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Sausage Sizzler - Webmaster Community Newsletter |
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G'Day Sizzlers!
This issue is coming directly to you from Sausage's rack in the Verio data center in San Francisco.
We are in the process of swapping over our two newer servers to RedHat. As I am based here in the USA, I had the duty of doing the install. I tried a install of RedHat on my own machine at home to make sure I was capable of doing it. Needless to say it was fairly simple. If anything the hardest thing was getting the CDs in the right order! Yes RedHat is a breeze!
Anyway on a down note lots of little complications have meant that our new database server is going to require a bit more time than I have here to get built. Everything that could go wrong has, as far as parts go. However in the end we are determined to have a solid machine that will last a few years.
My meetings with various shareware developers have gone brilliantly. There are sure to be some new exciting things launched in the upcoming months. If you know a great shareware or freeware developer that needs a challenge let me know.
Ok I have to sign off as the whirring of the fans is starting to get to me in here!
Keep on sizzling!
Nathan Allan
Sausage Sizzler Editor
editor@sausage.com
4CM_Quoter v2.0.0 PHP3+ FREE
http://4cm.com/scripts/listing.php?Category_ID=2
Ever wanted to see your favorite quotes rotating on your site? Tips or comments on your product or service? Well 4CM_Quoter will do it for you simply and easily.
Pulling the quotes from a text file, which you edit manually, it will display the quote where ever you put it on your page. On the creators site it is used in the top right corner (see link above).
Some other scripts that do similar things use databases instead of text files for the quotes, and may have backend administration pages as well. I thought these were unnecessary for such a simple task.
Review by Nathan
Password Depot v1.0.1.33 FREE
http://www.password-depot.de/en/software.htm
You may think it is unnecessary to have a program that can store your passwords. However if you are like me you will have lots to remember. Email, FTP, Servers, Workstations, and not to mention all the vital logins and passwords that your System Admin has in their head! That is where this little program comes in.
Not only does Password Depot store your login in and password, but it can also autocomplete entries for you so you can save on some typing!
If you want to create a totally random password this program can do this as well. If you beleive the claims on their web site, no one is goign to ever crack the passwords made in your lifetime!
While surfing you can use the handy little toolbar, and you can also backup, import and export the database to other applications.
Finally it
uses a
complex shredding method
which conforms to the norms of the
US Department of Defense
DOD 5220.22-M, to destroy all files created by the program. needless to say no one is goign to retrieve these passwords off your old hard drive!
Note that the free version only stores up to 20 passwords, with the professional version costing EUR29.00, and storing an unlimited amount of passwords
Review by Nathan
Determining the width of a web page
Over the past few months there has been a great discussion going on about how best to decide on the width of a web site and/or what people are doing with regard to this matter.
There is great debate over what the most used resolution is and how to deal with it. This forum thread is the place to go if you'd like to find great references to other sites as well generally great discussions and points of view.
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=540&perpage=15&pagenumber=2
Review by Bram
The future is changing (what else is new)
In the next few weeks, I'm changing professions (well, changing what brings in the larger part of my income). Fear not, I'll still be writing. I've loved designing and drawing since I was as young as I can remember. Following that dream lead me to attending one of the worlds most renowned design schools. I hold 2 degrees, one in Architecture.
After trying architecture professionally (as an intern) for more than two years, and losing two jobs due to lack of work, I decided to change professions. I joined an import/export company. I started with sales, worked into marketing and shipping logistics, eventually becoming a partner.
During my time there I began to fall in "love" with the Internet, largely because it was a new medium to design with. The first page I ever made was gorgeous (ack!! NOT). As I surfed, read news and followed companies like AOL, I began to realize that something was out there.
In August 1999, one month after my first son was born, I co-founded a dot-com that is still running today. It's had its ups and downs, but right now is heading towards a huge up. It has a CEO, sales staff and tech staff, though much of the work is done by contract. For nearly 2 years there was a fully active, busy office. After stepping down as a full-time staff member, I continue on as a member of the board of directors.
Some time before my departure, I started developing a strong interest in an area outside the realm of design. I felt a huge hunger stirring. The food I craved was that of business development. I wanted to "play" the role of president or even CEO. I'm very realistic and hope to be a CEO of a large business in my later years, when I've had the right experience. For more than a year now, I've been reading FORTUNE, BUSINESS WEEK and BUSINESS 2.0. While I used to be bored sick by magazines like this, I suppose I've gone through some kind of maturation. I won't lie and say I read these magazines cover to cover, but I get each of them weekly and make it point to know at least what each issue has to offer.
What have I learned? Business can be fun. The thrill of a sale or the joy of closing the big deal. Hell, even the satisfaction of knowing that while you could have failed, instead you created a successful business. Of course there is no steadfast rule that says a CEO must have gray hair and be at least 45. For some reason, that seems to be the typical specs of many people covered in the magazines I read. I've tried reading RED HERRING. I'm 50/50 with that one: Sometimes I love it and other times it goes straight into the circular bin for filing.
After leaving my dot-com and becoming a contractor/owner/director, I had these big dreams and fantasies of joining a company and working my butt off to climb "the ladder". After a few months of looking I ended up in a partnership focused on design and marketing services.
Over the years, I've picked up a few "no-guts no glory" attitude adjustments. For example, when I would quote a job, my price was my price. If the price were too high I would look for things to remove from the task list, thus lowering the cost. On some occasions, during a meeting, I've stood up, said thank you, and noted that I know what it takes to build a site and my time is valuable. I wished that person/company luck and left. At least half of those resulted in a call for me not to leave or a phone call to set another meeting date.
My partner, now ex-partner, while great on approaching complete strangers is missing the killer instinct that I so strongly wish to exercise. The experience I had with him really left me sour on web design as a business.
I do agree that the future of business lies within the utilization of the Internet. Uses range from:
1. E-mailed production notes to your factory in China (for example)
2. Your company's web site showing off its wares (online catalog)
3. Transmission / sharing of data between to databases in two different locations
4. E-commerce sites.
The last one is the most challenging. It's one thing to have a brick & mortar business that notes "we have a web site too" versus having a business that operates solely online and also has people in a real office. A popular trend has been brick and mortar's (like Best Buy) taking their store online. While they share the name, they are in fact two separate entities. Ultimately they both benefit but if anything closes first, I'm sure it's the web site.
What about starting online and marketing offline? The two best I can think of are Amazon and, do you uh, Yahoo!? They of course started early on in the game. As an example, my dot-com focuses in part on content. The other parts are partnerships with a shopping site and sponsorships by other companies. Most recently we added a radio show to the mix and already there is a huge following. The radio show tested in our local market (Miami), started in Florida, and will soon expand nation-wide (October 2002 I think). It just so happens that the market we chose, babies and parenting, happens to have a life-long growth rate as well as a huge, always growing audience.
All these partnerships bring more and more eyeballs which in turns helps increase sales of goods and services as well as advertisers wanting to reach this budding market.
It takes a lot of thought, planning and hard work to get any business going. As of this moment, I'm not sure if there is a difference in effort needed to market online versus offline.
Facing the next round of changes, reading about all the frustrations with technology and telecom, I wonder what the future holds. I love technology, I love to design and as of late, I love the ideas and feelings from making business deals. I read months ago in one of my business magazines that one of the best ways to make a great leader is to have experienced the various levels of business. That same article also noted the educational growth benefits of failure.
The change in my future seems to be pointing my full time attention away from design and technology and more towards business and sales. My work habits and the schedule of my new future leave me plenty of time to pursue creative outlet and more importantly the time to stay involved in all of my passions, family included.
With all of these thoughts, goals, drives and desires, I started asking myself questions. At the ripe "young" age of 31, I've been through a lot already. I've seen what makes both failure and success. I have a world of opportunities ahead of me.
I leave you with an "interview" I had with a programmer friend of mine via Instant Message:
Bram: Do you see the Internet as a tool or a business? How do you see the Internet affecting / benefiting the future of business?
Rich: It's both, depends on what business you're in... If you're a "brick and mortar" type company, then it's mostly a tool... but it's a business to the people building those tools.
Bram: So you see it as a tool / industry still very much in infancy.
Rich: yeah
Bram: Perhaps it's so infantile still, that is why people call it a tool.. and not a business.
Rich: Probably will perpetually be in its infancy due to the speed of change in the industry.
Bram: When does it change from being considered a tool by most to being considered a business? Or same thing.... perpetually a tool/business?
Rich: I think it will always be both. It just depends on what perspective you're looking at it from.
Bram: You took the words right out of my keyboard.
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=671
Discuss your experiences with Bram
Fixed width design vs. relative width design
I recently came across a thread in the Sizzler forums that I had forgotten about. Its this weeks "Spotlight." Ive had numerous discussions with people and from all those discussions Ive finally discovered THE answer.
What is it? I think there is no perfect answer.
Web design, like any other art form, is a creative process that ultimately comes down to the personal tastes of the designer/design team or the customer/employer paying the bills.
My ex-partner used to explain at great lengths that his sister, a professional copy writer, found a study that said (proved as he put it) that content is best read at a fixed width, preferably 800 x 600 since 1024 x 768 is not yet a standard setting.
I did some checking. Sure, many popular sites use a fixed width setting of 800 (780). There are popular news sites that use fixed width. Then you also have popular magazine sites that use relative width for their designs. There are also sites that try to deal with both in creative ways such as placing ads or additional information in what would be white space to a user with a larger resolution.
Using sites that I frequent:
Fixed width:
CNN (www.cnn.com)
Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com)
MSNBC (www.msnbc.com)
Relative Width:
Gibson Research (www.grc.com)
EWeek: (www.eweek.com)
NewsFactor (www.newsfactor.com)
Hitting both:
Business2.0 (www.business20.com)
Ebay (www.ebay.com)
I could go on and on. The point is that just as many "name brand" sites use fixed and relative widths in their designs.
The real question, I think, is when to use which one. Look at CNN.com (www.cnn.com). Being a content-based site one might say the "rule" I mentioned above holds true. Now look at Amazon (www.amazon.com). Unless Im missing something, Amazon uses relative width on every single page of its site. Its a sales based site but it does have content.
Do you think that a content site that utilizes relative width is harder to read if its width is maximized to your browser? One of my favorite sites for everything is Internet.com (www.internet.com). This site not only offers a conglomerate of information, they also offer great newsletters. The sites that are part of the Internet.com network follow none of the same rules. One of the leading content resources in the network, ClickZ (www.clickz.com) uses fixed width while many other portions of the network do not.
Maybe you think that all shopping sites use one or the other. We saw above that Amazon uses relative. A store local to me, Best Buy, has a fixed width site. Looking further, an industry powerhouse, Microsoft, utilizes fixed width in some areas, such as its MSN site, but on its main site, it uses a combination.
In the end it really comes down to the mixture of content and design. Perhaps its similar to "does form follow function or function follow form?" Does the content dictate the design thus dictating width? Or does the design become a thought process of "designing this way means fixed width while designing that way means relative?" I think it also comes down to the designers preferences in general as well as what the designer is moved to do per project.
Id like to leave you with something I learned in "art school". At RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), my architecture teachers were all working at their practices while teaching and the same went for all other areas of study. All areas of study were encouraged to think smartly as well as wildly. No design (jewelry, paint, industrial design, etc.) was too wild. There was but one "rule". Justification. I don't mean paragraph alignment. I mean a reason why you did what you did, an explanation of the thought process. One person gave a few reasons regarding growing resolutions and the difficulty and time lost in trying to design for every size. His solution is fixed width forever. Not everyone will agree, but surely he justified his decision.
Alas, there is no perfect answer. Its simply the designers challenge to work with each situation and find the best solution(s).
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=673
Discuss with Bram
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