tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874Wed, 16 May 2012 16:11:53 +0000best practicessite updatesreviewsweb toolstest projectshow-tosopinionsthe official blog of svidgen.comhttp://blog.svidgen.com/noreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)Blogger30125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-6473298124037436827Wed, 16 May 2012 16:10:00 +00002012-05-16T09:11:53.032-07:00The documentation on this is a little old and hard to find, since IE7 is old and on rapid decline. But, for those still plagued with a significant percentage of IE7 users, please note that building tables in IE7 can require a step not required by other browsers. We can normally build tables using HTML and omit the tbody tag without issue. Browsers are supposed to assume a single tbody when none http://blog.svidgen.com/2012/05/building-tables-in-ie7-with-javascript.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-3165298203522813613Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:04:00 +00002012-03-16T08:16:20.611-07:00Well, I lied already: JavaScript doesn't really have namespaces — at least not exactly. But, we can fake it quite easily using objects, which readily serve the same purposes: var com = {}; com.google = {}; com.google.www = {}; com.google.www.search = function(s) { // since we're actually working in the context of an object, // we can refer to "this" to set static-ish variables, like a http://blog.svidgen.com/2012/03/javascript-namespaces.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-1854988523175778256Sun, 22 May 2011 02:00:00 +00002011-05-21T19:00:42.741-07:00site updatesWe've made a few small changes in the past few days. Some of them are invisible to most users, backend changes. A few of them are stylistic changes that we feel are steps in the transition to a prettier bookmarking tool. First, we cleaned up our bookmarks lists a little bit: As you can see, we added some space between bookmarks, floated the info and edit/save links to the right, and replaced http://blog.svidgen.com/2011/05/small-updates.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-120532588956783488Wed, 15 Dec 2010 17:57:00 +00002010-12-15T09:57:47.035-08:00opinionsbest practicessite updatesI've been taking time recently to work on thepointless.com. Frankly, it generates significantly more traffic than Svidgen currently does, and I'd like both reward and harvest those visitors, rather than let the flow of people slowly die off as I have in the past. On a content level, I've removed a lot of fluff and pushed article-type content out to the angry stickman blog. The site has been http://blog.svidgen.com/2010/12/thepointlesscom-beginning-facebook.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-6184523210074110943Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:28:00 +00002010-11-22T13:29:06.909-08:00site updatesI just wanted to let folks know that I'm aware of some efficiency concerns on Svidgen. Namely, your Heros' Bookmarks list and tag autocompletion for <user x's=""> Bookmarks have the potential to operate very inefficiently. The latter issue deals with the order in which tags are being filtered. And there's actually a two-stage optimization that I'm considering there. I have some ideas for the http://blog.svidgen.com/2010/11/efficiency-concerns.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-4885222649957597322Mon, 11 Oct 2010 20:13:00 +00002010-10-11T13:18:42.588-07:00best practicessite updatesAn issue with authentication, which was reported this afternoon, was preventing users from signing in. We can see how preventing users from signing in might be bad for business. So, we promptly corrected it. The issue involved a few misplaced lines of code that break the user out of SSL after successful authentication. The code should have been moved to it's new home with a larger segment of http://blog.svidgen.com/2010/10/brief-authentication-issue-has-been.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-7049568149217620639Fri, 01 Oct 2010 21:45:00 +00002010-10-06T08:54:29.665-07:00site updatesSince its inception, Svidgen has provided bookmark-improved search results a Google Custom Search Engine (CSE). Well, we've finally enabled a Search Just These Sites feature. You can now slice and dice the public bookmarks on Svidgen in any way choose and search within just those sites. I'm talking about some pretty vast flexibility here. You can search across some really particular slices of http://blog.svidgen.com/2010/10/new-feature-search-tailoring.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-1869471956179352731Fri, 09 Apr 2010 14:10:00 +00002010-04-09T10:36:25.419-07:00Good caching is a really important part of getting the most out of your server(s) while providing visitors with the best experience. While I am not going to discuss best practices for caching now, I will share a very simple, but helpful PHP function that I use on svidgen.com. And here it is: function send_cache_control_headers($t = '+1 year') {     // set cache-control header     $cc_header = http://blog.svidgen.com/2010/04/for-your-php-library.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-9073276577211497426Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:14:00 +00002010-03-12T19:16:49.349-08:00I've finally decided to force the www sub-domain on Svidgen. This offers a few advantages: I can separate cookies from the "root" site and its sub-domains if the need arises. Search engines / Crawlers will not see "duplicate" sites. People are accustomed to seeing the www sub-domain. In the event that I add additional services using different protocols to the site, the www sub-domain will servehttp://blog.svidgen.com/2010/03/forcing-www-subdomain.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-8576920449551484078Mon, 22 Feb 2010 21:31:00 +00002010-03-29T12:46:59.451-07:00All types programming and software development, including web development and design, have some things in common. A litany of these commonalities is not the scope of this post. However, I would like to stress an oft-forgotten rule, common to nearly every form of development: Eschew Obfuscation! This rule is something that all Computer Science majors learn in the classroom—or were at least taughthttp://blog.svidgen.com/2010/02/eschew-obfuscation.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-1432649408610238422Fri, 11 Dec 2009 04:32:00 +00002010-10-01T14:47:39.470-07:00site updatesAlright, it's not like there are enough users or conversations taking place on Svidgen that a little security hole here and there is a big deal--it's in BETA, and I'm pretty sure I know the entire user base on a personal level.  I am still slightly embarrassed to admit, though, that I just noticed a big security issue with internal messaging.  Until a few minutes ago, psuedo-knowledgeable users http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/12/oops-we-had-tiny-security-issue.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-7679561907847822426Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:24:00 +00002010-10-01T14:47:51.341-07:00site updatesWell, I said I would post back when I determined in what way IE8 was breaking my cookies, and I think I have.  The issue seemed to be a combination of a difference in behavior in which IE8 handles session cookies (cookies that are deleted when the browser closes) for linked resources (such as my opensearch xml specification) and an authentication policy I previously had on Svidgen.  That is, http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/12/ie8-cookies-have-been-reassembled.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-1765945987046593617Wed, 25 Nov 2009 16:30:00 +00002010-10-01T14:48:05.161-07:00site updatesFairly recently, I discovered that svidgen.com does not properly manage sessions with IE8.  Is seems as though the general session cookie (svession) is being set and maintained correctly in all browsers, including IE8.  However, my "subsession" authentication token (atoken) headers are not being respected by IE8 in all cases, causing signin to last for only a single page view. After spending http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/11/internet-explorer-8-broke-my-cookies.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-3606931406128873319Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:07:00 +00002010-10-01T14:50:02.214-07:00opinionsSearch Engine Optimization (SEO) is a curious thing. Search engines are designed and continually optimized to provide better results, based on what searchers want to see. These engines take advantage of Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to index pages in a meaningful way, with respect to quality content. Why then, should anyone even be seeking SEO services? Is a page with quality http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/10/search-engine-optimization-seo.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-2973506898395307878Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:53:00 +00002010-10-01T14:50:52.365-07:00how-tosI've seen numerous posts in forums in regards to the ability to access, and sometimes modify, the contents of a JavaScript function dynamically (using JavaScript itself of course). To respond "globally" to these questions, I've created a quick little demo, hosted on Svidgen: JavaScript: Script-ably Rewriting a Function. I considered posting the code for a brief moment; but, the demo provides a http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/10/javascript-script-ably-rewriting.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-6311430285159901030Fri, 09 Oct 2009 16:59:00 +00002010-10-01T14:51:03.202-07:00site updatesHooray! You can send messages to other users on Svidgen now! Now all it needs is some users ...http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/10/messaging-on-svidgen-has-arrived.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-2804252967723749045Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:40:00 +00002010-10-01T14:51:47.895-07:00site updatesSvidgen development has been delayed for awhile now. However, in the past few days I have gotten a good amount of work done on an upcoming messaging feature. A pretty standard feature on most social sites, it will allow users to send messages amongst themselves. Svidgen's implementation of messaging will come in the form of conversations—at least initially. Conversation messages never get http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/09/adding-messaging-to-svidgen.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-6400777688664496950Thu, 02 Jul 2009 16:17:00 +00002010-10-01T14:53:25.351-07:00site updates When I started Svidgen, I wanted to make sure to provide some greak bookmarklets--links that do magical things from your browser's bookmarks menu or links bar. I started with the most essential, the add2svidgen link. It pops open a little window, prefilled with the URL and Title for the page you wish to bookmark. Just add tags and a description (both optional) and click Save Bookmark. Of http://blog.svidgen.com/2009/07/added-bookmarklets-and-webmasters.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-3993031185299753997Sun, 14 Dec 2008 15:51:00 +00002010-10-01T14:54:25.216-07:00opinionsbest practicesI often read forum posts in response to JavaScript questions that end in things like, "but you really shouldn't use JavaScript, because like a billion percent of users don't have it enabled. So, just don't use it-mmmmmk???1/1/1?lol!z/." ... Alright, I admit, I put my a bit of a spin on that. But, the message is the same: accessibility nuts want us all to stop using JavaScript to tailor to the 1http://blog.svidgen.com/2008/12/to-javascript-or-not-to-javascript.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-6686762598769942899Wed, 17 Sep 2008 06:37:00 +00002010-10-01T14:54:44.143-07:00web toolsTo follow my last post, I've created an HTML/CSS image and code generator. You can use it to quickly create rounded corners for your pages and see how they look immediately. The page is located here: http://svidgen.com/rcg.php Enjoy.http://blog.svidgen.com/2008/09/htmlcss-rounded-corner-generator.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-4529972109529231005Sun, 14 Sep 2008 19:14:00 +00002010-10-01T14:55:08.495-07:00how-tosCreating rounded corners for your DIVs and other HTML block elements isn't too tricky to figure out. However, some solutions are more elegant than others. And since I basically stole the following idea from Google, I'm going to claim it is a very elegant solution. The concept is relatively simple. Any block element that needs rounded corners needs an image of each corner in each corner. One http://blog.svidgen.com/2008/09/html-and-css-elegant-rounded-corners.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-2586992074415033737Wed, 10 Sep 2008 14:40:00 +00002010-10-01T14:59:36.637-07:00opinionsreviewsIf you've been looking for a good source of internet television, you ought to be checking out hulu.com. Before I continue, let me first announce that I am not getting paid to write this post. I really think Hulu just rocks. When it's time to burn some brain cells away by mindlessly zoning out to a good TV show, my usual first source is hulu.com. I can catch my Monk, Psych, House, Pretender, http://blog.svidgen.com/2008/09/hulucom-iptv.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-6487984983683653923Thu, 28 Aug 2008 15:27:00 +00002010-10-01T14:57:12.390-07:00best practiceshow-tosThere are two problems for web developers when it comes to client-side caching: The browser aggresively caches everything on your site, so the user doesn't see your new images, scripts, or stylesheets for days or weeks. The browser carefully checks for new images, scripts, and stylesheets on every page load. So, there's one group of people who are seeing old content and another group of people http://blog.svidgen.com/2008/08/effective-use-of-expires-header-and.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-7052114367297521187Tue, 11 Dec 2007 04:05:00 +00002010-10-01T14:58:36.798-07:00web toolsJust a little harmless self promotion here: The Generic You is now available in "widget" form: If you are seeing this message, your browser is not running JavaScripts! You may still view this content here. You like?http://blog.svidgen.com/2007/12/generic-you-widget.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-253456272243673874.post-5433976075307119677Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:54:00 +00002010-10-01T14:59:04.905-07:00best practicesAt about 10:50pm, central time, I visited unity08.com after its mention on the Colbert Report. The site loaded just fine initially. However, another click brought me to the following page: Now, it's probably not so bad to know that they're running Drupal. A lot of people proudly run Drupal. However, zooming in, we can see that Drupal was kind enough to reveal the MySQL username and server name http://blog.svidgen.com/2007/11/unity08com-oops.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Jon Wire)3