One rule I learned early on from my teachers is to never use contractions in writing. This was drilled into me during university as I wrote book reports and research papers. In fact, most formal writing abhors contractions. But there’s one place that loves contractions: web writing.
Category: Web development
8 tricks to write for the web
Writing for the web requires a few tricks. People who surf the web are in a hurry and rarely do they stay for more than a few seconds on a page. You want to capture their attention and provide them with information that is easily digestible. Here are 8 tips to help you engage your… Continue reading 8 tricks to write for the web
If architects had to work like web designers do
If architects had to work like web designers do, or why the web design industry is still not respected.
Am I a ColdFusion guru now?
I received a surprise email today from a developer working on ColdFusion 8. He is working on some new cool features, which I will keep private. He talked to CF guru Ben Forta regarding the new feature and Ben referred him to me! Ben Forta recommended me! Me! This developer sent me a draft of… Continue reading Am I a ColdFusion guru now?
ASAC Conference Websites
because the University of Lethbridge Faculty of Management was hosting the ASAC 2006 conference, I was commissioned to do the website. www.uleth.ca/asac It’s nothing special really. It’s not very trend-setting or bleeding edge. For the ASAC conference websites, however, it brought things to a new level. Using server and cookie based technologies, I was able… Continue reading ASAC Conference Websites
MySQL character set for ISO-8859-1
Our web server’s character set is ISO-8859-1. This has caused some problems when persons input accented characters or other non-ASCII characters into our database. Well, actually the problems occurred when the information was parsed to a webpage. I’ve tried fixing this several times, but could not figure out how to set the character set on… Continue reading MySQL character set for ISO-8859-1
Names in forms
Is it better to create a name field that allows the users to type in their names anyway they want, or should the first and last names be separated into different fields for better data management?
Canadian postal codes
One of the frustrations I have with filling out my address in web forms is the postal code field. Often, it is not a problem, but regularly, there are problems. For example, a form for a US-based company may indicate they accept Canadian addresses, but their zip code field is restricted to five characters (the… Continue reading Canadian postal codes
Web Authoring Statistics
Here is an analysis by Google of over one billion web documents. It shows the most common class names, ids, elements, etc. Very interesting.
Canada Web Conference Location
Last night, I talked to Justin Kozuch, the executive director of DesignFest ’05. DesignFest was a new media conference held in Toronto in October, and Justin has intention on holding this every year. So it turns out after all that there is a Canadian-based web design conference. So my new question is two-fold. First, can… Continue reading Canada Web Conference Location