1, unfortunately the top navigation stopped working with WordPress. This meant that when you created a page from within the WordPress control panel, it wouldn’t appear on the top navigation. This in some cases rendered the skin useless.

So for all of you that would like their latest WordPress install to work with the Blix theme, here’s what you need to do:

1. Go to /wp-content/themes/blix

2. Open BX_functions.php

3. Look for:

function BX_get_pages($with_content = '')"
{
   global $wpdb;
   $query = "SELECT ID, post_title, post_name FROM " . $wpdb->posts . " WHERE post_status='static' ORDER BY menu_order ASC";
   if ($with_content == "with_content") {
      $query = "SELECT ID, post_title,post_name, post_content FROM " . $wpdb->posts . " WHERE post_status='static' ORDER BY menu_order ASC";
   }
   return $wpdb->get_results($query);
}


4. Change WHERE post_status=’static’ to WHERE post_type=’page’ - There are two instances of this, so make sure you change it in both places.

And voila… Your lovely Blix themed blog now works with your navigation too!

As managing director of 2bscene Web Design company, this is one of the questions I get on a regular basis that makes me cringe! You nearly always know that the person asking this questions hasn’t a notion of the work involved in recreating a site of this magnitude. Yes I admit, you can quite easily go to sites like Elance.com or Rentacoder.com and get a freelancer to do a poor representation of what Bebo might actually function like for a few thousand dollars, but you certainly won’t ever get a “Bebo.com”.

There are a few key points to remember when looking for a site like Bebo:

1. Be Specific
   If you want a site similar to Bebo, don’t say it like that. Bebo is a huge site, with huge architecture behind it. If you want a “dumbed down” version of bebo, your time is better spent creating a spec doc and use anologies when referring to similarities between Bebo and the site you require.
2. Don’t Underestimate the Work
   A site like Bebo would take months to develop, it’s not a small job.
3. Price Comparison
   One thing people always question is price. “Oh I can get my nephew, little johnny, who has an iPod to do this for much cheaper”, you probably can and little Johnny I’ve no doubt is great. But if you approach my company, you have approached a professional company that has offices, staff and overheads. The bills have to be paid, so yes we are going to charge the going rate and be more expensive than any college student, family member or developing countries web developers.

We love working on projects like this, but the client needs to be serious about the project too. There is not only a lot of work for us on a project like this, but also the client. The client will have just as much work to do in terms of making sure it is functioning exactly as you have envisaged.

I just noticed that MyHome.ie have redesigned their website. I wasn’t a huge fan of their original site, I always felt it was hard to find things easily, but this one is worse.

I really don’t know what they were thinking this time. www.myhome.ie

EDIT: Wow, it turns out the people responsible for the new MyHome website are in fact the great Webfactory. I would have really expected a lot more from these guys. But then again maybe it was complete direction from MyHome themselves.