Hi,

This domain, bitfilm.net, is being sold. As you may be aware, I now blog at www.making-the-web.com, and I would recommend anyone currently subscribed to this blog's feed to unsubscribe and subscribe to this one.

So, why am I selling it? Well, I bought the domain with no intention of using it as a blog. In fact, I have no idea why I bought it in the first place! Eventually, after being left with a spare domain and out of ideas, I decided to give this blogging "thing" a go - I was aware that blogs can be quite successful, and I had nothing to lose. I was happy, and quite amazed, with the blogs progession - I seemed to get traffic almost instantly from services such as StumbleUpon and Digg, which eventually turned into regular readers.

With Making the Web [bitfilm.net] gaining popularity, I eventually came to the decision that the domain was inappropriate for the blog. On the 24th March (2008), I purchased the domain making-the-web.com and started a new blog there, under the same name. All posts from this blog, bitfilm.net, will eventually be transferred to Making-the-Web.com.

If you are interested in buying bitfilm.net, please put in a bid. You can make an offer at Sedo: Buy Bitfilm.net.

Thank you,

Brendon.

The following is a paid review

SonicShack.com is a state-of-the-art web service allowing users to design, create and purchase their own custom T-Shirts. SonicShack's advanced, but easy to use, technology gives visitors a range of designing tools, including gallery-images, an image upload utility and text in a variety of different fonts. (more…)

Sponsor: Advertise on Making the Web's RSS Feed Place your website's link in Making the Web's RSS feed via Text Link Ads

Hi,

I've decided to create a new blog at http://making-the-web.com, about website development. I will still post on this blog, but it will be less frequent. Generally, this blog [bitfilm.net] will focus on PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, etc, while "Making the Web" will focus on the actual design aspect. I will also be writing some articles about blogging, hacking and security and search engine optimisation.

For the most part, I suggest you update your bookmarks to point to www.making-the-web.com, and for regular readers to subscribe to the RSS feed.

-Brendon

Sponsor: Advertise on Making the Web's RSS Feed Place your website's link in Making the Web's RSS feed via Text Link Ads

When storing data in databases, it is important to ensure the data is stored using a minimal amount of space, while retaining its value and processing efficiency.

There are many common practices amongst MySQL developers who write applications which store data in a human-interpretable way; they often don't think about the computer's interpretation of the data, and often fail to realise that it can be more efficient and space-saving to store data in a certain form.

It is especially important to consider data storage techniques in high-demand applications, and where speed and storage-efficiency are key values. Web services require these key values: it is important that they can cope with extra demand, and can satisfy their user's desire for immediacy.

(Screenshot from phpMyAdmin)

In the first part of Saving Bytes: Efficient Data Storage, we will look at the storage of strings.
(more…)

Creating compatible and portable Javascript scripts can be extremely hard. We, as developers, can test our scripts in as many browsers as we want, but, there always seems to be problems.

Now, when an error occurs, what usually happens? The browser shows a little yellow symbol in the bottom-left corner of the screen (in IE at least - I might as well use it as a good example: it is the most popular browser). The visitor will usually just ignore the error for two reasons:

1. They don't know what the error means most of the time, unless they are Javascripters themselves; and
2. They don't really care about your site and the errors - why should they?

Because they ignore them, and you have no idea they exist, bugs in your applications may go unnoticed for weeks, or even months. And, all the time your application is not functioning as expected, visitors are seeing your service as unprofessional and will simply go to your competitors.

But, thankfully, there is a way to catch and fix these errors. A new service called DamnIT will send you emails whenever there is a problem on the client-side. Here's an example message:

One thing that the service could be used for is client-side error detection and reporting during BETA tests.

Here are some great benefits of the service:

• It allows the user to enter some details about the error, and what they did before the error;
• It can be incorporated in to JavaScriptMVC easily; and
• Error messages are very informative - they contain browser details, user's description and the error's line number

There is also another great benefit of DamnIT. That is its error management section. This section lists the most recent errors, and the most common - so you can prioritize. It will even categorize by browser:

To use DamnIT is simple - you don't have to touch any of your existing script. All you have to do is put this code on to your page:

<script type='text/javascript'
src='https://damnit.jupiterit.com/damnit.js?_KEY_'></script>

And it is as simple as that - after obtaining your key, you will automatically receive error details by email within a few seconds.

DamnIT Demo

Bookmarks are used by almost everyone to make a note of a website that may be important to us in the future. Acting as a "one-click access memory," they allow us to navigate to our favourite websites and pages with ease; and, they prevent those times when you spend up to a quarter of an hour (or, sometimes, even longer) trying to think of that website for the lines-worth of information you want!

I have took the decision to publish my bookmarks online. From them, you will probably be able to determine what kind of person I am - my likes and dislikes. You, if you have similar interests, may find some of my bookmarks useful and decide to bookmark them yourself.

So, here they are (the cut-down version) - in categories: (more…)

There are many websites on the internet which have great designs, are easy to navigate and have quality content. But, there are far more websites which have none or few of the characteristics which make a website "good."

Sometimes websites are designed by an inexperienced designer, who thinks design is about pretty colours, mind-blowing high-resolution graphics and "fantastic" animations on navigation buttons. Other times, they are designed by non-designers (ie web programmers) who think it is about the content.

www.thisisenglandmovie.co.uk - The Y Design Awards' 2007 Best Online Campaign

A good web designer will understand the importance of getting the correct balance between aesthetic elements and the actual content (the stuff the visitor wants: an article in case of a blog). (more…)

You may have noticed that I recently put an additional sidebar onto this website. But, you may not no the reason why. It's a very good reason, and you should think about how it applies to your website too.

Because I, like many bloggers, wanted to earn a decent amount of revenue from blogging, I placed advertisements (from Google AdSense) on to my blog. I placed these advertisements onto the sidebar, mainly because they would not interfere with the content (articles), and because they would be noticed.

But, to get a good click-through rate, I started moving the advertisements towards the top. The thing I did not think about then was how it affects the ability to navigate the site. And, it does affect it quite a lot. The whole navigation section is pushed down, and many important links pushed below the fold.

To overcome this problem, I was thinking about ways I could improve the ease of navigation, while, at the same time, getting a decent click-through rate from the adverts. My final solution was to add another sidebar…

…By adding another sidebar, I was able to place the most important navigational elements on to one of the sidebars, where they would not be broken up by adverts, were above the fold, and could be easily identified as a collection of navigational elements.

And, on the second sidebar, I put adverts and sponsored links, which also had the benefit of being higher on the page, which would probably increase the click-through rate.

So the two benefits are:

• The user can more easily navigate the site, because the navigational elements are collected together; and
• The advertisements are more noticeable, increasing the click-through rate, and increasing the advertising revenue.

If, on your site, you can not easily differentiate between the navigation section, the advertisements and sponsored links, and the other content, maybe you should consider implementing similar changes. I found this useful article on the internet which describes how to set up two sidebars in WordPress.

Ususally, I write about website development - PHP, MySQL, Javascript, etc. But, I'm going to write about paradoxes for two reasons: a) they involve logic and really challenge the mind, and b) because they challenge what we know and believe.

A paradox is basically a statement that seems to be true and logical, but simply can not be true.

Zeno's Paradoxes

Zeno's Paradoxes of motion basically say nothing can move. They state that to move from point A, to point B, you must first get half way between the two points. And then, to get to point B, you must get half way between your current position and point B - and so on…

In Physics, VI:9, 239b10, by Aristotle, it states:

That which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal.

So, this statement says we must get to half-way first, which we know is true. But, we must also then get half-way from the current position to the end (a quarter of the way), which we also know is true. But, this goes on for ever, and we must get to 1/n^th of the way, where n is infinity, which is impossible - we'd never actually get to our end position - we wouldn't even be able to start moving there!
(more…)

When visitors come to your site, they expect it to load up very fast. If your site takes too long to load, they may go to another site.

Here are my top tips for making your site load faster:

Compress images

Web graphics generally do not need to be high definition. You should always try to make images an appropriate size by compression, and by using appropriate file formats. Also, if you have an image which is bigger than what is being display (e.g. 150×150 pixel image being displayed as a 75×75 pixel thumbnail), then you should make a seperate image which is the right size.

I find Adobe (Macromedia) Fireworks great for exporting images, as it gives you a range of options so you can get an image to the smallest size required.

Use external files

Including external stylesheets and JavaScript files may seem like a bad idea. But, in my opinion, it's a good thing to do. Many browsers will cache stylesheets and JavaScript files, so, the next time the user downloads a page, it can just use a local copy.

Remove HTML Comments

HTML comments, in my opinion, are pointless - I never use them. If I do want to make a comment in one of my files, I'd do so in a PHP code block. If you are removing content from your page, don't surround it with <!– and –>, but instead (, if you have PHP, ) use <?php if(false) { ?> and <?php } ?>, so the data is not sent. Or, even better, just remove the content (maybe make a backup?).

Cache Pages

If you cache pages on your server, then you don't have to load them again for every request. There are some caching systems which cache the compiled PHP code, so it can be executed straight away. If you are not using PHP, you can use mod_cache on Apache, or another add-on for another server.