Microkid

Note: this is for OSX 10.4 Tiger, if you are on Leopard: tutorial for installing GD support on 10.5 Leopard.

I’m sure the people at Apple had a good reason not to include the GD library in the default apache/PHP installation that comes with OS X. Too bad though, because sooner or later you’ll need it when using OS X as a web development platform. Getting it running is not much like the 1.2.3 installing procedures you are used to on a mac, but here’s how to do it. — Read on

I am currently working on a Wordpress MU based platform for several professional weblogs, and one of the things I’m goofing around with is the phenomenon of tags, plugged into Wordpress in the shape of Ultimate Tag Warrior.

One of the coolest features in this nifty little program is the usage of Yahoo’s term extraction API, which gives the editor tag suggestions when writing a new item. Unfortunately, this tool seems to be very much English oriented. When jamming Dutch texts into it, it does come up with results but most of them are far from usable.

To overcome this problem I figured that if I would be able to translate the Dutch text to English, then send it to the term extraction tool, translate whatever comes out back to Dutch and present those terms to the editor as tag suggestions. So I have edited Ultimate Tag Warrior to use Babel Fish to do just that. And I have to say, even though there is still some jibberish among the results, my plan turned out to work.

The only problem now is that the Dutch language uses a lot of English words, most of the time specific terms in business or science. And since these terms are so specific, they are probably words you want to have included in your tag suggestions. So right now I’m looking for a way to combine the original results with the results generated through Babel Fish. Any suggestions of course are welcome!

Next time you’re lacking ideas when designing a web interface, go to this flickr pool of oldskool control panels to get inspired. Here’s a couple of my favorites: The inevitable classic 64, Rotate, Thrust, Fire, Calculator Cream, Moogalicious.

This stuff is awesome; microbotic sculptures by Norwegian artist Christopher Conte. Make sure you check out his Lethal Injection Attack Droid Prototype. And look what he did to his moms sowing machine!

Christopher shares his agent with H.R. Giger (you know, that guy that designed the alien in Alien).

Check out this presentation on microformats. This little technique might look obvious to some, but it’s a good step towards a more open, less browser based web.This presentation is very useful if you want to learn what microformats really are about, and how they can be used. Mainly because the microformats homepage seems to talk mostly about how fabulous the people running it are.

This February Jeremy Keith will publish his new book Bulletproof Ajax.

This book has everything you need to get started with bulletproof Ajax. You’ll find solutions to the challenges Ajax poses, illustrated with working examples. More importantly, you’ll find explanations for the concepts and answers to the questions surrounding Ajax. So don’t think of this as a programming book even, though you’ll find plenty of code within. Instead, think of this as a guidebook to help you chart the unknown territory of using Ajax.

Perhaps when I’m done struggling with my last bought nerd novel (in which the main character John Resig turns out to be a better programmer than writer) I’ll look into purchasing it. Hell - if there’s nothing useful in it, at least the title “Bulletproof Ajax” will look mighty impressive to my clients on that shelf above my desk. And it will sit there until Web 3.0.

In MySpace: Design Anarchy That Works, an article from about a year ago, Jesse James Garrett talks about the design anarchy on MySpace. Jesse states:

Regardless of its aesthetic consequences, this customizability is one of the site’s most attractive features, and the do-it-yourself sensibility of the site resonates with the audience’s desire for self-expression.

I guess all of us in professional development or design have looked at the chaos that is MySpace, and wondered why whoever runs it won’t pull it from the 1990’s. Or, like one of Jesse’s commenters points out:

The reason MySpace works is because even those with no Web knowledge can design easily. The funny thing is those of us with much knowledge have the trouble.

The most intriguing thing about MySpace if you ask me though, is the fact that so many people use it to it’s limits. Here we are, getting ready for Web 2.0, bragging about usability and Rich Internet Applications, while everyone over at MySpace is hacking away on inline CSS and copy pasting HTML tags from the movies they just uploaded to YouTube. It seems that while we are doing our best to make everything “usable”, users will go through anything by the threat of looking uncool on their MySpace site.

Smashing magazine brings us a listing of 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn’t Live Without. I’m sure one would be perfectly able to live a good and healthy live without it, but it does speed some things up.

Today I recieved John Resig’s book “Pro JavaScript Techniques” in the mail. I ordered it after reading the review at Digital Web Magazine. It seems like a good way of filling in those couple blank spots I have in my Javascript knowledge, and perhaps make my code better re-usable. While reading the article I also ran into Jquery, one of John’s projects. It’s a pretty cool javascript library with some nice short-hand techniques, definitely worth checking out more thoroughly sometime soon; if I ever get the time.

Heavy.com’s senior web developer Mike Brittain’s article at A List Apart describes a very nifty way of creating compact HTML forms while keeping your XHTML semantic. Forms can be quite tricky, so this is a very welcome solution.