₦airaland Forum

@tundewoods
I am sure you will agree with me that the site could benefit from the following touch-ups:

1) Our story: Rather than provide links to separate pages, I would make this a tab view. Then hide/display the appropriate pages when the tabs are clicked. I am thinking aesthetics and better download times, especially for those who use cybercafes. Tabs alone would eliminate trips to the server

2) Our photos: I would use smaller thumbnails which when clicked would expand to the bigger ones. I would also use lightbox 2 as that has "next" and "previous" buttons. Again, I am thinking about those with low bandwidth. Besides, you get to save some real estate, page-wise.

3) Instead of links to pages like "video" and "guestbook", maybe you can have an icon with the links. This would also help beautify the pages concerned.

4) Guestbook: Maybe it's just my eyes, but the white bubbles seemed to bleed into the cpl's background. I don't know what colour to use but I think the white needs to be a bit deeper.

5) Psquare video: Okay, this is personal preference but one the twin's teeth is really pronounced in the video. Looks more like fangs and are very scary to me (reminds me of dracula). I personally would go for another video but of course, this one might be your client's preference.

Other than the above, good job and use of javascript libraries for some eye candy!

@tundewoods
I think you are also missing, "of the unknown"

Having experienced something in recent times with respect to my work, I decided to throw this out to the forum.

Whenever you get a job from a client and they want everything including the kitchen sink, how do you approach it, especially when you are pressured to release something within a relatively short period of time? Do you offer to give them all they want (which more likely than not translates to working 25 hours a day, and snapping at anyone who as much as says hi to you, to get it done)? Do you resist? What do you do?

What I have learned is that its best to, just like in life, have a scale of preference. If I am faced with a tight deadline, I tend to ask the client what must absolutely go out on day one and rank them in decreasing order of importance. I then sit with the client and say, "hey, I would love to get all these done by launch date however I would hate for the quality of work to suffer for want of proper detail. Why don't we do this - I will tackle the first 5 (or whatever number I feel I can get done) on your list and over the following weeks, ease in the rest. If you insist, I will get all this done by the time you want but I would strongly advise that you go with my approach. Besides, the beauty of the net is unlike say MS where they come out with a CD and you have to wait for a year for an update, with the web, you can literally add new functionality to your site daily."

Again, from experience, there might be a little apprehension but I think when they see the maturity in your approach, 99% usually agree with me with little or no resistance.

Bottom line, just like in life as I said earlier, it is good to prioritize your requirements. It is then and only then that the quality of your work will shine.

Your thoughts?

well as i said, "where all else fails" as in when you are in a situation where you have no access to those wizz bang WYSIWYGs, you can always trust old, rusty, out of touch, out of date, notepad.

@webguru
DISCLAIMER: I don't know my2cents and have never met him in my life (wd love to though)

Considering my2cents has been banned, I don't think it is good to speak of "the dead" in that manner. Are you typing one thing yet meaning another (like maybe, "afam and my2cents don't seem to like web design)? Just wondering.

As they say, dead men can't talk. The dude has no way of defending himself.

I guess I need to clarify:
A site can be online without it being officially launched. In other words, I can put up a site for a client and they wouldn't even know until I told them the name. Of course, it is your choice whether to show the client your localhost version or the live web version.

What I tend to do is provide password access if I put up a site live so that the client can't get in and say, "why the hell is the background blue?" when in fact, I might have been experimenting at the time.

So again, in order for us to see the site, yes, it has to be online. However, the client doesn't have to know the site is launched. Make sense?

@webguru
I agree with you on the "criticizing without offering a solution is vain" part but not the "sites posted for review are under construction thus reviews shld nt b done as if site has been concluded" part. Allow me to explain:

I have gone through tons of review posts and from reading the initial comments, I have seen many instances where the developer would say something to the effect that, "the site has already been launched so I might not be able to change anything" or even, "well, i like that font size and will not change it and/or the client likes it." Feel free to confirm for yourself my assertions.

Sure, a review is as it is stated, a review. A true review would actually be done in stages. So the first one might involve say, the layout, the next might involve the navigation, etc etc. Be that as it may, I hereby propose that anyone posting a site for review should:

1) do so at least a week prior to the site going online. This allows the developer ample time to make any changes, and
2) CLEARLY state what parts he/she wants comments on. That way, we don't waste time on parts the developer knows are not ready.

Any takers?

As they say, wonders shall never end.

http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSN1237225720080612?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&rpc=23&sp=true

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc and Google Inc are close to reaching a search advertising deal, and talks between Yahoo and Microsoft Corp about a similar deal have fallen through, people familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

Talks between Microsoft and Yahoo concluded after Yahoo decided to pursue a deal with Google, one of the sources said.

Yahoo also asked Microsoft if it would renew its $33-a-share takeover offer for the Internet company, but Microsoft was not interested, another source said.

(Reporting by Anupreeta Das in San Francisco and Daisuke Wakabayashi in Seattle; editing by John Wallace)

where all else fails, nothing beats almighty NotePad. Tis the foundation from which all other WYSIWYGs flow.

@devine8
pardon the "looking for trouble" question but UNN is your start up dot com venture? Doesn't start up imply a site you develop for the purposes of making money as opposed to a website you develop for someone else (for which they might end up making money that you will never see)?

Hmmm

@edetcnn,

No problem or as TuFace would say, "mfina ibaha o". Any time.

Simple, short and sharp solution, as painful as it may be for some: If it sounds too good to be true, it more than likely is.

Just as he had the right to talk to you about anything, you also have the right to not sign up for anything. Unfortunately, the reason for this is our economic situation which has made people on one end do anything to make money and on the other end, has made people fall for just about anything in the name of making money. When I am approached, I simply tell such people to deduct the money they want from the proceeds I am "guaranteed" to make. You should see the looks on their faces at that point. Also, please note I said, "when approached". That of course implies that I don't have the time to sit in at a seminar for such schemes (read: legal scam).

I always tell people, there is nothing wrong in an honest day's job. Tis always best to sweat for the money you are working for. Why? because you will appreciate it more.

hmmmm,

cd it be because u hv no content in #content_block? Just wondering. I just added content and I saw the positioning of the div.

One thing I like to do with my css when it goes awry is turn on borders for each div. I would recommend you do a "border: 1px solid blue" for example for each div. change the color for each div so you can tell which from which.

since you are into css, i would recommend you use a library, in this case, openrico.org, for your rounded corners. You just declare the necessary files, apply the javascript code to the div in question and presto! that div is rounded. It however applies to the entire div though. Of course, digging deep into the code, you might be able to find that it can be applied to either the top/bottom and not both.

If you want to use Photoshop, it's okay I guess. I think you would have to alter the 'feather' value of the rounded shape tool. I am not too sure as I am not a designer at heart and as I said, I would rather use openrico for rounded corners.

Good luck!

lol,

Oh yeah, plenty on amazon. and guess what other book I got just a few days ago - a book on the YUI - released no more than 2 months ago.

Pretty "scary" out there with respect to the rate at which IT books are published these days. and as far as FB apps go, I could only find 4 (i searched for "nigeria" in the apps search field area), one of which was only returned because it had "Nigeria" on the actual page (Players from the following countries cannot play, Nigeria, malta, and ghana and one other country).

@sturvs
Pretty good. Pretty good. I am currently reading a book that will teach me more about facebook apps. After that, I want to come up with a unique idea so that it doesn't look like "just another app", then launch, so expect more than the 3 or so naija apps I see on facebook now, in the future.

Thanks, and your response was inspiration enough for me.

unfortunately, i haven't been lucky enough to do any lawyer sites, sorry.

Again, take advantage of those posted here on nairaland and/or google for them. For example, I just did a google for law firms and am pasting 3 of the returned results that i just so happened to click at random (I also specified spanish law firm peradventure there is something unique that all spanish law firm websites should have):

http://www.lawbird.com/
http://www.solicitorsinspain.com/Commercial.aspx
http://www.allenovery.com/AOWEB/PeopleOffices/Country.aspx?countryID=18698&prefLangID=410

In general, b4 i code any site, I google to see what the competition is doing, then I incorporate what I like into my sites and throw away what I don't like.

Good luck!

- on home page, left hand side is an image. why?

- why should i "search the web" on that site and if i need to, why is it a link and not a text field?

- the nav section is on th right on the home page but on the left on other pages not to mention, the nav area is much narrower

- each member of the firm deserves a page/popup telling us about them i wd think. This I think is better than the stock photo there currently.

- something tells me you aren't taking advantage of includes

- no contact form and email address font size is rather small. it took me a minute to find. assuming i wanted to contact those guys, am i to call them in spain (i wdnt) or wouldn't it be easier to fill out a form and get a response later?

that's it. in conclusion, if i am not mistaken, i have seen at least 2 or 3 site reviews on here for law firms. it might behoove you to look at them and "borrow" a thing or two.

Sorry, just wanted to add that I saw you have a facebook app.

If you don't mind sharing with us, how was your experience coding it? frustrations? time it took to develop? inspiration? etc.

If you don't mind, do share. I am considering writing one myself.

Thanks,

Thatz what am talking about! Naija guys building apps comparable to what is used elsewhere. Hopefully, our people will learn to patronize our own products and services just as the oyibos do theirs. Hopefully this, and other similar products will get on the radar screens of the googles et al of the world.

Just tested it and it looks good. I also like the web2.0-type look and feel.

Good job buddy.

@Afam
and that is where my, "people need to be careful" comes in. If you are promoting a business or service, it behooves you of course to use real information. However, if you are writing on something like abortion, you might want to be careful because you never know the religious leanings of the person doing the hiring. Within the Nigerian context, I dare say it is akin to not disclosing what cult you belonged to in Uni as you never know which cult your potential employer was a member of in the past.

Of course I won't take it too seriously. Google can't uncover everything although in a "youtubed" world, it can uncover some possibly controversial things.

What I will take too seriously though is that again, as I have stated above, many employers in the states do use google to check out potential employees as a last step in the hiring process. Again, just in case this gets in the Nigerian realm, people need to be careful what they post on their blogs or use an alias at the very least.

Who said google is evil? Apparently not McCain. I happened to read long time ago that employers in the US now, as a final step, use google to check up on potential employees. That is why, as a rule, I only use my real name/information on sites that have to do with my professional life.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080609/wr_nm/usa_politics_mccain_google_dc

RICHMOND, Virginia (Reuters) - It turns out choosing a vice president isn't that complicated after all.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain joked on Monday that Google, the popular Internet search engine, had made investigating his list of potential candidates a little bit easier.

"You know, basically it's a Google," he said to laughter at a fund-raising luncheon when asked how the selection process was going. "What you can find out now on the Internet -- it's remarkable."

Vice presidential candidates go through rigorous screening to determine whether they would help a White House aspirant in a general election -- and to make sure there is nothing in their background that could be damaging down the road.

McCain, 71, has faced high scrutiny in his search because of his age.

The Arizona senator, who wrapped up his place on the top of the Republican ticket earlier this year, said he still had some time to complete the search for a number two.

@kehers

How can they when there are posts like this: https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-136441.0.html ?

of all i stated, it seems only 1 (again, I surf with FF) has been implemented and poorly at that - centering the pages. On your contact us page, the page is scrolling horizontally and all the form fields are to the right.

@brownbonno

Honestly,i like your professional zeal

You are too kind.

@all
Look, I am not trying to force myself on anyone. As they say, work smart not hard. However, I am of the opinion that if you don't know the reasons behind working smart, you end up working harder. I have encountered many people who have needed help trying to debug code they wrote in one WYSIWYG tool or the other. When I ask that they debug the actual code, they look at me as if I were crazy. They are afraid of "messing things up". I know not everyone is like that but again, I have encountered a lot of people like this to make me draw this conclusion.

Finally, whether you fit in (to borrow from brownbonno) as a hand-coder or a WYSIWYG tool coder, the choice is yours. Just make sure that in the case of the latter, you get the proper training. Otherwise, you will end up with bloated code. How many sites have you been to where, upon viewing source, you see "MM" function calls and inline CSS code. That my friends, is the sign of an amateur coder.

wonderful webmonk. thanks.

I love to LEARN

Yeah,

Unfortunately this permeates through other aspects of our lives. Every young person is a "small boy". This obviously instills a sense of low self-esteem in the young person, making him/her think they can't do anything right. It also makes such young people to be labelled as "insulters" when all they want to do is voice their opinions. Meanwhile, what such old people fail to realize is that the young are the leaders of tomorrow and if they don't start their training early in life, it will be hard to take over once they retire (if ever. Most are used to declaring their age so many times).

Hopefully, with our generation, this attitude will change. One can only hope.

@mambenanje
I don't believe I have promoted one library over the other. All I am saying is what I prefer. I am a slow learner and so I need as much documentation as I can get, hence my preference for the YUI. Having said that, I have used pretty much all others, via programs that others have written (in other words, copy, paste, plug and play). As you have pretty much said, at the end of the day, you use what you are most comfortable with.

@webmonk
First and foremost, nice redesign of the webmasters of africa website. Are you sure that in other life you weren't a private investigator? Oh well. Yeah, I am not saying we shouldn't review our sites. All I am saying is that it shouldn't be the bulk of our posts. Before joining, I went through at least 30 site review posts and at the end of the day, they all pretty much said the same thing. One would expect us to go back and look at what has been said in the past and learn from them.

As for AJAX and slow response times in Nigeria, I have been a witness to this and it is frustrating. That is why I say that one should code for the lowest common denominator of their locale. Obviously when yahoo and google came up with their AJAX mail, they didn't have my cyber cafe at Ijebu Ode in mind.

@all
How do you provide a link to a word as opposed to a url? For example, how would I do, "<link>webmasters of africa</link> as opposed to www.whateversite.com?

Thanks,

@webguru
I don't know my2cents but I would certainly love to. I don't work for him either. The links are there and so it doesn't count as spamming. Read my comments above. Visit the link and search for "online resources". You will see them (dojo, etc).

@mambenanje
The libraries might be heavy but look at the bright side - those libraries handle all the cross-browser stuff for you, among other reasons.

@kehers
If you use DW, it adds as much fluff as the libraries. Again, as I have told mambe, the advantages lie with the cool stuff that comes with it. Besides, take the YUI for instance - its codebase comes with 3 flavors: full-blown (heaviest), file with a "-min" extension (smaller size) and file with "-debug" extension for use with the logger. I tend to use the "-min" version because all white space is removed and variable names are obfuscated.

@all
Please keep the conversations rolling. I much prefer this to "site review" posts. I am definitely LEARNing something.

It should be pretty obvious. Among others:

- 24 hour technical support
- friendly customer service, willing to help, no matter how stupid my questions are
- server uptime of 99.999%
- storage/bandwidth that is at least comparable with its competitors
- ability to pay (and also do pretty much everything else) online as opposed to calling, visiting an office, visiting a bank and/or sending an email

@webguru
i wanted to google all of them but as it turns out, they are all here, I just found out: http://webmastersofafrica.com/webmasters-of-africa-resources/ - search for "online resources".

That webmasters site has potential. It's content is rich and with the new design, I bet it will attract more members.

As:

1) The focus of web development is shifting more and more to the front end
2) Users are more and more demanding that their web apps look like their desktop apps
3) Users are more and more expecting to be wowed
4) Not many are good at flash but many are good at Javascript and writing code that mimics its flash counterpart
5) Most browsers may not readily have the latest flash but will always have the latest Javascript engine

How many of us are taking advantage of the various libraries out there (YUI, JQuery, Scriptaculous, Prototype, Dojo, etc)? For those who are, what has been your experience? What difficulties have you encountered while implementing your solutions? Which would you recommend?

Let's talk. Let's drop the "site reviews" and "language A is better than language B" talks. Let's actually start LEARNing something.

Let's discuss.

For me:
I have used all that I have mentioned above, mostly in combination as opposed to independently. I have used them for various animations and eye candy features.

Main difficulty is that, other than YUI, documentation is rare, usually bordering on non-existent which leads you to spend a lot of time trying to decipher and being tempted to dump it altogether. I have found google to be my friend, in terms of examples from fellow developers. Also, trying to implement more than one library (for example, I once tried to implement openrico/prototype and jquery/prototype on the same page and I had so many javascript errors that if the browser could talk, I would have been cursed back to the stone ages) on the same page could prove problematic. Bottomline Patience is key.

I would personally recommend the YUI, main reason being its better documentation and ready examples. In particular, I like its sample layout project which provides you with pluggable page layouts you can use on your various projects. The site even comes with a page builder which, after supplying it with info like number of columns, will build the basic structure that you copy and paste into your web projects.