James Oppenheim’s blog

What does a website say about a political party, who knows? With the Victorian state election coming up in a couple of days I decided to check out what each party use for their CMS. Really interesting results that I think sum up each of the political parties social bents quite nicely:

• Greens (http://vic.greens.org.au) use Drupal
  Suggesting openness, freedom of expression, passionate sometimes to the point of ridiculous while being just a bit nerdy
• Liberals (http://www.liberalvictoria.org.au) use the .NET framework
  Suggesting proprietary and very trusting of large organisations, too expensive and somewhat over complicating simple needs (framework for CMS?). They don’t even cater for the old battlers:
  “We see you’re still using IE6. For better experience with our site, we suggest you to upgrade your browser to IE8”
• Labor (http://www.alpvictoria.com.au) use Community Engine
  Suggesting specialised fluff with no real substance. Most likely too expensive, but can’t disclose budgets

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: CMS, Victorian Election, Greens, Liberal, Labor

Here is a fun IE CSS bug:

“In IE an absolutely positioned box sometimes disappears when in the source code it is the previous or the next sibling of a float”

After successfully tracking down this bug a couple of months ago I released that I had come across it before. This time so I don’t forget I will post it here. There needs to be a surrounding / separating div between the two elements to stop this.

Some interesting reading on the topic so we can all spot this bug when it comes up next:

1. http://www.brunildo.org/test/IE_raf3.html
2. http://www.brunildo.org/test/IE_raf3.pl

Technorati Tags: CSS, Web Standards, Internet Explorer, IE

Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo.

I spend most of my daily working hours as a front-end developer creating custom HTML, CSS, JavaScript for the web. However, from time to time I have to dip my toes into HTML emails. Which is not such a stretch as after all they use the same underlying technologies. Making them even more comparable is the pain I have to go through bending, cheating and hacking the code to fit with a Microsoft product:

Internet Explorer 6 is to web development as Outlook 2007 is to HTML email development - A massive time waster!

As outlined back in January 2007 by the Campaign Monitor guys Microsoft Outlook 2007 uses the Word rendering engine to display emails, that means:

1. No background images
2. Poor background colour support
3. No support for float or position
4. Shocking box model support

The Good

Internet Explorer 8 has a high level of CSS 2.1 support, which is a fantastic move in the right direction.

The Bad

Internet Explorer 6 and its additional development time to support it will be with us for a long time to come and Internet Explorer 8 does not support any CSS3.

The Ugly

Just when you though Microsoft was listening to standards bodies and creating a better Internet environment for all they mention that Outlook 2010 will also still use the Word rendering engine.

Hopefully, the Email Standards Project’s latest website http://fixoutlook.org/ will implore Microsoft to do the right thing and stop using Microsoft Word to render emails. Please, please, please. If I say it three times does it become true? I hope so.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Outlook, Email Standards, fixoutlook.org

Has anyone ever search for a solution to a problem in Google to only find that high up on the search results page comes Experts Exchange? I searched for ‘css background image on textarea‘ and low and behold Experts Exchange comes up in 4th position. Just like every other time I am meet with the message:

“View this solution now by starting your 7-day free trial. Setting up your free trial is quick, easy, and secure. We will return you to this solution, unlocked, when you’re done.”

I always wondered how they get Google to cache this page if I can’t see it, I even checked Google’s cache view with no luck.

But wait there is a simple solution to this problem…. scroll down to the bottom and BAM there is the answer! I can’t believe I never saw that after 6 years of searching for programming problems.

I hope someone else find this useful. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Web, Personal, Interesting Sites, Hacking

Merry Christmas to all and a happy new year. I will be off the radar for a while so this can keep you interested. Enjoy.

Technorati Tags: Personal, Interesting sites, Christmas, ElfYourself

Ever wondered if websites need to look exactly the same in every browser? Well the world renowned front-end developer and author Dan Cederholm answers the question on a new domain:

http://dowebsitesneedtolookexactlythesameineverybrowser.com/

You have to love the length of the domain name!

Technorati Tags: CSS, Web Standards, Interesting Website, Dan Cederholm, Simple Bits, Areeba

After needed an animated loading .gif image for a recent Ajax application I did some quick Google searching and came across a fantastic site: http://www.ajaxload.info/

Ajaxload allows you to generate your own animated Ajax loading images with a few simple click. Starting from a number of animation templates you can then choose a background and foreground colour for your new loading .gif. After 30 seconds of playing around, see some of my examples below:

Fantastic, yet simple. This is the way all websites you should be, well done Ajaxload.

Technorati Tags: Ajaxload, Ajax, Interesting websites, images, animated gif

Links, links everywhere! But where, why? Hang on, who?

Link building is an important part in any Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy. In an attempt to make a website seem more popular with search engine spiders it is important to gain quality inbound links to your website.

Link popularity

OK, but what is popularity? Simply put, link popularity essentially describes how popular a website is based on the number of links from other sites pointing to it. For example a site with 100 inbound links is seen to be more important than a site with 10 inbound links.

Link quality

OK so now we have quantity, what about quality? The quality of the link is much more important than the quantity of links. A few good quality links can increase your websites search engine positioning much more than a huge amount of poor quality links. A quality website will have to following attributes:

• A high Google page rank
• Search engine friendly coding with all its pages indexable
• Relevant content to your particular site
• Small number of outgoing links on the page you will be linked on
• The links on the page should be well classified and focused

Avoid artificial link farms and web rings as search engine spiders will place no importance on these types of inbound link. As a general rule, if a link is not created to be read or followed by humans, the link will be considered spam.

Where to get quality links

A great place to start gain quality and relevant inbound links are website directories. Website directories provide a topical and categorised list of links. The Strongest Links website goes one step further by creating a list of website directories ranking them on the quality of link they will provide you.

Next comes the social websites like Digg, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Technorati, MySpace and reddit which provide an easy way to create some user generated content (i.e. content generated by you, the user) with links to your website or a particular page /post on your website. These social websites generally have a lot of traffic and a high page rank which can filter through to your website with each link that you create, not to mention all the extra eyes you will have on your website.

It is a black art trying to gain quality inbound links to a website, one that I will forever be wrangling with. If you have any insights, suggestions or funny stories please let me know.

Technorati Tags: SEO, Interesting sites, link building, website directories, social websites

Directory Critic is a fantastic resource of website directories, featuring over 3900 search engine friendly website directories. Directory Critic breaks down the website directories into a number of categories, including free, paid and deep linking enabling a website owner to effectively target relevant websites when creating a link building campaign.

Website directories provide a good way to promote your website, creating exposure and traffic while building relevant inbound links. Directory Critic harnesses this power and is a must do for all good website marketing and SEO campaigns.

Technorati Tags: Directory Critic, SEO, link building

The new version of Google Analytics has launched and wow is it impressive. Showcasing an intuitive interface with drag and drop functionality, Google has taken its website statistics application to the next level. Showcasing large amounts of data in a easy to understand manner is the main advantage of Google Analytics.

Why would you bother with any other website statistics application when there is Google Analytics. Whats more, it is free!

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Analytics, website statistics, SEO