philellsworth.com

A hundred years ago, if you wanted to own and operate a car, you had to know a lot about what was going on under the hood (or regularly pay someone who did). Ideally, you’d also know how to run a mill, a lathe, and other shop tools if a part had to be replaced or improved. There were more than 200 car makers in the United States alone, and there wasn’t a parts store just around the corner.

The experience of learning how to build a full-function, data-driven website from scratch is somewhat comparable today. Typically, if you’re learning web development, you will download and install WAMPP or XAMPP, various code-editing tools, and configure it all correctly before you’re ready to build that first "Hello World" page. At this point, you might try to learn coding with a how-to book in your lap or while logged on to a tutorial site. If you do everything perfectly, your new code will run as intended. But if something goes awry during the configuration process, or a semicolon shows up where a colon should be, you can spend hours if not days trying to find the source of the problem.

One of the greatest advancements in learning about web development and web design is the huge growth and availability of online tutorials, both free and paid. The paid sites such as lynda.com are well worth the investment, but they all pretty much take the same approach: video tutorials, sometimes with exercise files to help you along. You can study of even re-create the exercise files, but it’s not the same as having someone or something to tell you what you’ve missed. And while some programs offer code-hinting, debugging tools, and many other helpful features, they’re geared for the builder, not the learner.

Here’s an idea I haven’t seen implemented, but it’s something I’d definitely pay for: truly interactive tutorials. I envision going to a website to learn about php, for example, and being able to code right on the page, while being led by an audio file. Click a button to check whether the code was properly formed before going on to the next part of the lesson. No need to download exercise files, upload completed files or even save them (although that might be a nice option), much less install a web server to test the files. By eliminating some parts of the learning process, or at least making it modular and thereby deferring it, the student’s experience could be a lot closer to a live classroom situation.

The closest to this approach is probably w3schools.com, which has a ton of excellent examples. I’ve learned much of the [admittedly limited] stuff I know from these, but I know I learn best and retain the most by actually typing out the code myself and hearing an instructor’s comments, suggestions, and corrections while I do it. I can’t afford to hire a private tutor, and I don’t have time to enroll in a semester-long class in scripting. Classroom training can be costly, and whether I retain the lessons depends on a variety of variables, including my familiarity with the subject going in, the instructor’s ability to effectively communicate, and my mood at the time.

Anyone who wants to build a full-fledged web 2.0 site should learn how to do it all, deploying a web server, learning javascript, SQL, xml, and so forth, but they shouldn’t have to try to learn it all simultaneously.

Even though I’m fairly new to it, I like making graphs in Adobe Illustrator CS3 much more than using Excel. They inevitably wind up looking more professional, and I especially like using the variables feature so I can make several similar graphs by just switching out the data. However, there are a few thing about it that drive me batty:

Having to change years from numbers to text. When I input a data set, it often has years as category axis. However, Illustrator assumes 2008 is a number, rather than a year. There’s no way that I know of to change the data from a number to a string except by hand, putting double quotes before and after the year (a la "2008"). I finally created a text file with a column of years from 1960 to 2010 with the double-quotes already applied. Now I can copy and paste the years I want, rather than doing it by hand every time.

When Illustrator applies the data to a graph it puts the legend upside down. For example, if I have a data set that shows data for January, February, and March, the graph will show January, February, and March from left to right, as you’d expect. But the legend will show up on the right with March, February, and January, from top to bottom. That seems upside down to me, and I don’t see a way to flip them, except manually.

Also, when inputting a data set, Illustrator can’t recognize numbers with comma separators or percentace signs as numbers. They have to be removed — usually in Excel — and then replaced once the graph is made, if you want ‘em back. I know it’s not Excel, and doesn’t aspire to be, but that seems like a pretty basic feature you’d put into a data-handling program.

I haven’t used CS4, so I don’t know whether these features have been addressed in it. And maybe somebody out there knows a way around these slight issues. I’d sure be interested to hear about them! I make a lot of graphs, and you’d be saving me a lot of time.

I’ve had this phone for about a month now. Here are some of my gripes and likes:

Gripes:

• Scrolling. It’s hit or miss. Sometimes you hit a link you were just trying to scroll across, other times you scroll on past where you wanted to stop. Takes some getting used to, and it shouldn’t.
• Music player. OK for most practical uses, but practically useless for listening to podacsts or aduiobooks. The only way to advance through a track is to hold your finger in just the right place … and wait. Scrolling through a one-hour podcast will take about 10 minutes, if you’re lucky. I’ve gone back to using my Sansa Connect for all but regular music tracks. 
• Limited Favorites. You can bookmark about 10 to 15 URLs, and that’s it. Why? I had to make my own page of mobile links.
• Unlock. You can leave auto-lock off, in which case your keys may try to call Outer Mongolia. Or you can leave it on, and unlock your phone EVERY time you want to do something (like answer a call). 

Likes

• Mobile Web Browser is fast.
• Great having access to multiple e-mail accounts.
• Calendar and other tools are above average.
• VZ Navigator is great for out-of-town trips.
• Great being able to update Facebook and Twitter, although you may find yourself logging in more than usual. Not sure why it doesn’t "remember me" longer.
• Can listen to music while browsing the web.
• QWERTY keyboard (horizontal) or standard keypad (vertical). This also takes some getting used to, but doesn’t seem as problematic as the scrolling annoyance.
• With the addition of a $12 8GB micro SD card, there’s tons of memory for pics, videos and music.

Despite my gripes, I don’t have any qualms about recommending this phone. I live in Wyoming. No AT&T, hence no iPhone. My previous phone was a Samsung SCH-u740, which I liked very much but wasn’t web-ready (at least not like the Dare. 

Yet another personal breakthrough in my learning about XML. Like the previous post, this knowledge took far too long to obtain through trial and error, so maybe this will save some time for someone else who’s trying to learn XML.  Before I post the steps, please allow me to mix a couple of metaphors:

• This process (like the one in the previous post) is akin to bait fishing for trout in a mountain stream. Purists will be sickened by it, it may even violate the rules, but it also put some fish in the frying pan.
• If this example were a car, I’d drive it, but only if no one’s looking.

Using these steps, I went from a Microsoft Word .doc file to an XML file, to layout in InDesign, and to a styled XHTML file in less than an hour. These steps do require a little HTML & CSS experience, preferably an html editor (such as the free HTML-Kit), a css style sheet, and Adobe InDesign. I also used Dreamweaver to attach the style sheet to the XHTML file, but you could do that fairly easily by hand.

1. Copy edited document from Word and paste into blank page in HTML-Kit.
2. Enclose content within <xml> and </xml> tags.
3. Add tags such as:
   <byline>  </byline>
   <references> </references>
   and so forth (to correspond with your InDesign paragraph styles).
4. If any paragraphs have special characters such as ampersands, greater than or less than signs, etc., they need to be enclosed in CDATA tags. You could put these on all text-carrying paragraphs, but it’s not required unless they have those characters.
   Starting tag: <![CDATA[    (note both brackets are lefties)
   Ending tag:  ]]>
5. Save as .xml file
6. Open blank InDesign document.
7. Import XML file.
8. Drag XML onto blank page.
9. Map Tags to styles.
10. Export to Dreamweaver/XHTML.
11. Open file in Dreamweaver.
12. Attach stylesheet (link icon on CSS panel).
13. Highlight any elements that aren’t properly styled and change using properties panel.
14. Save file.

If you have any questions, feel free to comment.

I don’t know why it took me so long to figure this out, but building an XML schema is really simple. I searched countless websites that talked about XML, but couldn’t find an understandable description of how to build the schema itself, so I decided to post this on my own site. 

Of all the software and websites I used in 2008, these are my favorites. Not all were new in ‘08; in fact, some are years old, but these remain my favorites. If you haven’t used them, they’re worth looking into. And when I say that some some of these are "free" I mean they are open source. A lot of work has gone into the development of these, and they deserve your financial support, even if it’s just a few bucks. In some cases, there are free versions and paid versions.

1. Wordpress. The New York Times uses it, and you can, too. It’s super simple, flexible, and has strong community support. Free.
2. Google Chrome. Tabs load independently, so if one locks up, the others don’t. Search from the address bar. What a concept! Free.
3. Xara Extreme. Amazing what you can get in a graphics program for less than $100.
4. Irfanview. A graphics viewer that’s fast, compact, and versatile. This one saves me a lot of time resizing, batch renaming, or for quick fixes when I don’t need to start up Photoshop. Free.
5. XAMPP. Easily install an Apache HTTP Server, MySQL database, and interpreters for scripts written in the PHP and Perl programming languages. Free.
6. Jott. Call Jott with your cell phone, and it transcribes the message and sends it as a text message. You can Jott to your calendar, to an expense sheet, to Twitter, Facebook, Remember the Milk, even to Wordpress. If you’re the forgetful type (like me), Jott yourself, and get a text message reminder about an appointment. Free.*
7. A List Apart. You will learn much about website design and development from this site. Free.
8. TED. Put all the smart people in one room. Give each one 18 minutes to inspire the world. Open your mind to what’s possible. Imagine if somebody had thought of this 100 years ago. Great videos. Free.
9. lynda.com. For $25 a month, you can go from idiot to expert. Good luck finding a cheaper way to educate yourself so thoroughly.
10. Carbonite. For $49 a year, back up all your documents every night, without even thinking about it. Set it and forget it.
11. Delicious.com. Access your favorites from any computer and share them with friends. Free.
12. AVG. Protect yourself from viruses, spyware, malware, and phishing attacks. Free.
13. United E-Fares. OK, admittedly an odd inclusion here, but cheap, last-minute fares are worth mentioning. Sometimes they even go where you want to go. Cheap (sometimes).
14. qipit.com. Shoot a photo with your cell phone. Send it to qipit and get a pdf e-mailed to you. Or fax from your cell phone. Free.
15. zoho.com. The amount of things you can do on zoho makes my head spin. I can’t even begin to list them all. Look for yourself. Free.
16. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Express. High-end database features for free.
17. HTML-Kit. A great little text-based html editor with plenty of features. Makes writing html code a lot easier than doing it from scratch. Free.
18. Adobe Dreamweaver. Pricey, but worth it. And I’ve only begun to explore its capabilities. Approx. $399.
19. Adobe Photoshop Express. Free, online version of Photoshop. Cool black-and-white filter tool included.
20. Excel to XML Export. There’s a lot you can do with XML, and this makes it much easier by converting those Excel files to XML files you can actually use. $19.99.
21. OpenDNS. Dan Kaminsky discovered a big scary flaw in the Internet. If you use OpenDNS, you aren’t vulnerable. If you don’t use it, be prepared to share your credit cards. Free.
22. W3Schools. Tutorials on practically every aspect of web development, from basic HTML to advanced XML, SQL, Database, Multimedia and Wireless Application Protocol. Free.

    The last three are Wordpress plugins:
    

23. NextGEN Gallery. Use a crappy photo gallery tool and then use this one. Suddenly, birds are chirping and flowers are blooming, and your faith in humanity is restored.
24. Wordpress Automatic Upgrade. Makes upgrading … well, automatic. For headache prevention, it’s right up there with aspirin.
25. Askimet. Hate spam in your inbox? You’ll hate it even more when it shows up on your website. Askimet prevents almost all of it.

    ENJOY!

*Some features require paid service.

What’s the big, square stone across the river from me? I dunno.