Getting started Ajax articles and tutorials
Top 34 Ajax Basics:
- Whats Ajax? : Intro at AjaxPatterns
- What is Ajax? : at The Strange Zen Of JavaScript
- Ajax: Getting started : at Mozilla
- An Introduction To Ajax : at Bea software
- Getting Started with Ajax : at A List Apart
- Getting Started with Ajax : at BrainJar
- The Non-Techie Manager Introduction to AJAX : at ITBusinessNet
- 10 Business Reasons to Use AJAX : at AjaxLessons
- How to Develop Web Applications with Ajax Pt 1 : at WebReference
- XML HTTP Request object : at W3Schools
Continue reading »
10 Key Things to Look for in a Good Web Designer
The pace of business today is positively supersonic. There doesn’t seem to be enough time for anything anymore, and businesses of all sizes are working harder and faster all the time.
It’s important to work smarter, too. And that means when you have to choose an important vendor for an essential service, you need to slow down and make a deliberate, careful decision. This is particularly important when you are getting ready to put your company’s face on the World Wide Web in a new or newly-refurbished web site.
Before listing the ten key things to look for in a good web designer, let’s define a few terms. Even though you may encounter variants on the name – like web developer, web artist, webmaster and so forth – we’re talking about an individual who, alone or with some assistance, is going to “get you up and running.” This means more than simple design.
You may need someone who can help you conceive and write copy. You may need someone who can plan smart site structure. You may need help getting a domain registered, files uploaded, e-mail accounts set up, and other technical details. You will definitely need someone who can do just about anything, or quickly find out how, or have an associate who can at the ready.
With these caveats, and serious encouragement to shop around for price and professionalism, here are the ten things to look for, in rough order of importance:
1) Experience
You will need someone with all the techniques, tools and tricks that will help you prepare your web site and accomplish your online goals. You should confirm that the candidate knows the entire alphabet soup of protocols, web markup languages and coding utilities: HTML, XML, CSS, PHP and so on. Ask all prospects for a portfolio, ask if they can “hand code,” find out how many years of experience each has, etc.
When you interview designers, on the phone and/or in person, you will get these answers swiftly enough. But take due time to get more important insights as to the individual’s character, level of expertise – and how well your personalities mesh. You will be working closely together, after all.
2) Customer Service Orientation
As important as experience is a mindset and attitude of making customer service a priority. If a designer/developer is too busy to answer e-mails or phone calls, will they be able to keep the production schedule? Ask for references, and make a point of actually calling them. Ask the prospect’s previous clients if the web developer was responsive, on time and effective.
3) Original copy and Graphics
Creating professional and 100% original web graphics separates the adults from the kids every time. Most anyone can do some “quick and dirty” copy writing and slap it on a page with some pictures and hyperlinks. On the other hand, a talented and veteran designer will demonstrate knowledge of page layout, have a way with color and know how to place elements on a page for best appearance and web site performance. Take a good look at a number of the sites each prospect has built, and make sure no one is using “templates” or “starter pages” that come with some software programs or are available (even free) on the Internet.
4) Creativity
You need to decide right away (before you even start talking to designers) just how much the designer you find will be involved in the conceptual process. Your designer may need to help you with some of the “big picture” questions, such as marketing, web copy writing (for search engines) and how to generate traffic. You want someone creative, but not a “diva” who won’t follow instructions or work with your ideas to bring them to fruition.
5) Marketing Experience
The easiest way to find out if your prospective web designers are good at marketing web sites is to view their site and their portfolio. That you are considering selecting them to design your site is a good first indicator that their designs convert. You’ll further want to ensure that you can find what you’re looking for on their site quickly and easily and that you can do the same on some of the sites in their portfolio.
6) Cost
Pricing for a professional web site of 10-15 pages with the standard features runs all the way from $500 to $5000. It may be that your idea is so complicated that you might have to pay for an estimate. For a full picture of all the costs involved in the project, ask for all the costs to be broken out individually – domain name and hosting, graphic design work, marketing fees and web development matters.
You may need to place a deposit if the job is large enough, and you should have all payment terms worked out before work starts. You can work out an hourly rate, a flat fee or some combination of the two. Leave nothing unstated or assumed: Get every detail in writing, including deadlines and how many revisions are included.
7) Job Timeline
After you ask the developers how long the process will take, make a point of asking references if the project was, in fact, completed on time. A basic web site may take as little as a week, while more involved and technically challenging sites could take a month or more. You need to know what the real-world turnaround time is for the specific people you are considering.
8 ) Communication Skills
Don’t hire anyone who insists on speaking to you in “computer-ese” or won’t explain unknown terminology. You have to communicate with this person about things that are important to your very survival, so you need to be clear at all times. If you cannot establish a good working relationship, it won’t matter if you have Leonardo Da Vinci working on your code, it just won’t work out.
9) Full Service
There may be one or two things that your designer/developer cannot do, but for the most part you should be able to find a reasonably-priced professional who can handle just about everything. If the designer needs help installing a particularly complicated shopping cart, or your site requires some heavy database programming, it is reasonable to expect that your designer might need some assistance. All of this should be spelled out in the pricing, of course (see #6, above), and you shouldn’t be surprised by anything your designer is telling you. If you are, you overlooked something in this list!
10) Availability
Are these prospects full-time web professionals? Or are they moonlighting from some other job, even a completely unrelated one? It may be that a part-time web designer who’s working at McDonald’s really can do a great job for you, but will he/she be available to meet with you during normal business hours? No matter what decision you make – full-time pro, part-timer or student – you must be able to get hold of your designer.
Finally, do you homework before speaking with anyone. You don’t need to be an expert – after all, you’re hiring help, because you’re not – but you need to know enough to know what you’re hearing. If you are uncertain of your ability to keep on top of what’s going on, get a friend with at least basic web knowledge to help you locate, interview and assess candidates.
Use all of this “head” knowledge to narrow down your list of candidates, but don’t be afraid to use your intuition (“heart” knowledge) to get a feel for each person’s honesty, integrity and character. Using this mix of study, inquiry, discussion ,and feel, you will start to develop judgments about the candidates. Following this procedure thoroughly should result in your finding a good match for your Internet needs.
3 Top Tips for Great Web Page Design
Great web page design is very important to making sure that your customers see your company in the way that you want them to. Just as you put a great deal of effort, time and resources in ensuring that your bricks and mortar storefront is bright, clean, and attractive, your website needs the same kind of attention. This article will explain the top three ways to make your website work for you!
When I started Future Access in 1995, St. Catharines website design guru’s thought that good web page design was no more than putting up a few pictures, a page of text, and that was it. Little to no thought was given to how things made you feel, the logical path you would expect someone to take through the site, or where you wanted them to end up. It was much more about being trendy and cool by being one of the first companies in your industry to have a website at all!
Today, now that bandwidth limitations have been greatly reduced and multimedia content is everywhere, great web page design has become a way for small companies to level the playing field and compete on par with much larger rivals. In my experience, as we have developed better and better websites over the years, our customers’ customers continually give positive feedback (and their business!) to companies that have made effective use of their design.
People have enough stressors in their life as it is today, and they don’t need their experience on your website to add to them. Everywhere you look, busy, highly pressured individuals are seeking after a Zen-like experience, feng-shui, or just simplicity in general. So should it be on your website. Do away with the unnecessary extras, flashy gimmicks, and fancy doo-dads. Resist the temptation to say everything you want, or put a list of every single product you offer all on one page.
I have come to realize that less is more, and that users really appreciate the simplicity of a clean, uncluttered look on websites. The success of Google’s web page design is a prime example. Look how clean Google’s homepage is compared to its major competitors like Yahoo and MSN. They have so much white space, they even offered a black background for the 2008 Earth Day in order to reduce power consumption on the monitors of their millions of users.
The simplicity and ease of use have allowed a single company to capture half of the market share of the entire search engine industry, and catapult them to market leaders and innovators in many other areas as well. Remember this, give the user what they want (not what you want), and less is more.
Part of keeping your site clean and easy to use is simple, intuitive navigation. Many times in my online browsing experience I have come across websites that have a beautiful homepage, and then completely change the design on their inside pages. Menu items that were clearly outlined across the top have now moved to the left hand side, or have disappeared altogether. I have no idea how I am supposed to progress through the site, and in fact I can get lost altogether on some pages.
I have found that a much better approach is to use clear, consistent navigation. This means that the links to your various pages should appear in the same place and in the same order on every page on your site. If you have many pages for your users to navigate, a drop-down menu can be a very effective tool. Everyone is used to clicking or rolling over a menu at the top of a program like Microsoft Word and have a menu drop down from there. If your website allows them to navigate in the same way, you keep the experience consistent and help users to get around your site with ease.
So now that we have established that your website should be clean, simple, and easy to navigate, how do we make it beautiful? What is going to create that emotional response that you create when people walk through your doors into your bricks-and-mortar storefront?
After years of St. Catharines website design at Future Access, creating hundreds of websites for our customers, I have come to realize that the use of high-quality photography really separates a great site from an average one. The key is to use the right photograph, and not to overdo it. A collage of 9 or 10 images a blurred together on your homepage, many of them indistinguishable because they are wide shots reduced greatly in size will not be effective. Instead, a single large, high-quality close-up photograph that showcases your product or service can work best.
If you want to use more than one image, a moderately paced Flash animation can create extra emotion by having them fade into one another, or by panning across the picture very slowly. A photographic technique called “depth-of-field”, where the foreground of an image is in sharp focus but the distant background is completely blurred really draws attention to the image. Don’t believe me? Check it out next time you are browsing the web and see for yourself!
Now you have all the essential advice you need to create fantastic website. Great web page design includes a clean uncluttered look that eliminates unnecessary information. You need an intuitive navigation system to help people get around easily. And finally, you should use great, high-impact photography to create an emotional response. That’s it! Now, go and check your website to see if it meets these criteria. If not, go to it!
About the Author: Bill Janzen has been doing web page design since 1995, and owns Future Access, a St. Catharines website design company.
Logo công ty ! lại cái khác hiihi !
sau phiên bản thứ nhất… Cái Logo bị phản đối khá nhiều hii. Cho nên lần này em thiết kế phiên bản hoàn toàn khác không dựa trên phiên bản có sẵn nào cả.
Ý tưởng logo :
- Nhẹ nhàng và đê lại một ấn tượng khi nhìn thấy lần đầu.
- phân tích Logo ra thì nó như sau :
Logo có các hình tròn mô tả thành viên trong công ty.
Sự kết hợp của các hình tròn thể hiện sự gắn kết giữa các thành viên trong công ty.
Sự kết hợp giữa hai màu xanh và da cảm thể hiện sự nhẹ nhàng không qua mạnh. Ý kiến của bác Việt là màu đỏ nhưng em không thấy hợp lý vì khi màu đỏ vào logo mình rất tối. gam màu xanh và da cam với nền trắng rất nổi bật và rõ nét.
Slogan : Chúng tôi biết bạn muốn gì cái này thể hiện tiêu chí làm việc của công ty. Không yêu cầu khách hàng nói nhiều. Họ chỉ cần có ý tưởng mình sẽ xây dựng ý tưởng đó thành hiện thực. Slogan hơi dài nhưng mang đậm phong cách làm việc của công ty.
MVC Design Pattern
MVC Design Pattern
Model-view-controller
Model-view-controller (MVC) is an architectural pattern used in software engineering. In complex computer applications that present a large amount of data to the user, a developer often wishes to separate data (model) and user interface (View) concerns, so that changes to the user interface will not affect data handling, and that the data can be reorganized without changing the user interface. The model-view-controller solves this problem by decoupling data access and business logic from data presentation and user interaction, by introducing an intermediate component: the controller.
Pattern description
It is common to split an application into separate layers: presentation (UI), domain, and data access. In MVC the presentation layer is further separated into view and controller. MVC encompasses more of the architecture of an application than is typical for a design pattern.
Model
The domain-specific representation of the information on which the application operates. It is a common misconception that the model is another name for the domain layer. Domain logic adds meaning to raw data (e.g., calculating if today is the user’s birthday, or the totals, taxes and shipping charges for shopping cart items).
Many applications use a persistent storage mechanism (such as a database) to store data. MVC does not specifically mention the data access layer because it is understood to be underneath or encapsulated by the Model.
View
Renders the model into a form suitable for interaction, typically a user interface element.
Controller
Processes and responds to events, typically user actions, and may invoke changes on the model.
MVC is often seen in web applications, where the view is the actual HTML page, and the controller is the code which gathers dynamic data and generates the content within the HTML. Finally the model is represented by the actual content, usually stored in a database or XML files.
Though MVC comes in different flavors, control flow generally works as follows:
1. The user interacts with the user interface in some way (e.g., user presses a button)
2. A controller handles the input event from the user interface, often via a registered handler or callback.
3. The controller accesses the model, possibly updating it in a way appropriate to the user’s action (e.g., controller updates user’s shopping cart).
4. A view uses the model to generate an appropriate user interface (e.g., view produces a screen listing the shopping cart contents). The view gets its own data from the model. The model has no direct knowledge of the view.
5. The user interface waits for further user interactions, which begins the cycle anew.
Secure Php Programming
SQL Injection
Quick solutions:
- Use appropriate field types
- use a security class for user input import
- Be careful when you use a string out of the database for comparison
only quoting all user input is not enough
Direct call of included file
Quick solutions: There are many solutions.
I prefer this: put the code in the included file in a function and call it from the main file.
Output of unchecked user input, XSS (Cross-Site-Scripting)
Quick solutions: Use htmlentities() on all user input before output of user vars (except if the output goes into a textarea)
The name of an included file does not end with .php
Quick solutions: Always give your included files a name which ends with .php
Unchecked extension on an uploaded file
Quick solutions: Never let users upload any files. Make sure that they can only upload files with extensions they need.
Access Rights
Quick solutions: Access rights for
- directories: 710 (or 711 if needed)
- upload directories: 770 (or 777 if needed)
- files: 640 (or 644 if needed)
- user manegable files: 660 (or 666 if needed)
Always set the rights as restricive as possible
Login data (username and password) is saved in cookies
Quick solutions: Never save username and password in a cookie.
Always use a session id in the cookie and store username and password as a session variable.
Error messages reveal starting point for an attack
Quick solutions: Set error_reporting(0) or provide your own error handler.
A misconfigured server gives away information about your project’s file organization
Quick solutions: Put a dummy index.html and index.php in every directory
Login form uses GET method
Quick solutions: Always submit a username and password with the POST method.
The file name for a file is constructed from user input and executed (Remote File Inclusion)
Quick solution: Only include predefined files
