All the Web2.0 You Can Handle

Read/Write Web has a list of . . . lists. All containing information about Web2.0 sites springing up like daisies around the internet.

What’s a Web2.0 site you ask? It’s one of those good-looking, fancy acting websites you’ve probably seen around. The developer of these sites use more acronyms than before, like AJAX, JSON, etc that allow users to interact in ways they couldn’t a couple of years ago. Some of these sites are so cool they drop vowels from their names – Flickr and HappyCodr are a couple of examples.

Overall they still need content and community but some of them are just beautiful to look at and fun to play with.

Why Aren’t You Using FireBug?

I’ve been using the Firefox browser addon called FireBug for a while now and am amazed at how helpful it is. If you’re a web developer, and especially if you use JavaScript and AJAX methods, you should be using it.

For example, while developing I like to add in timers to PHP based pages to show how long things are taking. This way if a SQL statement needs some fine-tuning or a change slows things down I can see it happen. FireBug extends this to the entire page and the HTTP traffic. Here’s what happens when I load a page that has a few JavaScript calls, small images and a single CSS link in it,

Straight away it’s obvious what’s taking up the bulk of the time – those two library calls. Once I take those out of the equation the load time drops to under a second. And through all this the PHP timer function only shows me how long the server-side work is taking.

With FireBug I know who (in a geeky code way) is doing what and with who and I can act on it. Now that’s helpful.

Securing Apache

Twenty ways to make sure that the 10 year old script kiddie down the street does not mess with your Apache Web Server.

Peter Freitag – 20 ways to Secure your Apache Configuration

The Big Book of CSS Tabs and Navigation

Well OK it’s not a book but have a look at Vitaly Friedman’s CSS Showcase for a whole lot of CSS navigation examples and how to do it right.

Personally I’m a fan of the the usability compliant Mozilla entry and Veerle’s for sheer beauty.