Blog of Shaun McCran - Architecting robust, elegant technical and business solutions - Web technologies

Misleading email-con about domain search engine submission

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 07:33:00 -0000

One of my domains was coming up for renewal recently, it was already renewed, I'd taken care of it, done deal. I'm guessing that this rather opportunistic company was monitoring domain renewals and spotted an opportunity. Then I got a rather bizarre looking email. It looked a lot like an invoice, and was sneakily designed and worded to look like a domain related issue. It uses lots of semi scare mongering terminology and shock value statements about offers expiring! And last chance to make sure things are in place! The whole thing is a con to try and get you to sign up to a 'search engine submission' service. Which anyone in web technology will tell you isn't managed in this way at all. I mean it can be, but only if you want to pay over the odds for a service that largely takes place by itself, or with minimal management from a web administrator. Shocking behaviour from this company, its not very convincing if you are technically aware, but for 'Joe public' could cause a random outburst of knee-jerk payment. Warn your less tech aware relatives. [Screen shot of email below]

Removing the recommendation videos from Youtube after playback

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 12:20:00 -0000

You know when you watch a video on Youtube there are recommendations that follow it? Well you can turn those recommendations off if you want. Here's how. [More]

Confusing Form handling from the new www.Game.co.uk website

Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:25:00 -0000

www.Game.co.uk recently re-launched their website. There is a new design and a they have changed the search and categories system. One of the other things they have changed is the 'Your Account' system including the login screen. Login screens have long been both a requirement and a barrier to users on transactional websites and how you allow users to interact with them can have a massive impact on your usability and sales. [More]

How best to approach introducing new development standards into a team

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 02:26:00 -0000

One of the issues I've been faced with is applying a hard and fast set of standards to a team of developers, whilst maintaining a balance of getting work out the door. I can't just wade into the team with new process and Quality Assurance routines and not expect there to be a few bumps in the road. [More]

Using URL re-writing to provide friendly 404 error screens

Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:30:00 -0000

A while ago I wrote a blog entry about changing the 404, page not found, handler in IIS ( http://www.mccran.co.uk/index.cfm/2010/3/2/Changing-the-404-template-handler-in-IIS). More recently I've moved some hosting to a Linux based server, and I didn't have the same server side options available to me.

The problem I've had setting up a global 404 handler is that I can setup a front end friendly error page easily enough, but the method used to set it up hugely affects my ability to actually report what the error was.

For example in the Linux admin area I can specify a path to a 404 template, but this appears to actually relocate the user to the file specified, leaving any error and its associated information behind.

Similarly the 'onMissingTemplate' Application.cfc function only fires when a missing ColdFusion template is requested. Not just any old url that someone tries on my site.

What I eventually ended out with is a URL rewrite rule that catches any page request that does not match an already defined re-write rule.

So if a user asks for 'www.mysite.com/contact/' the following rule would be found and used:

RewriteRule ^/contact/$ index.cfm?go=contact

But if they asked for any non matched rule, for example 'www.mysite.com/contactx/', or 'www.mysite.com/hack-attempt/' then the following rules would kick in and divert the user:

# Error handlers RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)/$ index.cfm?go=error&error=$1 RewriteRule ^([^/.]+)$ index.cfm?go=error&error=$1

The rule above just sends a user to my error page. It also appends the string matched in the Regular Expression to the end of the URL (error=$1).

This is so I can pick it up in a ColdFusion variable scope and log it, to actually let me know what the error was.

There is another documented way of using URL re-writing to redirect users to custom error pages. You can use custom error pages for any error type as long as you know its number by adding the following to your re-write file:

ErrorDocument errorNumber path/file.htm

As an example if I had the file 'error.htm' in the root directory of my site and I wanted to use it for a 404 error I would use:

ErrorDocument 404 /error.htm

Some of the more common server error responses are:

401 - Authorization Required 400 - Bad request 403 - Forbidden 404 - Wrong page 500 - Internal Server Error

Book review: CMS Design Using PHP and JQuery

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 09:48:00 -0000

I was recently approached by Packt Publishing to review one of their new books, CMS Design using PHP and JQuery. They mentioned that I'm always talking about JQuery so thought I'd be an ideal test subject. I've dabbled in some PHP, and JQuery is an everyday tool in my arsenal so I was more than happy to give it a read. [More]

Creating and using a custom short URL with bit.ly

Sat, 12 Mar 2011 22:04:00 -0000

Most of us are familiar with short URL's now. They are a pretty standard feature online now. What is becoming more popular is having a custom URL for your own links. Instead of posting short URL's that contain the name of the service provider, you can create a short link that has your own custom short format. [More]

Web Accessibility 101 - Validation and Testing

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:55:00 -0000

This article will discuss different ways to Validate and Test your projects for Accessible criteria, including using standard web browsers and screen readers. I'll also list some of the more popular testing tools I've come across. This is the third in a series of planned articles dealing with Web Accessibility. In this series I will cover what is Accessibility, how to build Accessibility into web projects, how to test and validate for Accessible users and some other factors to keep in mind when dealing with Accessibly minded projects. [More]

Web Accessibility 101 - Compliance and Standards

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 21:33:00 -0000

This article will discuss UK based Accessibility Compliance and the development standards around ensuring that your project will pass Accessibility testing and validation. This is the second in a series of planned articles dealing with Web Accessibility. In this series I will cover what is Accessibility, how to build Accessibility into web projects, how to test and validate for Accessible users and a few other factors to keep in mind when dealing with Accessibly minded projects. [More]

Why develop cross browser designs - why not code to specific browser strengths?

Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:42:00 -0000

I've been working for a marketing Agency for the best part of a year now, and one of the things that always rear's its head in a digital project is the compatibility of designs in multiple browsers. We have all encountered differences in design compatibility and functionality due to the browser vendor and version number, but the usual course of action is try and code solutions that address the differences in browsers in an effort to make them look and work in the same way. This article examines why that is the case, and I put forward the argument that by doing this you are spending valuable project time trying to ensure the same user experience on different browsers, when it may be a much better idea to use that same development time coding to the strengths of each of those browsers, to create a more rich user experience instead of a more generic one. [More]

CSS 3 Rounded Corners Example

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 12:46:00 -0000

My curiosity into CSS 3 was piqued at Scotch on the Rocks 2010 this year. There was a very good presentation from Chris Mills from Opera http://twitter.com/chrisdavidmills where he touched on some of the new CSS 3 and HTML 5 functionality that some of the modern browsers are taking advantage of. I particularly liked some of the really simple, but visual CSS 3 changes, in this case rounded corners. This article is a quick example of how to add rounded corner styling to your designs. Here is a demo of CSS 3 rounded corners in action. [More]

Adding fck Rich Text Editor to your Coldfusion forms & customising the Toolbar set

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 10:25:00 -0000

Whilst writing a Content Management System (CMS) recently I thought I'd take the time to go over some Coldfusion 8 functionality that passed me by when it was released. In Coldfusion 8 the fck editor was included as part of the server installation. This article deals with integrating it into your forms, and how to build a custom tool bar set to manage the options displayed with it. [More]

JavaScript Library conflicts when using more than one at the same time

Thu, 11 Mar 2010 19:21:00 -0000

Whilst building a new piece of functionality I have been trying to combine a JQuery carousel plug-in and the lightview prototype plug-in. This threw up an unexpected issue. Both libraries map the dollar ($) as their shortcut indicator. JQuery uses "$" as a shortcut as a replacement for "jQuery" and Prototype uses "$" as well. It turns out that there is a JQuery command for exactly this issue. Wherever you include the JQuery library reference add another script code. The noConflict function maps which character you tell it as the short name for "JQuery".




	google.load("jquery", "1.3");



	jQuery.noConflict();
	var J = jQuery;

~~Just remember to change your references to JQuery from "$" to "J", or whatever you assign it to. J(document).ready(function(){ code }); Now both the Libraries can load into different namespaces.~~

My Software Development platform specifications - whats yours?

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:42:00 -0000
I've been experiencing issues with my development setup, so I thought I'd write a blog entry to wrap up my findings, and try and gauge what the community is running. In this article I will detail what I use in my development environment, and how it is set up. I've recently had errors occurring in my Eclipse IDE. There have been some very frustrating SVN client version incompatibilities, so I thought I would re install it. It turns out this was a common error (menu options in subclipse were not available) based on an incompatibility between the subclipse plug-in and the Aptana studio. A detailed fix is in this blog entry: https://radrails.tenderapp.com/discussions/problems/173-synchronize-view-broken-after-upgrading-to-radrails-203
Software setup
I use the Eclipse Java IDE as my primary development application. Alongside this I use the CFEclipse plug-in for ColdFusion functionality, the Aptana Studio plug-in for CSS and JavaScript functionality. I also use the subclipse plug-in for SVN integration. For Flex/AIR I use a standalone FLEX studio installation. This is pretty much a custom workspace in an Eclipse IDE. I only do this as I have had several issues trying to get FLEX installed into the regular Eclipse IDE. I recently tried to switch to the 64 bit version of Eclipse, but it would not recognise my Java install, and from what I've read online you need to install a 64 bit version of Java. The only version of this I can find is flagged as "experimental" so I think I'll leave it well alone. I've found it quite good to increase the default 256mb heap space in Eclipse to 512mb, there e is an article detailing how to edit the Eclipse ini file here: http://wiki.eclipse.org/FAQ_How_do_I_increase_the_heap_size_available_to_Eclipse%3F
Download links
Eclipse downloads: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/ CFEclipse downloads: http://trac.cfeclipse.org/wiki/InstallingCfeclipse Aptana downloads: http://www.aptana.org/studio/plugin Subclipse downloads: http://subclipse.tigris.org/servlets/ProjectProcess?pageID=p4wYuA

Passing url variables through Isapi re write - Regular Expression

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:08:00 -0000
One of the more common tasks in ColdFusion development is passing variables through the URL string. We are all familiar with the idea that the question mark (?) denotes the url query string start, and that name value pairs are separated with the ampersand (&). I usually avoid using this in display templates, as it isn't great exposing your internal site workings to customers, and with Fusebox it is very easy to pass the URL variables to an "act_" template and remain hidden. What happens when you want to use dynamic url variables with a URL re writing application like Isapi re write? I've been using Isapi re write in some FuseBox framework application, and it is relatively easy to set up a rewrite rule, as shown below. RewriteRule home(/) index.cfm?fuseaction=circuitname.circuitfunction Where the url /home/ would actually serve up the content specified in the fuse specified. But this is hard coded. What about dynamic variables? We can create a regular expression to handle the translation of the variables. RewriteRule destination/(.*)/(.*)/ index.cfm?go=circuitname.circuitfunction&$1=$2 We use a similar URL, but append the dollar ($) 1 = dollar ($) 2 string. In the re write rule we specify that appended variables are transposed into the string using the slash (/) as a separator. So as an example we could pass a product id of 24 into the rule like this: www.siteurl.com/cart/productId/24/ RewriteRule buy/(.*)/(.*)/ index.cfm?go=cart.buy&$1=$2 It would be rewritten to the more familiar url string. A handy way of continuing to mask the url.