NivoSlider

One of the slider that can do all the other slider can do, combined. While it already started to sell commercial support, but you can pretty much get some support by just Google it. Yes, it works perfectly fine with WordPress, either by the plugin provided or you can get your hand dirty on it too.

Uniform

Spice up your form easily with this form beautifying plugin. You can either set to style all the inputs or by adding class to any of them. Best of all, it can easily change theme just by editing some images sprite and/or CSS.

jQuery Slide Menu

A very simple multi-level menu jQuery plugin. All you need is to style the menu to enable at least 2 level of dropdown and add this little plugin to it. Simple enough? It works well even with 5 level!

MediaQueries

We cannot deny the existing of mobile browser. This plugin basically help older browser (Especially IE6) to enable media querie, so you can set different screen resolution to different stylesheet. Best of all, you don’t need to do anything beside adding the script line.

HTML5shim

Let’s face it, we are all living at tomorrow today. Although HTML5 and CSS3 are still on development stage, but it has been widely used. Well, only the few tags. But it is more than enough to make one headache with older browser (IE, duh!). This little plugin helps on enabling the common tagslike header, aside, footer and etc to work well. Some suggest Modernizr, which both works pretty much the same just more support on HTML5 tags.

So the default layout does works well enough, and I adopted a little bit of code from there to this theme. Time to do more studies on how SEO work and what work best for it.

Beside, I’m testing one by one phone on how they can get the max-width CSS. So they all works, beside of course the almighty Internet Explorer. Even IE8 is not working with it, my Opera Mini works well too. The same thing applied on this theme as well. I bet some will see invisible area with IE6, 7 and 8

P/S: It’s good to have a refreshing days. Though I’m a bit lazy to work, but work just got easier with better mind focusing

Here are some list I know about GoDaddy and you should definitely avoid it at all cost!

Pricing term

Don’t get hook up with GoDaddy alone, there are a lot of research you can do to compare it with GoDaddy. Nowadays selling domain name is not profitable, a lot of domain registars are getting a hand in web hosting as well, so with others, you too can get hosting and domain in one account on one site. But the price GoDaddy offer? Always higher than any other competitors.

Pending Hosting

The reason I mention “new comer” above, is because this “Pending” thing. When you are with GoDaddy as an experiences hosting user, you’ll get frustrated with the “Pending” or rather, “Status”, there are a few step to wait just to get into your hosting account. Which means, if you are transfering your website to GoDaddy, expect a long long downtime, all because the “Status”. I don’t understand why I can’t adjust/create/edit my website in an IP address like how cPanel, Plesk and all other web hosting provider?

Catching you

I just realise that, GoDaddy doesn’t allow a folder with more than 1024 files in it. Yes, no folder with more than 1024 files are allowed. Reason? It will slow down your website. Can anyone explain this to me?

No error logging for budget host

Or rather, cheap host. The economic package comes with no error logging. Which means, if one day, GoDaddy come to you and tell you your website eat their resources, that is that. You are to abide with it or leave. Well, they probably ask you to upgrade to another plan. Even so, I will not believe the log file anyway.

So far, I have never had a good experience with GoDaddy yet. Beside of course the GoGirls Consider other hosting like BlueHost, ExaBytes for budget hosting, or VPS.net, WiredTree for VPS power. Just forget about GoDaddy, too many terms hidding in there.

Google instant search is annoying in some ways though… But don’t brag about it annoyed you when you don’t know how to turn it off. You will know how…

However, some who know the use of “Tab” on their keyboard will get frustrated if it’s not working. The almighty tabindex is a must for my point of view. It ease how we – the user – using the computer and browsing.

<input type="text" name="first_name" tabindex="1" />
<input type="text" name="last_name" tabindex="2" />

The number is where it will go from one to another one when “Tab” key is pressed. It would be annoyed if filling a full form where one need to keep between the mouse and the keyboard.

After viewing the site a few time here and there, checking them out, and I notice why it doesn’t work and I believe spend some fund on it. Well, I did the same exact mistake before too

User Interface, User Experience

Both are almost NIL on the site. Maybe the concept isn’t sync with the business concept itself. First off, it’s a designer greeting card. But the whole site doesn’t show the sense of designers. Instead, it looks more like the China website – Full information. There is no way one can navigate around the site easily and get to the wanted information.

Click on the picture, it load in the page; click on the title, open in new windows. I mean, there is the third-click on my mouse, there too have a right-click menu, why control how I browse the site? Let me decide how I browse with my own browser.

Poor SEO

A basic keyword of “Designer greeting card” doesn’t shows the site at all. Not even in the first 5 pages. With such age of website, keyword should be already in the search engine. Probably because no copywriter. Look into their copy, it is more like a casual blogger piece of content than a professionally wrote copy. I did that ALL the time back in the 90′s

Not only did the site has a poor SEO keyword and tags, the site is crumbed with Javascript on top of it. I do understand the Malaysia server, Malaysia users. But how about the International users they are expecting? That definitely bring down the whole search engine friendliness.

In my opinion, they did not fully utilised their fund in a way to help marketing. Instead, it is spent mostly on prototyping the whole system and marketing gimmick itself.

I do believe with such a unique idea of startup, it can still work well. But how well, will depend on how much hardwork to put in.

9Gag.com

Sort of like Tumblr, but only works for image and video. But I just like to browse around. All those funny memes or quotations. Oh, the keyboard shortcut helps a lot!

Geek and Poke

A geek on comic. Straight forward. But not all I understand though

Little Big Details

Very good to learn some UX design. It give a very short talk about how things were built to make it easy for user to understand.

Script and Style

Some update from scripts. Not all are quality though, but can found quite some handful helps there from time to time.

Church Create

Not a church thing, it’s a big network, something like Envato, but not as widely known like them. A good list of network which can explore a lot of new and old things.

So yes, I’m just laying back sitting here going them from time to time when I’m thinking about something or working toward a project. I believe this is not how to burn belly fat… But hell, I’m a married man anyway

Neh, see that guy? He is the one from [domain].com

Nowadays, having a domain and a webiste/blog is just too common. Even Fort Lauderdale car rental has a website. It’s too affordable, a mere RM200, you’ll get a domain name plus a hosting last for a year. The good thing? Having a website can always become a side-income too. Recently Mashable wrote “Internet Advertising Hits New Revenue Record“, so obviously websites are still coming in every moment.

I started off by selling websites I made for months, then paid posting coming in, I jumped into the bandwagon and now, I’m running a small web design services out of Internet.

This new media has been booming while I was still a teenagers, and now more and more people are joining this media. The potential is quite big, but how does one small fish shine in a big tank is the challenge.

I am not keen with a list of plugins in my admin panel, so I found quite an useful snippet in a forum discussing how to automatic detect mobile browser and sent users to the mobile version . The snippet looks like this:

<?php

$mobile_browser = '0';

if(preg_match('/(up.browser|up.link|mmp|symbian|smartphone|midp|wap|phone)/i',
    strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']))){
    $mobile_browser++;
    }

if((strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT']),'application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml')>0) or
    ((isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE']) or isset($_SERVER['HTTP_PROFILE'])))){
    $mobile_browser++;
    }

$mobile_ua = strtolower(substr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],0,4));
$mobile_agents = array(
    'w3c ','acs-','alav','alca','amoi','audi','avan','benq','bird','blac',
    'blaz','brew','cell','cldc','cmd-','dang','doco','eric','hipt','inno',
    'ipaq','java','jigs','kddi','keji','leno','lg-c','lg-d','lg-g','lge-',
    'maui','maxo','midp','mits','mmef','mobi','mot-','moto','mwbp','nec-',
    'newt','noki','oper','palm','pana','pant','phil','play','port','prox',
    'qwap','sage','sams','sany','sch-','sec-','send','seri','sgh-','shar',
    'sie-','siem','smal','smar','sony','sph-','symb','t-mo','teli','tim-',
    'tosh','tsm-','upg1','upsi','vk-v','voda','wap-','wapa','wapi','wapp',
    'wapr','webc','winw','winw','xda','xda-');

if(in_array($mobile_ua,$mobile_agents)){
    $mobile_browser++;
    }
if (strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['ALL_HTTP']),'OperaMini')>0) {
    $mobile_browser++;
    }
if (strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']),'windows')>0) {
    $mobile_browser=0;
    }

if($mobile_browser>0){
   header('Location: http://YourSite.mobi/mobile');
   } else {
   header('Location: http://YourSite.mobi/pc');
   }

?>

While it will automatic redirect users to the mobile version, it can however not direct users to another URL but another style sheet too.

if($mobile_browser>0){
   echo "<link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\""; echo bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); echo "/mobile.css\" type=\"text/css\" media=\"handheld\" />";
   } else {
   echo "<link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\""; echo bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); echo "/screen.css\" type=\"text/css\" media=\"handheld\" />";
   }

WordPress theme need style.css. All the information about the theme should be within style.css too. So I only place information on style.css and the rest of my CSS will bne in screen.css.

In functions.php, create the auto detect function:

function mobile_screen() {
$mobile_browser = '0';

if(preg_match('/(up.browser|up.link|mmp|symbian|smartphone|midp|wap|phone)/i',
  strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']))){
  $mobile_browser++;
  }

if((strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT']),'application/vnd.wap.xhtml+xml')>0) or
  ((isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_WAP_PROFILE']) or isset($_SERVER['HTTP_PROFILE'])))){
  $mobile_browser++;
  }

$mobile_ua = strtolower(substr($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'],0,4));
$mobile_agents = array(
  'w3c ','acs-','alav','alca','amoi','audi','avan','benq','bird','blac',
  'blaz','brew','cell','cldc','cmd-','dang','doco','eric','hipt','inno',
  'ipaq','java','jigs','kddi','keji','leno','lg-c','lg-d','lg-g','lge-',
  'maui','maxo','midp','mits','mmef','mobi','mot-','moto','mwbp','nec-',
  'newt','noki','oper','palm','pana','pant','phil','play','port','prox',
  'qwap','sage','sams','sany','sch-','sec-','send','seri','sgh-','shar',
  'sie-','siem','smal','smar','sony','sph-','symb','t-mo','teli','tim-',
  'tosh','tsm-','upg1','upsi','vk-v','voda','wap-','wapa','wapi','wapp',
  'wapr','webc','winw','winw','xda','xda-');

if (in_array($mobile_ua,$mobile_agents)) {$mobile_browser++;}
if (strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']),'OperaMini')>0) {$mobile_browser=0;}
if (strpos(strtolower($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']),'windows')>0) {$mobile_browser=0;}

if($mobile_browser>0){
  echo "<link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\""; echo bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); echo "/mobile.css\" type=\"text/css\" media=\"handheld\" />";
  } else {
  echo "<link rel=\"stylesheet\" href=\""; echo bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); echo "/screen.css\" type=\"text/css\" media=\"screen\" />";
  }
}

It is to be easy for front-end developing. For header.php, you’ll need to look for the function and display it:

<?php if (function_exists('mobile_screen') ) { mobile_screen(); } ?>

Do let me know if there is another easier way to do so, cause this is not a good way to implement as a mobile web yet. By the way, you can learn more about mobile web tips and technique here. Have fun!

I am seeing the birth of web apps everyday. I myself, used a few web app on daily basic. Google Document, Facebook, Twitter just to name a few. Some don’t understand why would I use web apps instead of a desktop apps.

I did install a set of Micorsoft Office 2007 in my desktop as well, because web app, like how it was named, need an Internet connection. However, it doesn’t mean a web app isn’t any better than a desktop app.

A few point about desktop application:

• Need installation
• Self update
• Some cost lots of fee
• Use without an Internet connection
• More flexibility on customization

I limit my desktop applications and save all the possible hard dick space for my music, movies and pictures.

A web applications is always supported by it team which manage and make sure it is stable, up and running. There is no hassle of scanning those application and waited for hours.

Of course a web applications cannot guarantee your privacy. But a desktop application can’t guarantee that as well once it infected by malware.

A few point about desktop application:

• No need installation, maybe a registration form
• Thousand of million developers watching and updating.
• Most web apps are free
• Need an Internet connection to work
• Most customization depend on how it design it UI

However, in Malaysia, we don’t get free Internet, and we don’t get free WiFi around the town too. Hopefully Penang can achieve this?

Now that you wonder why Google Chrome OS coming out to support their own web applications? Pretty sure there are some statistic about their web applications that they did not announce.