Posted: December 27th, 2005 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Well, not much to say more for today. This post is just to feed technorati with the link that authenticates the claim from this blog.
I guess that would be it for this year on this blog. 2006 is just 5 days away.
Plans for this blog
- Adding change-log section
- Finishing the touches left, specialy colorizations
- Adding my del.icio.us syndication
- New section to for downloads
- New section for RSS feeds
- Get a feed subscription tracker, Feedburner maybe?
- Removing Portfolio section
- Enabling Search
- Final launch of this blog aka dotone->Blue Autumn
- More bloging, and bloging more
Thanks for keeping in touch and reading this blog for the past 2 months. 2006, I’ll be back with more.
Here you go Technorati, your link Technorati Profile fetch it and finish my blog claiming process.
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Posted: December 27th, 2005 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Personal, Web-Browsers | 2 Comments »
I don’t know how I missed this one. 
IE can be tabbed too. I’m not talking about another browser such as MyIE that uses the engine nor the Firefox extension that could open IE in tabs . I’m talkin’ IE and pure IE; well, not that pure, you could actualy use MSN toolbar and have your IE tabbing.
I guess I’ll drop using Opera soon
Opera is my fav on Windows, but i’m getting sick of all the graphics and skinness in Macintosh already. So on my slim IBM T23 I just want to use all my apps without no window shadows no too-graphical themes. I get most of my work done on an iMac beast so everything is too, i mean too graphical and themed on Mac that when I get back on my laptop i feel abit lite. So i’m dropping using Opera here, or maybe soon. Enough of Firefox already since I use it for web-layout testing while designing and writing code. Really enough of all this nonesense. I don’t know why, but I kindda don’t enjoy using Firefox that much anymore. Okay I got all my extensions and they’re all great. I just have to admit it. I still have some love for IE.
Firefox doesnt support the scroller button on my IBM T23. But IE does. 
So to get myself tabbing on IE I installed MSN Toolbar which I always hated since the day it came out. But really it aint’ bad at all. So on my Windows laptop I dont need to install no Google Desktop Search and no Google Toolbar, just MSN Toolbar and it gets you all the goodies.
Even though I used to be a theme, skin and shell crazy I now like simple interfaces. I remember the days I used Litestep and then the X-Desktop. Man now I just love the simplicity on Windows, well not too long! Vista is comming out all too graphical.
Will wait till IE7 is final and get my IE rocking tabs and RSS and all the rest of the candies. Till then, MSN Toolbar and IE 6; my company while cruising online.
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Posted: December 24th, 2005 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Code, Tech | 2 Comments »
On Dec 2nd Zend announced and demonstraded a buzz about working on a Framework to help commercial development and to help PHP developers in general to develop faster and with less duplicate and repeated coding. With a number of reliable and commercialy sound packages available in the market how Zend is going to make the difference? Or is it going to be just one of those “Yet Another”s? It’s obviously not. But is it going to have any value other than it’s produced and supported by Zend which is indeed a big added value?
The rise of the Frameworks
Frameworks for web development and in particlular for PHP programming have been growing fast. PRADO a framework awarded by Zend in 2004 PHP5 Coding Contest is a framework that implements ASP.Net style of component and tag design. PRADO succeeded to reach the public programmers but not the hardcores. I haven’t witnessed any application that is made with PRADO in the PHP community.
2 years ago, I was assigned to research about suitable frameworks available in the PHP community as well as the commercial space by my previous employer. The list was already a long one back then. On top of the list was PEAR , HORDE , PHPFrame , Mojavi , Blue Shoes , etc… The need for that kind of research was to find out the chances we had back then for grabbing a framework which was closer to our Interaction Level framework and not only for a particular utility component. Simple put, frameworks were middle-weres/utility code back then. By now Ruby-on-Rails is offering alot of tooling and code generation. ASP.Net 2.0 is out with great components and a new standardized architecting model. What’s Zend to add?
The added value
The presentation/webcast by Andi Gutman and Mike Naberezny stated that they’re going to work with framework makers and develop components by small teams. Simplicity of coding and architecture was the main point through all the presentation in which Andi Gutman repeated many times. The question that many people might have is what’s the value anyways?
- One value (well, the core value) is that it’s supported by a PHP-oriented company which echos all around the world, and who, the makers of Zend Engine and the best PHP IDE.
- Second is the commercialness of the whole image (although the license is going to be PHP-like license) and free of charge.
- Zend will sure make it part of their Zend Platform, and sure integrate it with the IDE
IDE integration and GUI framework
The modern view on a framework is the higher level framework. It’s no more the utility code repository that does the work and providing APIs. It’s the automation of the developers’ job. How much of the code is going to be written by the framework and how much configuration is needed are the actual features of the framework. Ruby-on-Rails got it right. Now, Symphony is on the way for PHP. How is Zend going to implement such a framework and how is it going to make us code less and focus on tasks instead of coding what’s behind the tasks is going to be tempting to wait for.
Until now Zend has tried its best to provide some snippets, code libraries to it’s IDE users. As a user of Zend IDE since version 2.0 I have to say it hasnt improved fast. The last addition on the IDE was collapsable and nested code segmentation on the editing panel which is not something new. Dreamweaver got it too. On top of all that is Zend to implement the framework and integrate it with the IDE? That’s going to reform the whole IDE to a WYSIWYG and a wizard based IDE rather than text-based hacking IDE. Is that to happen?
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Posted: December 21st, 2005 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
2k5. dotone was born in november 2005 . Login Inn expanded and still to grow bigger. Some wins, some losses, and some long idle moments. Some fast days, and some other slow and empty. 2005, good bye!
The Web2.0 band-wagon
2005 is/was the year Web2.0 era and the social software revolution kicked off. A big number of usable and useful apps and services floated up.
Okay, I know, another sticky buzzword. I know everyone’s complaining about it. But it is just another era for web, RESPECT.
Tagging, another new term used for categorising and labeling is another additions to web.
Hmm, let’s see. del.icio.us , bloglines , and digg are the most important services that I subscribed to in 2005. del.icio.us the best social bookmarking service which was acquired by Yahoo! some days ago is my favorite, if you aint’ registered there then you’re just wasting your bookmarking moments or loosing your bookmarks during backups.
I wish happened in 2005…
* I wish there were enough web groups and events for web designers and developers in Dubai/UAE.
- I wish website design “copy & pasting” at least reduced.
- It’s painful to watch agencies doing lame and minimal work for clients and painting web-design with black and weighing it cheap. I wish this reduced.
- I wish some individuals got some publicity instead of only their agencies or studios. Artists have no stages to appear on! Dubai, pay attention!
One website that can change your mind!
Ma most played in 2005
- Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc.
- Coldplay – Speed of Sound
- Lenny Kravitz – Mr. Cab Driver
Hopes and wishes for 2006
- IE 7 final, on top of my waiting list.
- Windows Vista, although now I use Mac OSX for work, I’m still waiting for it even though it’s a copy of Tiger & Panther. It’s Windows!
- Longer life for laptop batteries.
- WiFi hot spots all over cities. UAE’s small. Doable, I think?!
- Agencies lay back a bit and stop just becomming sales offices and outsourcing web design and branding work. Please! programming and development is okay, but Design?
- Coldplay concert in Dubai.
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Posted: December 21st, 2005 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Web-Browsers, Web-Design | 2 Comments »
Whether you like IE or Fireforx , if you love Opera or just can’t stop using Safari , you have to choose one of these browsers as your standard browser for testing when you design with x-browser support or you’ll just end up testing on each browser on every CSS modification.
Morphing pretty images to structural markup
The design process started with a long enough checklist including branding, usability, find ability and compliance to standards. So the GUI or the website graphical layout is designed with all that in mind. Now it’s the time you take that beauty out of Photoshop and give it some jobs and some qualities. You HTML it. You write a proper structure for the layout and present the copy in a good arrangement according to your Information Architecture layout. You start CSSing to achieve what you designed in Photoshop in your web browser.
You press F12 in Dreamweaver
You’re partly done with some CSS work. So to satisfy your thirst for a visual treatment after some few minutes, you preview your work in your default browser. In most cases IE would be the default browser on Windows even though majority of designers turned to Firefox as we witness the badges on many blogs, and obviously Safari on Mac. But where should we start? Which browser should we take as our standard for testing. Why not pick our favorite and test against it, and then let’s say god will help–don’t do that!
It’s a modern talk!
We’re talking modern browsers; we’re cruising in a hood full of floating cars. DOM supporting browsers, CSS2 friendly, and now even XMLHTTPRequest. Cross browser (x-browser) compatibility is not an option anymore. It’s a must. So, how are we setting our pace to get there on time and on job? By having a rule of thumb that is having only one browser to test on. Once you’re done, test on the rest of the browsers on your list (the ones that most of your audience use, however you should consider all the people!). That way you don’t have to do an ad-hoc test on every refresh, instead you test on the rest of the browsers with an overall understanding of the differences; not forgetting to reset browser CSS defaults & using JS abstraction layers.
So which browser would you go with?
Fox rains a 3 pointer, he’s on Fire!
I’m an Opera fan on Windows. I adore Safari on my new Tiger. I still miss my IE that I ditched after being charmed by Tabbing and RSS support in Opera. So, I ain’t no biased and no promoter for sure.
Why Firefox? imma show you the money now!
The list of browsers and their different versions is a long one. It’s going to be appended by new ones as we go forward. How many are we going to have on Web3.0 era? My short listed browsers are shown below and I’ll explain why Firefox.
Safari, the default browser on Mac OS is a classy browser with all means. Supports all the goodies and renders CSS really in a smooth way. However, form controls are not editable in CSS and the look stays in tack with the OS theme. Konqueror the KDE ambassador runs the same unity game with KDE’s theme. Both being based on KHTML engine makes them both a special kind of browsers. Safari works on Mac OS and Konqueror on Linux running KDE shell. They’re not universal (portable) on the OS domain.
Opera hosts Pavarotti, not my testing
Opera ships with great themes & functions, oh okay let’s get back to slashing it. Again it has it’s own implementation of form control look and feel. Active-x objects are not supported. Weak on Active-x and XMLHTTPRequest. Even though Opera is one of the browsers that is portable on many platforms it’s still not a browser that helps in debugging. It’s got the different modes of viewing and zooming and the rest of the goodies including toggling images, and textual view. It’s a good one to consider but won’t be good enough to take as a standard judging baldy.
IE’s out of shape for now
Even with the updates and the promises for supporting the web dev communities by donating a Developer Toolbar it’s still out of the game for many of the bugs in the rendering engine for CSS. Until IE 7.0 is final let’s keep IE out. Let’s not forget that IE is good on Windows. It is really not even close to a web browser on Mac! It doesn’t even have a place in Linux (you wouldn’t use Virtual PC to run Linux and then run WinE to run IE would you?). But hey, it’s the most popular browser and a market dominator! Respect.
Firefox is the ideal testing browser
One happy family. Mozilla (gecko) browsers; Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape Navigator are all cross OS browsers based on the same base engine with different implementations. So by using Firefox we’re actually testing on 3 brands of browsers.
One of the most important qualities of Firefox is the level portability across OSes. It’s as if Firefox builders (Mozilla) are aiming for winning the standard-browser title all the way. Form controls implementation and CSS unity over OSes is an amazing part of Firefox for testing. Developer extensions are the most powerful additions to Firefox that makes it simple to debug on it. JavaScript console is another built-in feature.
It’s available on any OS you wish. Windows got it, Mac enjoys it, Linux Dist’s? most of them have it!
Done testing on Firefox. Now what?
Once you’re done on Firefox it’s your turn to start testing on Win IE. Once you’re done you’re mostly done with all the other browsers too! Only little fixes might catch you if you didn’t reset all the browsers’ defaults, even that are a minor change that you must have to do. After test on Firefox and IE you’re %98 done so to speak. The rest would be just a pixel or two misaligning or a font shift here and there. You’re just ready to after testing. If you used a proper JS abstraction layer such as Prototype then you’d be good to go for AJaX too.
Share your experience.
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Posted: December 15th, 2005 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
If you find yourself a web designer and know how to play around designing interfaces and export them to HTML using CSS and have a good background in Adobe Flash and live in Sharjah or Ajman U.A.E and don’t mind being around with a group of Geeks and Artists for many hours during a day send your resume to Jobs at Login.ae .
Login Inn is looking for a web developer too! If you can code a little PHP and are aware of OO and know your way around MySQL and designing pattern and can code HTML, CSS, JS in ease then please send your resume to Jobs at Login.ae .
You won’t believe how an awful experience it’s been since I put ads in newspapers classifieds and online recruitment agencies looking for Web designer and a developer. I’ve been receiving anything but that. I’ve been receiving CVs of Network Admins, Software Engineers, and even a Microsoft Great Plane consultant ! You won’t believe what how simple I put the ads.
Web Designer: XHTML, CSS, Photoshop, Flash, JS is a plus. Send your resume to jobs@login.ae
and for web developer ad:
Web Developer: XHTML, CSS, PHP, SQL, JS, Photoshop is a plus. Send your resume to jobs@login.ae
I’m still so confused of the way i’m receiving these CVs. I mean one day I was a job seeker too. I wouldnt spam every ad I see. For god sake how is an Electronics Engineer related to any of the jobs posted above?
Anyways if you know someone who’s fit or think is fit for the above jobs, or perhaps you are; don’t waste a minute send the resume.
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Posted: December 4th, 2005 | Author: dotblack | Filed under: Web-Design, i18n | 1 Comment »
I guess this would be on of the 2,3 entries for this month since this month’s going to be a little busier (I’ll tell you about it in the next posts) so, I picked up a hot subject that’s been puzzling me for a while; a subject that’s kept me busy for sometime. Information Architecrue & Usability for non-English websites.
Is language the dividing line?
Internationalization, i18n , L10n , and localization are terms that you’d face if you seek for multi-language software or web-applications. Language pack is another term you could find as a feature of many applications. So is that it? Turning left-to-right to right-to-left and changing character-set or using unicode; that’s it? Although it’s been appealing and a huge help for eliminating the language barrier against using applications it’s not enough. It’s not enough because changing interface language does not change the IA, nor the UI in most of the cases.
In our case, Arabic (or Farsi ) would be the secondary language.
Logicaly thinking, the whole ball game is different for informatin architecture and the user interface of the application or website because no matter how much westernized or how big of an English reader we’d be we still have our own mindset for the mother tongue and culture. When you think English you’d even answer yourself in English. So to relate it to our concern over here, when a user switches the interface to Farsi/Arabic mode, he/she will start skimming through the interface differently thus, different controls and texts would take his/her focus. If he/she is used to Arabic keyboard shortcuts of let’s say Arabic-Windows XP then the app should apply that.
How UI is different for Persian or any non-English language?
Language reading direction is one of the elements that defines how a UI is supposed to be constructed. What happens is that the reader/web-surfer starts identifying the language first, according to the language he/she starts skimming and folowing word tails depending on the ltr/rtl of the language. So to clarify, if the language used is Engish the user starts skimming from top-left all the way to bottom-right of the page. If not skimming and reading or looking for a particular thing on the page it still goes left to right but in rows. So what’s catchy and notable for an English reader would be totally different in the case of a right-to-left driven language. Okay, so a Farsi/Arabic web page would make the reader start all the way from top-right to bottom-left.
How would the links look like or the navigation layout in Arabic/Farsi website? This is a very tough question. Localized computing in this region (Middle East) is not that matured so to speak–it is only translated and right-to-left oriented following all the rules that an English computing methods follow. So, usualy all the links follow the global (English) kind of the look and feel (bold, underlined which I understand are the global standards for linking and hyperlinks depending on user’s defined CSS on the browser side).
Keyboard’s awkward layout. Even though the language is different still Arabic/Farsi keyboards use the same key layout used in english. My concerns are on Numbers, Tab-Key, Caps Lock key, Function keys (f1-f12), and Enter. For Arabic Numbers are read from right-to-left unlike Farsi and English that read from left-to-right so the numbering order is not the way one learns at school making computing experience a little harder when starting striking keys on early ages. Tab is very tricky, take an example of a data entry application that is in Arabic. Tab keys would go from right-to-left of the screen while Tab key is on top-left side of the keyboard. That is in contrast avoided by habit even though it is a major abnormality and anti-smoothnes on the input curve.
Localization: Many Arabic/Farsi sites fail!
So let’s get back to UI. Once text direction is defined either using CSS (direction:ltr or rtl) or using the Dir attribute of HTML tags every element on the page is oriented according to that direction.
What happens to numbers and dates? Unless you’re on an Arabic-Local box or your regional settings of your OS is set to Arabic or Farsi you’re going to get English digits or whatever you’ve set to display in your regional settings. The whole website is in Farsi/Arabic but still the numbers and dates are to be shown in English. Imagine clicking on a date control and you get a month’s days all in English and then again everything goes in Arabic. Isnt it even a little confusing. Of course it’s usable but not optimised for non-English users. gettext?
Special characters such as !, ?, ;, :, ., etc… are left-to-right characters so they make Farsi and Arabic text to get obfuscated where you can’t make-up where a sentence begins nor where it ends.
UTF-8 please! What’s worse than dialing a webpage address that shows you some weired question marks and other characters? That’s what happens when a page is made using a character-set that doesn’t exist on your computer. Even if that character-set is installed on your computer then you have to select that particular character-set and then reload the whole page which would engage 2-5 clicks. Is that something a potential prospect would do on a website? Isn’t that risky for any web presence and all the investment made on the website?
Typography
A couple of days ago AMEInfo (a leading online news provider for the Middle East region) released an Arabic version of their news website . While I’m sure the content would be great I still find the whole usage of type goes to an unwanted direction. Unlike English text if you select Arial font for instance, it’s alright. However, Arabic fonts tend to be smaller and hard to read. Many websites use bold for all kinds of text as a solution. Other smarter designers use Tahoma as it is a better font and better read. Yes, they’re really limited number of fonts available for use on web documents in Arabic.
So what’s the solution? While some of the websites use images, some others have used proper sizing for text and the weight. CSS is really enough but the font selection is a massive limiter. No, not even sIFR can help! Check out some good usage at Al-Bayan .
I’m still wondering how AMEInfo is still using non-bold styling for their navigational links. It was really confusing for me the first time I opened their homepage. I hope they’ll bold it up and use a non-black color too. AMEInfo, it’s a webpage! care about your users and make them feel home on the web. White space please!
Headers, titles, links, paragraphs, quotes, etc… follow the same rules used in English writing since they all come down from traditional writing methods used in print.
Read enough, show me the money!
No greens out here. The bottom line; changing text direction and translating the whole copy of an English website to Arabic/Farsi is not enough. Just about everything else is included. I believe researches and further development would be answering and ironing many of these concerns but just a reminder again, a language pack, and a rtl is not all that about it.
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