This http://code.google.com/closure/ needs more investigation...

We are more than 15 years into this web thing. It is about time that amateurs (because that is what you are) start to grasp the basics of common sense.

First of all, most websites are small business websites - people that want to be found to sell their crap to us. So don't forget you have a client, and that they are probably busy trying to run their business and not their website (that is where you came in). When you set up something new, stick to a few basic concepts - like calling things by their names, as in the real world. Don't use cryptic acronyms or abbreviations. If you are making a website and there is geography involved, say states, call them by their names - like newsite.com/new-york/ - not newsite.com/newyk123/ which means nothing to anyone.

Keep that in mind. Then when you name a file, think the same way - the HTML page is about NY? Then call it something like about-new-york.html - not pages1ny76.html

These concepts are not hard, and should extend as far into database creation as possible also. If the URL is eventually going to have to include a query string or data base table name for some reason, at least try to use plain, simple words - with dashes-in-between if necessary.

These little tips can go a long - LONG - way in making whatever you are doing a success, for you, and your client.

Have a nice day.

Here is a great tip for TypePad users: Add 'Tweet This' to your Typepad Blog Hmm - that did not work as advertised - but this functionality is now built into TypePad.

I recently set up a quick demo of Facebook Connect...Basically it gives you the ability to leverage Facebook data for use on your site.

Facebook Connect is the next evolution of Facebook Platform - enabling you to integrate the power of Facebook Platform into your own site. Enable your users to...

Seamlessly "connect" their Facebook account and information with your site
Connect and find their friends who also use your site
Share information and actions on your site with their friends on Facebook

Here is a demo that will log users into Facebook on ibizdaily.com...additionally it lets you invite people in your network to use ibizdaily.

ibizdaily Facebook Connect demo

Here are five useful and free css templates:

1. Little boxes -16 basic box layouts

2. Layout Gala - 40 layouts

3. Jimmy Lin - 8 Layouts

4. Six Shooter Media - 15 templates

5. Opensource Templates -15 templates

PayPal is constantly fighting off fraudulent attempts by hackers to gain access to their system and/or their users information. At some point there was a genius who managed to do something nefarious through the PayPal users logo image, so now this image must be served from a secure server (a website/server starting with https, meaning the data transfered is encrypted in transit).

Of course, many people are using PayPal because they don't have a secure server, so unless you want the generic PayPal logo over your checkout pages you have to find one to be able to use a custom logo.

SSLpic is here to solve that issue - this single function website allows you to upload your image, which is then hosted on their secure server. You get the code back to enter in PayPal, and voila, you're done.

Intrigued by the idea of developing a Facebook app to generate large amounts of income from the millions of Facebook users hitting my app, I decided to give it a try. It was surprisingly easy to get the basics up and running. The documentation provided by Facebook could use some work, but it is still better than most.

I started out by building the "Hello World" equivalent of a Facebook application. Basically, it is a page on facebook that shows five facebook friends who are currently logged in to the site. My application is a take on example code given to you by Facebook when you register your application with them.

You can try it out here

This is a screenshot:

Here are a few links that helped me out:

Facebook Cookbook -These guys have a few very detailed, yet simple examples to follow.

Nettuts - This guy show the basics of getting your first app up and running.

Facebook Developers Wiki - Great resource for developing apps and learning the API.

The next step is to come up with an idea that would have a plausible business impact... for me that is.

Here is the code.

So I am running one install of Movable Type Pro (at the moment version 4.23-en with the Community Pack 1.61 and Professional Pack 1.21) but I am using this install for several projects (or trying to!). 

I came across a nice tutorial on how to add your tweets to your blogs, by Remy Sharp

Below is a working example of loading twitters after the page has completed, thus preventing the whole page from locking up.

This was hacked together, so the next steps will be to clean it up and make it a stand alone module that can function as a badge and not just a blog post... stay tuned.

We have a new client who wanted to add a good old fashioned guestbook to their new site - so naturally we obliged. I came up with a quick and simple guestbook utilizing the MT Entry template, the Comment Form template, and a single entry. Since the site we are working on is running MT 4 but we were only using "Pages" for their content, we had the Entry and Comment Form templates available to carve up at will and didn't need to create a whole new blog (like some older examples do).

This is basically what I did:

1. Stripped the Entry template and put my simplified code in there (the code that gives the Entries the same look and feel as the rest of the site)
2. Added back into the body the mt:EntryBody tag (the title of the page is an image and that is hard coded in the entry)
3. Below that, added the mt:Include module="Comment Form" tag
4. Don't forget to make sure that the javascript link remains in the head of the document if you strip it clean like I did (hat tip to Tim Appnel)
5. Save and publish this.

So since the only "Entry" is the guestbook itself, that is pretty much it for the Entry template. The other main modification is to the Comment Form template. Here is what I did there:

1. Changed the instances of "Comment" to "Guesbook" where necessary
2. Displayed the comments below the form (basically just cut and pasted the whole chunk of code)
3. Commented out/deleted the URL field and other extraneous links and information (replies, preview, etc.)
4. Did some styling of the template to make the comments stand out
5. Save this and publish again.

We dont do code reviews enough....but when we do, this is typically how it goes.

This is a good image gallery script library:

Galleria is a javascript image gallery written in jQuery. It loads the images one by one from an unordered list and displays thumbnails when each image is loaded. It will create thumbnails for you if you choose so, scaled or unscaled, centered and cropped inside a fixed thumbnail box defined by CSS.

Here is a quick demo:

They are called a number of things: dynamic lists, auto completer, or auto suggest. Basically this is the functionality like when you type a search into Google and the most relevant list of topics appear as you type:

Here are 5 solutions that will give you this functionality:

1. Ajax Auto Suggest

2. Ajax Dynamic List

3. Ajax Auto Complete

4. Ajax Auto

5. Ajax Autocompleter

We are seeing and using this more and more recently:

jQuery is a fast and concise JavaScript Library that simplifies HTML document traversing, event handling, animating, and Ajax interactions for rapid web development. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript...

Just like CSS separates "display" characteristics from the HTML structure, jQuery separates the "behavior" characteristics from the HTML structure. For example, instead of directly specifying the on-click event handler in the specification of a button element, a jQuery driven page would first identify the button element, and then modify its on-click event handle.

Here is a very good tutorial on jQuery from a 12 year old:

Some additional background:

jQuery Eases JavaScript, AJAX Development

Dust-Me Selectors
A Firefox extension (for v1.5 or later) that finds unused CSS selectors. It extracts all of the selectors from all of the style sheets on the page you're viewing, then analyzes that page to see which of those selectors are not used. The data is then stored so that when testing subsequent pages, selectors can be crossed off the list as they're encountered.

Aardvark Firefox Extension
With Aardvark, you can: clean up unwanted banners and surrounding "fluff," especially prior to printing a page; see how a page is created, block by block; and view the source code of one or more elements.

CSSViewer
A CSS property viewer that displays all information about a design element.

Dummy Lipsum
This Firefox extension dynamically fills a selected field with Lorem ipsum text; the function is called via the context menu.

GridFox
GridFox is a Firefox extension that overlays a grid on any website. If you can open it in Firefox, you can put a grid on top of it. It's easy to customize and allows you to create the exact grid you based your layout on.