Why Wait Webs

WordPress 2.7 recently came out. For those of you who don’t know, WordPress is the most popular blogging platform in the world, and deservedly so. It is highly customizable and extremely themeable. It’s coded with standard, valid XHTML and CSS. My only real complaint with WordPress is that they, like much of the web, chose to use XHTML instead of HTML when there’s no real reason for it. But that’s a topic for another day. As it stands, WordPress is still the best CMS I’ve ever used by far, and that’s why I use it on my own site and recommend it to all of my clients.

I am going to be upgrading this blog and, if all goes well, my clients’ blogs shortly thereafter. Normally I wouldn’t go to the trouble of updating, but this is a big one. Instead of the usual one or two obscure bug fixes, the WP team has completely redesigned the back-end, and from what I’ve seen they’ve done a really good job of turning a great blogging platform into a truly rich CMS (content management system).

Continue reading to find out what some of these great new features are, and for a video showcasing them!

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Apple, developer of Mac OS X

Ok, it’s true. I am a big fan of Apple products. I do most of my work on a 24 inch iMac, and I find myself using my iPhone constantly throughout the day. I like these products because I’ve tried the alternatives, and I have found that for me, these are by far the best solutions. However, even though I’m a fan of Macs, I would never condone a website that doesn’t support PCs. I believe that right now, there is no reason why EVERYTHING computers can do shouldn’t be done cross-platform. That means OS X, and even Linux.

You see, applications and websites that are built from the ground up with these smaller platforms in mind don’t take any extra effort. Supporting an extra 12% or so of the market is easy to do, but yet so few developers do it. I came across an excellent article today about why game developers should support Mac OS X and Linux. But the concept extends beyond just game developers. Software developers of any kind, including website developers, should take heed to this information. Continue reading to see why.

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A lot of people put their email address on their website, either as plain text, or as a link to their email address which will open the user’s default email client with the “To:” field automatically filled out. And why shouldn’t they? That’s what email addresses are for, right? To give to people who want to contact you. While this worked great several years ago, one thing has made this a very bad idea on the web today:

Spam.

Spam ruins everything, doesn’t it? These days, many spammers employ robots that crawl the web, going from site to site looking for email addresses to put on their list. These spambots are so prevalent now that putting your email address on the web for all to see is like sending an email to all the spammers that says “please send me all your offers!” But what are we supposed to do? Here are a few solutions that will allow people to email you with a greatly decreased risk of being placed on everyone and their brother’s spam list.

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I would like to take this moment to personally congratulate Barack Obama on his recent victory in the 2008 presidential election. Regardless of your political stance, I think we can all agree that this is an extremely momentous occasion in U.S. history!

Additionally, as a designer, I have to admire the amazing things that Obama has done with his campaign. It is difficult to communicate all that they have done in such a short space. Suffice to say that the effective use of technology and 21st century tools shows remarkable design and vision.

So from Why Wait Webs, I offer a heartfelt congratulations on running the best campaign in history, and on overcoming tremendous odds to become the first person of African descent to assume the office of President of the United States of America!

One of my most popular services is my ability to work with Flash. I believe in Flash, and what it can do. But that’s not what this article is about. Just because I believe in and use something doesn’t mean it’s the end-all, be-all to web design and development! In fact, Flash has a TON of downsides that I think should be taken into consideration every time you’re thinking about using Flash on your website.

The logo for Adobe Flash CS4

For those of you who don’t know, Adobe Flash, formerly Macromedia Flash (and before that, “FutureSplash”), is a web plugin technology. Developers make animations, games, and other media using any of the Flash Authoring Environments (most notably Flash itself). The end-user downloads the plugin for their browser, and then views the content integrated or embedded into the page.

Flash has been around for quite a while now, and through the years it has been used for animation, games, all kinds of other interactive media, and even full-on websites or web applications. Rightly or wrongly, Flash has been adopted by both consumers and developers as the standard for all of these things. This is evidenced by the fact that today 99 out of 100 Internet-capable computers have Flash plugin installed (statistic provided by Adobe).

Both designers and business owners alike should seriously weigh their options when it comes to implementing Flash as part or all of their website.

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