Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Introduction to RSS

Want more traffic? An easy way to distribute your news? Then you
need an RSS news feed. To start all you need is content you want broadcast,
and one RSS text file.

What is RSS?

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing
headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable "What's New"
for your site. Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape
to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing
content between sites (including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley
Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet, and more). RSS solves myriad
problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic, and gathering
and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution
services.

RSS Syntax

RSS defines an XML grammar (a set of HTML-like tags) for sharing
news. Each RSS text file contains both static information about
your site, plus dynamic information about your new stories, all surrounded
by matching start and end tags.

Each story is defined by an <item> tag, which contains a headline
TITLE, URL, and DESCRIPTION. Here's an example:

...
<item>
<title>RSS Resources</title>
<link>http://www.webreference.com/authoring/languages/xml/rss/</link>

<description>Defined in XML, the Rich Site Summary (RSS) format has
quietly become a dominant format for distributing headlines on the Web.
Our list of links gives you the tools, tips and tutorials you need to get
started using RSS. 0323</description>
</item>
...


Each RSS channel can contain up to 15 items and is easily parsed using Perl
or other open source software. If you want more details on creating RSS files see
Jonathan Eisenzopf's excellent article in the February issue of Web Techniques. But you don't have to worry about the details, we've made it easy to create your own RSS channel with free open source scripts, all Web based. More on these later.

Once you've created and validated your RSS text file, register it at the various aggregators, and watch the hits roll in. Any site can now grab
and display your feed regularly, driving traffic your way. Update your RSS file, and all the external sites that subscribe to your feed will be automatically updated. What can be easier? But wait, there's more.

Contents

Next: Syndication and Aggregation

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

10 reasons for web standards


Here are ten reasons to develop with web standards:



  1. The learning curve of old school methods is steeper than it is when standards are embraced.


  2. It takes less time to do more work when using standards.

  3. It is easier to re-use standards-compliant code, allowing developers to build portable libraries of tools.

  4. Standards-friendly documents can be repurposed with ease.

  5. Site maintenance is made easier with streamlined code, reducing costs and increasing time available for content.

  6. The bandwith needed for a standards-based page is significantly less. More like a toeprint than a footprint.


  7. Using web standards enhances accessibility, leading to more consumers.

  8. Developing with standards creates site longevity, due to greater compatibility with future user agents.

  9. It is much easier to create cross-browser solutions by embracing web standards.

  10. Standards-based sites are more optimized for search engines, leading to increased traffic.


Basically, web standards save time and money. They make the job of the developer easier, with increased productivity and efficiency. Best of all, using web standards can make a developer look good for a client. "It's only going to take 2 minutes to change the font of all my pages? That's really cool!"


Source: http://jessey.net

Monday, May 26, 2008

An Introduction to XHTML

An Introduction to XHTML
(Page 1 of 5 )

XHTML reformulates the existing HTML technology to be an application of XML. It is already used for mobile phone and PDA Internet sites, and expected to gain widespread use as XML becomes more popular. Dan Wellman explains the differences between XHTML and HTML 4, and shows how easy it is to make the switch.

XHTML was invented to try to clean up the mess left by trying to make HTML a full-fledged presentation tool, and to reduce the fragmentation of HTML caused by the introduction of non-standard elements, mainly by Microsoft and Netscape. Additionally, XML is viewed by many as the future of the Internet, so reformulating existing markup technology to be an application of XML is a step towards embracing that future and letting go of the long standing legacy of the past. XHTML is now the specification of choice for mobile phone and PDA Internet sites, so its cross platform functionality is already being taken advantage of in excellent ways.

XHTML and its predecessor HTML 4 are extremely similar languages to use. Anyone that has worked with HTML 4 (or XML even) will find switching to XHTML extremely easy; it is more often then not simply learning to break those bad coding habits that many of us have found so easy to slip into. Remembering the few rules that come with XHTML, and trying to avoid any deprecated tags where possible, is all it really takes.

In HTML, the mark-up surrounding your content is traditionally referred to as a tag, the <a> tag for example.  In XML and subsequently, XHTML, these tags and the text enclosed within them are known as elements. For example:

<p>This sentence, including the opening and closing tags is known as a paragraph element</p>
<p>This is a separate paragraph element</p>

Web Design Standards!!

Jakob Nielsen's
Alertbox, August 22, 1999:


Do Interface Standards Stifle Design Creativity?

No design standard can ever specify a complete user interface. Thus, by
definition,
much design work remains, even if the designer is committed
to complying with the appropriate standards
.
Often, the most important design elements are
those that cannot be specified by a standard, since the standard cannot
know the specifics of the individual domain addressed by the design.

For example, I was recently involved in the design of an e-commerce
site. The draft home page had three ways of getting to the products: search
and two navigation schemes, both of which were presented as simple lists
of choices. One navigation scheme was structured according to the way most users
think about the domain; the other scheme was structured
according to the way many of the manufacturer's own staff thought about their product
lines. Results from usability testing:

  • success rate of 80% when people used
    the navigation scheme structured according to most users'
    mental model
  • success rate of 9% when people used
    the navigation scheme structured according to the
    company's internal thinking
Conclusion: the second navigation scheme was dropped from the design, even
though this pained some of the project members. The second scheme had its
advantages for those people who used it correctly,
but it led most users into trouble, so it did more harm than
good.


I mention this result for two reasons: First, even though both navigation designs
looked identical and
followed the same interface standard in terms of appearance, layout, and
interaction techniques, their usability was drastically different. The first
design was almost nine times better than the second. This difference sums
to big dollars for an e-commerce site that will sell nothing unless
users can find the products. The difference in usability was not due to
differences in surface design but to
differences in deep
design
: finding
out how to best match a Web design to the users' needs and how to best
structure the information architecture. Thus, even when sticking to a
design standard, there was plenty to do for the site designers. A bad
designer would have used the bad navigation scheme on the home page
and never tested it.


Second, the result also shows that great usability is not guaranteed even
when following a detailed design standard to the letter. A
standard
ensures that your users can understand the individual interface
elements
in your
design and that they know where to look for what features. It does not
ensure that users will know how to combine the interface features or that the
system will have the features users needs.


Eric Davis, an
Information Architect with Resource Marketing, recently reported on
a usability test of shopping cart terminology.
The draft design featured the term "Shopping Sled" since
the site (selling winter sports products) had a desire to stand out
and avoid standard terminology. Result: "50% of users did not understand
The Sled concept. The other 50% said that
they figured out what it meant because it was in the same location as a cart
would be. They knew that you had to add to something, and the only
something that made any kind of sense was the Sled." Lesson: Do not try to be
smart and use new terms when we have good words available that users already
know.


Of course, there is no guarantee that a site that uses the term "shopping
cart" will have a shopping interface that is easy to use. All that is
ensured is that users will
understand the term when they see it
used
as a link around the site.
But that's a usability benefit well worth taking.



Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience: Users spend most
of their time on other sites.
Thus, anything that is a
convention and used on the majority of other sites will be burned into
the users' brains and you can only deviate from it on pain of major
usability problems.


Since the dawn of time (1984), we have known that consistency is one of the
strongest contributors to usability. The Macintosh was based on a detailed
book of Apple Human Interface Guidelines that were followed by almost all
applications. One of the main benefits of the Mac (and later Windows) over
earlier systems was the resulting consistency that made it possible for users
to use software right out of the box. For example, people knew that you
could move stuff around by a sequence of (1) select-object, (2) Cut-command,
(3) scroll-to-new-location, (4) click-on-insertion-spot, (5) Paste-command. Always the
same sequence. And the Cut and Paste commands were always in the Edit menu
and were always abbreviated Command-X and Command-V. No real reason people
should associate the letter V with insertion or pasting, but since it was
always the same, it worked.



Despite the strong consistency in all Mac software do you think Excel
looks like MacWrite? Or that there was no design creativity involved in
making
MORE (a popular outliner)?
It's clearly not the case that all GUI software is the same even though
most software has pretty strong compliance with the platform
design standards these days.



Similarly for the Web: following design standards simply ensures that users
know what you are talking about. It's like using standard English words rather than
your own vocabulary when writing. You are still the one who decides what
story to tell and how to put the design elements together.

Rules for Design Standards



To be successful, an interface design standard must:

  • be well-illustrated with examples since designers go
    by the examples much more than body text
  • make sure that the examples fully comply with the standard in

    all aspects and not just the one they are intended to illustrate
    (designers may pick up more than one hint from a given example)
  • have extensive and comprehensive checklists as much
    as possible (designers prefer to scan down a list instead of having to
    read text) - for example, a list of all elements that must be on every page
    or a list of preferred terminology
  • have a standards expert available both to review new designs in a formal
    standards inspections and for more informal consultations
    whenever designers are in doubt about the correct interpretation of the
    standard (if there is no easy place to turn with questions, then each
    designer will make up his or her own answer - guaranteed to be different
    in each case)
  • be supported by an active evangelism program. It is
    not enough to wait to be consulted: you must actively seek out projects
    and visit them to tell them about the standard and to (gently) comment on
    their designs and how to correct the inevitable deviations
  • be a living document under the control of a standards
    manager who updates the standard as new issues emerge

  • either comply with the most popular other design
    standards
    or contain explicit statements highlighting the
    differences to these other standards
  • be supported by development tools and templates that make it
    easier to comply with the standard than to implement
    a non-standard design
  • have a good index (if printed) or a good search supplemented with
    hypertext links to related rules (if online)

Evangelism outreach is especially important for intranet
standards
since every department will have an inclination to
ignore mandates from headquarters. They usually do so with the
excuse that
"we are different and the folks at HQ don't know our
situation."
True, but everybody is special

so the total system will be utter chaos if people are allowed to
diverge because of special circumstances. Usually, the greater good
is indeed greater, and overall usability is increased by consistency.
There can be a few cases where circumstances are so special that
an inconsistency should be tolerated, but deviations must be limited
to cases with a very, very good reason (most good reasons are not good
enough).


Finally, realize that a standard has its own usability concerns. This is
true whether the standard is implemented as an interactive website
with hypertext links or whether it is a traditional printed document.
Therefore
a
proposed design standard should be tested with designers
to ensure that they
can use it.


Friday, May 16, 2008

HTML Tutorial

If you are looking for a good starting point for learning HTML I can suggest you W3School web site. It is a good refrence for HTML.
You can find there this Sections:


HTML Tutorial
In this HTML tutorial you will learn how to use HTML to create your own Web site.
HTML is very easy to learn!
You will enjoy it!
Start learning HTML now!


HTML Examples
Learn by 100 examples! With our editor, you can edit HTML, and click on a test button to view the result.
Try-It-Yourself!


HTML Quiz Test
Test your HTML skills at W3Schools!
Start HTML Quiz!


HTML References
At W3Schools you will find complete HTML references about tags, attributes, colors, entities, and more.
HTML 4.01 References


HTML Exam - Get Your Diploma!

Get Your Diploma!
W3Schools' Online Certification Program is the perfect solution for busy professionals who need to balance work, family, and career building.
The
HTML Certificate is for developers who want to document their knowledge of HTML, XHTML, and CSS.
The
ASP Certificate is for developers who want to document their knowledge of ASP, SQL, and ADO.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

20 Great Tips to get Banned from Google Adsense

Here is the ultimative guide on how you can get banned from the Google Adsense publisher program. Most of them will get you banned within a few days or maybe hours. Read the whole post, because tip number 20 is the most important one.
1 ) When you wake up, turn your pc on, open your website in the browser and start clicking on your own ads. The more ads you click, the better.
2 ) Write posts with a really big title where you ask your visitors to click on your Ads.
3 ) Make a video where you ask your visitors to click them.
4 ) If an
Adsense block does not fit in your template, just modify the code.
5 ) Send out thousands of
spam emails where you are asking to visit your website and to click on the ads
6 ) Hire some University students and tell them to click on your ads
7 ) Write a big post where you tell people about your
Click Through Rate, your earnings per click and your impressions.8 ) Partecipate in a click-ring (a group of people that click each others ads)
9 ) Use click-bots that will click automatically on your ads
10 ) Pay some Indian or Chinese clickers. There are really some people whose work is it to click on
Adsense ads the whole day
11 ) Put a big “CLICK HERE” over your ads
12 ) Fill pages with ads and search boxes. You don’t need content, only ads.
13 ) Use pop-ups on your website
14 ) Register many different Adsense accounts and place ads from each account on the same page
15 ) Ignore emails you receive from Google Adsense
16 ) Put Adsense on pages with prohibited content (Warez, porn…)
17 ) Write Adsense support an email and tell them that you are cheating
18 ) Blend Adsense with ad relevant images
19 ) Display adsense on registration and “thank you” pages
20 ) Don’t follow any of the tips above or you will get banned for real . Immagine a “DO NOT” before each point.

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Adobe DreamWeaver



Adobe Dreamweaver is a web development application originally created by Macromedia and now owned by Adobe Systems, which acquired Macromedia in 2005.
Dreamweaver is available for both
Mac and Windows operating systems. Recent versions have incorporated support for web technologies such as CSS, JavaScript, and various server-side scripting languages and frameworks including ASP.NET, ColdFusion, JavaServer Pages, and PHP.


Features
As a
WYSIWYG Presto-based editor, Dreamweaver can hide the details of pages' HTML code from the user, making it possible for non-coders to create web pages and sites. A professional criticism of this approach is that it produces HTML pages whose file size and amount of HTML code is much larger than they should be, which can cause web browsers to perform poorly. This can be particularly true because the application makes it very easy to create table-based layouts. In addition, some web site developers have criticized Dreamweaver in the past for producing code that often does not comply with W3C standards, though this has improved considerably in recent versions. Dreamweaver 8.0 (the version prior to the recently released 9.0 within CS3) performed poorly on the Acid2 Test, developed by the Web Standards Project. However, Macromedia has increased the support for CSS and other ways to lay out a page without tables in later versions of the application, with the ability to convert tables to layers and vice versa. Dreamweaver allows users to preview websites in many browsers, provided that they are installed on their computer. It also has some site management tools, such as the ability to find and replace lines of text or code by whatever parameters specified across the entire site, and a templatization feature for creating multiple pages with similar structures. The behaviors panel also enables use of basic JavaScript without any coding knowledge.
Dreamweaver can use "Extensions" - small programs, which any web developer can write (usually in
HTML and JavaScript). Extensions provide added functionality to the software for whoever wants to download and install them. Dreamweaver is supported by a large community of extension developers who make extensions available (both commercial and free) for most web development tasks from simple rollover effects to full-featured shopping carts.
Like
other HTML editors, Dreamweaver edits files locally, then uploads all edited files to the remote web server using FTP, SFTP, or WebDAV.

Syntax highlighting
As of version 6, Dreamweaver supports
syntax highlighting for the following languages out of the box:
ActionScript
Active Server Pages (ASP)
ASP.NET
C#
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
ColdFusion
EDML
Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML)
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT)
Java
JavaScript
JavaServer Pages (JSP)
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)
Visual Basic (VB)
Visual Basic Script Edition (VBScript)
Wireless Markup Language (WML)
It is also possible to add your own language syntax highlighting to its repertoire.
In addition,
code completion is available for many of these languages.

Version history
Dreamweaver 1.0 (Released December
1997)
Dreamweaver 1.2 (Followed in March
1998)
Dreamweaver 2.0 (Released December
1998)
Dreamweaver 3.0 (Released December
1999)
Dreamweaver UltraDev 1.0 (Released June
2000)
Dreamweaver 4.0 (Released December
2000)
Dreamweaver UltraDev 4.0 (Released December
2000)
Dreamweaver MX (Released
May 29, 2002. Version 6.0)
Dreamweaver MX 2004 (Released
September 10, 2003. Version 7.0)
Dreamweaver 8 (Released
September 13, 2005)
Dreamweaver
CS3 (Released April 16, 2007. Version 9.0)

Internationalization and localization

Language Availability
Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 is available in the following languages: Arabic (Middle Eastern version), Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Hebrew (Middle Eastern version), Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish.
Adobe Dreamweaver Middle Eastern language versions available from WinSoft
[1].

Specific Features for Arabic and Hebrew languages
Dreamweaver Middle Eastern versions allow typing Arabic or Hebrew text (written from right to left) within the code view. Whether the text is fully Middle Eastern (written from right to left) or includes both English and Middle Eastern text (written left to right and right to left), it will be displayed properly in the browser.The Middle Eastern versions are also available for
Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, Adobe InCopy and for Adobe Creative Suite (Design Standard, Design Premium, Web Premium).

You can see some good tutorial in this web site: http://www.entheosweb.com/dreamweaver/default.asp

Dreamweaver TipsTips on tables, forms, CSS Styles, behaviors more.
Dreamweaver Behaviors Use the Dreamweaver behaviors panel to add interactivity to your site.
Jump Menus Use jump menus to create a drop-down menu with links.
LayersWhat are layers? Learn how to create them.
Dreamweaver Web Photo AlbumLearn how to create a picture gallery in Dreamweaver.
Using Templates in DreamweaverLearn how to create a template in Dreamweaver.
Making your site Live! Learn how to upload your files to a remote server and make your site live.
Flash Text RolloverHow to insert flash text rollover in Dreamweaver?
CSS Text RolloversLearn how to create CSS text rollovers.
Anchors and MailtoWhat are anchors? How to create mailto links? Click here.
Define a Site in Dreamweaver How to create a site in Dreamweaver
Pop-Up WindowsLearn how to create small pop-up windows for ads or news!
Play SoundPlay sound, music on Rollover, on Click or on Page Load.
Show Hide Layers Learn how to hide and view layers.
Dreamweaver Image MapsLearn how to link to different pages from the same image.
Server Side IncludesLearn about server side includes and how do you use them.
Dreamweaver Form TipsTips on customizing input boxes, list menus, submit buttons.
CSS Styles Tutorial Learn about CSS Styles and cool tips on tricks!
Links without the UnderlineLearn how to create links without an underline using CSS styles.