₦airaland Forum

@ayoomo9

Simple: find a cheap webmaster.

Yeah, one manz meat is anotherz poison. What was good for Okon at the convention may not necessarily be good for Akon

For those who were not in attendance/those who were, feel free to visit http://www.governorakpabioinaction.org/akwa-ibom-association-usa-convention-2008/ , read a synopsis of the 3-day event and browse through photos as well.

While you're at it, check out the projects that Akpabio has inaugurated since he was sworn in, complete with a breakdown by LGAs: http://www.governorakpabioinaction.org/

@wadel,


soooooooo, wat does a forex site have to do with this?

Is Fuel necessary for a car? Therein lies the answer to your question.

Sure, you can whip up the next greatest site using FP or DW, there is no doubt about it but IMHO, as a webmaster *by career*, you must know about the underlying code and how they mingle with each other to produce a web page. Those that don't are responsible for a lot of the crappy code/layouts that can be seen everywhere and more than likely the ones asking for help on issues that seem to be the easiest.

I believe even the Bible makes reference to those Christians who, to paraphrase, suffer from a lack of knowledge. If Christians can suffer, then why not webmasters?

So yes, (X)HTML is necessary.

Damn! Just when I suffered to finally learn v2.0, v3 is on the way. When will the continuous reading stop for goodness sake?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/15/apple.apple

The sleek, touchscreen iPhone has proved so lucrative for Apple that the electronic gadgets manufacturer has unseated Google to become the most valuable company in America's cradle of technological innovation, Silicon Valley.

Queues outside Apple's stores are commonplace since the phone's launch a year ago as shoppers line up to get their hands on the prized device.

On Wall Street, the phenomenal popularity of the phone has fuelled a 44% surge in Apple's share price in 12 months. By the close of trading on Wednesday, Apple's market value had edged up to $158.8bn - a shade ahead of Google's $157.2bn.

Apple's predominance amounts to a shift in the balance of power in the hi-tech world. The company has repeatedly been able to eclipse rivals with its distinctive, easy-to-use designs. The iMac and the iPod continue to be firm favourites among laptop computer buyers and music fans.

Meanwhile, Google's once dazzling star has waned slightly as America's economic slowdown has eaten into online advertising and investors have wondered how the company can produce solid profits from expensive ventures such as the video-sharing website YouTube.

Scott Kessler, an equities analyst specialising in technology at Standard & Poor's in New York, said the twin fortunes of Apple and Google were central to the technological landscape: "These are the two companies most currently identified with the notion of innovation - not just in Silicon Valley or in this country but arguably in the world."

The milestone amounts to a reassertion of success by an older technological generation. Apple was founded by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976 making it elderly in comparison to Google which has only existed for 10 years.

Experts say Apple's distinctive skill is its ability to reinvent itself with new products which are typically kept secret until the last possible moment.

"It's one of the few companies that has been able to internally develop a number of blockbuster products and killer applications," said Kessler.

Apple fans tend to attribute a large chunk of the company's success to the personal entrepreneurial instincts of Jobs, who is chief executive and is heavily involved in product development. When Jobs appeared to be gaunt and thinner than usual, Apple's stock briefly slumped last night before the company scotched rumours that he was ill.

While Apple and Google differ widely in their business models, they have a degree of personal overlap. Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, sits on Apple's board as a non-executive director. The companies are based barely five miles apart in a sprawling hi-tech corridor running south of San Francisco. Apple is in the town of Cupertino while Google is in neighbouring Mountain View.

Neither company offered any immediate reaction to the shift in supremacy. Apple did not return calls and a Google spokesman said: "We never comment on our stock price."

However, Apple has had few qualms about boasting of its prowess in the past. When the company's value overtook the computer maker Dell two years ago, Jobs sent out a companywide email reminding staff that Dell's founder had once predicted Apple's imminent demise.

"Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the future," wrote Jobs. "Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought it was worth a moment of reflection today."

For Apple, the iPhone has provided an edge in creativity and convenience. When a 3G version of the phone came out last month, Apple sold a million of the handsets in a single weekend.

Google is comfortably the global leader in online searches but has seen slowing growth in "paid clicks" - the number of times users alight on lucrative advertisements. Google says this is because better tailored advertising has led to better quality, but less numerous, clicks.

Google's shares, which topped $700 late last year, have settled back to just over $500 - but the company's founders, Sergey Brin, 34, and Larry Page, 35, remain billionaires who travel the world on a customised Boeing 767.

The pair see conquering space as their next challenge and have put up a $20m prize to anyone who produces a privately financed spacecraft able to land on the moon.
Head-to-head

Apple

· Founded in a bedroom in Los Altos, California, by schoolfriends Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976

· Recently settled a long trademark battle with the Beatles' record company Apple Corps, over use of the word "apple" to sell music

· Began as a computer manufacturer and has diversified into iPod media players, iTunes online music sales and, most recently, iPhone touchscreen mobile phones

· Apple's iTunes website has sold more than 5bn songs

· Annual sales of $24bn and profits of $3.5bn

Google

· Established by Stanford University graduates Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998

· Based initially in a garage in Menlo Park, California

· Named after the word googol - which is the number one followed by one hundred zeros

· Has expanded from a powerful internet search engine into online applications such as word processing and spreadsheet tools, and owns the video-sharing website YouTube

· The company slogan is "don't be evil"

· Annual revenue of $16.6bn and profits of $4.2bn

this is y i like the free market economy - innovation and competition that inspires lower prices and innovation.

Keep it up guys. Just don't cheat yourselves in the process, in the name of beating the competition.

You need to use CSS that is XHTML and Web 2.0 Standard compliant.
That makes your site to layout across different browsers.

@poster:
Don't you actually mean that we need to make our code Web2.0 Standard compliant which in turn means that we need to separate presentation from content/XHTML via CSS?

Just curious. Your wording I think is throwing me (and perhaps others) off.

How about these?

1) have a solid web architecture: No house can stand without a good foundation. Same applies to a website

2) Code to web standards: This ensures that your site will degrade gracefully in older browsers, look good in future browsers and will display correctly across a multitude of devices (PDAs, browsers, etc)

3) Always have your logo link back to your home page

4) Where applicable, always have a search box

5) Keep important information "above the fold": If you fold a newspaper in half, you will notice that generally speaking, important information perfectly fits the section from the top of the paper to where your fold is. On a website, this equates to what you can see before you start scrolling. Most people determine whether to go on on a site depending on what they first see. Of course, what is "above the fold" is dictated by your screen resolution. So this implies that you should have a target resolution in mind

6) Use semantic code and code that validates: Works better for screen readers, search engines, page download times and is also sort of related to (2) above.

@mustay

Tell me about it man. I see it all the time.

other frameworks (just google for them):
scriptaculous, mootools, jquery, YUI - for the most part, these have all built upon prototype and offer in many instances, richer features. Of course, the foundation for all these libs is prototype

@webdezzi,

I personally have no problem with green but find it interesting that a majority of sites we develop have that color (or colors close to it) as though someone had passed a decree punishable by death that we must use green. I personally have used green as well so I am not to be spared in all this

As for those who are calling up clients to discredit the original developer, that is a shame, pure and simple, depending on what they said. If they say, "we can do better" or something to that effect, I can see with them on that but to say, "that site sucks and you shouldn't have used that guy at all" or words to that effect is another matter entirely.

Besides, which client having spent say 100K on a site, will immediately scrap it? I know I wouldn't. I would let the site stay as it is for at least a year. After all, someone else is more than likely to rubbish that one as well. I am not the united nations to be handing out money like handing out sweets to a little kid.

The aim of this post is part educational. Some of the points are bad and as a group we need to LEARN from them and be better developers.

@mustay
So I guess what you are saying is that we should add, "blank pages" to the list?

@fasanD1

Geez! Could you at least put up an link that ACTUALLY WORKS?

@kehers

Here here.

Besides, what if I did that to knock on someone? Haven't any of us here heard of what a wise one said about critics? If not, let me regurgitate it here: We are to love what critics say about us cos they are the only ones true to us. As such we need to make them our friends.

The important part is not succumbing to such criticism but to use such to make us stronger.

@webguru,

Let's take a look at the first paragraph I put up:

ok guys/gals,

Let's be honest, this section of Nairaland has been boring for at least a month so I want to shake things up a bit.

Conclusion:
This was a post done purposely, to spice things up. It was boring up until that point. I shall not apologize.

Now, letz parse part of your post:

u are quite funny, i wonder how many sites you've put up for review, last time i checked it was none

and

by the way, web reviews are usually done by those looking to build reputation, who get jobs only
on forums nt real world.

based on the above, I guess I will never post a site for review. I have all the reputation I need

If you want to know more about me, just email me. Don't insult our intelligence by taking style to make me post sites I have done cos I won't. So again, if you want to know me, email me.

let's look at the positive sides and how we can grow, nland gave so much to me in d days of my2cents and sbucareer

May their (nairaland) souls rest in piece.

@kehers, sure there are. No arguments there. In fact, based on this forum, there are more than just 2

I guess where I was coming from is, having seen a lot of sites on profiles/reviews here, I have noticed certain themes and trends. Perhaps many on here are reading from the same (e) books

@fitinwell,

Is there any particular reason why 95%+ of your site consists of not text but image blocks?

dollar mbe, naira mbe, paper mbe, guruji mbe

kobo package
double kobo package
triple kobo package
four kobo package

ROFLMAO!!

goldenimp,

Speaking for myself: I have visited your site and checked out your portfolio. Let's just say you are capable of doing better than this. I know you are, even if it means reusing the layout of one of your pre-existing sites.

danteweb,

Honestly, for me it isn't about whoz right and whoz wrong but about learning something. For all you know, I could have been wrong in which case I was expecting you to educate me. That is what I thought you meant by "debate". Oh well.

not so fast danteweb. No ad hominem attacks please. If you go through the posts from #1, you will note that abidemi and I had, at least in my opinion, said all that needed to be said on the issue. The reason y i brought up the "using differing names" is because I had totally forgotten about this and it was my way of being sarcastic. I guess you didn't catch it. i won't apologize for that. Now, to parse your statements one after the other:

I don't quite know where u're coming from. Anyways i'm not one of u jobless (no offence) peeps that sleep and wake up on nairaland.

I don't eat and sleep it either. I am here to learn which is why I log on frequently. Having said that, enough of the ad hominem attacks. Let's LEARN something.

Anyways going to the matter of the day, your arguments towards table-less designs are valid, but you make it sound like designing with tables is a sin.

I wouldn't call it a sin but bad practice. By the way, I am not the one saying it is bad. There are those way smarter than us who are advocating this and it makes sense (in other words, I won't just do something because someone says so. I have to verify for myself). I have analyzed hard data of sites with and without tables and recorded the differences in page size, download size and bandwidth. I even once worked for a company that saved tens of thousands of dollars in bandwidth alone moving from tables to DIVs. In other words, I am not one of those who googles for information, reads it, calls myself a guru and starts preaching to the choir. I say what I say based on verifiable facts not emotions. Finally, if you read my posts again, please note that I say that tables are a necessary evil for tabular data.

You probably want to ask about the load times for tables, but you and I know that tables only "seem" to load longer because none of the stuff in a table will be displayed until all the contents of that table are downloaded. This results in tables displaying all at once. In CSS, individual materials load and display one after the other!

I honestly don't know where you are going here but I will attempt to answer: which has the least number of bytes (for non-tabular data)?
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tr><td>bla</td><td>bla bla</td></tr></table>
OR
<div id="container"><div="left-col">bla</div><div id="right-col">bla bla</div></div> (of course, css would take care of the presentation.
Moreover, imagine several nested tables.

Accessibility - How many visually impaired people use the internet

I have no idea, however I will say that I have worked for companies that take accessibility seriously because if they don't they stand to be (and have been) sued for developing sites that the deaf, dumb and blind can't use. In the states, such lawsuits can run into the millions. Sure, it might not be a big deal in Nigeria presently, but we are developing. It is better to code on the concept of progressive enhancement/graceful degradation than code on, "i don collect my money, na una business now or una come hire me again" principles.

Maintenance - well i've got dreamweaver!

and i've got homesite/note pad. woopty-doo. no big deal. Would you rather maintain code simply because you have dreamweaver or not maintain at all. i would choose the latter.

In conclusion, CSS is better, but I don't believe tables are bad!

I agree with the former. and yes, tables are bad if abused. Using it for layout is definitely a case of abuse.

@dante,

Unless u sign in under differing names, I didn't know I was debating that issue with you. Regardless, when you are ready, you know where to find me. Just set the tone of the debate (what exactly you want to debate, etc) and state ur case)

the structure is good but I don't find the site that easy to navigate. It would be nice if I knew what to expect up front instead of having to click deeper and deeper b4 finding out on my own. Again, pictures would help as well.

geez gamine, how many sites do you crank out per week? Can I come work with you?

Observations:

1) Contact form isn't validating email address

2) Google search should be such that it returns results within the context of your site and not launch an external window to google.com

3) The "shopping experience" photo on the home page in firefox doesn't look well positioned

4) There are graphics to the right of the results pages like "shop gold jewelry at habib". It would be nice if it were clickable so that I go to habib's page and see how to get the jewelry.

5) Under "about us", it would be nice to have different photos of Palms

6) On http://www.thepalmsshopping.com/relax.php , what is the point of "viewing/hiding all store directories"?

7) I think the background gradient image should cover the whole screen and not look like a giant block. You might have to adjust your margins/padding.

In addition to what HC has said:

1) Contact page:
a) Phone field accepted just one digit
b) when I submitted, I got sent to a broken page

2) In general:
a) I would get rid of the globes in the background. Why? A later observation should clear that up.
b) I would get rid of the "reach out and touch" scroll on the home page. If it has to be there, at least make it pause for a few seconds.
c) on home page, "our history" section is showing up more than once
d) I would choose a better font. I am thinking arial right now.
e) You should brush up on your photoshop skills - On your secondary pages, the photos are squares. If you knew how to manipulate photoshop or whatever tool you use, you could use the (in photoshop at least) "extract" feature to trace the image thus leaving behind the actual image. The way it is now, especially with the globes in the background (refer to 2a above), it is obvious (and tacky) that those images are squares.

ha!

Very good. I am enjoying this thread. Others, please post more.

ok guys/gals,

Let's be honest, this section of NL has been boring for at least a month so I want to shake things up a bit.

Question: What things would you see on a website that would make you say, "yep, this is definitely a website designed/developed by someone in Nigeria"?

I will take a first crack at it, if I may (I base my numbers below on sites that have been up for review here on this site, which I feel is a fair representation of sites designed/developed in Nigeria as a whole):

1) Extensive use of green colors, including various shades of green

2) Abuse of flash

3) Scrolling marquees/scrolling news flashes

4) Forms that don't validate (both server- and/or browser-side) or send the user to page that doesn't exist

5) Tiny fonts

Are there any more? Come on folks, let's stir the pot a little. We haven't engaged in serious conversation in a long time.

- The header is too tall.

- The photos are in blocks separated by text. Everything is so "sharp" and "boxed up".

- The flash file is over 119K. That's pretty huge in my books. Can you imagine hitting that site from some cyber cafes in Nigeria?

I hope I have answered your questions.

no offense but it looks like that game where u jumble up numbers from 1 to 15 and are expected to rearrange everything in ascending order.