Results tagged “web”

Western Pennsylvania Health Information for Deaf, Deafblind and Hard-of-Hearing website launched in evening of May 27, 2009.

The website address is: www.healthbridges.info.

The description:

A newly developed website seeking to provide reliable health care information to people who are Deaf, Deafblind and hard-of-hearing, in a format that is accessible to all. In addition, it is our desire to encourage effective communication between healthcare providers and patients by educating both about individual perspectives, rights, and obligations in the healthcare setting.

All of you know who I am writing in very blog here, I developed healthbridges.info site with a team of our deaf task force in Pittsburgh. The site is 100% powered by WordPress, web publishing platform, to ease my development work in my spare time.

I learned something new in my web environment which I never thought of: Deafblind. My priority goal is to have this website is 100% accessibility. I used the free evaluation web tool, WAVE - Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool to track down the accessibility errors and fix in our web site to ensure this is full accessibility for all - especially Deafblind.

I am very grateful to have my learning experience with group of deaf task force, shared the feedback, discussions, and challenges.

Being as web developer, my job is to test the layout content on four different browser platforms: Internet Explorer 6 (IE6), IE7, Firefox and Safari to make sure this layout page are all same. If one out of four is different, a glitch or odd function, which are not supposed what I am looking, I had to fix this damn problem. IE6 is the leading problem, and so are web developer's nightmare. This is the reason I hate, hate, hate IE6.

I am currently working five web projects in my spare time. I chose one out of five, Pittsburgh Association of the Deaf clubhouse (PAD) website with Google Analytics to do my analysis based on visitor's stats. I snooped to look the browser capabilities what the visitor uses different browser platform. Here is the chart of most popular browser for the visitors to use web browser:

The first-place IE6 and IE7 combined together in one - the mammoth 74.16 percentage, dwarfed the rest of browser platforms. The second place, AvantGo is a web page & file synchronization service for PDAs and smartphones such as Sidekick and Blackberry. The third place, Firefox 2 is my number one favorite web browser choice for tech savvy.

IE6 has been around since IE7 launched two years ago, because of existing Windows XP comes with IE6, and no one cares to get into Windows Update to upgrade the version to 7. Read the web log entry in 'Save the Developers! Stop Using Internet Explorer 6'. The entry mentioned IE6 have lack of security vulnerabilities, non-standard features & functions and not compatible with other browsers.

Why PAD visitors still using IE6? I don't mind to write the code to detect the visitor with older browser (such as IE6) to block, and force the visitor to switch the list of most recent version of modern browsers. But bad idea, these could be abuse and not friendly for redneck and dummy visitor enough to understand the terminology of computer technologies and Internet. Who wants to deny me?

Microsoft, please help! When will we see IE6 disappear? If no IE6 then my job could be easier to develop websites...

This is my first try. Honestly. Can you?

Via mamamusings

Very simple and time-saver, I can type and post it right away in less than a minute, instead of thinking of 'as term of my journal' to write the very long essay in this main blog here. Likes to drop the link of joke or two, digging the networking, make a plan or two and hit the road.

I read the good article per mamamusings's article about Twitter criticisms:

The first criticizes the triviality of the content. But asking "who really cares about that kind of mindless trivia about your day" misses the whole point of presence. This isn't about conveying complex theory--it's about letting the people in your distributed network of family and friends have some sense of where you are and what you're doing. And we crave this, I think. When I travel, the first thing I ask the kids on the phone when I call home is "what are you doing?" Not because I really care that much about the show on TV, or the homework they're working on, but because I care about the rhythms and activities of their days. No, most people don't care that I'm sitting in the airport at DCA, or watching a TV show with my husband. But the people who miss being able to share in day-to-day activity with me--family and close friends--do care.

The second type of criticism is that the last thing we need is more interruptions in our already discontinuous and partially attentive connected worlds. What's interesting to me about Twitter, though, is that it actually reduces my craving to surf the web, ping people via IM, and cruise Facebook. I can keep a Twitter IM window open in the background, and check it occasionally just to see what people are up to. There's no obligation to respond, which I typically feel when updates come from individuals via IM or email. Or I can just check my text messages or the web site when I feel like getting a big picture of what my friends are up to.

My main concern myself is about my personal privacy, since my Twitter account is open to public, I had to be careful for avoiding any of my sensitive information.

I find most fascinating myself reading the one line friends' who-I-know or even strangers across the social networking, that make me coming back easy to post. Very easy.

Found via Grant Laird Jr. Blog <- Noesis <- Jared's Rambling Thoughts. Credit goes to Grant who found this video with subtitled first. Thought I MUST post this in my blog, to remind EVERYONE including my Deaf folks what RSS is all about.

If you or I have ever had trouble explaining why someone should get into RSS, or even if you’ve been on the fence about trying the technology, the folks at CommonCraft have released a great resource of video that explains RSS In Plain English; and DotNet have added the subtitled version on this video.

I find this three and half minutes video very informative with subtitled (yay!), to have web idiots, newbies and grandparents to understand. Looking for my big, bold RSS orange icon on right sidebar in my blog to subscribe.

Bloglines is in my blood, and terribly addictive, I couldn't live without this to subscribe from numerous of blog readers, including DeafRead, customize feed through Alexa's Top 20 web traffic rankings including Flickr, CNN and eBay (!).

I am kinda disappointed that few of my folks (such as non-web savvy) still don't get it [RSS], they still prefer to visit websites on their own time frequently, use email subscription or distribution lists in the old fashioned way.

Beside web developer at my work, I spend my own quality time of my pastime for my pleasure. Hanging out with my folks during special events. I suck over my time to play Wii at home, and DS on the road. I am swinging golf course to ease my stress, gathering the Deaf folks to play Texas Hold’em poker at clubhouse or host in their house on weekends. I am kickin’ my habits to eat healthy foods and do some exercising. This is 2007.

I felt that I am turning down to spend my time to do freelance web work at home. I felt so sick and tired that I had to sit my flat ass on the chair, stare in front of monitor to do coding at my home. From now on, I declared myself that I am no longer developing my projects, such as Deaf Faceroll.

Also I forgot to mention, I do blog here. What? I find myself posting far less frequently these days on this very blog here for my 4 years. I felt that I have fallen into blogging trap where you start to feel as if I have to write a very long and involved essay in order to post my blog. Go read through my blog archives, I was twittering long ago, but somewhere along the way, I decided that if I need to say something, I should think first. Bad, bad idea – that kind of thinking could kill my time to write a blog!

Now, what is my problem? My biggest enemy is timing. I want to have my time management being as my life to be happy, happy.

End of story. What’s next for me? I still do enjoy blogging right here in very daveynin's thing...

One day, I went back-end blog administrator to analyze the visitors filtered the search words in DeafJoke.TV website. I looked few visitors are trying to find the keyword search word, oral through DeafJoke.TV internal search engine powered by WordPress. The search result for oral is Zero. None.

As I aware there are few video clips identify as oral, and the text-based does not have the word, oral in DeafJoke.TV archives. The search engine cannot filter the video clip format and image format to identify what are in there. How can I solve this to know what's video / image is in there from search engine?

The short, sweet and one word answer: Tag. The not-so-long answer: From wikipedia definition of Tag:

A tag is a (relevant) keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (like picture, article, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information it is applied to.

What does tag looks like in my very entry here? I applied this on my personal idea: web, technology, search, metadata, definition.

Where can I find tag[s] in my blog? There are multiple ways you could self-service to find: internal blog search field box or in my tag cloud page - displayed all of tags in alphabetical order, setting popularity in order by using smaller font size to larger font size. Take a look an idea from most popular tag-clouds sites:

From left to right: Del.icio.us, Flickr and Technorati cloud tags.

I built my first tagging system inside my personal blog, generated by Movable Type blog management system. However, Wordpress (WP) does not include the tagging system but they offers a WP plug-in, Ultimate Tag Warrior, it need to get this plug-in installed manually.

The most popular blog web tools, Blogger, also support tagging. What about Xanga? Yes, they uses 'label' which are same meaning as tag. Take a compare the inputting the tags in blog application page (new entry / post):

Blogger

Movable Type

WordPress

Xanga

Conclusion: After setting up Ultimate Tag Warrior plug-in in WordPress for DeafJoke.TV blog site, then oral can be found in search results.

Tags come handy in search engine. It is not necessary to have tags in your blog, but it is more useful if you post vlog or pictures in your blog site. If you build tags, they will come.

My dad remembers that he can’t imagine that his kids as our younger ages know how to use neaty technology - TV with the accessories such as VCR video player and console game systems to connect. He remembers black & white TV are too expensive and complicated to use during his teenager age in 1950s.

The incredible and entertaining video called “Web 2.0… the Machine is Us/ing Us” found in YouTube, this video is visual accessible to read with bunch of animations, text, and screenshots in order to tell the concise explanation story of “Web 2.0” and why it matters, and how it’s indeed to change the world-wide-web itself.

This is a splendid four and half minute video, highly recommended of your time to watch the video. I have been watch this four times… and I love the every second of it. Brilliant. Splendid.

UPDATE (3/13/2007): The director has edited the final version of this clip on 3/8.

Since you know that I am developer and programmer for the web applications in my full-time Mellon employee and my freelance work. I spend countless minutes and hours of my time building the regular expression rules for inputting the characters in web form to beat glitches, bugs and weirdness.

I found the most useful site, RegExLib.com, the Regular Expression Library. This is free, open source for everyone to look and find the right regular expression, to set this expression string in any programming languages (PHP, ASP.NET, Perl, etc.) instantly. It could save me the amount of time at work.

If you're programmer, you might not miss this one. Bookmark this!

However, let me say to you again: I love Flickr. They got RSS feed, tags, groups, friendly upload stuff (such as Win XP and email) and awesome photo management tools slideshow, notes and Organizr [?].

Congras to Flickr, it gets big yahoo-ing!

I have been using web browser, Firefox everyday since December 2004. I am extremely very happy with most useful Firefox add-on tool: extensions. It is small add-ons that add new and unique functionality to Firefox browser. They can add anything from a toolbar to right-click button to a completely new feature. They allow the web browser to be customized to fit the personal needs of each user if they need additional features. Here are my ultimate list of Firefox extensions:

Dictionary Search - Looks up a user selected word in an online dictionary. Simply click and drag on this word then click right-button mouse to go dictionary.

Tabbrowser Preferences - Tired of having multiple Firefox browser windows to switch? Get Tabbrowser, to enable enhanced control for tabbed browsers in one window.

ColorZilla - Want to know the exact color of hexadecimal or RGB in browser? It's great for web developers!

Web Developer - One of my favorites and must-have for web developers out there! Adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web tools include converting from POSTs to GETs, hiding images, outlining level elements, disabling style sheets, resize browser resoultion, validations, and many more!

FlashGot - the ultimate download tool. It handle single and massive (all and selection) downloads using the most popular external download managers for operating systems.

Linky - Increase to handle links. Open/download/.validate links and pictures in tabs or windows.

Adblock - Prevents being manipulated by web advertisements (iFrame, Flash, etc) Just point the ad box and right-click : Adblock: done.

Wikipedia - Adds a toolbar for easier editing of Wikipedia pages.

LastTab - yet another most useful keyword shortcut to allow tab navigation in most recently used manner. I modifies Ctrl-Tab to switch the tabs.

That's all I have on my PC desktop. Also, I have to install same thing all over in my Apple Mac.. argh!

From Part One.

I shut down the login system in WPSDAA web site on Wednesday, January 19th to avoid the growing problems from users unable to log in. I have been thinking for two days since I do not want to destroy the register users where they store the name and emails in login system and have to start over again to register new ones.

I got good idea how to solve this: creating a new password column in database. So, I made the flowchart diagram to solve this problem in WPSDAA user interface. Here how it works:

Also in MySQL function, I have used new Encryption Function, to avoid using PASSWORD() function which was used before Wednesday, January 19th. Please note to yourself, this new encryption function for administrator may not see the users’ password, they only see the encryption password, instead users’ words, there is no way to decrypt (or change) this back to normal password. It is safe to prevent the hackers, also bring the users to show our honest and trust. The function code remains confident only for me.

However, few days later, I spend some of my time reading MySQL developer’s reference manual web site about Encryption Function, and I found answer that I could restore the old password in WPSDAA web site login system:

A year ago, I developed the login system in Western Pennsylvania School f/t Deaf Alumni Association (WPSDAA) website. The login system’s function is used by PHP server side scripting and MySQL database. Most of the scripts I learned from the book, Visual QuickPro Guide: PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites.

Last Wednesday, January 19th, I just found out myself that I can’t login in myself by using email account and password. It kept saying 'bad password', and I am puzzled with this. Even whole numbers of the alumnus members users cannot log in. I went over to PHPMyAdmin front-end MySQL database administration to see what’s wrong and tried to run the test with SQL query:

SELECT * FROM [table] WHERE email='[email name]' AND password=PASSWORD('[password]')

The result appears nowhere. Lastly, I tried the simple SQL query to see my password compare to my login password:

SELECT PASSWORD('[password]')

The result: the encrypted password is very different than my login encrypted password. I suspected that web hosting, ProHosting has updated a new version of MySQL database and PHPMyAdmin. I emailed to them about this and they replied me back that it is all true. I am extremely very angry with this; because there is no way that I could solve the password situation with my two hundred sixty WPSDAA register users. The MySQL password function is translated into an encrypted password, which I can't see the users' password secrets and there is no way for the decrypt this back to original ones.

I went MySQL developer’s reference manual web site to search the different way to solve this problem. In article of Encryption Functions, they said:

The PASSWORD() function is used by the authentication system in MySQL Server, you should not use it in your own applications.

I’m angry again. I felt like I screwed up with WPSDAA password login system. Those PASSWORD() function I used from Visual QuickPro Guide book, and I believe they are making a bad choice to use PASSWORD() function in my login system application.

I have forced to shut down the WPSDAA login system, to avoid the problem from user logged in or else they might click 'forgot password' to get old & bad password, which it might get worse problem. I have been thinking and figuring out how to solve this damn problem from keeping users records to change the password without register needed.

Next to part two...

Last week, I posted my entry, Pittsburgh OC movie lackstuer. In this very last paragrah, I was asked them a suggestion the XML/RSS feed in their website. Now finally, they replied back:

There is a good article about Stopdesign discussed their issue about tables vs. CSS layouts.

I held out for a long long time by using tables, but after seeing Stopdesign's article (relatively) reasonable argument on how efficient CSS layouts are, I’m forcing myself to make the move on.

One of the major compelling arguments of switching is that in Stopdesign’s CSS makeover example, the final redesigned page was nearly 1/3 the size of the original file, which, leads to a much faster page load. Additionally, editing your pages would simply involve changing a few proportions and directions in a CSS file instead of opening up your table-filled page - increasing productivity (and ridding yourself of headaches).

I have to pratice to use CSS layout design instead HTML tables. Thank god, in past of my freelance web work, I used CSS layout for WPSD Alumni Association (borrowed this from alistapart.com) and DeBee Communications (borrowed from SimpleBits).

Some people complain or puzzled why they posted the comment on my blog, and afterwards it did not shown the comment box in my individual entry page.

I upgraded new version to MT 3.0D few weeks ago, this new version improves the security features in my blog. Once you submitted your new comment in my entry, the administator of my blog (that is me), could only see a new comment, and approve if it as good. Once it is approved, the comment will be shown for public viewing on individual entry page.

I added the caption under 'Post a comment', it says: 'Once you submitted a submit a comment, the administrator will review this and might before approving it into for public viewing.' to clear up for people before typing the comment.

I am reading a new designed web page, RIT Information Technology. It says: "RIT became the first university in North America to offer a complete degree program in information technology."   Is it real?   I think I do believe their words.

I graduated in RIT Information Technology in February 2004.   I was in RIT for last four years, this department had expanded with new concentration areas & class courses, new faces of instructors, new building, and it changes the people's everyday life.

I do love IT.   My concentration is Web Site Development, and it puts me into my heart, and I am still doing as my hobby today.   Everyday, I have seen more and more new technologies and their vocabulary related to Internet networking and programming, which cannot be found in dictionary (such as Webster), so instead you can find these only in Webopedia.

I am now currently learning ASP.NET programming at community college class near my hometown, and I am self-learning PHP and MySQL for my next big freelance project.   I am still struggling to find the career job, because of me, deafness.   Don't feel sorry for me, I'm not the only one like my friend, Justin.

By the anyway, here is my final comment: IT is real.