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The article is really very good and the users comments and external links to another articles just complement it!

Posted In .

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 at 21:13:53 GMT

I realy like hiphop music, but this is very crazy!

We'll use it in user group PHP conference at Brazil!

Posted In PHP Anthem.

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 at 11:16:50 GMT

Having used smarty for many years, this has never been a problem for me, but after building a website in a framework that uses PHP as the template/view, I got caught by this feature.

PHP badly needs a flag to stop it messing with newlines, which could be switched on for template directories etc. In my case, I was creating some templates for iCal files, so PHP corrupted the files by incorrectly wrapping the lines.

My solution was to simply echo "\n" at the end of each line, but it looks like a nasty hack.

Posted In PHP Stripping Newlines.

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 at 21:37:49 GMT

Thanks for the info. I have posted the news here on my page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Web-Scripting/176350059435

Posted In PHP Anthem.

Sun, 22 Aug 2010 at 18:15:41 GMT

Oh, you need to press "save your password".

Posted In Mozilla Account Manager.

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 at 07:09:36 GMT

The windows version doesn't seem to work with your demo :(

Posted In Mozilla Account Manager.

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 at 07:00:15 GMT

I use an alternative solution that consists in putting all Firefox (Thunderbird, Google Chrome, etc..) in TrueCrypt file containers. Then I don't bother with storing my passwords in remote services. My one password is the truecrypt container password. It also gives me additional protection in case my notebook is stolen.

Posted In Mozilla Account Manager.

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 at 02:20:49 GMT

(continuation)

I got a little carried away in writing, and part of the point I was trying to make just slipped my mind, and sentence.

The point in the delicious example is: things like site.example.com/some-ugly-dashes/something *may be* (ie. not definitely) just as bad as del.ici.us, though dashes in the last segment (the so-called "post slug") are most likely okey.

Special punctuation in special circumstances may be okey as well. For example: example.gallery.org/wallpapers/16:9/my-wallpaper. The reasoning here is as long as it doesn't burden the users with new rules, 16:9 being the natural way to refer to wallpaper aspect ratio, it's fine - if not actually preferred.

Posted In URL Sentences.

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 at 13:57:08 GMT

While a little complicated to implement, I can really see the benefits of this. I can imagine you could also have some kind of tagging system though which you form the sentence, so articles with similar keywords can be accessed easily. Well, at least though the breadcrumbs, though personally I can access it just as fine by clicking individual segments (and seeing as that is how windows vista and onwards work, I imagine browsers will follow). I also know people are not that shy that they will not type urls directly; some people that is.

Personally I've been leaning towards having very readable urls for some time, since sometimes people just look at the url. Other times, people don't really have anything else to look at really. For example, when your url is naked and a link on another site, or your url is mentioned in a video or audio cast.

One important consideration, or rather brick wall, I've come across is urls need to be fairly short and must be readable; in particular the domain, as that is the portal though which people will enter your (err) domain. Preferably you want to use English words (actual, not made-up) and avoid any special punctuation.

Things like del.icio.us are cute and all but may prove tricky for some. The example both makes things like the period position hard (is it deli.cio.us? or de.li.cio.us? how many were there again?) but also suffers from typos (is it del.icio.us? or del.iciou.us? or del.ici.us?).

One of the biggest sins though is having a name that's hard to pronounce. This both forces very awkward spelling bee moments whenever it's mentioned: "[...] that's shiflett DOT org, S-H-I-F-L-E-T-T, the prefix is shi-F not shif-T, and there are two T's at the end of LET [...]". But also, as I eluded earlier, your audience doesn't have to be blind for audio-only visualization to happen. Your link could be part of many in a list, so it's presumably in small font and/or something like a video of a presentation. Or, your audience is viewing a low-res version of the video and can't see anything clearly, or your url is mentioned in a podcast, or in a commercial, or as a passing reference in another talk. Even if you made your url fit the entire slide, for all you know people might just be listening to the talk.

Going back to the delicious example, another problem is urls like that are pretty hard to remember. At least I, not having english as my main language, find them pretty hard to remember. At least they are fairly easy to google (secret SEO strategy? probably more likely to shoot you in the foot I reckon).

Each time someone uses a alternative site to shorten your url for a twitter post (or something other) I say it's a bad omen, and your url is either too cryptic or too long.

http://www.backtype.com/domain/shif...g/conversations

Or, both.

Disclaimer: I've only used your url as a example Chris, no offense intended. Given the context of this site, your url is fine. :)

Posted In URL Sentences.

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 at 13:42:38 GMT

The only thing I don't understand is "Footer" at the bottom of this page. Seems as though better wording could be used in its stead.

Is there some accessibility guideline I'm missing Chris? :)

ps. your comments form resets on any small error

Posted In CSS Naked Day.

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 at 12:44:35 GMT