Category: Quick Links

HTML mastery

Posted on by chris

Nathan Smith, himself no slouch when it comes to things webby, is recommending a new book by Paul Haine entitled HTML Mastery. If the title and premise are anything to go by this, as Nathan rightly says should be required reading for everyone involved in building websites.

You see, it all comes down to the quality of your foundations. Whether you’re talking about architecture, drumming, or pretty much anything else, getting the basics right and keeping them right is fundamental to your success. When developing websites the basics is the HTML your pages are made up of. get that right and you’ve got a great foundation from which to build. get it wrong and you’ll come unstuck sooner or later.

Microsoft, the web, and lots of long words

Posted on by chris

Microsoft have long been seen as the enemy of The True Web ™, and to be honest they haven’t always been on the ball when it comes to Internet developments. However perhaps all that is to change. This particularly intrigues me:

Later this year, it will offer Live CRM, a Microsoft-hosted, subscription-based version of its customer relationship application, part of its Dynamics line of business apps. Microsoft has hinted that it will offer its Dynamics ERP apps online and says new versions of the shrink-wrapped products coming out this year will feature links to Microsoft-hosted online communities. The first, a social network for financial professionals, will feature blogs, discussion boards, wikis, and the ability to create personal profiles, à la MySpace.

Why ‘financial professionals’? Why not add these sorts of facilities to the already huge Hotmail community? Or create a MySpace killer (if such a thing is possible)? Oh well, whatever they do I’m sure it will be worth watching.

New bird on the block

Posted on by chris

Here’s something that’s sure to ruffle a few feathers (pun very much intended). Yesterday while searching for an open-source player for a particular music file format I stumbled across this tuneful Songbird. It’s basically half-iTunes, half-Firefox. Intrigued? I know I was, and not just by the great design and illustration of the site.

After installing the developer preview (it’s currently in alpha, not even beta yet) and taking a look around I found that when you navigate to a website it automatically scans the page and puts all the music files linked from the page into a playlist ready for listening and/or downloading. Fantastic, and not unlike my very own Greasemonkey script for playing MP3 files on 3Hive. Except better. Much, much better.

I think it looks pretty cool, and you get even more great illustration in the program itself (is that bird pooping?) as well as a load of configuration options – and even add-ons, just like the fantastic ‘Fox. It says it integrates with iPods as well, and while it certainly recognised my iPod and showed all the playlists on it, I couldn’t create or copy a playlist to the iPod itself. Hopefully there’ll be some decent documentation somewhere that will help me out.

So if you’re into the musical web, this could well be the most useful software you get this year.

Catching up

Posted on by chris

Returning from a short break over the Easter weekend I find myself with the usual problem of too much reading to catch up on. My blog reading list has thousands of items outstanding on it, and I need to decide what I really need to read before I hit the magic “Mark all read” button. Here’s my top 5 must-read blogs (not in any specific order).

  1. Creating Passionate Users: I’ve linked to and written about Kathy’s excellent writings so many times before I’m not going to subject you to my fawning fandom again. Suffice to say if you’re involved in anything that provides products or services to anyone, you need to be a regular reader. Despite what’s happened recently there is still a wealth of information on the blog that’s worthy of your attention.
  2. Signal vs. Noise: 37signals are to modern web development what Tower of Power are to funk. Anyone in the know knows that they know their stuff, and they produce the very best in the business. I’m very influenced by 37signals’ ethos of less-is-more, and their blog truly is a window on the world through their eyes.
  3. The Cartoon Blog: Dave Walker is a friend of mine, and I’m proud to say so. He’s a cartoonist, humourist, blogist and websitist with a particularly unique way of looking at the world. He also has a book which is rather good.
  4. John Heron project: Wood is also a friend of mine, and could be described as a ”hack’, although his short stories are what draws me back time and again. Stories that skirt around the gap between this world and the other dimension that exists deep in each of our souls. Compelling stories.
  5. Gaping void: Hugh is one of those blog A-listers about which not much more could be said. I like what he says more than some of the cartoons that accompany the words, but the cartoons that really intrigue me are the ones about faith. There’s something going on deep inside Hugh, something fascinating.

Of course, there’s a lot more that just missed out being in that list, but these are the can’t-live-without-them ones.