My band “The Universal” (we are a psychedelic space-rock band from Boise, ID) finally has a website up…still some work to do and a couple dead links, but the majority of it is up and running. It uses a couple of out-of-the-box open source apps which I am pretty fond of – namely Calendarix calendars and JW Flash players.Awwww….my first site. Ain’t it cute?The Universal’s Official Website
Why, Microsoft…WHYYYY????
December 19, 2007So lately at my day job, I have been recruited by the marketing dude to construct some HTML emails for him to mail around to prospects and clients. That’s right, folks. I am a spammer. I don’t feel weird about it – it’s work, and work is work – at least to a certain degree.
What I have discovered though, is that a huge portion of our clients and prospects use Outlook 2007 as their primary email server, and there are some serious problems with this. First of all, in their infinite wisdom and genius, Microsoft has decided to use Word 2007 as it’s HTML rendering engine for Outlook. Why they decided to do this is just simply beyond me, and beyond the scope of this blog – but there is no shortage of other bloggers ranting about this in the “blogosphere.” Just google the phrase “Outlook 2007 HTML emails” and see what you get . They published a list of supported and unsupported elements, attributes and properties and when I finally found it, it blew my freakin’ mind! Bad news for anyone building HTML emails…check it out for yourself :
That’s quite a hefty list. In fact, almost all of the really useful CSS has been stripped out completely. I wanted to shoot myself in the face after writing all that inline style and tr’s and td’s…
Word has always been the LAST choice of HTML editing for me (I use notepad, of all things), and it really should be the last choice for any person serious about creating standards compliant pages that can be sent through email.
In my struggle to re-think things in terms of in-line style and tables galore, I have found some good resource materials for getting the rules wrong on purpose, in case anyone is interested.
Firstly, there’s the acid test…this doesn’t have anything to do with HTML emails, but it will make you wise up and add more wood under the effigy of Microsoft hoping for a hotter fire. Go ahead- test all of your browsers. MSoft has made much to-do about the enhanced support and compliance with IE7, but it’s still unbelieveably bad! I’d say “why didn’t they just use IE to render their HTML for Office products, like they did in the past?” But after seeing this, I have decided it would be the lesser of two evils at best. Must have something to do with that anti-trust lawsuit. Here’s a link to the acid test:
Slightly more useful is this tool, which will give you a “spam score” for your HTML emails. It lists the most common flags for detecting spam, and gives you a pretty easy to understand rating, complete with suggetions for clearing up some of the more obvious problems which may be easily overlooked.
Lay’s Chips and Helvetica?
November 29, 2007
This has got to go down as one of the most patently offensive uses of Helvetica (Helvetica Neue, specifically) that I have yet to come across. I don’t pretend to know what their multi-million dollar marketing dept was thinking, but this is terrible.First of all, it’s too narrow – are they suggesting that people will feel less guilty about eating these chips if the font face is thinner? There is no character, no appeal, no message in this packaging concept other than “don’t worry – you can eat these and stay thin.”The use of Helvetica here almost makes me imagine that these chips taste like concrete. To me, this looks like a font failed to open when printing to post-script. I see it on this package, and I almost see Courier. When I first saw this, I thought it had to be some kind of mistake…seriously. I laughed out loud, until I realized that it was intentional. Then I was somewhat disgusted.The rest of the packaging concept is good…I like the potato flaking off into chips – it suggests freshness and reminds us that the humble potato is still king of snacks. There is a certain wholesomeness to this image for me – but the bland, corporate, “unobtrusive” Helvetica just ruins it. Maybe something a little warmer and friendly? Like a bold Humanist or a Souvenir?
Digital Art / Collage
November 18, 2007
A piece of digital art I constructed in photoshop. Click on the image to see larger version.
My first try at PHP and MySQL…and some previews while I am here
November 14, 2007Here are a couple small graphical previews of the site I have been working on. I have been working diligently, chipping away bit by bit at figuring out how to do the things I want to do with my website. I set up a database for a mini blog that I want to run…that was the first step. That and how to build an admin page to edit and add records. I have gotten a crude skeleton built that connects to the db and adds records. I will now have to figure out how to edit existing records and set up proper security measures for accessing the page. I am using a lot of “includes” – putting the common routines like opening and closing connections to the db, insert routines, etc. From what I have read about it, this is a pretty good idea- and it cuts down on the typing a bit, not having to type the same thing over and over again.
I also figured out tonight how to select records from the db and display them within a div with an id. I was always under the impression that data called from a table needed to be displayed in a table, so this was a huge stroke for me. I was very pleased. I can’t imagine a reason not to do this, but if any PHP guru out there wants to school me on it, I’d be happy to know about it!
I was very excited to find out that if you echo a div tag the same way you would echo a table you can still assign it an id if you leave out the quotes around the id name. That means I can position and style the elements using css, and work without tables in my pages!
Julien Pacaud – Check it OUT!
November 8, 2007His work is so awesome. Surreal, mysterious, urgent and compelling.
Check it out: Julien Pacaud
Foxserv Is Pretty Cool
November 5, 2007Well, I managed to get the development environment installed on my windows box at home. It was much easier than the last manual install I did, thanks to foxserv. The installer package they put together works pretty neat. As far as I can tell, it all runs without touching the windows registry whatsoever. There’s a handy little GUI with buttons to launch Apache, to view PHP.ini, httpd.config, and a button to launch a nifty little mySQL front end that I haven’t seen before. I actually dig this installation. I had to go in and comment a few things in the httpd.config file that referred to expansions that I am not using or planning on using. I had to also change the root directory to the folder I created, and update the apache root directory. Simple as that, and I have a fully functional Apache server running PHP and MySQL on my home machine. That will save on bandwidth undoubtedly, as I muck and muddle my way through my first PHP project – I anticipate a fairly large amount of trial and error going on, so I might as well do it on my own computer rather than ftp over and over and over again as I trundle along.
Any beginners out there who just want to get started with PHP and MYSQL should check out foxserv. It’s a good package for windows (hadn’t bothered to check if it’s available for mac), and it’s a pretty user friendly way to set up a server side development environment on your home computer.
Curiously Absent?
November 1, 2007Just a quick note to any who might be wondering…I have been having to split my blogging time to allow me to keep making progress developing my website. I bought the domain a while ago, but I am trying to get a development environment installed on my windows box so I can try my hand at coding in PHP and MySQL. I am sure it will still be a while before its up and running, but I need to allot regular time to this project so I can at least feel it growing little by little.
Today when I get home from my “real” job, I plan on installing and configuring Apache/PHP/MySQL on my machine. Hope it all goes well…I have done it before but lost it when I had to reformat about a year ago. When I did it that time, I did it manually, and it took me two days. I learned alot about .ini files and stuff, but it was a major pain in the ass. I think this time I will try some packaged installers and see how that goes. The one I am planning on trying is by FoxServ. If any one out there has ever used this package…let me know ahead of time if there’s anything I need to watch out for and I’d be eternally grateful.
So in case anybody is wodnering where the “Rock Band Logo” review is for today, it’s coming. Maybe a bit later, maybe tomorrow. We shall see. Stay tuned…my blog stats are dropping like stones through a murky brine.
