Web Development Blog

Development

10+ Essential Tools for Windows Based Web Developers
Web development is not an easy career path to follow- there’s so much competition around for jobs and the industry is advancing all the time. If you want to stay ahead of the pack, it’s important to familiarise yourself with the latest and greatest tools- tools which will save you time and improve the appearance and usability of the sites you build.

IT job trends – Which technologies you should learn next
According to indeed.com you are currently the most valuable IT ressource if you are a Java Developer with Spring and Hibernate knowledge. You should know how to develop web applications with JSP, Struts or Web Flow and how to deploy it on Tomcat or Oracle Application Servers.

Learning jQuery: Your First jQuery Plugin, “BubbleUP”
There are many posts available detailing how to write your own jQuery plugin. It won’t take long before you realize that building in jQuery is very simple. Continuing in our jQuery Learning Series, here we’re going to build your first jQuery plugin. It’ll generate a bubble effect for your menu list and we’re going to call it BubbleUP.

10 Things That Make a Great Web App – Fred Wilson at FOWA Miami 2010
Fred Wilson is described by Ryan Carson as one of the “smartest investors in the industry” with 15 years investing in web applications and services. He’s discussing 10 things that make a great web app.

Introducing Web SQL Databases
The Web SQL database API isn’t actually part of the HTML5 specification, but it is part of the suite of specifications that allows us developers to build fully fledged web applications, so it’s about time we dig in and check it out.

Design

Create An Editable Stitched Label Type Treatment
This Stitched Label Type tutorial relies heavily on the Appearance panel, making it easy to edit the text and apply the treatment to other fonts and vector elements.

2009 Web Design Trends: What’s Washed-Up & What Will Remain Hot in 2010
There were some strong trends in web design in 2009. Here’s a look back at my top ten, and my predictions for these trends in 2010.

Innovative Product Design
When I’m looking for web design inspiration I like to make sure that I look at non web related sources of design to ensure that I don’t just follow current web trends. So today I thought I would showcase a whole host of really innovative product designs.

11 Essential Tips Every Designer Should Be Aware Of
Almost every profession requires never ending learning and self educating, but especially it’s important in design field – new software, websites, tools come out every day, it’s your task to keep up, evolve your view and find the best ways to do specific tasks!

80 Extreme Advertisements That Will Challenge Your Mind
Presenting another side to design, some of the advertisements shared in this article today may be a little visually disturbing or conceptually controversial.

Blogging & Business

The 1st month of Richworks : My journey to become a kickass blogger
The first month of blogging is always the toughest because this is when you have to come up with quality posts and tutorials to keep the visitors glued to your blog.

Do You Have What it Takes to be a Freelance Web Designer or Developer?
Do you have what it takes to be a freelance web designer or developer? Check out these 15 things to consider, and you decide!

12 Reasons You Need a Facebook Fan Page and 5 Easy Steps for Creating One
Separate from your personal profile, a Facebook fan page is a public profile that lets you share your products, services and related information with other Facebook users. Here are some of the biggest reasons you should create a fan page today.

So you don’t like ads on websites/blogs
If you have a website that has ads, you are probably no stranger to people commenting that you have too many ads on your website. Usually, I just smile and nod when I receive such comment but today, I thought I’d write my thoughts here.

5 Sure Fire Tactics to Promote a Business Blog
Relevant, Consistently Updated Content + Flawless Technical Functionality & User Experience = Perfect Blog Launch
What’s missing from the equation above? You guessed it: blog promotion.

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Last updated: Feb 2010

FireFTP is a browser plugin for Mozilla Firefox that lets you connect to a FTP server. By default, it doesn’t show any hidden files on the server, but you can change this via Options.

1. Connect to a FTP server using FireFTP
2. Click on Tools -> Options from the top right menu
3. From Options dialog box, tick “Show hidden files” and click “OK”

So you don’t like ads.

If you have a website that has ads, you are probably no stranger to people commenting that you have too many ads on your website. Usually, I just smile and nod when I receive such comment but today, I thought I’d write my thoughts here. You don’t have to agree with me, and I encourage you to share your opinion in the comments section.

Firstly, we see ads everywhere; at bus stops, in newspapers, in magazines, at shopping malls and so on. And I don’t see why having ads on a website makes any difference to having ads somewhere else.

Secondly, as long as there is no pop-up ads or video-ads that start playing automatically on your website, I don’t think they are distracting enough to make you stop reading the content on the website.

Thirdly, are you forced to click on an ad before interacting with the website such as proceeding to another page or leaving a comment? If not, why too hard on them.

I agree having ads on the website doesn’t come without drawbacks. You, as the user, may have to scroll a bit more to read the content, the website might load a bit slower because it has to load extra data (images, javascript, etc) for the ads, it will use more bandwidth from your ISP because you’re loading more data, and some cleverly designed ads might grab your attention causing you to follow them which could possibly result in wasting your time.

However, you, as the user, have the right to block the ads if you find them extremely annoying by using ad-blocking plugins and software. And as the owners of the website, we have the right to put ads on our websites with the hopes of earning some pocket money. It also gives us an incentive to produce good content. It is a win-win situation.

So, I am all for having unobtrusive ads on websites. After all, someone has to pay for all the hosting, marketing and resources put into making and maintaining a website. But I understand it’s a tricky issue and I’d like to hear your thoughts on this topic. Please leave a comment to have your say and share your opinion.

As you can see in the table below, Cross-Site Scripting, SQL Injection and Buffer overflows are three most common and serious programming errors that result in vulnerabilities. This list was published recently on 17 February 2010.

Source: 2010 CWE/SANS Top 25 Most Dangerous Programming Errors