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Showing posts with the label development

Force fit an HTML Table

My previous post had a table that the browser pushed outside the defined dimensions, making half of it un-viewable. Beside the rather narrow body for the blog, which by-the-way makes it easier to read, most browsers just don't know how to break text strings that do not have white space. Turns out there is some CSS code that can be used that will correct this in most browsers. Use the following two CSS properties in your table definition (adjust width to meet your need). table-layout: fixed; width: 425px; Surprisingly, if you use Firefox, it shortens the width correctly but it still has trouble wrapping some lines, while IE and Safari seems to render the entire table correctly. Visit the W3C site to get details on other table options .

Firebug: Firefox Extension for Web Developers

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I have been using the Web Developer toolbar for Firefox for some time now, but I recently learned of a new, powerful Extension, Firebug from Joe Hewitt. Firebug makes it very easy to inspect different portions of your code while on your web page. For example, click the Inspect tab and then you can see the related code as you hover over different elements on the page. Where the Web Developer toolbar makes it easy to look at different parts of the code on a page, Firebug lets you interact with the page and subsequent code. If you want to see how fast (or slow) the various elements load on the page, click on the Net tab. In addition to showing the time to load the various elements, it is very easy to filter by element types such as JavaScript, images, and even Flash. You can use Firebug as a part of your browser window (while you're interacting with it) or in its own window. the one drawback I see is that each time I change tabs, the new website is processed by Firebug; not that it&

Dying computer skills?

Did you see Computer World's, " The top 10 dead (or dying) computer skills " published last month? Some have been on the list for some time, such as Cobol -- it's needed just long enough to finally get companies off those legacy systems. What surprised me is even the mention of non-relational DBMS and non-IP networks. I guess I'm a bit ignorant in the fact they these two still exist in places. Then there is the more obvious, Cold Fusion. Of course with open source solutions and better scaling solutions, Cold Fusion is on its last legs. I remember when it was a good choice, because the open source alternatives and Microsoft had not matured; now, if you're not a Microsoft shop, you're probably using open source. For the rest of the items, couldn't we get something that is a little more "on it's way out," not already gone? take for instance the hobbyist turned pro developer. In the early days of the Internet, HTML was easy, and it didn't

Web Analytics

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If you are new to web analytics or need to brush up your skills, I recently read Web Analytics Demystified: A Marketer's Guide to Understanding How Your Web Site Affects Your Business and found it very helpful for this category. If you are a little more advanced, you might try another book from the same author, Eric T. Peterson, Web Site Measurement Hacks . Perhaps what I like most about both of these books, is that Eric makes it simple. In addition, Eric has experience with web tags, which is particularly beneficial when your site is distributed across multiple systems. Eric also has a companion site for his Web Analytics Demystified book. In addition to companion files to Web Analytics Demystified, he has done a lot of work to bring the web analytics community together. For example, Eric has organized Web Analytics Wednesday where professionals all over the world meet locally on the 2nd Wednesday of every month, at 6 pm, to discuss web analytics. I attend the local Web Analyti

How to Be a Better Developer

Steve Bayzl writes in his blog Petit ecureuil , 5 Easy Ways to be a Better Developer . Steve makes some very good points. Here is the list with my comments: Learn Ruby and Ruby on Rails: Steve's point is that you need to learn how to write clean and maintainable code. He is right on the money. It is simple: bugs need to be fixed, you will want to extend your app, and/or someone else is going to work with the code too. Read The Daily WTF? : I think the lesson here is learn from your mistakes and of others. Learn something new every week: Someone is doing something new and better everyday. I joked the other day that the Internet is moving so fast, we are now on Web 4.0. The point is that if you want a career as a developer, you need to be constantly learning. Understand customer wants != customer needs: A very wise observation. I have two comments -- First, one common situation is your customer comes to you to get a new tool to solve their business problem. What they really need is