NetOffice Revitalised

Some time ago, I had some plans for a revitalised version of NetOffice that got shelved due to staff shortages.

Well, we're almost back to where we need to be and I've dusted off the folder ready to get back into it!

Will probably take a few weeks to get back up to speed. Will post again when we have something to show.

Top 8 Firefox Plugins

Just moved to a new computer, and it's time to reinstall everything again!

Thought it might be a good time to list my favourite Firefox plugins so I can find them again...

1. Web Developer
   


2. ColorZilla


3. MeasureIt


4. Timestamp Converter


5. Clear Cache Button


6. View Source Chart


7. del.icio.us


8. ShowIP

Have I missed any good ones? I think that's about it...

UPDATE

The del.icio.us plugin listed above is a new one that behaves a little differently. Actually, it hijacks your normal bookmarks toolbar! Here's the original (better) one.

How to Lose a Customer for $12

It's been a few months since I hired a movie from my local Video Ezy store. We've been collecting the Stargate SG-1 series on DVD and have been chipping away at those. Up to season 8 now, so we're nearly done. I'll be hiring a few movies once we're done as I've got a bit of catching up to do!

But I won't be going back to Video Ezy.

You see, I had a couple of late returns. Nothing major - 2 movies that were returned a day late. One day late.

Didn't think too much of it until I received a threatening letter from Video Ezy. Followed by a letter of demand from this mob called Entertainment Recoveries.

Now get this - it's all over $12.

If new release movies are $6 each, in the month after we finish with our Stargates we would probably have spent $48 with them. That's 4 times the amount of the late fees, in 1 month.

Now, for the sake of $12, I'll never go back.

What business would permanently distance a customer over $12?

Think of it this way. Even if I only hire 2 movies per month (which is pretty conservative) that's $156 in a year, or 13 times the amount of the late fee. Pretty good chance of hiring more than 2 movies a month, mind you.

I don't understand the marketing logic behind this. Sure, if I hadn't actually returned the movies I can understand the legal threats.

(And to top it off, I now have a $15 "Administrative Charge" as well. Give me a break!)

And I love this bit too - notice at the top of the excerpt above? I have a "Member Number"! I'm a member of Entertainment Recoveries now?

Top 10 Geek Business Myths

Ron Garret has posted are rather clever article, The Top 10 Geek Business Myths.

Although I don't think it's just limited to Geeks. I have people come in from time to time wanting a quote on a website that, in their eyes, will be the next big thing. Some are extremely reluctant to tell me about their idea "in case I steal it"! (How can I possibly do up a propsal for them if they won't tell me what they're wanting to do???)

And I look through this list and they are making all the same assumptions that are listed here.

Think I'm going to hang onto this link and print it off for the next one that comes in!

Top 5 Command Prompt Tips

Typing commands instead of mouse-clicking... sound a bit old-fashioned? It's true, once upon a time all computing was done this way. It may not be pretty, but the command line can still be pretty handy. Here's a few commands I use:

1. PING
   If you need to check your connection to something, this is the basic check. You can either ping a name or an IP address.
   ping www.sitename.com
   or
   ping 127.0.0.1
   are both valid. If you ping a name, you can also see what IP address that name resolves to.


2. TRACERT
   This will trace the route to another computer. Again, you can use a name or an IP address.
   tracert www.sitename.com


3. SHUTDOWN
   This one will shut the computer down. (Pretty obvious, hey!) Really handy to put at the end of a batch file that does a backup or something similar. Heaps of switches, so type shutdown /? to display all the options available.


4. IPCONFIG 
   Displays the IP address of your computer, plus the address of your gateway (eg your ADSL modem or the computer that's actually connected to the internet).


5. XCOPY
   Great for quick and easy batch backups. Check xcopy /? for all options available.

That's 5 that I use a fair bit - got any others?

If you're really bored, here's Microsoft's A-Z Reference.

21 Tips For Better Google Rankings

SEO Egghead has put together a bit of a summary of Matt Cutts' advice over the last year or so.

He's called it "Mattcuttsarama"... Dunno about that title(!) but the post itself makes pretty valuable reading.

301 Redirects

There are thousands of these posts out there already - I'm putting this here for my benefit more than anything else. Saves me from having to Google when I need to check how it should be done!

So - if you move a page and want it to be followed by a search engine (and keep it's pagerank etc), open up your htaccess file and enter (all on one line):

redirect 301 /olddir/oldpage.html http://www.newsite.com.au/newdir/newpage.html

Or if you're shifting a whole directory (again, all on one line):

redirect 301 /olddir/ http://www.newsite.com.au/newdir/

The 301 code says "moved permanently", so don't use it for temporary redirections. Obviously this htaccess stuff is for linux servers, if you're on Windows then there's a different way... But you'll have to find that somewhere else!

Quick Links for 21 September

A few unrelated things from around the web...

• 5 simple ways to open your blog post with a bang (might try using some of these suggestions one day!)


• MS Office 2007 technical refresh available. Worth grabbing of you're using Office 2007 Beta 2.


• Portable, accessible form styling from A List Apart. I really like this one. Forms can be a pain in the proverbial!

Email Plugin for Wordpress

Thanks to Jamie for sending me this fantastic plugin: Subscribe2.

Basically, visitors to your blog can add their email address, and this little plugin will automagically email them whenever you add a new post!

You can customise the message and a few other details. Simple to install and set up - and you can see it working by clicking the Subscribe link in the sidebar. (Or here if you're too lazy to look over there for it!)

Upgrading from Outlook 2003 to Outlook 2007 Beta

Took the plunge and upgraded my Outlook 2003 installation to Outlook 2007 last night. It had seemed to work fine for others in the office, but after my upgrade I couldn't open it at all. Kept hanging. Then wanting to open in Safe Mode. Then wanting to run Detect and Repair. But nothing seemed to fix it.

Until...

From Start -> Run, type outlook /profiles and click OK. Then create a new profile name, and make it the default profile (by clicking the Options button). Then you can go about attaching your old PST files and setting up your email accounts.

Seems that there are some instances where there is something in the old profile that new new version doesn't like.

Initial thoughts are pretty impressive. They have done some really good things with Outlook this time around. Calendar treatment is really nice. The To-Do Bar at the right of the screen is very handy.

So far, a big thumbs-up!

Visual jQuery

Not sure how long this has been online, but here's a very handy visual reference for jQuery. This is a really cool way to present online documentation - not much reading required - just gets you straight to the bits you need.

Time to Get Cracking With IE7

Microsoft have released a pretty comprehensive list of changes implemented for IE7, as well as IE7 Release Candidate 1.

With IE7 being pushed to XP users with auto updates turned on in the 4th quarter of this year, the pressure is now firmly on to get everything behaving.

We've got a few issues we're aware of, just need to make the time now to get them all sorted!

AHAH! It's jQuery!

This was going to be a post about my first stab at AJAX. But, as technically it's AHAH, I thought I'd use the lame title above...

This snippet uses jQuery - an excellent little piece of Javascript that makes this sort of trickery relatively simple.

Firstly, have a look at the basic syntax here: jquery.com/docs/ajax

A couple of things that I stumbled on:

1. Content loaded via the .load call doesn't have any event handlers attached, so in the Callback function you need to use .find() to look for any elements you want to assign events to.


2. Getting the ID of the element clicked ended up being pretty simple: this.id


3. Getting the value of a form field involves a simple walk around the DOM - as the form isn't actually "Submitted" - use document.GetElementById("fieldID").value

Then you should end up with something more-or-less like this:

Don't Be Content Without Content

Excellent post over at Blue Flavour bringing attention to the amount of time we spend on content for websites we're developing.

We've all had trouble getting content from clients, but really, what are we doing to help them prepare it? Do we just say, "It's your problem, sort it out" or do we direct clients to good resources to help them get it together?

Some excellent comments on this post too, including a reference to providing clients with a content brief.

Food for thought...

Password Issues with PHP4 and MySQL

I have struck this a couple of times now so thought I'd put a reference here, if not for anyone else then at least for me!

Recent versions of MySQL 4 use passwords that are not compatible with PHP4. If you have received an error like this, you'll know what I'm talking about...

Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

To fix it, log into MySQL via the command line and use OLD_PASSWORD to change it so that's it's compatible.

• Creating a new user via the command line


• Changing the password so it's compatible with PHP4

How to Write a Blog Post that Gets Lots of Links

White something like this!

But seriously, the tips on headline writing in this article are red hot. Like any good advice, it makes perfect sense after you have read it. It just takes someone to actually point it out!

Now I just need to come up with a good subject for a "How To" article...

A New Basecamp Clone

Just stumbled across this courtesy of one of Sitepoint's newsletters - a Basecamp clone called activeCollab is being developed.

Still in alpha, but at least it's open source and downloadable. For many, that's a far more attractive proposition than paying for Basecamp on a monthly basis.

And if it's anything like Basecamp it's really simple to use.

Might have to check this one out...

Some Priorities Have Changed

Been a couple of weeks since I posted here.

1. Went on holdays to Perisher! Fortunately, I did not break any bones!


2. Jamie (our programmer) packed his bags and moved to Brisbane. I knew that was coming - but was hoping it would be later rather than sooner.

So after being away for a bit over a week and then coming back to be a man down, things have been somewhat busy. And given the serious skills shortage we have here at the moment, it will probably stay that way for the short term at least.

So basically - my plans to work on NetOffice have to be shelved for the time being. Once things settle down I may be able to pick this up again, but I expect that will take some time.

Thanks to all who have commented and offered assistance, and especially to Kemie who emailed me a couple of designs. I hope to get back to this one day, but in the meantime it might be best if you check out the Dwins version which seems to be fairly active.

Things Are Getting Serious

Things must be getting serious - I have just set up a forum! :)

And you thought this was going to be a serious post...

It's at http://forum.rockyshark.com - empty at the moment but if you want to have any say on the direction of "NetOffice Light" then post away. Not totally sold on than name yet mind you, but Kemie has been good enough to start working on the new look, and that's the name used thus far.

[Edit 8 July: Forum has been taken offline for the time being...]

I Need A Name

What are we going to call this NetOffice fork? Another fork has been called NetOffice Dwins, so I'm thinking NetOffice Waterfall might be the go.

Or maybe NetOffice Light?

Dunno. Anyone got any other ideas?

RSS Feeds for NetOffice, Client Site Idea

I've managed to get an RSS feed working for task updates! Just need to tidy up the code and implement some security and I'll be able to add that in. With the hard work done we can also add feeds for other events/updates as well.

Thanks to all who commented on my previous post about what the future holds for this project. I'm starting to think about the 'client site'. It's not used by any of my clients in it's current form, but I think it might be useful to have the following:

1. Somewhere to upload comps or design ideas, and have the client log in and comment (or even vote) on design alternatives


2. Somewhere to upload documentation that everyone needs to access, in a very similar way to Basecamp

I have received a few offers of help which is much appeciated. I'll be contacting those people over the next week and we'll see if we can get something under way.

Stay tuned!!!

Cheat Sheet Collection

This is a great little resource - Pete Freitag has put together links for a bunch for cheat sheets. And lets face it - these things always come in handy.

Time to start downloading and printing! ;)

V7ndotcom Elursrebmem

V7n are running a search engine optimisation contest, where you have to get top ranking for the term V7ndotcom Elursrebmem in Google on the 15th of May 2006.

This is a pretty feeble attempt to rank well for V7ndotcom Elursrebmem - I'm not chasing any incoming links or anything else like that. I'm basically putting this page up out of curiosity to see where I end up.

Oh, to comply with their rules I need to do this:

• We support v7n.com

"Something is Happening" Icons

Here are some assorted "Something is happening here" icons to use when you're busy AJAXing.

Some are quite familiar... it seems that these sort if icons are all trend-driven too!

RIP WE, Hello WD

Web Essentials have held conferences in Sydney for the last 2 years - but sadly 2005 was the last.

Fear not! Web Directions is on in late September - and is the child of 2 of those responsible for Web Essentials - Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp. No particular details released as yet, but hopefully it will live up to it's predecessor - and I have every reason to believe it will.

They also have a few workshops planned for around the same time, so I'm hoping we'll have enough notice this time. Last year I had already booked and arranged everything before the Veen workshop was announced. That would have been pretty good, I expect.

A New NetOffice?

There has been no activity on Netoffice for some time now. I contacted the current admins about taking it over some time ago but received no reply. So I'm thinking it might be about time to fork and start doing my own thing with it. I have a couple of thoughts:

1. I'd like to redo the header/footer and remove all presentational HTML so the look can be customised easier with CSS


2. Delete the 'Client Site' facility. None of my clients actually use it - it just gets in the way


3. Delete the 'Support Requests' for the same reason


4. Streamline the workflow - make it simpler to update a task and log time in the one step


5. Add project & task templates - make creating a new project simpler


6. Improve Milestone handling


7. Improve some of the reports


8. Add RSS feeds for project/task updates

Yep... that's a bit of work. I know these posts are being read... Are there any other thoughts out there?

It's April Fool's Day...

A classic piece appeared on Sitepoint today.

Jason Gried? 37 Singles? Beautiful!

Fuji Digital Camera - No Fault Found?

Purchased this FujiFilm FinePix S3000 probably 18 months ago now (maybe a bit more). Initially, it was great. The second Fuji digital camera we have purchased.

But then after about 9 months it started chewing through batteries. I'd put a fresh set in on Friday for the weekend, take maybe a dozen photos over the weekend, and then go to use it again early the following week and they'd be dead!

We have about 4 sets of NiMH batteries that we cycle through 2 cameras and a few other things, and the batteries last fine in everything else so it's safe to say it's not the batteries.

Took the thing back to Harvey Norman (where I purchased it) and they sent it back to Fuji under warranty.

About 3 weeks later, it came back with the message "no fault found".

Apparently you're not supposed to leave your batteries in this thing over the weekend? Which means that when you do want to take a photo, you have to put the batteries in, reset the date and time, and adjust all your settings again as it defaults to 1 megapixel when you take the batteries out!

Is this normal? I don't think so!

So what can I say about this camera? When you first put the batteries in it's great. Good lens, nice quality photos, easy to use.

What can I say about Fuji's after sales service? Well, pretty lame. If they think that this camera's behaviour is "normal" - that there's nothing wrong with it - well...

It's pretty safe to say I won't every buy a Fuji digital camera again, that's for sure!

7 Essential Title Tag Strategies

The latest Market Position newsletter has a nice summery about good use of the Title tag. Main points covered:

1. The length of your title


2. Word proximity


3. Keyword location


4. Word order


5. Repitition of words


6. Titles for human consumption


7. What words to use

The author contradicts himself a little - in point 3 he suggests better results from placing your keywords at the beginning of the title and then in point 6 reminds us that the Title tag is important for human consumption too. Ever looked though your browser's History and tried to find a site you were at yesterday and they have used keywords (or something else just as unpredictable) at the start of the title tag?

Like everything else, a balance is required.

Simple Problem Solving

Found this little gem in a post at Signal V Noise - a simple, step-by-step guide to problem solving:

1. write down the problem


2. write down why it’s hard to solve


3. write down what would make it easier


4. write down possible ways to implement things that would make it easier


5. write down why those ways suck


6. then make it not suck

Beautiful!

Crazy Egg - Another Web 2.0 Stats Pack

These things seem to be coming out of the woodwork - Crazy Egg is another invitation-only Web 2.0 stats pack.

Although it does look like it's got an extra nice feature missing from others - a heat map showing where visitors are clicking. Nice touch.

Well, I've signed up for an invite. Will take it for a test drive when I can get an account set up!

(Via TechCrunch)

Tags: crazy egg | web 2.0 | statistics | Stats

The Yellow Fade Technique (YFT)

Some time ago 37 Signals pioneered what they call the Yellow Fade Technique, or YFT. You might have seen it on Basecamp or Backpack.

Jamie asked me the other day if I knew how it was done. I had seen a tutorial for it before, but hadn't bookmarked or blogged it! So after a few minutes of Googling a found a couple of possible how-tos:

• The Yellow Fade Technique, Revisisted. I don't know how or why this is better than the original. But it's revisited, so it must be, I guess!


• The Fade Anything Technique


• And the find of the afternoon - script.aculo.us - this site has lots of goodies. Shall have to poke around here some more!

However, none of these were the original tutorial that I was looking for... :/

Tags: yellow fade technique | 37 signals | web 2.0 | javascript

Formatting for task descriptions

Thanks to Sawan for this suggestion - don't know why nobody thought of this earlier

Anyway, have just finished integrating TinyMCE with task descriptions in NetOffice. So now you can add lists, include hyperlinks, stikeout previous instructions etc etc!

A couple of things have been changed:

1. Obviously, TinyMCE files need to be copied into your NetOffice installation.


2. We have added a file called tinymce.php to the /includes/ directory. It only contains Javascript, but we've used a PHP include so we can pass variables to it later if we like. That will mean we can enable or disable certain buttons dynamically depending on other page variables.


3. This file is called in the head of the page, so /themes/deepblue/header.php has been adjusted accordingly. If you're using another theme, change your header.php to include /includes/tinymce.php.


4. Then obviously /tasks/edittask.php has been adjusted - basically just giving the textareas id attributes so TinyMCE can find them. There is also a little bit of code at the top of that file that calls a function to convert < and > to their HTML entities, which we don't want any more! So that's just been commented out for now.

That all might sound scary, but if you're using the standard Deep Blue theme that comes with NetOffice 2.6, all you need to do is unzip the following file into your NetOffice directory. I've even included TinyMCE so it should be pretty straight forward.

• Download ZIP file - 1.53 Mb

This is only tested with NetOffice 2.6 - I have no idea what will happen on earlier versions.

Also... just in case, make sure you back up your NetOffice installation so you can roll back if needed...

Quickies for a Friday Arvo

Just a few quick links from around the traps today:

• 37 Signals have released Campfire - a group chat IM thingy. I quite like a lot of their stuff, but have no need for this one at all. I expect there are those that do, but I'm not one of them! I'll just stick with MSN Messenger.


• Scripto - it's Flash without Flash! Animations in HTML and CSS driven by Javascript. Will have to check this one out.


• And while we're on the subject of Flash, FlashObject lets you use Javascript to detect for the flash plugin and then embed the object. That should overcome those pesky validation issues with embedding Flash too.

Tags: campfire | 37 signals | scriptio | flash

Dropdowns for Google Search?

Heard a rumour tonight that Google are testing dropdown boxes for their search page. So instead of seeing different tabs for web, images etc, we might soon see just one search page with a dropdown box containing these options!

Can't find anything on Matt Cutts' blog or the Googleblog... so we'll see what happens there...

Technorati: google | dropdown | predictions

Google Acquires Measure Map

I was fortunate enough to be invited to join Measure Map some time ago - a great little blog statistics tool. Well, just found out that Adaptive Path (the developers) have sold it to Google.

Way to go Adaptive Path!

I'm not really surprised though. It's a great tool, simple to use, with a nice interface. One of the big boys were bound to pick it up.

Be interesting to see what they do with it!

Technorati: google | measure map

Music to Your Eyes

I've been keeping my eyes open recently for an easy way to keep this blog updated with my music playlist, and tonight I happened to stumble upon it!

First, sign up for an account with last.fm. Then download the plugin for whatever you play your music with. In my case, whatever I play in iTunes now updates my profile on last.fm - and this neat little Wordpress plugin automatically updates the sidebar here. (If you looking at my home page you'll see it - it's hidden if you're looking at this post's page.)

Installation is a breeze... And now the world can see what bad taste in music I have!

Technorati: last.fm | itunes | wordpress

Hey! A new look!

Feels like it's been ages since I posted here so I thought I'd make up for the lack of activity with a new look. Unlike last time I started with a completely empty stylesheet instead of hacking away at the one that came with wordpress.

You're looking at about 90 minutes (and 2 Woodstocks) worth of effort.

It's simple... But then again, so am I!

Technorati: woodstock | bourbon | redesign

Wordpress 2.0 is here!

Upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.0 last night, and was very relieved to find that it all went smoothly. This theme stayed intact (maybe that's not such a good thing!) and all the plugins I had installed previously still work.

The main difference so far is the Write Post page - we now have a WYSIWYG editor driven by TinyMCE. I keep hitting Enter twice to start a new paragaph, but with this now I only have to do that once. That might take some getting used to! Images and other files can be uploaded on the same page - no need to upload an image in one section, copy the URL, and go to another to write the post.

Also, extra fields around the post area (categories, timestamp etc) are tucked away and you can expand them when needed.

The preview post function now previews the whole finished, styled page - not just the text of your post. That's a bonus. My proof reading is pretty bad, I need all the help I can get!
Other than that - it still looks a lot like Wordpress, which stands to reason, I suppose!

Technorati: wordpress, blog, tinymce