Points to consider while designing a website layout

When you create a website is very important to consider that you may change something on the site and that must be an easy job. That’s why:

Keep it simple:

In major situations a simple website layout is user friendly. It’s better to not create complex navigational links using complex scripts or images that may not be viewable correctly in different browsers. It’s also very possible that search engine to not index the site properly if complex navigation is involved. You should use small icons to attract visitor’s attentions because using larges images cam make your website difficult, laborious.

Readable font size and face:

We recomand you to use standard font size of “-1” (11 or 12 pixels if using styles) because that way visitors can read the content easily. Select a professional looking font face (Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif are very common). Avoid using fancy fonts like Comic Sans (unless it is a personal website). Use appropriate spacing between lines (12 or more pixels) to avoid clumsiness.

Use web safe eye pleasing colors:

You must select that color you feel are best for you website subject. However, it is a wise decision to get feedback from users or friends about what they feel about the color combination of the website.

  Web pageDimensions:

Here, an important thing is to keep track of dimensions of a web page. Most successful commercial websites limit the width and height of the web page so that the important content of the web page lies within the top 600×600 viewable area without scrolling. The best choice is to limit the width by placing a table with a fixed width of 750 or 775 pixels and to work in this table. The page height should not be any more than 4 scroll lengths. Limit the content of the page and if more content needs to be added, move it to a new web page. Provide a navigational link to the next page and a link back from the second page. This will also increase your web site’s page views.

Tips & tricks

Extract JavaScript code and styles from within the HTML page to external .JS and .CSS files. To decrease you individual HTML page size create a link from each HTML page to these external files because browsers download these files only once and caches them on the user’s computer. Use server side includes for centralizing common content, use a background which creates a contrast to the font colors and graphics and why not look at media sites to inspire.

There are lots of advanced features that have been added for your convenience. Photoshop CS 2 is not merely content to correct your photos or make graphics, but its goal is to supply you with everything you need to make your images the most vivid they can be. This latest version introduces powerful new tools for creative design and photography as well as refinements on all the old traditional favorites. With Photoshop CS 2 they introduce new levels of power, precision and control with a combination of revolutionary features and evolved enhancements.

Photoshop CS 2 has lots of new features like the next generation file browser Adobe Bridge, Vanishing Points, non-destructive Image Transformations (smart objects), Image Warp and 3 new filters for common photographic problems. Many of us can say that is complicated, or they never use all its features but you never know when you need them and you will use, so that is not a drawback is an absolute advantage. When you have a look at the work area there are many different types of tools. This makes Photoshop appear similar to most other products but, what you don’t see, is all the hidden tools and all the hidden functionalities for these tools which make image editing or graphic design a whole lot less complex.

It’s very important when you have to work with a picture or with different parts of a picture to be able to select the part of the picture that you want to edit. What makes Photoshop so easy to use is all the different sub functions that you can learn about which helps you select the exact thing you want to edit and thus streamlining the editing process. The acclaimed Photoshop file browser, Adobe Bridge, has evolved into its own application that runs fully independently, thus allowing you to multi task between organizing, editing and processing your images by adding Scalable Thumbnails, Enhanced Ranking and Labeling, and a Slide Show Mode for a quick review of your latest shoot.

The Bridge also integrates with Illustrator and InDesign and all the other applications in the creative suite. It is very important to mention some unparalleled new traits, new things from which we can learn how to use the Photoshop Training course. For example we can use this appliance to match new perspectives, new longterm, say how you can have a family portrait and another very important things which should be known by the user.
Photoshop can show you how to remove this clutter very easily. Also known as Smart Object, Photoshop is a destructive o creative transformation who can show you how you transform images without loosing important pixel. They also have Smart Guides who can control the movement of the copies which you will create.

CSS 3 eliminated the need of Photoshop when it comes to add a shadow to a text. A shadow offset is specified with two length terms that indicate the distance from the text:

• The first length term specifies the horizontal distance to the right of the text. We can use negative values which place the shadow to the left of the text.

• The second length term specifies the vertical distance below the text. Also we can have a negative vertical length term which places the shadow above the text.

A blur radius may be specified after the shadow offset. The blur radius is a length value that indicates the boundaries of the blur effect. After setting the blur radius we can add the color.

Let’s have some examples:

1) The example below will set a text shadow to the right. This is a simple example and we can easily observe that no color has been specified meaning the shadow will have the same color as the element itself, and no blur radius is specified meaning the text shadow will not be blurred:

h2 { text-shadow: 0.3em 0.3em }

2) The next example will place a shadow to the right and below the element’s text. The shadow will have a 4px blur radius and will be blue.

h2 { text-shadow: 3px 3px 4px blue}

3) The next example combine more effects specifing a list of shadow effects. The first shadow will be to the right and below the element’s text and will be blue. The second shadow will overlay the first shadow effect, and it will be yellow, blurred, and placed to the left and below the text. The third shadow effect will be placed to the right and above the text.

h2 { text-shadow: 3px 3px blue, yellow -3px 3px 2px, 3px -3px }

4) Take a look at this example:

.shadow {

background: white;

color: white;

text-shadow: black 0px 0px 5px;

}

Here the background and the text has the same color (white) and the shadow is black. This shadow effect added makes the text to be visible.

Note This property is not defined in CSS 1. It is possible not to have a text shadowed if we work with agents using CSS 1. This feature isn’t new in CSS 3, it was put into CSS 2 but only got implemented in Opera 9.5 and Safari 3 so far.

Motivation

Stankaa, my web project, is based on the idea that anybody can add her to his/her web site. You just have to copy 2 lines of code to your web site and it works.

All of this is done using XHTML Strict and without any <iframe> elements. The web site never reloads. Stankaa gets the information she needs from the stankaa.com server asynchronously and modifies the host web site on the fly. The usual way of doing such things is using the XMLHttpRequest JavaScript object (the AJAX way). The problem is, it just doesn’t work if you are requesting information from a different server than the one your site is hosted on. Since the whole idea behind Stankaa is that she can be included in anybody’s web site, I had to come up with a solution.

Ajax

First, I will show you how it is usually done when you do not want to do it cross-domain.

function ajax_request(send, onReady)
{
    var request = window.ActiveXObject
        ? new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
        : new XMLHttpRequest;

    request.onreadystatechange = function()
    {
        if (request.readyState != 4) return;
        onReady(request.responseText);
    }
    request.open("POST", "http://some-domain.sk/some.php", true);
    request.setRequestHeader("Content-Type",
                             "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
    request.send(send);
}

This is a source code of a simple function that can “do” AJAX requests for you. You do not have to understand how it works. I will just explain how you can use it. Try something like this:

function onAnswer(answer) { window.alert(answer); };
ajax_request("", onAnswer);

What does it do? The ajax_request function makes a POST request for “http://some-domain.sk/some.php”. When the server answers, the onAnswer function you provided as a parameter for ajax_request executes. It displays an alert window showing the server answer. All this happens “in the background”, and the web page doesn’t reload (thats the point!). You can provide POST parameters for the target .php like this:

ajax_request("pudding=christmas&state=burned", onAnswer);

Of course, since JavaScript support anonymous functions (which is a really really nice feature that works especially well with closures in JavaScript), you can write just:

ajax_request("pudding=christmas",
             function (answer) { window.alert(answer); });

How to do it cross-domain

All above should work as long as you request the .php file which is located on the same domain as the requesting web site is. However, it doesn’t work for Stankaa’s scenario. After a few hours of desperate research, I managed to put together something that works the way I need it to. Although I must admit that the basic idea behind this thing isn’t mine (dynamically adding a <SCRIPT> sub element to <HEAD> to get server data), I collected the information from many sources and packed it inside this “lovely” package:

request_callback = undefined;

function request_send(send, callback)
{
    request_callback = callback;
    request_script = document.createElement("script");
    request_script.src = "http://some-domain.sk/some.php?" + send;
    document.getElementsByTagName("head")
        [0].appendChild(request_script);
}

function request_receive(data)
{
    document.getElementsByTagName("head")
        [0].removeChild(request_script);
    request_callback(data);
}

The usage of the request_send() function remains the same as for the ajax_request() function. Request_send(), is, however, capable of doing a cross-domain asynchronous server request. Since it doesn’t use the XMLHttpRequest object, I’m not sure if I can call it “Ajax” anymore.

This approach has its limitations. The first limitation is, POST method is not supported. Everything you specify in the “send” variable will appear in $_GET array in PHP. The second limitation is, the server-side PHP has to “cooperate”. What does it mean? It means that instead of doing

<?php echo "I am a Christmas Pudding!"; ?>

the PHP file has to do this:

<?php echo "request_receive('I am a Christmas Pudding!');"; ?>

But, I don’t think thats such a big problem.

Finally, I will briefly talk about how it works. When you call the request_send() function, JavaScript adds new <SCRIPT> element to document <HEAD> element. This new script tag specifies the requested PHP file as its source (”src”) attribute. The PHP file is then automatically requested. When the request (in form of a “request_recieve(’I am a Christmas Pudding!’);” source code) arrives, its content is executed. Consequently, request_receive() function is called, the <SCRIPT> element is removed from the document head and user-defined callback function is executed with a data that server sent.

The really great thing about this is that it works across all major browsers (latest Opera, Safari, Firefox, IE7 and IE6). And the funny thing is, many people believe that it can’t be done at all Some people have already found this way of doing it, by I doubt it is a widespread phenomenon.

Full article here

Why is this a huge problem?

Well  the thing is pretty simple: security reasons to not permit reading/writing of cookies from one domain to another. So if we have domain a.com and b.com, while accessing a.com we won’t be able to access any of b.com’s cookies. If this restriction wouldn’t be active, would be so a big hole into security.

 So what can we do though to have cross domain cookies?

Google-ing a lot and reading other opinions I got a final working version of it. The idea is based on a set of redirects between the domain cookies are on(user is logged in there) and the domain where we want to have same cookies set ( domain where we would like to login the user, without asking again for an user/password. Let’s denote by a.com the domain that contains the cookie and b.com the domain we need the cookies on.

The whole process works in some steps:

1. First from domain b.com we do a request to domain a.com;
2. On this request, on a.com we respond by building a http GET/POST to domain b.com  sending there the needed cookies as HTTP GET/POST parameters (pairs name/value).
3. on domain b.com, as a response to request from domain a.com we take each POST/GET parameters and send them as cookies to the browser.
4. This step is optional, but if into the previous steps we used GET as the HTTP method of requests, than this needs to be done in order to avoid security holes. Why is that? Well in step 3 we sent a GET request to b.com. So we are on b.com?some_query string. That query string has the needed cookies so that when accessing that url, it’ll automatically login user on domain b.com( the desired effect). Now, if on domain b.com there is an external link, user clicks on it, after being redirected from a.com. On that external link’s webserver, into the logs, will be stored the refferal, which is exactly our URL containing the COOKIES needed to automatically login. Someone may see those logs and login without being authorized.
   So what’s about this step. Pretty simple:  we do another redirect to domain b.com, stripping the COOKIES into the GET string. That way we are secure. 

That should be all.  this is the main mechanism that I got implemented and working. I’ll come back in another post looking a practical way of doing it. Any comments are welcome. If you discover any security holes or you think something is wrong, please leave your feedback.

Google’ing a few hours I found the problem. I was using Google Toolbar and that has a setting to highlight forms. I never knew about it. So simple but get me so much trouble. So I deactivated it and everything works fine

If youhave that same trouble, You don’t even need to deactivate it, but you can go to Options from your Google toolbar and then More and then uncheck Automatically Highlight Fields that AutoFill can fil.

That would be it. Hope it’s useful and somebody there won’t loose as much time as I did before finding out what was wrong.

We have a mysql table that stores all orders of an online store. Each order has off course a field that represents the status of this order. That can be ‘pending’, ‘payment_received’, ‘approved’, ’shipped’, ‘completed’ .

Those statuses are found in the majority off good online stores so this is a practical theory.

Now what if we want to list all orders, but sorted like 1st the ‘pending’ ones, 2nd the ‘payment_received’ ones, 3rd the ‘approved’ one 4th the shipped ones and last the ‘completed’. Off curse if you think of it from the beginning you’ll probably structure your table such way so that is wasy to be done by a simple sort by . But what if your application is already done and you just need to add this small thing?

Well mysql can save from a ton of work . You can use advanced decision statements on the group by. We’ll just use a switch type of statement and we’ll basicly assign each value of the status a numeric value and we’ll sort on that.

Here is how the order by clause would look like :

ORDER BY

CASE order_status

      WHEN 'pending'   THEN 1

      WHEN 'payment_received'   THEN 2

      WHEN 'approved' THEN 3

      WHEN 'shipped'   THEN 4

      WHEN 'completed' THEN 5

      ELSE 99999

END

The above will do exactly what we want. Will test the values of order_status field and will assign to that a numerical value used jst for search. Such a nice thing that does your life much easier when you really need it…

What I always notices is that if your wordpress 404 page is bigger than 512 bytes than it is always loaded in IE.

So Put more than 512 bytes and you’ll force the buggy IE to work

We have a folder that is password protected via htaccess and within it we have another folder that we want to be accessible to the public. There are two ways for doing that. One is the hard way and another easy one. Off course we always want to do the easiest possible workaround so here it is how we do it.

In the main folder we leave the htaccess file intact protecting the whole structure. In the folder we do not want protection we just place a htaccess file with the following content:

Satisfy Any

Allow from all

And that’s it You are now “public “

Using Slice Select Tool you can move, duplicate, divide, delete, align user slices. The advantage of using this tool is that you can save the slices into html file, that include all pieces that are connected as a complete image.

Slices are also advantageous when working with images that contain different types of data. For example, if one area of an image needs to be optimized in GIF format to support an animation, but the rest of the image is better optimized in JPEG format, you can isolate the animation using a slice.

Style (A): Use style to control the proportion of sliced area while select.

• Normal: To determine slice proportions by dragging manually.
• Fixed Aspect Ratio: To set a height-to-width ratio. Enter whole numbers or decimals for the aspect ratio. For example, to create a slice twice as wide as it is high, enter 2 for the width and 1 for the height.
• Fixed Size: Use this style to specify the slice’s height and width.

Width and Height (B): Enter value of slice width and height for Fixed Aspect Ratio and Fixed Size slice style. As you can see in the image I set with to 200 pixels and height to 100 pixels.

Slice from Guide (C): Click to create slice form guides.

How we create a slice using Slice Tool

• Select Slice Tool
• Choose style settings in the option bar.
• Drag over the area where you want to create a slice. Shift-drag to constrain the slice to a square.

To create slices from guides:

• Add guides to an image.
• Select the Slice tool, and click Slices From Guides in the options bar.

Working with slices

See in the below image how I intended to divide my image using Slice tool:

Slice lines: Define the boundary of the slice. Solid lines indicate that the slice is a user slice or layer-based slice; dotted lines indicate that the slice is an auto slice.

Slice colors: Differentiate user slices and layer-based slices from auto slices. By default, user slices and layer-based slices have blue symbols, while auto slices have gray symbols.

Slice numbers: Slices are numbered from left to right and top to bottom, beginning in the upper left corner of the image. If you change the arrangement or total number of slices, slice numbers are updated to reflect the new order.

Slice badges: The Web Content palette uses a number of badges, or icons, to indicate certain conditions, and these icons also appear in the document itself:

• User slice has Image content
• User slice has No Image content
• Slice is a layer-based slice
• Slice is linked
• Slice includes a rollover effect
• Slice contains the active rollover state
• Slice is a nested table
• Slice is a remote trigger
• Slice is a remote target

To show or hide slice boundaries: Choose View » Show » Slices. To hide and show slices along with other items, use the Extras command.

To show or hide slice numbers: In Windows, choose Edit » Preferences » Guides, Grid, & Slices. or in Mac OS, choose Photoshop » Preferences » Guides, Grid, & Slices. Under Slices, click Show Slice Numbers.

To change the color of slice lines: In Preferences » Guides, Grid, & Slices. Under Slice Lines, choose a color from the Line Color pop-up menu. Changing the color of slice lines automatically changes the color of selected slice lines to a contrasting color.

Now go to “File/ Save for the Web…“, and you’ll see the “Save for the Web” dialog box. Choose you optimized Settings on the right side of the panel, then Click “Save“. You’ll be prompted to “Save Optimized As” to a location on your computer.