Web Development
WWW has always fascinated me. It is such a nice medium for information exchange. This section is based on my experience with the WWW.
I plan to add my thoughts, code snippets and information I found useful.
I'm also offering some web services via XML-RPC.
Since web is quite an insecure medium, and you want
to have secure communications, I strongly recommend
you use SSH. A good and free SSH client for MS-Windows
is
PuTTY
.
Also helpful might be this
good document
on connecting to CSoft servers.
For Unix/Linux/BSD, visit
OpenSSH
site.
All the scripts in this site are under GNU Public License. And they cost $0. I've had several people ask me how much they need to pay me to use these. If you've tons of money and feel that you must pay me, email me. If you really liked the scripts, you can send me a postcard of your town/village.
Usability & Web Design
I used to read Jakob Nielsen's Useit.com
fairly regularly. Since around September 2000, I think it is just repeating old stuff,
and that it is over-hyped, like Java. Try A List Apart
,
which is more sensible, practical and does not remind you that you get more information
for $40000 an hour. STC Usability Site
is a very good resource.
If you have 1001 dot-com/dot-bomb web consulting companies trying to
sell you how wonderful (for them) it will be to make your mostly-static
site by putting everything into a database, please please read
Static Site Development
from Guide to Web Publishing
. Some guys
even make a 100 page static site using MS Access database.
You don't need database for every damn thing on the web. You just need
a datastore. It can be as simple as a disciplined folder structure,
plain text files or CSV files. Try XML with XSL instead of silly
Access databases with useless ASP scripts. What you gain most (or loose most)
by putting all your stuff in a database is that you'll have a
prolonged relationship with the guys who made it for you. Oh yes, they
will make nice PowerPoint presentations for you too, which you
can take to your managers and say "wow, it is exciting" a thousand
times. Remember the boy - "mommy, the emperor is not wearing any clothes"
? Unfortunately, in the corporate world, that boy is seldom present.