Monthly Archives: May 2007

New modules for Drupal

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At the moment, in the spare time between projects (a very virtual thing – spare time, i have to say), i am writing 2 new modules for Drupal – one of them is a submodule for using Flash in a advertisement module and the other one is a directory module for Drupal. Both of this modules will be based on the 5th branch of Drupal.

First module was born out of the need for the current project i am doing, when i found out, that Advertisement module has had no support for flash-based ads. While smaller sites are basically using animated gifs (images), the bigger companies are using flash for advertisement. I was told by a couple of different people, that the “big firms” they are or were working for created the biggest the part of the online advertisement in flash. When i was responsible for one of the Fortune 100 sites in Portugal i saw a big percentage of their inner advertisement done in Flash as well. On a personal note, i would add that i do not like flash ads, and prefer the “normal” images – they are lighter and do not appear like a buddy-spam. After finishing this submodule or better “ad type”, i am thinking about submitting the code to the author of the Advertisement module, for his decision of inclusion into the “official package”.

The second module is being born for the other project, since it looks like there is no real directory module for Drupal, which seems to be quite a negative surprise. I am still in the phase of projecting it, but leaving the doubts behind, this module has to be implemented this year, because the website based on drupal, i am going to implement, is going to need it badly.

While the Flash Type submodule is virtually ready and being tested, the Directory module is likely to be finished in the second part of the 2008, mainly because of my newest personal project, which should go live in August this year.

Google updates Trends and Analytics

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This month, Google has released quite a number of updates to its services: Google Trends, Google Analytics and Google Maps.

Google trends has introduced a new area – “hot trends“, which display the hottest trends in the search, or the way i understand it – it should show those phrases which have received a sudden increase of the searches. Besides hotness (right now from “medium” to “on fire”), the results also displays related searches (similar ones), peak time and most used searches location. During an intensive web search engine optimization it could be quite an important criteria to look for.
Trend Hotness

Google analytics has launched a completely redesigned interface, completely based on Ajax. They are still maintaining the elder one, for a couple of weeks, but the users are suggested starting their “migration” to the new one. I found the new interface sometimes being quite unstable, crashing the Firefox completely, but since it must be a “beta” release, i hope they will improve the service very fastly. No webmaster or search engine optimizer, who uses Google Analytics will like to continue using quite buggy product. Besides some crashes (something to do with the Firefox extensions ?), the new interface is quite different, and one have to get used to it, so i confess, that for the most of the time i still continue using the old one, while trying to push myself into learning the new one. I hope to be able to “move” to the new one during next couple of days.

I am still fuming about Google Zeitgeist and the absence of Portugal from the results, and by the way, at this very moment they have 2 Irelands listed at the menu links, which should be quite a surprising fact to the united kingdom government. I gotta email to someone at Google, telling them to stop ignoring portuguese optimizers. =O)

p.s. I have forgotten to mention the Google Maps update, which includes now 360 Streetside Views. As usual, this update is for US-based map only(it will be available in Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco at the moment), but in the nearest future. Some people over the net have already reported that it helped them avoiding traffic, so it sounds to be a good update, but since Portuguese map has arrived more then a year after american and british counterparts, i am not expecting any “important” info for me in the next months.

Jakob Nielsen on sitemaps in 2000

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Today, while browsing an old book called “Designing Web Usability”, written by Jakob Nielsen in the far 2000 (some 7 years ago), i have found a reference to the idea of distributing site content to the search engines in the form of the. On the page 238 there is small subtitle “Integrating Sites and Search Engines”, where he discusses the idea of integrating sites more closely with search engines. The problem for its implementation was considered at the time of writing – the agreement of a standardized method for encoding the user’s query terms. Right now we know, that the Search Engines can agree on the way of crawling the websites, but at the same time we know, that they use a lot of own “meta-extensions” to the crawling, like Google’s “no-follow” or Yahoo’s “no-content” for example. While user’s query terms are really far away from being interpreted by the sites (at the moment of writing it seems that only Yahoo pays attention to the meta content tag), the search engines have already done the first step into the direction of a better cooperation with website administrators and into the assuring of a better quality and better search results content.

Interesting, is that recently the governments of Arizona, California, Utah and Virginia announced they would use Sitemaps on their web sites. Of course it is quite a publicity stunt with a support for Google in the first place (creators of the sitemap protocol), but at the same time it is a quite a recognition of the Sitemap protocol. First Yahoo, then Microsoft and Ask.com has recognized it, and now we have some “enterprises” from the public sector coming for its support. Way to go, Jakob, i am looking for your next book =O)

As good as WordPress “Getz”

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“WordPress is as good as it Getz“. After just a couple of weeks of delaying, the new WordPress version is available. This is a second major upgrade for WordPress this year, which comes as a new politics of WordPress developers, but anyway, full of new enhancements the new WordPress version has arrived and we are all encouraged to upgrade to it.
Some explanation – Getz is the name of a one of the most famous and recognized tenor saxophone player Stan Getz. This way, wordpress continue giving the name of music artists to the new releases.

While still thinking whether i should upgrade the wordpress, i have noticed a new article at the WordPress dashboard, referring the security fixes that the new WordPress version includes.

Mark Jaquith wrote that there are some important security issues, which were fixed in the new WordPress version, but what is more interesting, that at the same day, at his blog he wrote
I’ll have upgrade files for 2.0.11 once it is released, and if 2.2 sees any security/bugfix releases, I’ll do upgrade files for those too. For me this is quite an interesting, that somebody posting 2 opposite things at the same hour.

What surprises me in this story, is the fact (if its really true), that no upgrade version for 2.1 and 2.0 branches has been released by now. WordPress has a good fame of supporting elder releases and leaving users who can not upgrade (mysql version problems for example) is quite a sad fact. I have thought about ignoring this release for a couple of days, or at least testing it locally, before upgrading, but this leaves no option but to do wordpress upgrade as soon as possible.

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

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Microsoft has finally release the final version (1.0) of the infamous Internet Explorer Developer Tooolbar, which works exactly copies the functionality of the Web Developer Toolbar extension for Firefox. After 2 years of development, the first (1.0) version has arrived and is available for every web developer. Microsoft has promised to release a couple of free tools for web developers, and as a matter of a fact, i consider they are doing nice job (even when copying efforts of others) of fulfilling their promise.

Developer Toolbar simplifies a lot of functions for web developers, such as selectively disables some of the Internet Explorer functionalities, validates the content of xHTML and CSS, DOM handling, window resolution resizing, between others. My favorite and most useful functionality for Internet Explorer 6.0 is a ruler – for measuring size and distance of the xHTML elements. Having a lot of bugs, IE6 needs this functionality desperately, especially for the pages, with a lot of content. The other very useful functionality of this toolbar is the object id outlining – when editing CSS it is extremely useful to be able to consult the name of the specific object or objects, without digging into the HTML code.

If you don’t have, then get it as soon as you can, and if you are a beta user, then it is a time to upgrade, since it should bring some of the bug fixes.

Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar 1.0 download

Java SE is open source

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Today, Sun has officially turned Java open source, they have given the source code to the Open JDK Community. This is the next step (and a very important one) in a series of changes in Java licensing structure. In 2006 Sun has promised to turn Java into open source and now, after more then a half year they finally did it.

First the java complier, then a hotspot engine and now finally Java is an open source. I think that Sun has chosen good strategy in fight with Microsofts .NET, which has conquered the internet (and intranet) by the storm. There are not too many firms still holding to java and the best way of fighting back is giving the source to the people, so the enthusiasts can hack and improve it. This will give the world a big topic for a discussion as well, which can produce a good word of mouth and more people may consider choosing or coming back to Java’s world.

This announcement comes right in time, so the developers still have time to contribute for the next JDK SE, the seventh one, Codename Dolphin, which should arrive somewhere in 2008. Btw, a good link on this topic is an Wikipedia article about history of Java versions.

Being a lot of years a Java enthusiasts i am just thinking that it would be much better for all of us, if it would have happend some 5 or 6 years ago, but a lot of things has changed since then, and Java is not anymore an internet favorite or open source darling. I hope this step change some things in the future, though there are not much space for maneuver, but we will see – open source community have proven quite a lot of times that there are mountains that can be moved (remember firefox?) … =O)

New Chama Talento webshop

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Today, I have finished implementing some updates and a new online shop for Chama Talento and it should go live on Monday afternoon GMT, if everything is alright and no serious bugs will be found during the weekend testing. =O)

There are a lot of changes introduction of the “running news” and the flash news on the main page, privacy policy area, and the most important one is at the shop: the product hierarchy – from having only categories and products, the shop is now having much more complicated one: categories -> subcategories -> products -> versions. Besides that, each product version will have a lot of different options to choose: color, width, size or material for example. Chama Talento is surely becoming one of the finest shoes shops in Lisbon(Portugal) area.

Some of the other introduced changes are: inclusion of 7 subcategories (Dance shoes, Flamenco, Dance-Hall shoes, etc) with a more detailed shop products description and a lot of images. This site is getting better with each update, but still i am thinking about a lot of usability and accessibility changes which should be done, if the client would agree. Maybe with the next update some of them will find a way into the Chama Talento site.