BeardyGeek.com

I got my usual pop-up from the Apple Updater the other day.  But along with the obligatory Quicktime and iTunes update, there was a new arrival.

Apple’s Safari browser was on the list.

When did they sneak that one in there?  I didn’t even know you could get Safari for Windows.

So I left the box ticked (notice it’s ticked by default, nice trick), and thought I’d give it a try.

The first thing I noticed was that there was no ‘Home’ icon/button?  WTF?

I found the menu that let me add this and all was well with the world.

I’ll keep tinkering and let you know what I think.  I guess one benefit is that I can now test any web pages I create in Safari now as well as the usual Firefox and IE.

Plus it looks quite pretty.  Yes I am that shallow!

The Anatomy of a Sales Filter

People sometimes put computer programmers in the same category as brain surgeons and rocket scientists. They believe they are an elite group of brain boxes, and only a chosen few have what it takes to make it.

Well the above probably is true of brain surgery and rocket science, but it certainly isn’t the case with computer programming.

Getting Started

There are an awful lot of resources out there on the net for would-be programmers. But a problem for someone just starting out is ‘What language should I start with?’. Once you have chosen that, you then have to worry about IDE’s (integrated development environments), frameworks, deployment options, methodologies. It’s all just too much!

My Advice

If you want to develop applications for the web, you can’t go far wrong with PHP as a programming language. It’s relatively easy to learn, and is the most widely used across the internet. Match that up with MySQL and you have the ability to create data driven websites.

For an IDE you can use Eclipse. And the cherry on top, for those nice Ajax effects, is Dojo, an Ajax framework.

The best thing about all the above tools is that they are completely free.

A Little Help

We all need a little help from time to time. I have just created a set of Quickstart Video Tutorials which should help you get going. By the end of the series you will have a working web application (albeit a small one). You will need to sign up to get these videos, and I’d be grateful for some feedback on them.

Enjoy!

New Membership Site for Budding Web Developers

Hi Guys,

I just wanted to let you know that I am currently working on a new membership site to teach budding web developers the ropes.

I’ll be concentrating on PHP, MySQL and AJAX development, with a view to building some great Web 2.0 applications.

The big focus of the site will be learner support. There will be loads of content in the form of videos and text, but most importantly I’ll be around to answer any and all questions about the lessons. That way you won’t be left high and dry with just a bunch of content.

I’m looking to launch this in about 2 months time, so if you are interested please subscribe to my newsletter, so I can keep you up to date with the latest developments.

Cheers

Stuart

Update April 24:

The launch site is now live, and includes a series of quick start video tutorials for Web 2.0 style development. Check it out here.

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I read the other day how Yahoo was going to start supporting semantic web standards.

The semantic web is something that is often associated with Web 3.0 (if that’s what you want to call it!), and will allow greater data exchange, better and more targeted search, and generally open things up for a super mash-up. Take a look at Wikipedia’s definition of Web 3.0 for more info.

One of the formats that Yahoo will initially support is hAtom, which is a microformat especially for blog entries.

So, I thought I’d take a look at it and try and implement it in the BeardyGeek blog.

First Steps

To add an hAtom feed to your blog, all you need to do is add some class names to what are probably existing divs or spans in your blog template.

For example, if you have a div around your entire content that looks like this:

<div class=”content”>

you just need to add an extra class tag called hfeed:

<div class=”content hfeed”>

To have more than one class, just separate them with a space.

There are 3 more main tags that you need.

• hentry - the outer tag for each blog post
• entry-title - the tag for the post title
• entry-content - the tag for your post content

And that’s it. Easy as pie!

How I changed my Wordpress Theme

Ok, here’s what I changed in my theme.

Header page - At or near the bottom is a div tag - <div class=”content”> - I changed that to <div class=”content hfeed”>.

Single Post - I added the hentry tag to <div class=”post”> so it now read <div class=”post hentry”>. I then added entry-title to the <h2 class=”post-title”> so it read <h2 class=”post-title entry-title”>. And I also add entry-content to <div class=”postentry”> so it read <div class=”postentry entry-content”>.

Main index template - pretty much the same as the single post page, as the tags are all the same.

Testing

To test the feed, I downloaded Greasemonkey plugin for Firefox. I then downloaded the RSS Panel X script for Greasemonkey, which allows you to view a page’s feeds in a small JavaScript window. This is ideal for testing in this case as it supports hAtom.

Once you have these installed and running (tip: install the plugin first, then the script installs automatically), just load up your blog page. If all went according to plan, you should see your hAtom feed along with your RSS feed.

In fact, you can test it out here, as I have my hAtom feed up and running!

Good luck, let me know how you get on.

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Hi Guys,

I just wanted to show you this great free mind mapping software. Check out the video below and give it a try. You can download the software from www.thebrain.com

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Click here for the quicktime version of this video

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