migrosch - Web Development

Webkrauts advent calendar: YQL image gallery as WordPress plugin

migrosch — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 08:26:56 +0000

Based on yesterday’s article “SELECT Bilder FROM Flickr OR PicasaWebAlbums WITH YQL FOR Bildergalerie”, I describe in today’s article on the Webkrauts advent calendar how to build a simple WordPress plugin that provides a shortcode to easily integrate a gallery with images from Flickr or Picasa Web Albums into your posts or pages.

Read the article “YQL-Bildergalerie als WordPress-Plugin” on webkrauts.de

Webkrauts advent calendar: Image gallery with YQL and Flickr or Picasa Web Albums

migrosch — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 08:03:56 +0000

Take a peek behind the ninth door of this years Webkrauts advent calendar to read my article “SELECT Bilder FROM Flickr OR PicasaWebAlbums WITH YQL FOR Bildergalerie”.

Read “SELECT Bilder FROM Flickr OR PicasaWebAlbums WITH YQL FOR Bildergalerie” on webkrauts.de

Is Google Instant killing SEO?

migrosch — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:55:50 +0000

Google just unveiled its new project Google Instant. As you start typing into the search box, Google tries to predict what you are searching for (most likely using the Google Suggest algorithm), and instantly displays results for that prediction. So it’s not really displaying results as you type but kind of before you type. For now, this feature is only available to logged in Google users and is therefore also the next step of personalized search.

Although I believe that this will change the way people use Google, I don’t think that it will kill SEO (search engine optimization) or make SEO irrelevant, as Steve Rubel wrote. The search algorithm is still the same. As the results are refreshed while you type, we’ll probably see more and more people typing in order to pull results to the top that they consider most relevant, instead of typing, clicking (or hitting “enter”) and scrolling. Therefore I believe that long tail keywords will see an increase in traffic. But it also might make lower rankings less relevant. I guess that people will be less apt to scroll down and even more so go to page two of the SERP. I’m looking forward to seeing how it will affect our search behavior.

Google Instant will not make SEO irrelevant but it will most likely have a strong impact. I think it’s an exciting innovation that will make search engine optimization even more challenging, especially since no two users will see the same results.

What do you think? Will you keep it or dump it?

UPDATE (Sept. 17th, 2010): Stefan Tweraser, Deutschlandchef von Google spricht im internetworld.de-Interview auf der dmexco über Google Instant und äußert auch die Vermutung, dass durch die Neuerungen der Long Tail noch länger werden wird und dass sie wenig Einfluss auf White hat SEO haben werden.

Introducing HTML5: A Book From the Future

migrosch — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:51:23 +0000

Today I received the highly praised book “Introducing HTML5″ by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp. I was pretty surprised, when I opened it and found out that this book must have come from the future. The first page tells me that its copyright is from 2011. How is that possible? Is that a typo or is that just due to the futuristic nature of the topic? Is it safe to read it now or do I have to wait till next year?

Update: I just received word from Peachpit, saying that any of their books published after June carry the next copyright year. Thanks. That was quick.

Google Mails’ new look

migrosch — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 06:32:52 +0000

When I opened Google Mail this morning (the first thing I do on a work day), it greeted me with a new look and some info about the visual changes. The GMail team has moved “Contacts” and “Tasks” further into the forefront. I haven’t had to use these features in the past, mainly because of GMail’s automcompletion when typing the recipient’s address. This might be a huge improvement for some users but not for me, as of yet. I might look deeper into what “Contacts” could do for me but because I mainly use “Things”, I have no need for “Tasks” in Google Mail.

They also decreased the size of the header and thereby moved the list of messages up by *drumroll* 16 pixels. Should I care about this? I’m not sure.

But what I really like is that they shed (most) rounded corners. Although such a visual feature is nice, it’s nothing more than pure eye candy with no practical use whatsoever. I assume that the Google Mail team threw these rounded corners overboard in favor of overall performance and I congratulate them for this step.

No SXSW for me this year

migrosch — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:34:58 +0000

It’s been a pretty tough decision to make. But due to the current work load and moving from Burgthann to my new apartment in Zirndorf in early March, I figured it would be best not to overload my calendar and my synapses. I’ve been to SXSW Interactive in 2006, 2008 and 2009, and always had a blast, meeting great people talking about very interesting stuff.

I wish everyone who’s going a very inspiring time; may the headaches be bearable.

See you again in 2011.

Firefox 3.6 and the behavior of Command-/CRTL-clicked links

migrosch — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:45:41 +0000

After downloading and installing Firefox 3.6, I went back to my learned browsing behavior and opened tab after tab. But when I opened a link, using the beloved Command-/CRTL-click, I was irritated and at first couldn’t find the newly opened tab. While previous versions of Firefox opened these links in a new tab after all existing tabs, Firefox 3.6 now opens thes links in a new tab right next to the active tab.

Since it’s always hard to unlearn learned behavior, I looked for a way to fix it and looked at the configuration (“about:config”). There I found the parameter “browser.tabs.insertRelatedAfterCurrent”, which is set to “true”. Changing that value to “false” switches Firefox back to behaving like it used to. I’m not sure which behavior I’ll use in the future but at least now I know that I have a choice. That’s what I love about Firefox.

SXSW Interactive 2009 – Day 5

migrosch — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:41:50 +0000

Winding down from a very inspiring SXSW Interactive 2009, I only went to a few panels and book reading on day 5:

11:00 AM Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click? (Susan Weinschenk)
12:00 PM Universal Design for Web Applications: Web Applications That Reach Everyone (Wendy Chisholm – UW/Indie, Matt May – Adobe)
03:30 PM The Mobile Web for Good: Hype or Reality? (Daniel Appelquist – Vodafone, Erica Kochi – UNICEF, Merrick Schaefer – UNICEF, Tatsuki Tomita – Opera Software, Katrin Verclas – Mobileactive.org)

Can’t believe that I only bought two books this year (unfortunately the book “Neuro Web Design” was sold out):

So I guess now it’s time to read all the books I haven’t yet read and are piling up not only on my desk at home. But before I return home, Peter and I will take a four-day road trip through southern Texas.

SXSW Interactive 2009 – Day 4

migrosch — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 13:30:15 +0000

After some awful weather in Austin, we eventually had some real Texan weather on day 4, so it was hard to be indoors for the following panels, but well worth it:

11:30 AM Browser Wars III: The Platform Wins (Arun Ranganathan – Mozilla, Chris Wilson – Microsoft, Brendan Eich – Mozilla Foundation, Charles McCathieNevile – Opera Software, Darin Fisher – Google)
02:00 PM Quitter: How to Leave Your Perfectly Good Job (Bryan Mason – Small Batch Inc, Ryan Freitas – Freitas OmniMedia, Christopher Sacca – lowercase capital, Laura Mayes – Kirtsy)
03:30 PM No Web Professional Left Behind: Educating the Next Generation (Aarron Walter – The Web Standards Project, Stephanie Troeth – unadorned.org, Chris Mills – Opera Software, Leon Adkison – Taylor University)
05:00 PM 2009 WaSP Annual Meeting (Derek Featherstone – Further Ahead, Aaron Gustafson – Easy! Designs LLC, Glenda Sims – University of Texas at Austin, Stephanie Sullivan – W3Conversions, Henny Swan – Opera)

The broser wars panel didn’t really hold any new info but it was interesting and entertaining nevertheless. As usual Apple wasn’t there. Shame on you!

The highlights of day 4 were the two afternoon panels with WaSP members and of course the official launch of WaSP InterAct (originally called WaSP Curriculum Framework), a framework for educators, teaching web standards. If you teach web standards or would like to get involved, WaSP InterAct is the place to go. Another great resource is the Opera Web Standards Curriculum that Chris Mills put together with the help of many great developers.

Peter and I ended the day with a few beers at the Great British Booze-up.

SXSW Interactive 2009 – Day 3

migrosch — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 06:30:27 +0000

Here’s my schedule for day 3:

10:00 AM Being a UX Team of One (Leah Buley – Adaptive Path)
11:30 AM Journey to the Center of Design (Jared Spool – User Interface Engineering)
02:00 PM CSS3: What’s Now, What’s New and What’s Not? (Molly Holzschlag – Opera Software, David Baron – Mozilla, Hakon Wium Lie – Opera Software, Sylvain Galineau – Microsoft)

Three great presentations/panels on day 3. Leah Buley showed very inspiring ideas about what you could do when you’re a team of one and that it’s always a good idea to involve other people, which you could also do when you work as a lone wolf, at some point of the process. As always, Jared Spool’s presentation was entertaining and interactive. He just knows how to get his audience involved and up on heir feet. He stated (among other things), that “it’s time to retire the dogam of user centered design” and that “we should focus on informed design and the three core ux attributes,” he found in his reserach: vision, feedback and culture. At the CSS 3 panel, the representatives of the different browsers (except for Apple, who were absent as usual) showed the level of CSS implementation. If what they said is true, while Opera and Mozilla have, as we know, already started implementing CSS 3 features, IE8 will be the first browser with complete CSS 2.1 support. Can’t wait to verify this. The links to the slides of this presentation will be posted on molly.com can be found on Molly’s website.

In the evening it was time for the web awards at the Hilton.