RSS Feeds

Chrome doesn’t handle RSS Feeds natively by default. Is that redundant? Can Natives be Defaults? Only if their parents are interested in unusual names. But enough with the hilarious jokes making you laugh too loud in your cubicle, aka, the bus you’re reading this on. While I understand that the majority of users don’t know what RSS is let alone use it, it’s a handy protocol that’s changing the way people consume information and will continue to do so at a growing rate as Grandpa checks into the afterlife and little Suzy’s desk at school is replaced by a giant iPad. With Chrome, you either have to use an extension to read RSS feeds, or open Firefox. I don’t want to use extensions, the whole point of using Google Chrome is to keep it raw and fast, as Firefox as a browser is still better functionality-wise, just not in the performance department.

Gmail Support

Click a myemailaddressis@gmail.com link in a browser and Chrome tries opening up Outlook, Mail, or whatever your default desktop email client is. I don’t use a desktop client, and like everyone else who isn’t still wearing scrunchy socks or remembering how great the 1800s were, I use Gmail for my Internet communication type things. Google makes Gmail, Google makes Chrome, but Google doesn’t let Gmail and Chrome play nicely together. I can only assume it’s because of that one time that they were left alone at the house for the weekend while Mama and Pappa Google went off to the Bahamas and the two of them threw an online bash like nothing Windows ME could have ever imagined. So the only solution to avoid having Mail open up on me every time I want to easily send an email to someone is to copy/paste the address, switch over to a tab running Gmail, and proceed from there like I’m some kind of common task manager.

Firefox has a bookmarks toolbar, and it can be customized wonderfully to take up very little space (see the picture to the right.) What you’re seeing there a simple » button which you can click to bring up a dropdown menu showing whatever bookmarks you’d like to display therein. I click the CBT booklet and I’ve fixed any errors in IE7 before the cows got the memo to come home.

For whatever reason, Google Chrome feels like the bookmarks should only be accessed from a new, blank page, or from the menu way up there in the File Edit View… bar. If I wanted to travel so far north every time I needed a bookmark, I’d open a Border’s in Greenland.

Something about Webkit, however, renders text differently than Firefox does, even on the same OS, so you can end up with spacing differences. Still fixable by targeting particular browsers, but again, how annoying. This isn’t really a fault with Webkit vs. Firefox’s rendering engine, but simply that the browsers end up with differences, and since more people use Firefox than Chrome and Safari (as of the writing of this article, more than twice as many people use FF than use both Chrome and Safari combined), as a Web Designer, developing in a browser that is less common and renders differently than the more popular ones just doesn’t make sense.

The ideal solution would be that all browsers use the same rendering engine, Webkit being a great choice since it’s already used in Chrome, Safari and Apple’s slew of iProducts, but I’m still waiting on the call back from the King of DotCom on that one.

The process for building websites in the past went a little something like this:

1. Write some code in your favorite editor (I like Coda for Mac, FYI).
2. FTP that to your website.
3. Open up the site in your browser, wait for it to load. Wow, it’s all messed up.
4. Edit the code back in your favorite editor (I like Coda, did I mention that?)
5. Repeat steps 2 through 3, over and over again until Comcast calls you and says you’re using too much bandwidth and you find out you’re 93 years old for all the time spent waiting.

With Firebug, you just right click on an element and can edit the CSS values right there. Figure it all out, go back and make the changes in your editor, and you’re done.

Chrome comes with a built in feature similar to this, and it’s a lot like Safari’s Element Inspector. Both of those browsers differ from the Firebug plugin in one major way: they’re not as easy to use. Firebug opens up in a pane at the bottom of the browser window. Chrome’s Inspector opens in a new window of its very own, requiring crafty keyboard shortcuts or mouse clicking to go back and forth between browser and inspector. Weak.

That’s my only major complaint there, but it’s one of those little things that itches your knuckles just enough to keep you from wanting to use Chrome full time.

Like everyone else, I had 157 plugins that did nothing particularly relevant and eventually found my particular version of that browser bringing up web pages as slowly as Firefox was quick to crash. I dumped all of the plugins and started focusing in on what the Internet was really for: me to build websites for other people to use it. I started realizing that the world was big and green and wonderful outside, something that I thought faded out with my teenage years. Firefox came out with update after update and still I found the browser crashing, hogging memory, and generally becoming the pain in the processor for which I’d switched from IE in the first place. In 2006, the Pittsburgh Steelers won their 5th Super Bowl championship, yet it was completely eclipsed by the news that I’d finally bought my first Mac and tried Safari a few months later. For various reasons, primarily Safari’s lack of customization (and when you do customize it, will Apple kill all of those customizations with the next release?), I switched back to Firefox.

So for the rest of the first decade of the turn of the century that officially marked the future known as the 2000s, I was back in FF, watching my browser slow down my computer more than Photoshop at a slow foods conference. And then Google Chrome was released for Mac and that gave me the potential to change everything.

I’ve been using Chrome intermittently over the past month, more heavily over the past two weeks, and right here on this very website I’ll be exploring the potential of the browser as it applies to building websites.

That has changed now, and there are several designers and developers out there doing a wonderful job, helping to put us on the map and making sure that local businesses have a great look, great functionality, and are standards compliant. Using the same criteria from my last go at this, we’ll review the top 10 search results for Pittsburgh Web Design and see how everyone is stacking up.

Review the Criteria

It’s a 2 point system, I’m modifying it a little to be a bit more fair than perhaps I was last time. You either get 0 or 1 points for each of the criteria models.

• Web Standards. If your site is built using a modicum of web standards, you get a point. If not, you don’t.
• Design. I won’t let personal taste come into play, if your site has nice, crisp graphics that look like they were created in this century, you get a point. Otherwise, a tattoo of a 0 on your forehead.
• Content. Content is King, or so someone who thought that C and K were the same letter came up with, and if you’ve got a well written homepage, point, if you sound like an SEO whore, nothing.

Their were a few surprises I stumbled upon during this little revisit to my former experiment. Not surprisingly, a lot of the companies that were in the top 10 results four years ago aren’t anywhere to be found, several seemingly not even in business anymore as their websites are now those weird SPAM/link sites with a picture of a Russian girl on them. Nauticom, who I guess is now going under the name Consolidated, is not really even in the picture. They still somehow have their website up in the rankings, but it links to some type of default theme. A web design company who is using a cookie cutter theme, somehow that seems just wrong to me. Only two of the sites (myself being one of them) that were there last time still are. And for the first time in three years or so, I’ve been knocked out of the number one position for a week or more by Mr. Andy Weigel. Congrats to him for having such a nice site and obviously doing great work to get him where he is.

Regardless, it’s still nice to see that we’ve made some progress, from 2 out of 7 sites passing this little litmus test to now 3 or 4 out of 6, depending on how you look at it.

All in One SEO Pack

SEO is important, but you don’t need to spend a kaboodle if you’ve already got the kit. Install this plugin and use the knowledge of how to get your page titles vs. the titles of your page all in a row, using the infinite knowledge you’ve no doubt already amassed from reading a dozen 10 Most Important Things to Know about SEO Page Titles articles, etc. and you’ll be on your way. Or just have me build your site for you and you won’t have to worry about a thing.

My Snippets

This plugin lets you manage a second block of content on a page. Currently, one of the biggest drawbacks to using WordPress as a CMS is that you need to create multiple pages and then include them (using another great plugin, listed below) from one page onto another if you want multiple blocks of non-linear content. For example, if you want different information on every sidebar, you either have to use some type of widget (and go away from the page editing screen), or create two pages and include one on the other as it’s sidebar (which leaves you with a bunch of odd pages users can find when doing a search on your site). The My Snippets plugin puts a little box right below the main content editor which allows you to add some text or HTML that can be placed in your sidebar, or any other area on the page that you have widgetized.

Improved Include

Even with the above plugin, there are going to be times when you’re going to want to include the content of one page on another. 404 pages, sidebar content that spans across multiple pages, and when you want to bake a thousand cookies for your kid’s school birthday party tomorrow but only have an Easy Bake Oven and some Play Doh. Ok, maybe not in that last scenario, but you get the picture. This is the plugin to do it with, and it’s uber simple and straightforward.

Contact Form 7 or Dagon Design Form Mailer

Almost everyone wants a form on their website. They’re annoying to fill out (vs. a simple email address) and make you look like you have a robot answering emails for you, so of course everyone will want one. They also involve a lot of neatly aligned boxes, and everyone loves to be reminded of Legos. Contact Form 7 is an incredibly simple and fairly customizable form creator that almost any client will be able to use, and Dagon Design Form Mailer is a big time hardcore get the job done but it’s almost as hard as just coding the form yourself type of plugin.

There you go, four plugins that I use on almost every one of my client’s sites, unless you count that last entry as two plugins, in which case…there you go, five plugins that I use on almost every one of my client’s sites. Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two about numbers, numerology and even Newman’s Best. That’s some good salad dressing.

So today I bring some good news. I’ve been working with a group of individuals who’s goal is to get us back in business when it comes to the business of hosteling. Many people have contacted me over the years due to my previous post, Pittsburgh Needs a Hostel so I know that interest is there, we just needed someone to put it together.

They’re not all the way there yet, but I can say that they have been doing the kinds of research and exploration that will help this hostel succeed where the last one did not. For more information or to help, visit the new Pittsburgh Hostel website.

I’d like to mention a few really nifty sites that I’ve had the fortune of working on recently, though, including one for local produce, one aimed at making life easier for your local farmer, and another aimed at helping Pittsburghers get on their bikes and ride.

Click any of the images to see larger versions of the site’s designs. The first two sites weren’t built by me, only designed, so I can’t hold strong on the efficacy of how well they’re put together, just the loveliness of the pictures and layout.

The first is Small Farm Central, which is run by Simon Huntley, Pittsburgh local web developer. Small Farm Central offers a CMS specifically aimed at small farmers who would like to promote their produce, meatstuffs, markets, etc. I’ve worked with Simon before, as per the next item herein, and when he asked me to redesign his site I was extremely excited. Simon did all of the HTML and development work behind the site, I merely put together the design.

The other project I’ve recently completely, again, doing all of the design work while Simon handled the development, was Buy Fresh Buy Local PA, part informational/part social networking, this site combines user profiles and custom Google Maps to allow users to find local food in their area and network with other local food lovers.

Finally, Free Ride Pittsburgh, a Pittsburgh non-profit, asked me to design and build their site for them, which I happily did. Free Ride will help you learn how to fix a bike, not just fix it for you. They have tools, spare parts, and helpful volunteers to show you how to do everything from fix a flat to replace your gears, and designing their site was a blast. They’re also looking for volunteers, so if you like bikes and want to do some good in your hometown, let them know!

I first thought that maybe it was a CSS problem, but even View > Page Style > No Style produced a site without scrollbars. Next I suspected Javascript, so I deleted all of the links my external Javascript files. Still, no scrollbars.

The culprit? Once again, Microsoft, or at least my lack of understanding Microsoft meta tags.

<meta http-equiv="msthemecompatible" content="no" />

I had discovered the code long ago, and it was supposed to aid in preventing Windows from forcing styles on IE6 buttons, but today for some reason it causes sites displayed in Firefox 3.0.1 on a Mac to not have scrollbars. Puzzling, but true.