Hi-FrontPage is frustrating me. Just want a simple website for my new business. I hate to waste my software, but can’t take any more time. I already have hosting & domain elsewhere. Any suggestions? Thanks!

My response:

Suggestions? Well that’s easy. I would recommend letting a professional handle your simple website for your new business.

Many small business owners today highly underestimate both the advantages of a well-constructed web presence and the difficulties involved in its creation. I believe this is because of a simple lack of precedent. What I mean is that leaving web development to professionals has not made it into the realm of “common knowledge.” In contrast, take something like construction. Rarely does a business owner decide that they need a small patio behind their building of business and immediately set off to home depot to buy concrete, a trough, 2×4’s and plywood for framing, etc. and then head back to attempt to pour the patio on their own. No, most business owners would hire a contractor for this job, as they do not have the necessary expertise to do the job themselves. This seems like good common sense.

For whatever reason, people seem to think that building websites is easy. It is not. Sure, you can get some words to show up on a screen. But then, I can simply pour a bunch of concrete on the dirt and call it a patio as well. That does not make it a good idea.

To put it mildly, FrontPage sucks. I quit using that software as a web development tool nearly a decade ago (I have been building websites since 1995).

I think it is good that you have decided not to waste any more of your time. Now, like you would with the patio job, you need to figure out what your requirements are and what the budget for the project is. I can build a $1200 site in a night or two. I have also been contracted out in the past for 6 month jobs – where the full payment was equivalent to some people’s annual salary. So you need to figure out what you are willing to spend on your web presence. Then I would get bids from several contractors and/or web development companies based on your requirements and your expected costs.

If all of this seems too heavy for your business, then it is probably a VERY small business, which is okay. I would just try to find a cousin or a nephew that perhaps has some skills in building web pages and have them do it for you. Or put an ad on craigslist to try and find a student who is learning to build websites. They are often eager to work on small projects for little money.

Hopefully some of this advice has been useful. Good luck!

Danyell

But seriously… I am involved in the development of some rather large projects that involve extensive code tracking and maintenance, and I am curious as to what others are doing out there. I have heard passionate discussions in regards to several of these super sexy topics that all involve multiple developers working on a common codebase:

• Types of version control
  • SVN
  • Subversion
• Code branching
• Managing code across several environments
• Support vs new development
• Merging strategies

It seems to me that these things have already been discussed at length by some assortment of really nerdy developers / software architects and that there is probably a best practice. Where do you find this knowledge? As a programmer working in the industry, as well as being an architect of my own software, I think this would be invaluable.

I have thought about going back to school, but who teaches that? The most complicated stuff I saw in college, as far as web-based development, was ColdFusion. Wow.

In reading this, sometimes it seems like my blogs are more about asking for information rather than sharing it. Is that okay? Hmm…

If any girl reads this I will be highly surprised. If any girl actually likes that pickup line, pinch me.

Password Management

• RoboForm – A must have for anybody with more than 3 passwords (You) Worth the money, trust me. This is probably my top time-saver right now.

Virus Protection

• Trend Micro PC-cillian Internet Security – Does pretty much everything you need it to do

Office Suite and Document Viewing

• Microsoft Office – I load this only because I have a license for it. If I didn’t, see below…
• OpenOffice.org – Free software that has pretty much everything MS Office has and can open files created in the MS Office suite (Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, etc.)
• Adobe Acrobat Reader – Standard for well formed documents and forms

Web Development Tools

• Zend Studio 5.5 – Not to be confused with the bug-laden Zend Studio for Eclipse 6.0 (see my previous post)
• Eclipse – I use the PDT for PHP development. Not really a fan of Eclipse, but you have to know it since it is industry standard and hey, its free.
• XML Notepad – Handy free tool for viewing XML output in a tree format
• Xampp – Local development environment with Apache, PHP and MySQL all in one package

Browsers

• Firefox – Obviously
• Flock – Social networking browser based on Mozilla engine. Saves a bit of memory over FF
• Internet Explorer – Yes, you still have to test on IE6 and IE7

Browser Extensions / Add-Ons

• Firebug – The best tool for web development out there.
  • Tip: Add the “Inspect” button to your toolbar for quick access
• Web Developer – Lots of handy features like cache clearing and table outlines
• del.icio.us – Keep your bookmarks up to date
  • Tip: Add the “Tag” button to your toolbar for quick bookmarking
• StumbleUpon – Find sites that you never would have found. Great for development if you set your interests to be programming-related
• Screengrab! – Handy for quick screen captures
• Tab Saver – Restores your last tabbed session

Database Tools

• SQLyog – Great tool for working in MySQL. Have to buy it though
• MySQL Query Browser – Free interface to MySQL databases. Not as good as SQLyog, but it’s free!

FTP and Telnet Applications

• FileZilla – Great FTP app with SFTP capabilities
• Bitvise Tunnelier – Opens an FTP window and a SSH window with one quick logon

Images & Graphics

• Adobe Photoshop CS3 – The best out there
  • If you can’t afford Photoshop, check out The Gimp
• Picasa – Google’s picture manager.
• Instant Eyedropper – Awesome tool for stealing color codes from anywhere on your screen

Music

• Rhapsody – Well worth the monthly charge for the “Rhapsody To Go” subscription
• Pandora – The best web-based radio station. I use this to find good music that I would not otherwise know to look for. When I hear a song I like, I go add it to my library in Rhapsody for playing later

Instant Messenging

• GoogleTalk – The best overall instant messenger
• MSN Messenger – Everybody is on here
• Yahoo Messenger – For some reason people still use this, so I load it too

A few more random setup things I do…

• Taskbar on the Side – Quick access to the programs you use the most without ever going into the Start Menu!
  • Add all the programs you use the most to your taskbar
  • Now, under start menu properties, change the taskbar properties to not be locked
  • Now grab the task bar and drag it to the left side of your screen
  • Resize it to be just wide enough for the icons
  • Change the task bar properties to turn on “Lock the Taskbar,” “Auto Hide,” and “Always on Top”
  • Now you can access all your frequently used programs just by hovering your mouse to the left side of your screen! Sweet!
• Virtual Desktops for Windows – VirtuaWin is a slick program that gives you multiple workspaces in windows, switchable with configurable hot keys
  • I generally set up 6 desktops:
    • 1 for Outlook and Web Development tools (Eclipse, Zend)
    • 1 for telnet and FTP connections (FileZilla, Tunnelier)
    • 1 for planning and help docs currently in use (APIs, developer guides, language references)
    • 1 for image editing (Photoshop, Picasa)
    • 1 for Music (Rhapsody and Pandora)
    • 1 for personal chat windows and web-based email (Messengers, Gmail, Hotmail)

Well that’s about the setup I use. Hope this helps you out! Feel free to leave suggestions as I may have inadvertently left some stuff off.

I am fairly concerned about this posture issue, but am not sure what is the most effective method of battling the degeneration of my spinal cord. I have a nice chair with a headrest and multiple adjustments for the height of the chair and angle of the back and I have tried many combinations. I have even considered getting some sort of device that ties me to the chair, but it seems like this would be rather uncomfortable.

Any suggestions?

Flyspray has a few key features you should note.  First, you can manage multiple projects, which is essential for me.  You can assign rights of users to different projects, allowing you to support multiple end-users without allowing them to see each other.  You can easily view tasks for all projects to which you have access or view each project’s task list individually.

The notification system allows you to be updated when a task changes or is closed via email or Jabber.  You can also create custom categories for your tasks, which allows you to add things like “Feature Request” or “Code Cleanup” to a task, allowing you to prioritize your work easily.

I don’t know why the version is not even version 1 yet, as this seems to be pretty robust software. If anyone knows of more good bug tracking software, I’d like to hear about it!

I found at least as many of the same issues with the software as Eran Galperin did. I experienced the issues with the build and had to kill the task several times. And I too hate the “dreaded queue.”

Futhermore, I was disappointed in many other seemingly small changes in usability. For example,

• in Zend Studio 5.5 you can simply hit Ctrl + Tab to browse through your open files, as in Windows programs like Word or Photoshop. In Zend Studio for Eclipse, I have to hit Ctrl + F6 to browse through my open files, which necessitates the removal of my right hand from the home keys and just seems somewhat of an awkward key combination.
• In Zend Studio 5.5, you could hold down the Ctrl key and hit Enter when you want to insert a <br> tag at the end of your HTML code. This just seemed to disappear in Zend Studio for Eclipse.
• Adding a remote server to the project took me into some kind of file reading loop that would never finish. So, to combat the bug, I just stopped adding the remote folders to the project. However, this caused much of the code assist to “not know” about classes and variables, since it apparently must be added to the project for the inflection to work.

A bit nit picky you might say, but these small changes add up to a lot of minutes in a 10 hour day of programming and reduced my efficiency by enough of a margin to have me wanting to go back to 5.5. I really wanted the new version to work well, but it seems really buggy and cumbersome. So I switched back and am flying through code again!

Hopefully these issues will be resolved by the next release, but it makes me wonder how much the integration into Eclipse has limited or will limit the program’s usability. The standalone version seemed like a better route to me if they just took the advice of my previous post and then continued making updates and improvements.

I placed Tennessee.org on ebay today with no reserve and a modest starting bid price.  The auction is only 24 hours, so the time has come to show and prove.  My guess is that some bidder will walk away with a steal of a deal…

Go directly to the auction here

However, in order to complete development and give the software my full attention, pre- and post-release, I find myself in need of funding. Therefore, in an effort to raise capital for this project, an impressive domain portfolio is being offered.

In total, 296 domain names are for sale, including:

• A country name KingdomOfSaudiArabia.com and shortcut domain KofSA.com
• A state name, Tennessee.org, which includes rights to the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce trade name and 33 additional supporting domains like TNCOC.com, tnChamber.com, tnJob.com, tnMail.com and many others
• Technical support suite Tech911.com including 3 supporting domains and rights to toll free number 1-800-Tech911
• Technical support directory Tech411.com and Tech411.net
• Countless additional gems including BuyTheChannel.com, CertifiedPolls.com, Denver411.com, DenverX.com, DomainPawnShop.com, EqualPay.org, MusicCity.org, RealtyWanted.com, Resolve.net, SecureRFID.com, CashBuyout.com, Hoffa.com, InternetDNS.com, Satvertizing.com, AdYear.com and many more…

The list goes on, so you should really just check out the portfolio for yourself. As previously stated, the proceeds for this sale will fund the completion and subsequent release of this custom software, so I have great interest in seeing some lucky buyer walk away with the domain deal of the century.

Obviously, feel free to pass the word along to anyone that might be interested!

Too often these days, people watch the news and feel depressed afterwards. Not a surprise given the regular barrage of bad news about corrupt politicians, war and violent crimes rampant here and ashore, robberies, natural disasters… And they are reporting all the worst of it!

Check it out and submit an article or two that might brighten somebody’s day…

Interested in being an admin and helping me weed out the “bad” news? Leave me a note in the comments and I’ll get in touch with you!

1. Code folding for arbitrary code blocks. While we CAN fold functions in classes, we appear unable to simply highlight arbitrary code blocks for folding. This wastes a lot of time scrolling.
2. CSS code completion support (context dropdowns).

The email I got back said that they had opened a feature request for the code folding (SWEET!), but that they already had CSS code completion and to send them a scenario that they could reproduce. Did I miss something? I certainly have not seen any CSS code completion, so this is what i sent back:

Perhaps my ZDE is not configured correctly, but I do not see the CSS code completion. For example, if I wish to style a <p> tag to be aligned center with bold text, I would start by typing the following code:

<p

As soon as I hit the space bar in Dreamweaver, a drop box appears and gives you the option to select align, class, dir, id, etc, which is actually HTML attribute support, which ZDE does provide me. However, once I select “style” I get to the point that I have the following,

<p style=””

and my cursor is placed in between the quotation marks. However, this appears to be the extent of the ZDE code completion for this tag. At this point in Dreamweaver, another drop-box appears giving me the CSS options azimuth, background, background-attachment, background-color, background-image, etc and this is the first part of the CSS attribute support I am speaking of. I must only type “te” and the text-align option is highlighted and I can then hit enter. At this point, my tag looks like this:

<p style=”text-align:”

and another drop box appears giving me the option to select center, inherit, justify, left, or right. I must now only type “c” and enter, then finish off this CSS attribute with a semicolon. Once I hit space bar, another drop box appears and I must only type “font-w” and hit enter, then “b” and enter, and I have completed the font-weight attribute:

<p style=”text-align:center; font-weight:bold;”

Now I just hit the “End” key and type “>” to close my tag and I am done.

<p style=”text-align:center; font-weight:bold;”>

To illustrate the importance of this feature in terms of efficiency, I complete this tag in Dreamweaver in 24 keystrokes, including spaces, Enter and End keys, while the same tag in ZDE costs me 43 keystrokes. To be completely fair, ZDE automatically adds the closing tag of </p> which would cost me 3 additional strokes in DW “</ + Enter”. However this still brings the score to 27 to 43, which is a rather large efficiency gap in my opinion. To be honest, though I have grown somewhat accustomed to the closing tag being automatically added in ZDE, I am not sure it is always an efficient method in itself, and it was rather frustrating when I first started using ZDE.

In any event, multiply this loss of efficiency from one tag and its CSS attributes by thousands of lines of code and I think you can see why this is a critical feature to be added to this otherwise outstanding piece of software.