I just launched a new site that discusses how to make money with affiliate marketing. I think the design is by far one of my favorites so far. I’m proud of the work that I have put into the site. I will also be continuing to update the site with more and more content on making money with Adsense, and affiliate marketing, and making money on the internet in general. Have a look.
Mega Money Keywords
Recently on Popular Delicious there has been a link to the Firefox Help site with instructions on how to make the active tab easier to distinguish from the non-active tabs. While the tweak is helpful, I thought I could take it a little further. Using the Mozilla article as a starter, you can insert my code below into your userChrome.css file to make your active tab stand out even more.
/* Change color of active tab */
tab[selected="true"] {
color: black !important;
}
/* Change color and size of normal tabs */
tab:not([selected="true"]) {
color: gray !important;
font-size: 90%;
}
/* Kill all tab icons, no matter what */
tab .tab-icon {
display: none;
}
/* Show icons when tab is selected */
tab[selected="true"] .tab-icon {
display: -moz-box;
}
/* Show tab loading indicator while the tab is loading */
tab[busy] .tab-icon {
display: -moz-box;
}
I ran across the latest “Web 2.0″ tool this morning called Remember the Milk. This tool provides functionality very similar the to-do lists in BackPack from 37signals complete with email and SMS reminders.
Overall, the tool is very well put together, and the interface is well designed. However, a few things struck me as odd. Probably the most annoying is that when I check off an item is complete, it disappears from the page completely. I then have to click a link to view my “completed” tasks in order to see the item again. Once I do that though I can’t see the items that are left to do. I found this annoying. I was expecting a single view similar to the 37signals version. That style seems to make a little more sense to me.
All in all, I think it is well worth a test drive. I’m sure the folks over at 37signals are test driving it right now.
[Update:] I just noticed that the fine folks over at 37signals have lifted their 10 list limit on Ta-Da Lists. I wonder if that has anything to do with this new competition!?
Give it a spin, it’s free: Remember The Milk
Great article from another Michiananite (someone from Michiana [close to the border of Michigan and Indiana]; whatever, you get it!). This is the first part in a series on how to build a great table-less design, standards compliant site. John is also involved in some great work over at Notre Dame. Go Irish!
This is a great article from Derek Powazek. I whole-heartedly agree that you should not try to sway a user from their path until they have reached their intended destination and are ready to try another one. Derek implements this same idea by moving the majority of his swaying links to the bottom of his site (where the user will be once they are done reading, which is what you want them to do!) Go get ‘em Derek. Fantastic idea.
I have often told my larger clients that Wikis work great for corporate communications, and that they should really get comfortable with them. Here is yet another use of a Wiki that is a prime example of the power and flexibility of this class of technology. Bravo!
During an application discussion with another developer today a question occured to me that I’m sure others have had. When and where do I start with my data validation in a web application?
Usually in a web application you have data validation in at least 2 places: the browser, and the server. The other developer I was working with felt that it was easier to code the validation using javascript in the browser, so he preferred to do it there first. I had to disagree with this. Looking at it from a couple of points of view, it seems more productive to code the validation first on the server-side.
From the project management, product delivery side of the house, it seems more important to have the validation happen on the server because at least when it’s there I can go ahead and deliver my application without fear of invalid data. If I code it first on the browser-side in javascript, then the user could always disable the javascript and still send me junk data.
From the ease of coding/testing side, it seems like a major hassle to test the server-side validation if I’ve already coded the browser-side validation. I have to somehow have a way of sending junk data to the server in order to test that the validation truly works, and that I am sending back valid messages to the end-user. If my front-end validation is already coded, this would generally mean disconnecting my functional validation javascript from my forms, or building a separate test harness for my server-side code. Either way, it means more work from a coding perspective.
So, I say build it on the server first. What do you think?