Alright, I feel like I’ve been slacking off with these posts lately! Whats new? My wife is pregnant, and we purchased some land to build on in the future. Other than that, I have no excuse here!

Anyhow, this post is concerning a wonderful thing called AJAX. What is AJAX? You will find out here!

What is AJAX?

AJAX is a programming language that consists of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. AJAX is preferred if page updates are needed without refreshing the web browser and if you want the application to retrieve information from a database without affecting the speed of your application.

Why use AJAX?

Not only does it increase the speed of your application, but since it doesn’t perform a page refresh, it lowers your overall bandwidth usage on your web site. With AJAX, web developers do not risk losing functionality across a variety of Operating Systems, and browsers.

Disadvantages?

While AJAX is a fantastic language for web developers, there are still some disadvantages. If any user of your site has javascript disabled, then your site will not function properly. This demographic is minimal and this limitation alone should not prevent a web developer from making the jump to AJAX.

The most dis-advantageous aspect of AJAX would be Googles inability to index an AJAX based site. This severely affects your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and page ranking. It is reasonable to suspect that Google will develop a method to index these sites, but as of today, it is still a problem.

Conclusion

If not used in excess, AJAX is a fantastic solution to bandwidth laden sites and XML functionality. Make this jump, you will not regret it.

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When it comes to web development, resources are your best friend. In my experience, I have found some tools that I use to make my life as a web developer easier and more functional. Here is the list.

5. Wamp Server for Windows

As a developer, I have had to go through my fair share of installs to get a machine set up in a fully fledged developmental environment. I remember my first introduction to setting up Apache on a computer very well…It was a nightmare, especially for a beginner. As I’ve done this more times, I am comfortable with it, but there is a tool that makes those tasks so much easier.

WAMP will automatically create and install services/software pertaining to Apache, MySQL and PHP. It even provides quick access to your projects and phpmyadmin page. I love it, so don’t leave home without it!

4. Firefox Add-on: Web Developer Tool

First of all, if you are viewing this page and do not have Firefox, you’re peeing into the wind. As a web developer, you are required to have multiple browser installs on your system. These include, but are not limited to Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 3, Opera for Windows, and previous versions of these browsers( Google multiple IE).

This tool is a web developers best friend. It will allow you to view and edit the CSS files on the fly (on a live page), clear/manipulate cookies, outline tables/elements, validate code, resize and easily access all this info from a simple toolbar! A must have if you are serious about developing on the web.

3. Dreamweaver or any other Web Development Sotware

I was at a stage in my web development career where I used to brag about how the best tool I used was notepad and that I hard coded everything. This was the dumbest statement I have ever made. While I still hard-code everything, I do not use notepad (except for a quick view source, of course). Why did I make this transistion? Lets see:

• Design/Code View - See what your changes have done on the fly, without saving and loading the browser
• Automatic code/tag formatting- No more tabbing out my tags
• Project Management - Easily see your project tree and upload files/folders easily
• Link Updating - If you move a file, it will update your links to reflect its new location and make any page that linked to this update as well.

So if you are still hacking away on notepad, good luck to you. However, you should seriously consider making this tool #1 in your arsenal.

2. A good reference book

I am not going to name any specific books, but there is a book on almost any topic you wish to tackle. Some book topics I have purchased were about HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, PERL, CGI, ASP, ASP.NET, CMS, Joomla, various cookbooks, various bibles and a Clive Cussler novel…..Hmmmm

Seriously though, if your interested in a topic, by a book. Give it a good read and tackle the subject. Good Luck!

1. Google

This is a web developers number one resource. If you have a question type in the keywords and you can find your answer. A good web developer knows how to find solutions to his problems this way. It may take some time, but if your not afraid to try different solutions to your task, then Google is the best tool for the job.

Yes I know this list is short and simple, but with these tools you cannot go wrong. Let me know of any other tools you have come across or that I may have missed so I can make sure this list is beneficial to everyone.

Now I am off to try to fix my spellchecker on this WordPress install….hmmm….let’s google it…

FIXED!

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Let me know in these comments and I would love to write a topic about something that interests you! Have questions, or have useful information that you wished was in a central location while you were learning it? Let me know and I’ll give it a shot!

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I’m back from a nice fourth of July weekend and am refreshed and ready to hit the road running! The sicial addressbook is very nearly finished, which is extremely exciting. It seems as if new features are added all the time! Luckilly it was designed with a large scope in mind, so scalability shouldnt be too big of an issue.

Anyhow, would you like to know how to redirect a page in PHP without worrying about META Refresh and all that fun jazz?

Here you go:

<?php
# very basic redirect
include neage.php;  ?>

Simple, eh? Just include the page. So now, when you have multiple domains, just make an include!

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I am developing a social address book that allows users of a company to share their contacts with each other.

For example:
A large company has may Senior level positions with everyone contacting the same people, but the data is not shared or stored in a central location. So if one Manager updates the contact info, everyone else is out of luck!

NOT ANYMORE!

Users sign up and have the ability to import/export csv files and mark their contacts as private or public. Users can searh private contacts that are not their own and request access, requiring the owner of the private contact to grant permission for access to the requestor only.

Also, a feature exists that allows users to create notes that can be tagged as public or private! So any user could tag a public address entry with a private note, that is visible only to them, or even make it a public note, visible to all!

Imagine the ability to share, collect, distribute, maintain, access, and secure all your information from anywhere with internet access!

Users can also be tagged with a do not contact feature, showing users of this software that users do not want to be contacted by either phone, email, or at their address.

Need to do a mail merge for a huge mailing? No problem! Export your groups or entire list as a CSV and Mail Merge away! Everyone except those entries on the Address DO NOT CONTACT list will be exported and prepared for your mail merge!

Need to email everyone? Don’t export all the emails, just email an individual or group directly from the software! Everyone will immediatley get their emails, unless they’ve requested a DO NOT CONTACT on their email!

Need a list of phone numbers? Get your list of phone numbers with this software! 

Imagine that you are uploading a new contact, but run into an issue where this contact already exists as a public contact. You can choose to update the public contact, or create your own private contact as well!

If anyone is interested in this software for their companybusiness contact me at nathan@blazekwebdesign.com

I will be releasing this “Social Address Book” by the end of July.  so contact me/leave a comment if you are interested!

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I heard somewhere that “just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you should do it.” This saying especially rings true in the world of web development. With the use of frontpage or microsoft word people can create a webpage! The web is riddled with sites that are created using this method, but it is important to know that not all of them are! There are some sites that are developed appropriatley and I would like to share a few steps that I use in web development that work for me! Feel free to add some of your own thoughts on the subject!

1. Know what your doing, and why you are doing it. What is the purpose of your site and how will your visitors benefit?
2. Put everything down on paper. Simply right down your thoughts and design concepts on paper. This will help stimulate further thinking and open you up to the possibility that the idea is a bad one.
3. Design! This phase has many steps and is the most crucial to a succesful launch and continuation of your site. At this point, you are not yet on your computer, this is pen and paper, working out all your kinks.

•           If the site is dynamic, design your database structure to ensure appropriate cardinality and relationships. I have found it important to design a database in the 1:N (one to many) cardinality so that one record in one table may match many records in another table. If in doubt google it.
•           Design for your visitors. If your site focuses on the elderly, know that their screen resolutions may only be set at 800×600. If you are designing for highschool/college, know that portable devices will be a common way to browse the web with this audience. Make your word usage appropriate for the audience

    4. Develop. Start with your layout that users will see. Get the layout looking and even more importanly working perfectly (check multimple browsers and remember your target audience, elderly may still be using Win98). Now develop and create that database structure, then start working omn the bits and pieces that will make your site work!

Remember that your site should always be built so that it’s scalability is effective. You do not want to design an amazing site only to find out that if 1000 users visit your site in a day, you’ve reached your bandwidth limit and were charged $400 by your hosting provider to suppor the extra traffic.

And one last note, avoid using ads if at all possible, and if you need ads, then incorporate them into your design so that it isnt thrown in as an afterthought!

Good Luck and let me know what you think!

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Imagine a social website that served as a portal for every bit of information available? This kind of site is being developed on http://www.theniggle.com

I can’t go into to much detail, but this site will be a solution to many problems that exist in social media today!

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I have released my PHP based Addressbook that I have been working on!

To interact with it live, check it out here:

http://www.blazekwebdesign.com/apps/detail.php?id=1
Login:
Username:bwd
Password: bwd

Use this accountor create your own!

Features:

• Import/Export CSV contact list
• Add entry to groups
• View all entries in a group
• Email a group
• Email an entry
• Delete an entry
• Edit an entry
• Membership access to allow muliple users

If you want to download this application, then click below:

DOWNLOAD

This Online address book is free to download and written in PHP using mySQL.

1 Comment »

Have you ever declared a function and wished you could get access to the variables within that function? As you may know, this is unable to happen until you make one simple declaration in that function.

function somefunction() {

     //DECLARE THIS AND MAKE YOUR VARIABLE RECOGNIZED OUTSIDE THE FUNCTION
     global $var1, $var2, $var3;

     $var1 = “This text can now be seen outside of the function”;
     $var2 = 2; //So can this variable
     $var3 = 30+$var2; //So can this variable!
}

Now the variables that are used in the function can be called out of it, such as

somefunction();

echo $var1;
echo $var2;
echo $var3;

I hope this helps some of you out there! Just remember global and you cannot do this(global $var2 = 2;) Just declare global, then set values in the variables.

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This is a fairly short and simple post! Have you aver wanted to store and encrypt data while developing in php?

If you want to store the value of the data in $password simply do this!

$enc_password = md5($password);

//To check the value agains the encrypted data you stored, do this
if($enc_password==md5($password) {
//YOUR CODE HERE
}

You can store the md5 encrypted data in a mySQL database if you like and recall it back. This encryption is easy to implement. Good luck!

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