dgibson.net

Web Developer, Web Designer, or Graphic Designer?

Apart from the disturbing statements I heard about ColdFusion while job hunting earlier this year, another thing that I found interesting was the terminology used for front-end work.

Since I was also looking for CSS work, among other things, I was called for quite a few interface design and web designer positions. It's been a while since I had been job hunting prior to this, so I hadn't really given much thought as to my position title. Afterall, I don't usually pay attention to my title at the places I work even, as they are often made up by Human Resources or other people who don't know the technology much less have any rhyme or reason to them. So "web developer," "software developer," "software engineer," "programmer," etc., (with an optional designation of 1-4 or 1-5) - it doesn't matter to me as long as I am getting paid according to my experience and doing what I like to do, which basically comes down to utilizing my array of skills and having some input into the decision making process on the project.

Back to the topic at hand though. I usually just refer to myself as a "web/application developer." Six years ago I would never have considered myself a "web designer" or a designer at all. Sure, I've been using CSS since the early days (Netscape 4) and Photoshop since version 3, when it came on floppy disks, and have an art background, but I do not have the raw artistic talent and I am generally just not creative on demand (in the artistic sense).

Yet, after hearing all of the types of jobs I was being contacted about, and was actually qualified for, I began to accept the title of web designer for two reasons. First, CSS is how you implement design these days, afterall, and I've gotten pretty good with my CSS layout skills and making them extremely modular. Second, a web designer is simply someone who designs sites and who understands (and respects, IMO) the medium. It has always peeved me when "designers" - who, in light of this discussion, I would now call "graphic designers" instead of "web designers" - push the boundaries without considering the web as a medium and the consequences of their actions on that medium or the landscape of users out there.

In broad terms, considering the web as a medium means understanding the basics of usability and accessibility. These areas span designing for different people and different devices (with different resolutions and various levels of support for underlying web technoligies such as HTML, JavaScript, Flash and more). Wow, those are some broad qualifications for a web designer, who several years ago was traditionally focused on making the site look pretty with graphics. But in reality, a web designer needs to be well-rounded and versed in these areas as well as capable of implementing a design in modern standards-based methods. Without those skills, the person is merely a graphic designer, or perhaps less than spectacular web designer.

Continue reading "Web Developer, Web Designer, or Graphic Designer?."

dgibson.net Going On Another 7-Year Hiatus

Dgibson.net going on another 7-year hiatus? Nah. There really aren't any good April Fools pranks that I can play here, on my personal blog. However, I thoroughly enjoy this time of year and creating ficticious stories for posting on my other site,
Metalunderground.com.

You can check out the stories we ran today as well as in previous years with the links below:

• April Fool's Day, 2008
• April Fool's Day, 2007
• April Fool's Day, 2006
• April Fool's Day, 2005
• April Fool's Day, 2004
• April Fool's Day, 2003

Some of the better April Fools I've seen done today are as follows:

• World of Warcraft Announces the Bard Hero Class (I don't even play, but this is really well done)
• World Of Warcraft: The Molten Core (not so funny, but you have to watch the video on that page - it's classic!)
• New Xbox 360 Spring Line

I'll update as I find some more really good ones. I wasn't really impressed with Google's attempt this year, but they've had some great ones in the past.

Tagging vs Categories, and Hybrids Thereof

After tweaking my CSS (still in progress on some minor things such as code displays and the comment form), and implementing SES URLs, the next thing I planned to implement is a tagging system. This sounds pretty simple, but as I debate the best way to go about it, I've become paralyzed in thought over it.

The flexibility of tagging is a strong point and the primary reason that tagging caught on several years ago. The many-to-many relationship of tags to the items being tagged make tagging work where hierarchical categories simply do not.

It's great for the general user to label things however they want without restriction. But as any seasoned user of del.icio.us (I have nearly 2500 bookmarks at the time of writing this article) knows, this flexibility eventually turns into chaos. Inconsistencies become apparent as you find that some of your items were tagged singularly and some plurally. People make their own compound tags differently, using dashes, underscores, or dot notation - and some people are inconsistent in that as well. If you start out simple, you may find the need to add more tags later on for greater descriptiveness.

I'm not necessarily seeking a system that will address all of the above issues. Rather, I am looking for a way to create some more order within a flexible tagging system. I could come up with some simple solutions like adding a parent key to each tag's database entry, which would allow for some hierarchy (however messy it would be to take advantage of on SQL 2000 right now). Thinking of some other projects I'd like to use this codebase for, I would also like to be able to have groups of tags that are not in a hierarchy. I.e., the tag group is not selectable as a tag. For example, perhaps I am writing tutorials and want to tag them by technologies used as well as difficulty level (beginner, intermediate, advanced). I could use a flexible tagging system for this, but interface-wise it makes sense to have these tags grouped rather than be free-form entry tags.

While I could certainly construct my own ad-hoc system, I'm wondering if anyone has any experience or has read about more robust taxonomies that may address my needs and could point me to some articles or examples.

Implementing Search Engine-Safe (SES) URLs

I recently implemented SES (Search Engine Safe) URLs here on my blog for the first time ever. I read a number of posts about it. Techniques range widely from using Apache's mod_rewrite, which I initially favored, to using a Java servelet, to using ColdFusion to parse out the URL (similar to what Ray Camden does on Blog.cfc), to using 404 and missing template handlers.

In addition to the many techniques, there are many different angles to approach the topic. Several terms seem to be used interchangeably, but I think there are really different intentions behind each of them. There are Seach Engine Safe URLs, Friendly URLs, Pretty URLs, and Meaningful URLs.

What I would call a friendly URL or pretty URL is one that is coded to be the shortest possible. So the following URL:

http://dgibson.net/blog/categoryid=1

might be represented by a short, memorable and typable URL such as:

http://dgibson.net/blog/coldfusion

These types of URLs require a lot of assumptions in your specific application. If you know them upfront, you could implement this in CF or Apache just the same. But then you need to have a different rule for actual articles (as opposed to the category page).

However, I was not worried about the looks of my URLs so much and going to that extreme. The basis for Search Engine Safe URLs - and my choosing them - is two-fold:

First and foremost to avoid the use of a standard query string, which can hinder low-ranking or new web sites from being fully indexed. Surely Google, et al can index dynamic content by now, but they tend to not index dynamic content on newer sites as aggressively. By not using the query string, all of your pages appear static to the search engines, and therefore get index more thoroughly.

Second, by including a URL stub (a human-friendly, keyword-rich URL version of the headline), you are both making the topic of the article known from looking at the URL and stuffing it with some keywords taken from your headline, which should help your search engine ranking.

Like I said, I initially planned to use Apache's mod_rewrite facilities. I've used them before, but when doing so, the URL is always updated in the browser's address as well, which is not what I wanted. Perhaps there's a way around this, but I wasn't feeling like exploring that method because it has a drawback in flexibility compared to the ColdFusion method I ended up going with.

So I implemented SES URLs through ColdFusion. I decided that I might as well let CF do the heavy lifting since I will be dynamically writing out the href URLs in ColdFusion anyway.

Continue reading "Implementing Search Engine-Safe (SES) URLs."

SES URLs To Blame For Duplicate Feed Items

My latest article, CSS: Overcoming "background: transparent" In IE seems to have shown up in my RSS reader at least four times. It looks like this is one of the down-sides to my implementation of Search Engine Safe (SES) URLs, which I plan to discuss in more detail at a later date.

Because I tweaked the headline, the actual link to the article has changed as well, and therefore the GUID in my RSS feed is changed, making it look like a new, unique article. Some systems generate a unique GUID based on a hash of the content, so any change would trigger duplicates.

I just thought I'd mention that as a caveat. I'll definitely have to consider my headlines more carefully before publishing an article in the future. Sorry 'bout that.