₦airaland Forum

I knew it - that sooner or later the opinions of tree huggers and "animal rights activists (who detest killing animals, yet wear them and also have no problem in killing plants)".

Guys give us a break

You could also stay up-2-date by visiting/registering at www.webmastersofafrica.com

Reverend,

I personally think, and I could be wrong , that there is a difference b/w offending a political party and providing readers with the most up-to-date information, some of which in the end may even end up promoting such political bias.

In my opinion (not worth much ) I think it has to do with motivation and who maintains the website.

Motivation: is there a dedicated I(C)T department and if so who runs it and how much is this person getting paid? Are such pple on-call 24 hours? Are they able to either upload news from their homes and/or get to work safely when the news breaks?

Who maintains the site? Once the initial site goes up, does the newspaper company pay a 3rd party to maintain the site? do they maintain the site themselves (refer to "motivation" abv)?

Just my 2 cents

fizofly,

if you hvnt already, I would encourage you to register at www.webmastersofafrica.com - some pple have reported getting job leads from there and the site is barely a month old

checktinu,

what you just said is one of the reasons why I put up www.webmastersofafrica.com (WOA). Check it out, register, and spread the word

This time next year, I can feel it in my gut that WOA will be the most talked-about website, with respect to where pple go to search for a webmaster in their neighborhood

I personally don't c y, if pitched to a bank, they wdnt take it up. In the end, it would benefit them. But of course, where all else fails, opensource is another way to go

LMAO casper,

Good one!!

Who would win? Why?

Me? I would go for Donnie - based on his movies, he fights with power and he has this deadly look on his face whenever he fights (I know, highly subjective )

Your answers are welcome

cactus,

I only suggested AJAX based on this quote:

so that when sm1 submits smthing it would be immediately viewable on the page

Of course there are 1001 ways to skin a cat. I am sure he also needs help regarding what framework to use as well, which is where your advice on PHP, ASP.net et al comes in handy. I was just addressing the "immediately viewable" part.

I would also beg to differ, if I may, when it comes to your, "but not appropriate for everyone going into development" comment - AJAX is a tool that, when used efficiently, is appropriate for what you want to use it for. In other words, everyone going into development should use any tool whatsoever that makes their coding lives easier/gives their visitors the best experience possible. Perhaps you meant not appropriate for every situation (in this case, I would agree with you whole-heartedly)? Just wondering.

At the end of the day, wetin I sabi? Just my opinion (my 2 cents )

sounds like "sm1" needs to implement some AJAX

Keep one foot in naija and one foot abroad.

one foot in naija: your biz, house, assets, culture, children (secondary school time)

one foot abroad: children (when they are of schooling age), work (one u can easily abandon when you are bored with the place).

Many people are doing it this way, and I am considering it myself. As I tell people, abroad is like the leprechaun (sic) who went on a hunt for the legendary pot of gold only to end up finding the pot was filled with corn flakes. Also, don't forget the story of Lazarus and the rich man in the Bible - Not all those abroad will tell you the truth with respect to how life is with them there

Good luck!!

I guess I might as well throw www.webmastersofafrica.com into the ring

Personally, I have never doubted the fact that we have talent to do anything. Our problem has never been talent but access to resources to develop the talent.

As naijacutee said, there is some work needed. However, it is more than grammar. Ensuring a site is cross-browser, abuse of flash, layout, etc are some of the other areas where we need improvement.

Having said that, again, we do have the talent. We just need to optimize the talent, thatz all.

Server (based on url you provided above) not found

Of course, I knew what to do to get the right address but:

1) you can't assume everyone is like me

2) you don't want to lose the very audience you are addressing this to.

Just an FYI

Afam,

LOL. I will try to reduce my references to that site. I just like using it over and over again to drive my point home on bad flash implementation As for what the site costs, I don't know, however I was recently asked to put in a Request for Proposal for a site redesign, so we shall see. Point noted sha.

WebMonk (y your name reminds me of kung-fu film, I don't know ),
Steps to reproduce:
Home page -> Portfolios -> Illustration
I use Firefox 1.5.0.9 and I have Flash 9. My PC runs Windows XP.

Specific URLs:
http://www.semeonline.com/images%5Cartwork%5Cgrave_poster_final.jpg
http://www.semeonline.com/images%5Cartwork%5CA-Knights-Journey.jpg
http://www.semeonline.com/images%5Cartwork%5Ctale_of_two_sisters.jpg

Basically, all 3 illustrations are "404", but just wanted to provide you with direct links. If my suspicions are right, then it has to do with "%5" used in place of "/". As I nod to the beats of your website , I suggest you either encode the URLs or replace the "%5"s in your fla files.

I hope this helps and let me know what you found out.

I try recusing from critiquing flash sites. Nothing against them, especially those implemented well. I just stay away from them purely on a poor usability standpoint. Having said that, I would like to tip my hat to you for being very creative. Not everyone can pull off a cool-looking flash website, not to mention a cross-browser one. Look at www.akwaibomstategov.com in both IE and FF to see why I think that some flash "gurus" should be shot at sight

I like the "v2" as well. One thing though - under "Illustrations" in your "portfolio" section - when I clicked on each illustration, it took me to a "404" error page. Also, the flash file is pretty large, but I guess there isn't much you can do about that in terms of optimization. See, and I know it may sound archaic, but I still have a 56K modem at home and it hurts me to sit and wait for a large page to load. In your case, a whole 85 seconds.

If you could fix at least the former though, then I would say your redesign is 100% certified

cool,

so based on what i said earlier, what methods (in pseudo-code) do you think each of those classes will need? For example, the task class could have a "isComplete()" method. Let's take it to the next step. Again, I don't code in JAVA. However, with respect to logic, all languages are the same

gbenga,

based on ur above post, i wd strongly suggest you wait till you get to the lecture/lesson on classes. After that, alert this post again to revive the conversation. Right now, my fear is, stuff may be said here that will be over your head. Thatz just my 2 cents in the matter anyway

smart,

iv got to admit you got me on the logic bro

nice,

the javascript solution can be "danced" around in one of 2 ways:

1) disabling javascript in your browser, or

2) using your browser menus (view - source, then copy the source, paste, then save off all the images by referencing their respective paths).

wilkanah,

I will confess that my answer doesnt reflect me actually testing the page but I will offer a possible reason y - with majority of the world using IE, it is possible that they could implement this to throw off the novices. Someone like me, when I c this, I resort to such things as switching to FF (well take that back, I do all my surfing in FF ), viewing source (first try right-click , if they blk that, i go to the menus ), etc. LOL

xdos,

In the end, the entire page needs a redesign. Regardless sha, rather than use an html editor for this, I say letz do some "surgery"

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%">
<tr>
<td width="574">
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tr>
<td><a href="index.html"><img src="images/but01.gif" width="114" height="30" alt="" border="0"></a></td>
<td><a href="aboutus.html"><img src="images/but02.gif" alt="" width="114" height="30" border="0"></a></td>
<td><a href="mission.html"><img src="images/but03.gif" width="112" height="30" alt="" border="0"></a></td>
<td><a href="http://www.ensaca.org/squirrelmail"><img src="images/but04.gif" width="116" height="30" alt="" border="0"></a></td>

<td><a href="contactus.html"><img src="images/but05.gif" width="117" height="30" alt="" border="0"></a></td>
</tr>
</table> </td>
</tr>
</table>
<div></div>
<div><img src="images/banner.gif" width="575" height="97"></div></td>
</tr>
</table>

I won't bother testing this and will leave this to you/others, but this should work (man! I hate tables ):
- remove the div tags surrounding the banner image
- remove the empty div tags (if dynamically generated, include them within ur logic)
- remove the banner altogether from where it is now
- add another row and dump the banner, in its own cell, in there. In other words:

<tr><td><img src="images/banner.gif" width="575" height="97"></td></tr>

This should work. One more thing though: Up top the td width is 574 yet the banner width is 575. This will throw off your layout by 1 pixel. In fact, if you look at the page closely, using FF at least, you will notice it is sticking out a little. I would suggest you make them the same width for both the banner and the td.

Also the menus width total is 571 if my math is right. I would suggest adding 1 pixel to each menu to make it equal 575.

Note this is just bandaging. Again, there is a better way to implement this, way more efficient - think inline lists, using text and an orange background. think using % widths for the overall menu and width:auto for the individual items. Your code shows the inherent problem with using an html editor in my opinion. I personally go for coding by hand - if you don't understand how the underlying code works/implement unit testing, when you run into problems, you won't know how to solve them.

Remember: Just like you can't trust auto-suggest in MS Word to help you with correct grammar all the time, you can't trust an html editor 100% of the time either. Coding by hand may take longer, but you learn much better. In the future, I would suggest you switch to the code tab of your editor.

I hope this helps. For more, give www.webmastersofafrica.com a try

I hope this helps.

gbenga,

I don't code in JAVA per se. I am a web developer, I use JSP though I guess you could say they r somewhat similar. JSP, in a nutshell, calls JAVA functionality via tags. Anyways here it goes:

I don't know about diagrams, but in terms of classes, I would probably have:

produsoft class (which calls all classes)
employee class
timesheet class (does the calculations)
task class (parent class from which all tasks would inherit - ala job1 extends task)
maybe a time class (abstract class from which 2 subclasses - billable time and non-billable time classes - emerge)
an admin class that would enable you to enter pre-defined jobs

The above are a start. There could be more. I will yield to the more experienced JAVA guys to either add or remove from the abv. After the classes are "approved", the process of defining the methods et al can begin. As I was taught, 90% of ur development is design. Once the design is down, the coding should be a breeze

Good luck!!

Come on guys, the guy is a self-confessed newbie and doesn't need you all to overwhelm him with your "knowledge" of computer terms. Just answer the question as asked and stop going off on yeye tangents biko

gbengaijot, if they haven't confused you enough (I hope not ), dump the certifications and pick up a language on your own. Based on what I have seen on this forum, and speaking for just web dev, stick with php, mysql, dreamweaver, xhtml, css, javascript with a sprinkle of photoshop/fireworks and you should be good to go. I would imagine on the programming side you could stick with JAVA. One thing that will eventually pop out at you (I hope ) is that in the end, programming is all about logic. If you have the logic down in your head, it doesn't matter what language it is you want to learn. The next paragraph should hopefully vindicate me with respect to the last 2 sentences of this paragraph.

As for lessons, you can either solicit from this forum links to tutorials or you could google for one yourself. I didn't know a lick about PHP when I started using the forum, but thanks to someone on here, I got perhaps one of the best e-books on it to-date. I have even put up my first php-based website. As you learn, give yourself a project and implement what you have learnt, adding a few "crayfish and pepper" extra to ensure you understand what you have learnt. Then invite your peers to check out your work. It doesn't have to be picture-perfect on day one. As they say, na sleep we dey take practice for death.

Again, dump the certifications - sooo out-of-date. Most people cram for it anyways. There is a difference b/w cramming and understanding. Besides, and I speak for the states, I know a few professionals who have been in the game for 10+ years but yet have failed various certifications at least twice. For instance, you can't tell me that a DBA with 20 years experience is stupid and doesn't know what he is doing just because he failed the MCDBA twice.

I hope this helps.

To hit the nail on the head, it is because we as a pple in the diaspora don't appreciate such music. If we did, and promoted it accordingly, the music would get the recoginition/popularity it deserves.

How many times have you (I know I have ) talked to a fellow naija about a naija movie or even news from naija and they reply to the effect that, "Who cares?" or "Nna, lv me o! I no dey too follow naija news sef"? How many of us do you know (again, I know a few ) who cdnt tell you Genevieve's latest movie yet will tell you how many women, say, Busta Rhymes was bedding while filming his latest music video?

If we don't promote them, who will? Oyibo (LMAO if you think they will)?? It is not only music, from my observations. Take the US for example, Atlanta specifically. There is not a "true" Nigerian association. Yet there is an association for each tribe. Take the Akwa Ibomites. We alone have at least 5 or so sub-associations. We are too splintered, too divided. Hence when say, OBJ comes here, only a certain tribe will hear about it. Others may be either too busy to attend or too tribalistic to even entertain the thought. Take another instance when CNN et al did the 419 documentary. What Nigerian association came out to make them retract the show? Now let's say for instance, you dared to use the word "illegal alien" to describe the mexican. Their association will be all over you like a fly sticks to s**t. How many Nigerians would have dared to even dream of organizing the kind of rally the mexicans organized on May 1st? Last but not least, there is Air Afrique, even common (sorry to use the term but hopefully you will get to where I am headed) Ethiopia has a national Carrier. Why don't we? If we did, most of us wouldn't use it claiming it is full of problems. Yet we wonder why it isn't popular.

To summarize, we are the problem, plain and simple. If we don't take it upon ourselves to make it popular, it won't be popular. Case closed, and as my secondary school math teacher used to say, QED

Sisi,

it is either the problem is solved or I am too slow to see what you are talking about. I do see a "view profile" section but it isn't at the bottom.

I would love to help. Only, that is, if you help me help you

I prefer the word "word-of-mouth" to connections personally. At least in the states, if you do a good job at whatever you do, your best bet for making money is from those who tell others about you. All the jobs I have done have come via word-of-mouth.

Adverts on other hand tend to create the initial buzz that may or may not keep the biz going. The trick here is keep them coming back. In the end, it all goes back to word-of-mouth. For example, if all the pple you attract aren't satisfied at first, what makes you think they will talk to others about it?

Are any of you regular visitors to www.nigeriaworld.com ? To those who are, as if the site wasn't bad before, have you seen what it looks like now? I looked at it in both IE and FF, peradventure it wasn't cross-browser compatible, but the results were the same.

The site was bad before, but it is much worse now. I now know y I only visit the site once a week, though after their present "re-design", I may never go back.

Your thoughts as always are welcome. Oh, Merry Christmas by the way

Hmmm,

suddenly, I am sensing a money-making venture in counselling

gridlock,

I dunno if you have gotten any responses yet, but either way, there are tons of webmasters listed at www.webmastersofafrica.com (WOA). Check it out. Rather than post here (or other places) and wait forever for a response (many atimes from pple who may end up not even qualifying), you could have found one, right in your neighborhood, within seconds at WOA

To the rest: As I have said, webmastersofafrica.com aims to be the #1 site for african webmasters and for clients looking for webmasters. It slowly is gaining momentum and I am confident that within a year's time, it will.

So, what are you waiting for?