www.UniversalGalaxies.com

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????

So 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 :

The Black List

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:

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.

Spam Checker

My first try at PHP and MySQL…and some previews while I am here

Here 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!

His work is so awesome. Surreal, mysterious, urgent and compelling.

Check it out: Julien Pacaud

Foxserv Is Pretty Cool

Well, 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?

Just 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.

What The Design World Needs….

…is another rant about Flash websites.

Yeah, right. There is no shortage of persons railing against the evils of Flash on the web, especially in terms of search engine marketing and optimization. I have found a few gems worthy of some chuckles at least, such as this flowchart for instance.

I currently am employed as a production designer for a big real estate magazine. Not exactly what one would call “graphic design.” At least not in the traditional sense. I employ a lot of the techniques and philosophy of good design: hierarchy, repetition, contrast, alignment, etc. But basically my job is to build nice looking ads and then the customer ruins them in corrections. Frustrating as all get out, but a hard-knocks lesson in client management – not to mention Quark keyboard shortcuts. (snicker)

The point of this is that when I was in school, and now as I am discovering, in the REAL world, people like Flash websites. They mistake the dynamism of “intuitive” flash movies for efficiency in communicating the intended message. Designers in particular seem prone to this syndrome. They want to make something that is clean and concise in it’s intended message. It will be strewn with Helvetica so as not to over complicate the message with a bunch of serifs….but I digress – for I am now being facetious. (And the Helvetica rant is coming later.)

It’s frustrating to me, because I see it as irresponsible to build an all-flash website. To me it’s the equivalent of going into a dark room and shouting into a (albeit pretty) box. Why? Because if your intent is to make your message accessible – as accessible as possible – then Flash CAN BE the wrong choice.

I have seen plenty of examples of responsible use of Flash. It has it’s place and I am really trying not to sound like a snot or a scrooge. If none of the content or navigation is in it, then right freakin’ on. Go for it. Use it to enhance your efforts and add some interactivity. Fine. Beautiful, even. Flash is also great for streaming music and video.

I’ve been told, and from my admittedly limited knowledge of it, when you encase your links in a flash movie the search engines can’t spider them. I have no idea how in the hell one goes about being findable in a search engine with content that resides in a flash movie. Isn’t the only way people could find your site by direct link – either clicking on a link on another (usually more friendly to search engines) page, or by typing in the exact url?

Now, I am no marketing genius, but it doesn’t take one to know a little bit about the way people use the web. I rarely find what I am looking for by typing in an exact url into my browser. I use google – I “google it.” I start entering search terms until I get a first page result that I am happy with. Rarely do I venture past the second page of results…it usually means that I just need to refine my search terms a little better. I have gotten good at it.

So…who is getting my business?

Those who can be found. Simple as that.

Update: I have, incidentally – stumbled across some people who are developing solid techniques for optimizing flash pages and making them indexable. This is worth a look : Flash SEO

Very interesting – brilliant even.

Guess I’ll just shut the hell up and wait for the flash movie to load.