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Web Developer 2.0

Web Developer 2.0
Everything web-builder-centric. Techniques, SEO, Marketing, Content Strategy, Opinion and Reviews

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Minor update to Context Voice API
2009-08-22 03:15:00
I’ve finally got around to updating my Context Voice API Library to include the latest addition to the API. The new parameter for the reactions method of the API is “threaded”. When set to true, the API returns retweets (or reactions-to-reactions) as child elements of the original reaction. I’ve also updated the demo to include the new parameter and display threaded reactions accordingly. This makes it easier to track the social graph for a URL in addition to it’s online spread. Demo Manual Download
More About: Update

Unmasker Chronicles: Dawn of the Demon
2009-07-28 04:32:00
Ever get fed up of seeing the same phrases used over and over again? I was looking through lists of Twitter users on Mr. Tweet and started to get irritated by the number of social media experts, affilate marketing gurus and people who were “passionate” about everything from Twitter to printer cartridges. As a private joke, I wrote a simple php script which would take any Twitter bio and replace certain words, in a rude and derogatory way. I called it “Unmasker” and it provided a few minutes of fun. My colleague Greg Smith suggested that the idea had the potential to go viral if it was presented in a fun way. He (eventually) produced a great design for the app. Given the quality of the artwork, I thought it only fair to put some effort in the UX design and create the scrolling background effect. The whole front-end is essentially jQuery powered, including the use of Ariel Flesler‘s excellent ScrollTo plugin. A simple php script provides the database, Twi...
More About: Chronicles , Dawn , Demon

Context Voice API PHP Library
2009-06-26 18:30:00
Context Voice is the new name for uberVU’s web API, they recently released a new version (1.1) and I’ve updated my PHP library accordingly and written a spiffy new demo. Demo Manual Download New features New method getUrlReactions returns the indexed reactions (tweets, diggs etc.) it includes a number of optional parameters: since – retrieve all the reactions that are newer than this timestamp include – include only the reactions from the specified platforms: twitter, friendfeed, digg, wordpress, blogger, typepad, disqus, flickr, picasa, youtube, vimeo, delicious, reddit, hackernews, mixx, stumbleupon, nytimes, slashdot exclude – exclude the reactions from the specified platforms: twitter, friendfeed, digg, wordpress, blogger, typepad, disqus, flickr, picasa, youtube, vimeo, delicious, reddit, hackernews, mixx, stumbleupon, nytimes, slashdot filter – exclude the reactions from Twitter that repeat/quote someone’s tweet regarding the current...
More About: Library

UX Design for Developers
2009-06-16 00:30:00
I’m currently building a new application and one of the areas that I’ve been concentrating on is the User Experience (UX) aspects of the build. Often, the UX design is considered to be mainly a creative process, undertaken as part of the graphic or web design phase of the project. It is then down to the developer to implement the UX as specified. In this case, I’m building the back-end functionality first but that doesn’t mean I don’t need to think about making using the application a smooth painless experience, regardless of what improvements will be made as part of the front-end design. Key Idea – Remove Barriers To make interactions as painless as possible, I’ve sought inspiration from not only web applications but also desktop and mobile apps. Adobe Air has given flash developers the capacity to create and publish desktop applications. These guys are often at the forefront of designing great user experiences and it shows in the slickn...
More About: Design , Developers

Pure CSS rollover for printable images
2009-06-11 14:32:00
This is a quickie but may be useful to somebody out there in the big wild interweb. I had a requirement to implement linked images in a page with a separate rollover image. Normally I’d be using CSS to switch backgrounds but the client wanted the normal image to be visible when the page was printed out. I didn’t want to have to add in javascript, regardless of how simple it would be so I came up with this idea. The HTML I’ve used a simple image (<img>) tag contained inside an anchor (<a>) tag to create the link, this ensures that the image will be printed for most default setups. The anchor tag has a class assigned to be the hook for the rollover and I’ve used an inline style attribute to set the background image of the element to the rollover image. This could also be done by adding a specific class in the stylesheet – but not in this demo. <a href=http://webdeveloper2.com/"#&quo t;brush: css;"> .rollover{ display:inline-block;...
More About: Images

uberVU php library
2009-06-02 19:11:00
uberVU is a conversation engine which aggregates conversations from social websites around specific URLs. They track services like: Twitter / FriendFeed Digg / Reddit/ Hacker News Major blogging platforms (WordPress, Blogger, MT, Typepad etc) Major video sharing websites (Youtube, Vimeo) Flickr / Picasa Disqus Like any decent web based service uberVU are making an API available for us developers to play around with the capabilities of their system. I decided that, in the absence of anybody else doing it (and as a nice little coding exercise for myself), I would build a php library for using the uberVU API. Demo Download (.zip ~15KB) In order to use the library, you will need to register for a developer account and apply for an API key, go to http://developer.ubervu.com/ to get started. How to use it Include the ubervu.php file The basic ubervu object is constructed using only the api key as a parameter: <?php include('ubervu.php'); $uv = new ubervu("[my api key]");...
More About: Library

WWW and User Experience
2009-05-12 23:00:00
Which do you prefer? www.somedomain.com or simply somedomain.com ? The use of the WWW (or variously: wuh wuh wuh, dub dub dub, dubya dubya dubya etc.) in domain names is something of a debatable subject. A colleague recently stated that people feel more comfortable browsing a site which uses the www prefix – a “fact” which I initially dismissed as an irrelevant personal preference. I’ve always treated this issue from a techie standpoint and it’s never occured to me that people might have a preference. The Technical Standpoint It is fairly normal these days for a site to respond to domain.com in exactly the same way as www.domain.com, in many cases the www prefixed address will be redirected to the non-prefixed version. The historical reasons for using the www prefix are outlined byÂ Tim Berners-LeeÂ here. It is a convention. I suggested it early on, in this guide, and I am of two minds about it now. An alias was a better alternative to “pegasus.fo...
More About: Experience , User

Swine Flu + Google-Fu = Monkey Wank Fever
2009-05-05 18:30:00
I think something must have clicked in my brain when I read this tweet: If it was Monkey Wank Fever going around, rather than swine flu, I think the national mood would be a lot more buoyant. Graham Linehan I knew that I had some code sitting around from playing with the Google Ajax Search API. Within a few minutes I’d cobbled together a simple text-replacement for search results to see if Monkey Wank Fever really did lighten the mood. I think it did, but then I have a twisted sense of humor sometimes. One upshot of this is that I realised just how easy and useful the Google AJAX Search API can be. To include the API loader, a single script call is added into the page: <script src="http://www.google.com/jsapi?key =[Insert API Key]" type="text/javascript"></ script>Â then by following the API documentation and examples, it’s quite easy to build a search query with a customised output. google.load("search", "1"); var w...

Social Media Stories
2009-04-29 18:27:00
I stumbled across this presentation from Seth Goldstein via Kyle Lacy’s blog. The information presented here is very valid for anybody working in social media, whether PR and marketing or application development. It’s also presented in a fun and attractive way, the designer in me fully approves, well done Seth. Social Media Stories Â Â Â Â View more presentations from Seth Goldstein.

Social Media Stories
2009-04-29 18:27:00
I stumbled across this presentation from Seth Goldstein via Kyle Lacy’s blog. The information presented here is very valid for anybody working in social media, whether PR and marketing or application development. It’s also presented in a fun and attractive way, the designer in me fully approves, well done Seth. Social Media Stories View more presentations from ...
More About: Social Networks

Google Analytics API Launched!
2009-04-22 11:07:00
I ranted about the lack of an API for Google Analytics back in November last year, now at last we have an easier way to use our analytics data. A Google Analytics API has long been one of our most widely anticipated features. Today we’re pleased to announce that the Google Analytics Data Export API beta is now publicly available to all Analytics users! What’s so exciting about an API?Â The API will allow developers to extend Google Analytics in new and creative ways that benefit developers, organizations and end users.Â Large organizations and agencies now have a standardized platform for integrating Analytics data with their own business data. Developers can integrate Google Analytics into their existing products and create standalone applications that they sell. Users could see snapshots of their Analytics data in developer created dashboards and gadgets. Individuals and business owners will have opportunities to access their Google Analytics information in a variety o...

Twitter?s new web interface
2009-04-17 15:36:00
I was setting up the Twitter account for a new project which I’m working on (more about that some other time) when I realised that the Twitter page looked a little different. It seems that the real-time search capability which Twitter purchased with the aquisition of Summize is now being integrated into the main user interface. The ...
More About: Interface

Twitter’s new web interface
2009-04-17 15:36:00
I was setting up the Twitter account for a new project which I’m working on (more about that some other time) when I realised that the Twitter page looked a little different. It seems that the real-time search capability which Twitter purchased with the aquisition of Summize is now being integrated into the main user interface.Â The new sidebar features a search input, the results of which are displayed in the main body of the page. Searches can be saved so that they become available via a single click in the sidebar. There is also a trending topics section so that you can see the most popular topics of conversation. The Saved Searches, Trending Topics and Following sections can all be collapsed to clean up the sidebar when they’re not required. Speculation: It could be that Twitter are trying to win back users from third-party Twitter apps. Increasing their pageviews in preparation for paid advertising?
More About: Interface

Handy WordPress hack – changing javascript library location
2009-04-14 10:00:00
Here’s a little hack I worked out to solve a dilemma that didn’t appear to be particularly well documented. My problem was that I needed to use jQuery 1.3 for some script but the default version in WordPress 2.7 is v1.2.6. It also makes sense to load the library from a common source such as the Google Ajax Libraries API store which increases the chances of the site visitor already having a cached version of that file in their browser (decreasing the page load cost and consequently the page load time). Simply adding the script tag to the page header works, but any plugins or other WordPress functions which require jQuery will load the default copy of jQuery in addition to the one that you have added. Get a handle on it After digging around in the WordPress Codex and some other helpful blogs I managed to get to grips with the in-built system for loading javascript files. The way it works is that WordPress registers script libraries against defined ‘handles’. In...
More About: Wordpress , Library , Hack , Javascript , Changing

Handy WordPress hack ? changing javascript library location
2009-04-14 10:00:00
Here’s a little hack I worked out to solve a dilemma that didn’t appear to be particularly well documented. My problem was that I needed to use jQuery 1.3 for some script but the default version in Wordpress 2.7 is v1.2.6. It also makes sense to load the library from a common source such as the ...
More About: Library , Java , Hack , Javascript

15 Social Media Discovery Tools
2009-04-12 01:22:00
One of the key activities in getting the most out of social media is finding relevant people, blogs, conversations, wikis, forums etc. This is a list of sites that will help to find those shiny needles in the giant haytstack of the web. Unified Social Media Search These sites aggregate search results from multiple sites and services. SocialMention ...
More About: Tools , Discovery

Web agencies and their clients are getting it all wrong
2009-03-30 14:00:00
It’s a bit of a confrontational title, but this is a bit of a confrontational post. The disparity between what a client should get from their web agency and what they do get is all too often down to the established process of client brief / agency proposal. Paul Boag spoofed this situation with his tongue-in-cheek ...
More About: Web Design , Clients , Wrong , Agencies

Online shopping with added cleverness ? Woya
2009-03-27 14:07:00
I was recently invited to review a website, Woya.com – a consumer electronics shopping site. At first I didn’t really think that it was relevant and was going to politely decline, but I diligently went and took a look at the site expecting to see familiar price-comparison features. I was surprised to find something that ...
More About: Shopping , Online , Online shopping

New WordPress theme
2009-03-24 21:44:00
I finally decided to go live with my new WordPress theme – it’s still something of a work in progress so expect changes on a regular basis. The main design aims that I focussed on were: Remove clutter to clarify the main content Improve readability Retain essential page elements but keep the page clean as possible use CSS to progressively ...
More About: Wordpress , News , Wordpress Theme , Theme

Building a YouTube Dialog
2009-03-11 17:38:00
For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been working with the YouTube API in order to build some new functionality into Ackura PressRoom. The aim was to build a dialog to browse or search videos from YouTube in order to select one for inclusion in a Social Media Release. I started by building a quick wireframe ...
More About: Youtube , Building , Dialog

My 4 most wanted iPhone features
2009-02-24 14:55:00
Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPhone and wouldn’t be without it but it’s frustrating sometimes to know that despite it’s myriad capabilities, there’s still more it could do. The fact that people are already managing to do this stuff having jailbroken their iPhones leads me to believe that Apple is witholding this stuff ...
More About: Iphone , Features , Opinion , Wanted

Review: AIPTEK Slim Tablet 600U
2009-02-19 14:00:00
I’ve never used a drawing tablet, ever. I’ve always thought that I might like one but it seemed like an unnessecary expense when my mouse-wielding skills are if not prodigious, then at least acceptable. Last month, I was gifted some Amazon vouchers and instead of buying lots of books (my usual vice) I spotted the ...
More About: Review , Tablet , Slim

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