SitePoint blog

News, opinion, and fresh thinking for web developers and designers. The official podcast of sitepoint.com.

Updated: 28 min 31 sec ago

Google Releases Chrome 6

3 hours 18 min ago

Despite being just 2 years old, Chrome has reached version 6. On average, Google release a new version every 4 months and version 5 appeared at the end of May 2010.

Call me a cynic, but I’m convinced the rapid release schedule is pure marketing hype. By the time Internet Explorer 9.0 finally arrives, Chrome will be at version 8 and will quickly overtake Microsoft’s browser. Although few people care about the numbers, it doesn’t stop journalists and bloggers like me reporting that a new version is available. How many news stories appeared about Firefox 3.6 or Opera 10.6? They had more new features, but the version numbers didn’t seem so important and they received far less press coverage.

Enough about the marketing conspiracies — what can Chrome users expect from the update?

New default theme
Chrome’s always been clean, but the new theme is subtler and more minimalistic than before. The window is transparent gray on Windows 7 and there are even fewer distractions.

Some of the menus have been combined, for example, Cut, Copy and Paste are on a single line. There’s also a new “Create application shortcuts” option which allows you to add web links to your OS desktop or menus.

Form Autofill
It’s taken some time for autofill to arrive on Chrome, but Google has an interesting implementation. Rather than simply associating strings with similarly-named input fields, Chrome remembers sets of addresses and credit card numbers. It works well and form details can be entered with a single click.

Synchronized extensions
If you’re using Chrome on more than one PC, you’re probably syncing bookmarks, passwords and possibly themes. The new version adds automatic synchronization for autofill and extensions. It makes Chrome quicker and easier to install when you upgrade your OS or switch platforms — there’s less reason for you to shop around for another browser.

Improved address bar
Google may call it the “Omnibar” but I never will! The most significant change is the removal of “http://” from the start of web addresses. It’s a sensible move since few users know or care what it means. Secure addresses are still shown with the full https:// highlighted in green.

The bookmarks star has moved to the right and the “Go” arrow has been removed (good riddance!) You might notice a few other icons appear, such as a cookie indicator.

WebM
Google’s own open source royalty-free video format, WebM, makes an appearance in Chrome for the first time. Whether it has a chance against H.264 remains to be seen.

Standards and speed
Needless to say, Chrome 6 has better support for web standards and is faster than its predecessor. It was already good in those respects, so the improvements are barely noticeable to most users.

The Developer Tools have also received an update. I suspect many will still prefer Firebug, but it’s an impressive set of tools that come with the standard browser.

There’s little to dislike about Chrome. You may not appreciate Google’s version numbering or ambitions, but they’ve produced a great browser which has attracted a significant following in a relatively short period.

Chrome can be downloaded from www.google.com/chrome. If you’re already version 5, click the Tool icon, About Google Chrome, and follow the update instructions.

Will Chrome 6 become your default browser?

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The 7-Point Email Marketing Checklist

18 hours 48 min ago

There are many different philosophies that can be applied to email marketing, and one is not necessary better than another. In fact, you may find that you have many different approaches you use at different times for different reasons in your own email marketing campaigns.

Despite how you craft your message, there are several items that combine to make what I consider a “must-have checklist” for every email marketing campaign.

Here are the 7 items that should make it onto your email marketing checklist and should be verified before you hit send on every campaign.

1. You have your entire campaign planned out.

Before you start any email campaign, you should decide on the frequency of your emails, the topics and how they flow together, how you will follow-up, etc. This should all be figured out before writing one word of your first email.

2. Your email is going to the right list.

If you have multiple lists, make sure that the email is being sent to the correct list. The last thing you want to do is send the wrong message to the wrong audience.

3. Your message has an effective subject line.

Every email that you send to your list should have a descriptive and relevant subject line that will drive the curiosity of the recipient to open it. Just like your copy will go through several revisions, so should your subject line.

4. You printed it out and reviewed it.

By printing the email message out and reviewing it on paper, you will be looking at it from a different perspective which will help you pick up errors that you might have missed on the screen. And you never know, some of your list may actually print out their emails to read so this will give you an idea of how your email will look like in hard copy.

5. You have provided a plain text version of your message.

Most email marketing platforms will automatically convert an HTML email into a plain text version so that recipients who prefer plain text over HTML, or those accessing on a device that doesn’t display HTML, will still be able to see your message. However, since most of these conversions come up short on the formatting side, you should always go in and clean up the plain text version.

6. All of your links have been tested.

You should always test all links in the email message to make sure they are correct and working. Nothing is more embarrassing than directing a recipient to a broken link. Chances are, once that happens, you will quickly lose their attention and willingness to click-through again.

7. You tested your email for email client compatibility.

Just like you would test any web site for cross browser compatibility, you should test your email for compatibility with all of the major email clients. I use Salted Services’ Litmus for testing. It saves me a ton of time and clues me in on what my audience may be seeing.

What elements of your email message do you check consistently before sending? Is there anything not listed here that is a standard part of your process?

Image credit: iprole

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Avoid Email Overload With GMail’s Priority Inbox

Fri, 09/03/2010 - 22:22

It’s been a busy week for Google’s GMail developers. They recently added free telephone voice calls and now they’ve introduced a new feature to save you from email overload.

A typical corporate user sends or receives an average of 110 messages per day and spends 8 hours per week dealing with their inbox. It’s a recognized cause of stress, can make people feel overwhelmed, and prevents them completing more important tasks. GMail’s new Priority Inbox could help you reduce the strain. It’s an experimental feature which is being rolled out to all users over the next few days. Look for a bright red “Priority Inbox” link at the top right of the page — you should see it soon.

Essentially, Priority Inbox is a junk mail filter in reverse. It recognizes important messages — such as those from your boss — and gives less priority to non-critical messages. Such as those from Bob in the Accounts who cc’s the whole company when the coffee machine’s empty.

As usual, Google has released a cheesy video to explain the concept:

Priority Inbox watches what you read and respond to. It learns over time and should become more efficient at sorting the critical from the trivial. The inbox is split into three sections — Important and unread, Starred and Everything else (you can configure them in GMail’s Settings):

If the filter gets it wrong, you can mark a message as more or less important using the + and – buttons accordingly.

Google has tested Priority Inbox internally for 18 months. According to it’s own internal reports, employees now spend 13% less time reading irrelevant emails.

For more information, refer to The Priority Inbox page.

Will it save you from email overload?

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SitePoint Podcast #77: Paper or Blu-ray?

Fri, 09/03/2010 - 11:46

Episode 77 of The SitePoint Podcast is now available! This week your hosts are Patrick O’Keefe (@iFroggy), Brad Williams (@williamsba), and Kevin Yank (@sentience).

Listen in your Browser

Play this episode directly in your browser — just click the orange “play” button below:

Download this Episode

You can also download this episode as a standalone MP3 file. Here’s the link:

SitePoint Podcast #77: Paper or Blu-ray? (MP3, 37.9MB, 41:18)

Subscribe to the Podcast

The SitePoint Podcast is on iTunes! Add the SitePoint Podcast to your iTunes player. Or, if you don’t use iTunes, you can subscribe to the feed directly.

Episode Summary

Here are the topics covered in this episode:

IE9 screenshot leaked
Facebook drops IE6 support
Microsoft’s browser performance breakdown
Google backs out of JavaOne
H.264 to remain royalty free forever (for free content)

Browse the full list of links referenced in the show at http://delicious.com/sitepointpodcast/77.

Host Spotlights

Brad: Google and Arcade Fire Get All HTML5y
Kevin: Tips and Tricks for Better HTML5 Canvas Animations
Patrick: Why working at home is both awesome and horrible

Show Transcript

Kevin: September 3rd, 2010. Internet Explorer inside and out; JavaOne won’t be the same; and H.264 goes free (mostly). I’m Kevin Yank and this is the SitePoint Podcast #77: Paper or Blu-ray?

And welcome back to the SitePoint Podcast. With the Internet Explorer 9 Beta coming out on September 15th it seems like everyone is talking about Internet Explorer. Brad, why don’t you lead off the Internet Explorer news department.

Brad: Absolutely. So there has actually been a leaked photo of Internet Explorer 9 Beta which appeared on one of the Microsoft foreign websites…

Kevin: It’s the Russian website I think.

Brad: Russian one, right, and obviously it was quickly taken down, but in the age of the Internet if it’s up for a second it’s up forever, so the screenshot has been making the rounds. It’s a little small and a little blurry but you could certainly kind of get a good idea of what it looks like Internet Explorer is going to look like and what they’re going for, and that’s certainly like we all thought it would be is the kind of minimal approach that we’re seeing in a lot of browsers such as Chrome and Firefox, so it looks pretty clean. What do you guys think?

Kevin: If it was just a screenshot I would be questioning its realness because it doesn’t look like a real browser screenshot to me, like there’s too many things wrong with it, but reading the provenance, like Mary Jo Foley who I believe is a ZDNet writer who specializes on Microsoft, she apparently is one of the people who grabbed this off the original site. And so with that big name associated with this as the source I find it difficult to question, but I wonder if Microsoft Russia is just mocking things up on their own time here because this really doesn’t seem to work for me.

Patrick: Microsoft Russia has a little too much time on their hands is what you’re saying.

Kevin: (Laughs) Maybe.

Patrick: It looks pretty — I think it looks nice, I mean obviously there’s so much more to a browser than just how it looks; are we that shallow, are we that about appearance?

Brad: Yes, yes we are.

Patrick: (Laughs) No, but it is very simple. If I look at it in my browser that I’m using, which is Firefox, I notice that there is a much lower number of icons and then buttons and menu items available in the browser. Now, will I use it? I was a longtime IE user and switched to Firefox last year; I mean I would consider it but just not based on the looks alone.

Kevin: Hmm.

Brad: Yeah, I have to wonder too, Kevin, because if you look at it closely you can see the actual, the back button, part of the website they’re viewing which is Bing in the screenshot of course, it almost looks like they’re overlaying the back button which seems like that would be an obvious thing to fix, so you do have to wonder if it is kind of sliced up a little bit.

Kevin: Either it’s a bad Photoshop job there or that’s some sort of, I don’t know, artistic choice on Microsoft’s part, just the same way that the Windows button, the Start button in the bottom left corner of every Windows monitor, it now protrudes up over the top of the bar at the bottom, this one it seems to be tucked behind the browser content area, and so I could sort of see Microsoft going, whoa, this is kind of cool, we can tuck buttons behind things, that will make it look a little trendier, a little more novel. So, that isn’t necessarily what trips me up about it, what trips me up about it is they’ve got the browser address bar sitting next to the tabs for all of the open tabs leaving only about a third of the width of the window for browser tabs. And looking at it you could have two tabs open and then after that your tabs are going to start getting smaller right away. This does not seem like a reasonable user interface for me because like the one thing your browser Chrome is having to do for you these days is give you good access to a set of tabs I think.

Patrick: Right, and we’ve seen when I think it was Firefox and the above and below thing, and they’re going to offer the option, I think that just could be the case here where they could offer an option. But what trips me up about this is that on the Bing website that’s in this mock-up it says “Popular now, Internet Explorer,” when was Internet Explorer a popular search on Bing?!

Kevin: (Laughs) Yeah, I’m calling foul!

Brad: I could see the tabs working on that line if every website that I ever visited has a very distinguishable favicon because a lot of the larger sites that you visit certainly do, SitePoint has a very distinguishable— It’s the SitePoint logo, so I know that’s SitePoint, so even if my tab went down to just the fav icon I would know that’s SitePoint, but the problem is not 1) every site has a distinguishable fav icon and 2) a lot of times we’re reading sites that we may not read very often, we just click on a quick article and view the site just for that article and never go back to that site again. So, I would imagine if that is the default layout that there were certainly be an option to move those tabs either up above or below the address bar.

Kevin: I think you guys might be on to something with the option, but I’m actually, I think what they’re going to do is that’s the default state, but as soon as you have more than two tabs open the whole tab bar drops down below the address bar and then occupies the entire width. But what they do is they move them up next to the address bar when there’s not many tabs so you have a little more space to work in when they don’t need the extra space for tabs.

Patrick: Yeah, and at best obviously this is pre-release because there’s things missing here as well, like at the top left some sort of title or icon or something at the top left to say it’s Internet Explorer.

Kevin: Yeah! Where’d the window title go?

Patrick: It’s gone, so if this — maybe it could always be just a fancy Photoshop versus an actual application.

Kevin: Yeah. Okay, well, I guess we’ll see on September 15th.

Brad: Yeah, and something else actually happening September 15th, Facebook, everyone’s favorite social network, well, most people, have announced that they’re going to make some significant improvements in their chat feature, and one of the big parts of that announcement is that they’re going to end support for IE6 in their chat feature the same day that Internet Explorer 9 Beta is released which is September 15th.

Brad: Coincidence? I don’t know but it certainly is interesting.

Kevin: I think September 15th is also that the day Diaspora network is supposed to open source its code in preparation for a consumer alpha sometime in October. This is the supposed Facebook killer built on open source technology and open web standards. We shall see what happens on September 15th, but it seems to be a nexus date in the Web at the moment, it’s Internet Explorer, it’s Facebook and Internet Explorer, it’s Facebook and Diaspora; I wonder how long a chain you could form of things that are happening on September 15th.

Patrick: And which matters more to developers? Which brings them to tears faster, Facebook saying no to IE6 or the release of the code of Diaspora? I think I know the answer!

Brad: Is that tears of joy?

Kevin: One is tears of joy, yeah, tears of joy.

Patrick: Exactly! That’s what I mean, tears of joy.

Kevin: See which one you can pick. So, Facebook doing away with Internet Explorer 6 support, I’ll be honest I was shocked that Facebook was still supporting Internet Explorer 6, but this is yet another line in the sand that I think the last big high profile IE6 support killing was Google Apps, or Google Docs and all of that— All of Google’s web applications no longer support IE6 as a first-class citizen, and so that was an important one, but if you went to your boss and said, “well, Google doesn’t do it” and they said yeah “well talk to me when Google’s search homepage doesn’t support Internet Explorer 6.” But Facebook doing it, now that is a mass market website if ever there was one. So is this finally— I’ll be honest, we still test on IE6 at SitePoint just out of habit more than anything because we know if it’s going to break anywhere it’s going to break on IE6, so often after we finish developing something the first thing we test it in is in IE6 because we know that’s going to be the most problematic environment. But I just in preparation for this broadcast I checked our numbers, IE6 traffic at SitePoint is down to about two percent.

Brad: I don’t think this is the nail in the coffin. I mean we’ve discussed on the Podcast a number of times, and looking at stats, too, that backs this up a good majority of IE6 users are corporate users, and the reason they’re stuck on IE6 is specific applications they need to use that were built for IE6 and IE6 only. Well, those corporate users probably shouldn’t be on Facebook, and they probably don’t have a great reason to be on Facebook other than maybe their marketing department. So I can’t imagine that this would be the nail in the coffin, I mean I would certainly like it to be but I don’t think it will be.

Patrick: It’s like the Google CEO said, you know, if there’s something that you don’t want people to find you shouldn’t do it online, so same thing, if you use IE6 you shouldn’t be using Facebook. No, I think that — I don’t know why it’s unreasonable to maybe say, okay, we have these programs that work with IE6 so you have to use IE6 for those programs, but then install something like Firefox 3 or something.

Kevin: Yeah, I’m with you, Patrick, I think this may not be the nail in the coffin of IE6, but I think it is the nail in the coffin of people developing new apps with IE6 in mind.

On a related note, still talking about Microsoft in browsers and things because it’s all happening this month for Microsoft, but the Microsoft IE Blog has this amazing post called Performance: Profiling How Different Websites Use Browser Subsystems, and don’t be put off by the dry title, this blog post is full of eye candy, if like me you consider eye candy amazing graphs.

Brad: Kevin loves his graphs!

Kevin: (Laughs) This story breaks down the 11 subsystems that goes into the Internet Explorer browser, everything from obvious ones like HTML and CSS right down to things like native object mapping, block building, and marshalling. Brad, did you find this as mind-blowing a glimpse under the surface of Internet Explorer as I did?

Brad: Yeah, it’s certainly interesting and it’s certainly geeky, too, I mean when you really break it down like this, but I did enjoy the graphs; I kind of wish, because they basically break it up by different sites, but it’s very generic, news site one, news site two; I would love to know what those sites were.

Kevin: Yeah! I’m dying to know.

Brad: That’s what I’m missing, but other than that I mean I think it’s really neat to look at.

I was amazed at the amount of JavaScript pulling off these sites, and you probably love that, Kevin, because I know you’re a JavaScript buff, but these sites are running quite a bit of JavaScript.

Kevin: Well, it depends, because what interested me, they’ve given the performance breakdowns of five common news sites, and then they also show a breakdown, an average over all Ajax sites or the top 25 Ajax sites they’ve averaged them all out. But looking at the news site graph the biggest thing that stands out to me is the fact that they are news sites seems to have no bearing on their performance profile. News site number one has a gigantic chunk of Flash—not Flash, JavaScript—and indeed like half the time that the browser spends working on displaying that site is spent running JavaScript code. Whereas if you move over to news site two and news site three the JavaScript component is actually really small, but news site two, they spend a lot of time in marshalling which is preparing the JavaScript communication with the browser itself. And if you look at news site three they’ve obviously done a lot more work than their competitors on performance because their graph is down near the 1,000 millisecond mark.

Patrick: Either that or they have less ads (laughs).

Kevin: Well, yeah, maybe. The next fastest site is almost at 2,500 milliseconds, so they’re taking almost half the time. So, there is no standard profile for news sites which makes me wonder why they’ve gone to the trouble to average out then the amount of time in each browser subsystem on Ajax sites, because if the picture for Ajax sites is anything like the one for news sites they’re all different, and every site is different, and this I guess is the point that Microsoft is trying to make that it’s really difficult to optimize a browser so that it works well and fast on all sites because every site is different and it makes different demands on the browser. That said, JavaScript does seem to be a very big component, if you add up the components that have to do with JavaScript, things like marshalling, JavaScript, the native object mapping interface, these are all things that kind of have to do with JavaScript. On news sites the average has over half the time spent on JavaScript or JavaScript related tasks, Ajax sites it’s weird, it’s only one-third the time. So they’re spending a lot more time on rendering and formatting, which is applying CSS to HTML elements, laying out the page, that sort of stuff, so whereas on the surface you might think Ajax sites are heavier in the JavaScript front, it seems like they’re actually heavier in making the browser’s rendering engine work and work to constantly update the page and make changes on the fly, and the actual JavaScript code is not that heavy. I bet you’re right, Patrick, I bet the JavaScript code on those news sites has a lot to do with the ads that they run.

Patrick: Well, speaking of JavaScript, or more specifically Java, JavaOne is an annual conference that was created by Sun Microsystems in 1996, and Google has participated in every conference since 2004, but this year they won’t be, and they will not be because of Oracle’s lawsuit against Google, according to a blog post on googlecode.blogspot.com by Joshua Bloch of Google’s Open Source Programs Office, he writes that they wish they could participate in the conference but “the lawsuit against Google and Open Source has made it impossible for us to freely share our thoughts about the future of Java and Open Source generally. This is a painful realization for us as we participated in every JavaOne since 2004, and I personally have spoken at all but the first in 1996.” Careful wording there: “lawsuit against Google and Open Source.”

Kevin: Hmm. Yeah, this is a bummer for me as well because I’m a Java developer from way back. I don’t really do much Java these days but part of my heart will always belong to Java, and I think like a lot of Java fans out there I’m really dismayed by what Oracle is doing to Google. Like I guess from the outside, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few stories out there taking this angle, that Google is being a bit of drama queen about this, “Oh, you sue us? Well we’re not coming to your conference!” But JavaOne is really like this is the heart of the Java ecosystem and there are people who’ve been to every JavaOne since 1996, and it’s usually an amazing conference because it’s not just, well, Sun Microsystems previously, these days Oracle, it’s not just the one company getting up there and saying well here’s what’s new for our platform this year, developers, eat it up. It really is a meeting of all of the big players in the Java world, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Google was one of if not the biggest partner in that up until this point. And to be able to go to this massive conference every year that had to do with such a mature platform and still get so much, such an impression of a vibrant ecosystem of people still playing with new ideas, you know, building new languages to run on the Java platform, building new things that take advantage of Java, I think especially at the moment the biggest thing going on in the Java world is the Android platform that Google built using Java technology. And the fact that Oracle has chosen to thank them for that favor by suing them really does throw a bucket of cold water on this thriving ecosystem, this positive atmosphere of sharing around the JavaScript platform that was centered around JavaOne every single year. I know I’m on the mailing list for the Java Users Group in Victoria here in Melbourne Australia, and they’re talking about it along the same lines; they were getting ready to hold their monthly meeting and they suddenly went, you know what, if the custodian of the Java platform in Oracle is taking this approach to it, suing people who are investing in Java technology, do we really want to be getting together and talking about how much we love Java this month? I’m really not feeling it and they’ve cancelled this month’s meeting and have no immediate plans to schedule another one going forward. It’s a really sad day, especially for a technology like Java that has been held up through good times and bad through the force of its developer community.

Brad: I feel sorry for the attendees that shelled out the $2,000.00 to go to some of these Google-specific sessions that are not going to happen anymore. Some of these look pretty interesting: Taking Java to the Sky, Cloud Computing, The High Performance Java Servers at Google, that would be really interesting, Testing Techniques for Google AppEngine, GUI Animation Rules; so all these sessions that were on the agenda are now cancelled obviously, and so anyone that had planned to go to those are out of luck, they’re going to have to go a different session, so that’s really too bad.

Patrick: Google is apparently already on board for a sponsorship, though, because if you look at the site they are listed under the bronze sponsor, so that’s a little uncomfortable.

Kevin: Whoa. (Laughs) Yeah, hmm, I wonder what they’ll be putting on their sponsorship banners.

Patrick: (Laughs) They’ll put ‘Java’ with a big red circle and a line through it like Ghostbusters did, and right there, ‘no more Java’.

Kevin: Yeah, you know, I feel like I have invested years in Java at times when the main company behind it did not seem to believe in it the way I did. And now that company is punishing companies like Google for choosing it. Google didn’t have to choose Java to build Android on, there would be plenty of alternatives out there and, yeah, anyway, I think enough said, but if there are any listeners out there who are also feeling the pain as one-time if not current Java developers, we’d love to hear from you in the comment thread of this post. Because I’m feeling a bit alone in my love for Java at the moment, I’d love to hear some other people.

Patrick: Come commiserate with Kevin.

Kevin: Yeah, please do. Please do.

On the bright side, H.264 is kicking great goals at the moment. Let’s talk about a technology that’s on the upswing for a few minutes here. We’ve talked about H.264 as a potential standard for web video in the past, if you’ve viewed video on the Web, whether through a Flash player or in one of these new-fangled HTML5 players, chances are the video you were watching was encoded using the H.264 video codec. It’s the one that is supported natively by Apple devices, iPhones, iPads, and so forth, in hardware. It’s really the, the de facto format for video on the Web at the moment. But, as we’ve spoken about before, the W3C when standardizing the new HTML5 <video> tag couldn’t endorse H.264 because there are patents on this, this is patented technology that is owned by a group, the MPEG Licensing Association, MPEG-LA, and they charge licensing fees for people who want to make money using this video format. And so the W3C said, yep, there’s no good option, we’re not going to take sides, we’re going to say there’s a <video> tag and you can use whatever codex you want and the browser will, if it sees a supported codec in the list you’ve provided then it will play that video.

Meanwhile Google has invested in their WebM video format buying all of the technology involved with it and releasing it free to the public domain in the hopes, supposedly, of creating a new de facto format that the W3C can endorse because it isn’t patent encumbered. Now there’s a lot of humming and hawing over whether it is or it isn’t patent encumbered, you know, I get the feeling that for technology as complex as a video encoder if at any point you try to make significant money out of it someone’s going to come out of the woodwork claiming to have a patent on it, and these aren’t the kind of things that you can definitively eliminate from the equation beforehand. I feel like at some point someone’s going to come out with a patent saying they have a patent on logging people into websites using usernames and passwords and now everyone on the Web has to pay them money.

Patrick: Wish I thought of that.

Kevin: (Laughs) Yeah, that would be a good patent. So, you know, there is a lot of questioning over WebM is everything it’s cracked up to be, and of course there would be a lot of work involved in retrofitting not just all of our browsers, but all of the hardware devices to be able to play it as efficiently as they already play H.264. So this latest news that the MPEG-LA says they will not be charging royalties or patent licensing fees of any kind to anyone who is producing or delivering content in H.264 format as long as that content is available for free. This is significant news.

Patrick: Is that free viewing without ads?

Kevin: Yeah.

Patrick: Or what kind of free?

Kevin: You know what, I don’t know if ad support is an issue. My reading of it is as long as it’s available on the open Web to be viewed without paying for it, so ads are allowed, I believe, as long as it’s freely available to watch then it’s license free, patent free. Not patent free, license charging free; it’s free to use! You don’t have to pay for it. Is this enough to make it the format for web video?

Brad: I hope so. I think everyone feels that way. I mean we just need to set a standard so we can move forward and everybody can adopt it and we’ll have HTML5 video for all. It sounds like this is it; I mean you know we have Mozilla and Opera who were both kind of holding out on this because they were uncomfortable with the licensing; it shouldn’t be a question anymore, so they should certainly hopefully support it in the next release or soon thereafter, so hopefully this is it. I mean I think everybody wants to see a standard, I know I do, and there’s a lot of sites and browsers that do support this already, so it’s looking good.

Patrick: It feels kind of weird to me because, you know, you have sites out there that obviously are paid to access video, so it’s weird to have a standard, let’s say, that those sites couldn’t use, I think, where we have a lot of educational sites, for example, that are paid access and so they have to go and use a different standard just because there’s a paywall there, I don’t know, that still seems kind of weird to me, uncomfortable.

Kevin: They don’t necessarily have to use a different standard, but they do have to pony up for the licensing fees.

Patrick: Right, yep.

Kevin: And the way the MPEG-LA works, we’ve looked into this recently at SitePoint because we’re using video in our courses, which are paid content obviously, and there is a certain threshold if you’re, I forget if it’s number of views, it probably is, but it’s something on the order of, don’t quote me on this, but on the order of half a million; if you’re serving up half a million video views or hours or something then you cross this threshold where you have to start paying licensing fees, and then you have to pay an annual fee to the MPEG-LA for your use of that codec. And so if H.264 is embraced as the format for video on the Web what it means is for the first time there is a standard core part of web technology that you need to pay to use as an author if you are producing a certain type of content. But maybe that’s okay, maybe the Web has grown up and we’re at the point where if you’re going to make money off the Web you have to be willing to put money into the technology that makes the Web possible. I’m really interested in you guys’ opinions on this because I’m really on the fence.

Patrick: Well, I’m not, as you know, I’m not a web standards guy by any means, but I don’t even consider myself — I’m not a programmer, I shouldn’t even say I consider myself, I’m not a programmer. But, like I said, it does make me uncomfortable to think that there is ‘a standard’, now I don’t view standards as for-profit operations, now maybe that’s a wrong viewpoint, maybe that’s not the way to think about it. But for me I don’t view the standards of anything we do online whether it be HTML or CSS or video or graphics, or whatever, as something that is someone is out there for profit, but I view people use those standards to profit, and maybe that’s not a sustainable model, maybe that’s a bad way to look at it, but that’s just the way I feel about it, it seems strange to me if you have 500,000 video views, or whatever the number is, within a certain period that you have to opt for a different standard, or pay for the standard, especially because I don’t know what the price is at this stage, that’s a part of it, it’s kind of scary to think well if I ever did this — I guess if I ever had 500,000 views maybe I might have enough money, but still, it just seems weird.

Kevin: Yeah. What I would say is based on our research if we were serving the amount of video that people were paying to view where we would have to start paying license fees, the fees seem fair, they don’t seem generous, they seem fair.

Patrick: And then if you could go with another standard save that money, and don’t tip your hand here or whatever, but would that be something feasible for you to look into, would it be worth it?

Kevin: It’s an interesting thought exercise. Let’s take a step back here, let’s talk about Blu-ray for a second because Blu-ray as a media format, you know, the fancy new discs you can buy to watch HD video in your home theatre, Blu-ray is also based on H.264, the video that is encoded on your Blu-ray disc is also an H.264 format. And a lot of people are paying licensing fees around Blu-ray technology; if you want to put out a Blu-ray player you have to pay a licensing fee for the decoder because you are providing that decoder as a commercial product to decode H.264 video, so the people who make your Blu-ray player are paying a license fee. Also the people who make each of your Blu-ray discs are also paying a license fee because they are putting out commercial content that is encoded in that format. And so the MPEG-LA is cashing in on both sides of that equation. But I don’t think as consumers we are that uncomfortable with that because we see Blu-ray discs as a commercial product, Blu-ray is not a medium for free communication; at least we don’t see it that way currently.

Patrick: Right, that’s a good point.

Kevin: Whereas, you know, if someone were to say that they own the licensing fees on paper— Paper, it’s a technology, it’s been around a bit longer than Blu-ray, it’s probably not quite as complex as Blu-ray to explain how you make paper, but at one time someone maybe did come up with some innovation in paper technology and —

Patrick: Thicker paper.

Kevin: Thicker paper, decorative embossed paper, whatever it might be, and if they owned the patents on that and they suddenly said everyone who A) produces paper to be bought in stores needs to pay us a license fee, would we be okay with that? And, B) anyone who writes on paper and then sells that written-on-paper as a product also needs to pay a licensing fee, would we be okay with that? Paper is thought a lot more as a medium for free expression in the world, and so I don’t think people would be that excited about a new paper technology that required licensing fees to be paid on both sides of the equation. So where on that spectrum does the Web fit?

Patrick: I think it fits in the spectrum of paper to a lot of people. Now, you know, I don’t know if that’s fair. I think if we see something where there’s, let’s say, a standard where there’s people working on it, it’s a business, right, they’re employing people to work on that standard. I think it becomes a little more understandable. I think if you go to the MPEG-LA website they’re the leader in patent pools (laughs), so I mean just by that, there’s nothing against that, it’s a business and it’s fine, there’s publishing companies that go and buy the rights to old music to profit off it now, that’s perfectly fine, but I don’t know, it just seems weird to be a standard affiliated with a patent pool, I don’t know, it just seems weird to me. But then again maybe I don’t understand enough to make a clear distinction there.

Brad: See, and I think that’s kind of the mindset of just the Internet in general is most people assume everything is free, and I think actually we had one of the listeners comment about –

Patrick: That’s not me, Brad, I’ll tell you. That’s not me but I understand your point.

Brad: No, that’s not you, Patrick, definitely; but we had one of our listeners that commented and he made the point that he’s never paid for anything on the Internet, period, his whole life. And I think a lot of people have that same mindset that, hey, if I can get to it on the Internet it should be free. Whereas there’s this other mindset that it’s a business, everyone’s out there to make money, and to make money you have to have patents and things like this and paywalls to watch those videos, so if I have half a million people paying me to watch a video somewhere I should probably be paying somebody for that technology.

Patrick: That’s a good point.

Kevin: It may not be you, Patrick, but I think it is the W3C; the W3C has drawn a line in the sand, they have a patent policy that basically says if a technology is not patent free or licensed royalty free for use on the Web without restrictions then it cannot be a core part of the Web. And so I think despite this latest news on H.264 we won’t be seeing the HTML5 spec updated to endorse H.264 as the de facto format, I think we’re going to stick with HTML5 video as a tag that can list whatever video formats you want, but there is no recommended format. I think WebM has still got the edge, WebM inasmuch as it holds up to scrutiny as a patent free technology may yet make it into the HTML5 standard, but pragmatically H.264 seems like it will continue to be and has cemented its leadership as the format that people actually use whatever the HTML5 spec says. This is a meaty area, listeners, and I would really love to hear what your thoughts are on it: is the Web paper or is the Web Blu-ray? Does the Web have to be free or have we gotten to the point where people making money off the Web need to pitch in a bit? And there’s been plenty going on in the comments feed, Patrick?

Patrick: There has and we’re going to highlight a couple comments real quick right now. The first comes from Chris Trinkiewicz who commented on Google Wave and its impending demise. He says that he thinks, it’s a bit of an understatement to say that Wave was just a collaboration tool and the ability to link Wave was huge for him. He also viewed the tool as easily being the next RSS generation as well. He also commented on the JQuery part of our last group show saying that “JQuery isn’t too thin in size and integrating mobile support could very well influence a project in a bad way.”

Another comment we received was from Joaquin who commented about Wave as well. He said that it was “really hyped but just badly explained.” He said his Twitter feed, for example, “is mostly normal people, not geeks, and they thought it was meant to compete with Facebook or Twitter or some other social networking site, and of course it failed at that.” He says he wanted it “to succeed if only for the reason of not having to remember to reply to all, man, I hate that feature in email,” he says.

Kevin: I’m loving our comments feed at the moment. Please, listeners, do contribute because we read every single comment and, yeah, we love hearing your thoughts on this stuff.

Let’s finish off with our host spotlights, guys, Brad what have you got for us?

Brad: I have a fun website that’s actually released by Google, and they’ve partnered up with the band Arcade Fire, and essentially what the site is, it’s called The Wilderness Downtown, and it’s basically like a showcase of what you can do with HTML5.

Kevin: Yeah, I saw this too and I love this.

Brad: This is really cool; I watched the whole thing through, so the website is actually chromeexperiments.com, and then the very first experiment will, if you click the launch experiment button, will open up The Arcade Fire, The Wilderness Downtown. And I don’t want to spoil it too much, but essentially it will ask for your home town and then it will start up this music video that opens up multiple different windows and closes windows throughout the video kind of making it a little bit more, I don’t know if I would say like 3D, but a little bit more interactive I guess. But it’s pretty wild and then it also integrates your hometown via the Google Maps and things like that, so it’s definitely interesting.

Kevin: Oh, I didn’t even realize! I watched the whole thing and now that I think about it those streets did look really familiar! (Laughs)

Brad: Is that my car? (Laughs) It takes about a minute into the video before it starts showing the home town stuff, but then all of a sudden it will integrate and show the satellite imagery, it will show streetview shots as this person’s walking through the streets, it’s pretty wild to actually see it because it looks like the video was shot in your home town. So it’s a really cool demonstration of HTML5 and kind of connecting with some different Google features, so I’d definitely give it a spin.

Kevin: The music is good too, I’m a big fan of The Arcade Fire and this is one of their best songs. It really is like a — it’s like watching a music video played out through browser windows, and at times there are six windows on your screen playing different clips of video and there’s interactive bits as well, I don’t want to spoil the surprise because this thing is full of surprises, but be sure to move your mouse near the birds because fun things happen. Yeah, but the thing is when you first load this up it took for me about a minute to preload, and at the same time it’s showing messages like “This experiment is processor intensive, please close down other apps on your computer for the best possible experience.” And you’re like, whoa, it’s been a long time since a website has asked me to close down other applications because it’s going to be too processor intensive. And sure enough it did spike my CPU to 100% while it was running. And I think a lot of that has to do with the stuff they’re doing with Canvas, and this goes into my pick this week, my spotlight, which is Tips and Tricks for Better HTML5 Canvas Animations. This comes to us via Webmonkey but it’s a nice blog post written by Hakim el Hattab who has a list of tips or practical discoveries he made while working on a Canvas experiment, very much or similar in technological underpinnings to what we’re seeing with this Arcade Fire experiment. And he’s discovered, this is something we talked about a bit before, but he’s discovered that getting decent performance out of this technology is not trivial, and if you do things the obvious way often that’s the slow way. And I think Google is just having to do things the slow way because they’re trying to pull off so much in their demo, but especially the biggest one is manipulating bitmaps, so if you take an image, say a Google Maps image of your home town, and you want to manipulate it and display it skewed, say so it looks like it’s in 3D and someone’s running down that street of your home town, that kind of thing is really going to slow down current browsers because manipulating bitmaps in that way is just not a very optimized process at the moment in HTML5 <canvas> tags. So he’s got a whole list of things that you should do or shouldn’t do if you want to keep your experimental animations performing nicely, I’m not sure Google would be able to do all the things he suggests, but if you’re thinking of using Canvas on your site it’s definitely worth spending the ten minutes to read through this because it might save you some painful performance problems down the line.

Patrick: And my host spotlight is an article at theoatmeal.com, I have to warn you it’s not work friendly, there’s a lot of vulgarity in there, so you know you’ve been warned. The article is called, or the comic really is called, “Why Working from Home is Both Awesome and Horrible”. And I work from home and I know Kevin’s worked from home, Brad works from home, so we all kind of can sympathize with this. I would like to think that my own life isn’t as bad or as good, let’s say, as this article explains, but if you do work from home or you have you’ll certainly be able to get something out of it.

Kevin: And that’s our show for this week. Just before we go I’d like to direct your attention to the .net Awards where the SitePoint Podcast is nominated for the Best Podcast of the Year. We’re in good company in the list but it is great to be on that list. And listeners if you enjoy what we do here every single week please do drop by thenetawards.com to vote on the .Net Magazine Awards for 2010, you have until October 12th which is when voting ends, and yes, please do consider us for category 6, Podcast of the Year.

Let’s go around the table guys. Who are you?

Brad: Sure, and just a quick plug: I will actually be speaking at WordCamp Mid-atlantic, which is in Baltimore on September 11th, so if you’re in the area and you want to come to a really fun WordPress event, be sure to track me down. You can check out my blog, strangework.com and on Twitter @williamsba.

Patrick: I’m Patrick O’Keefe for the iFroggy Network, ifroggy.com, I’m on Twitter @ifroggy.

Kevin: Visit us at sitepoint.com/podcast to leave comments on this show and to subscribe to receive every show automatically. You can follow me on Twitter @sentience, and follow SitePoint @sitepointdotcom.

The SitePoint Podcast is produced by Carl Longnecker, and I’m Kevin Yank, thanks for listening and please do vote!

Theme music by Mike Mella.

Thanks for listening! Feel free to let us know how we’re doing, or to continue the discussion, using the comments field below.

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Dollar ReDe$ign Project

Fri, 09/03/2010 - 11:19

The Dollar ReDe$ign Project is an open submissions project organized by New York designer Richard Smith to rebrand the US dollar. The concept behind the project is “that the ‘only’ realistic way for a swift economic recovery is through a thorough, in-depth, rebranding scheme – starting with the redesign of the iconic US Dollar.” Designers from all over the world have responded to the call and as is the case with many design competitions the quality ranges from the ridiculous to the sublime.

Looking through some of the entries, it’s a case of goodbye greenback, hello purpleback, yellowback, and redback. Here’s a selection of submissions from 2010.

“Music Man” by Fabiano Pinel. “Each Dollar bill would represent a genuinely American music genre, such as Blues, Jazz, Soul, Country, RAP and Rock’n'Roll.”

“The future is now” by Jon Stefaniak. “So naturally I turned to Old Glory for inspiration, only to find an instantly recognizable color trio, the good ol’ red, white and blue.”

“Money Maker” by Lee Willet. “The characters on the bills represent a diverse array of Americans who made significant contributions to the development of our country.”

“Creed or Greed” by Jonathon Miller. “I used the official American creed on all the bills. I think it is a good reminder of what this nation is all about.”

“American Icons” by Matus Benza. “When I was redesigning the American bank notes, I wanted to create a series of 21st Century, very sleek, modern-looking banknotes, which would not resemble Monopoly money or supermarket coupons.”

“Girl Power” by Magen Farrar. “”Despite representing half the human population, women have been struggling with discrimination and suppression for far too long. I wanted to take this opportunity to commemorate some of the most influential American women of the 20th century – Amelia Earhart, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Rosa Parks, Eleanor Roosevelt, Marilyn Monroe and Maya Angelou.”

“Relative Value” by Duncan Dowling. “We have kept the width the same as the existing dollars. However we have changed the size of the note so that the one dollar is shorter and the 100 dollar is the longest. When stacked on top of each other it is easy to see how much money you have.”

“Tea Time” by Vincent Kettering set beautifully in Comic Sans type.

You can enter your own design here and can see all of the submissions here and vote for your favorite one here.

On a related note, there is an interesting article here on The Atlantic web site in which Pentagram designer Michael Bierut discusses the best and worst currency designs from around the world.

What do you think of the designs featured here? Would any of them make a good US Dollar design?

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Five Signs that You’re Ready to Freelance Full-time

Thu, 09/02/2010 - 13:37

Are you ready to start freelancing full-time?

There’s no magic formula for freelancing readiness. The point at which each person feels ready is different, and will depend on their lifestyle, goals, discipline, and target market, as well as a myriad of other factors.

There are, however, indicators that can suggest you might be in a good position to strike out and do your own thing. These five factors were the signs that told me I was ready to try freelancing full time.

1. You have more work than you can handle … and you’re thrilled about it.

We all have busy periods. But if you’re staring down the barrel of an ongoing busy period that will see you working so hard that you’re thinking of outsourcing some work, taking leave from your day job, or somehow injecting another eight hours into every day — and these thoughts inspire and excite you — then you might be in a good position to start freelancing full time.

The question you’ll want to answer, though, is how long this busy period will last. Landing a big job won’t necessarily justify leaving your paid job, but if you have more work on the not-too-distant horizon, and feel confident it’ll eventuate, full-time freelancing might look more like a viable option and less like a pipe dream.

2. You can’t see how you can achieve your life and/or career goals while in salaried employment.

Some people simply itch to run their own businesses. Others long passionately for the freedom to work the hours they choose in an environment they choose. Some daredevils feel a burning desire to buck the trend and break with the usual working conventions.

If you’re one of these people — if you do not believe that salaried employment will allow you to fulfill your dreams or, alternatively, you believe it will actively prevent you from achieving those objectives — you may be ready to look seriously at alternatives like going it alone.

3. When you think of freelancing full time, you feel secure.

Security is a relative concept, and its definition varies from person to person. Some see security as a roof over their heads and a buffer in the bank; others believe it’s about family and friends; still others see it as self-belief or education or talent.

Obviously, making a big life or career change is likely to put you on your mettle. Just thinking about it might send adrenaline through your system and set your mind racing. But is that excitement the product of dread or enthusiasm? As you launch yourself into full-time freelancing, you may well feel nervous about getting enough work, paying the bills, and keeping your clients happy. All of us face those kinds of questions.

The things you don’t want to have to worry about are imminent financial issues, relationship problems, health worries, and so on. These kinds of issues are the things that can, ultimately, cause you to throw in the towel when the freelancing fight is barely begun. If you feel secure in yourself and your life in a broader sense, you’ll be more likely to be able to cope with the stresses and concerns you’ll undoubtedly feel as you find your feet as a full-time freelancer.

4. You’ve talked it over with the people who matter.

The people who matter aren’t just your loved ones, or those who will bear the brunt of any impacts that your career change has on your broader life — though of course you’ll be talking your plans over with them! But perhaps you’ll also want to talk to your clients, peers, and freelancing friends. Perhaps you’ll also decide to discuss your plans with your bank manager, financial planner or accountant.

The people who matter include anyone whose opinion or advice is valuable to you. While I’m not saying that you should only go out on your own if others give you ‘permission’, trusted advisors can give you insights, suggestions, and help that can make the transition smoother and more successful than if you make the decision in a vacuum. If you’ve talked to the people who matter, and their advice has cemented your belief that you can succeed as a full-time freelancer, you may be in a good position to get started.

5. You feel ready.

No one has reliable secrets for freelance success. No one can say whether you’ll truly enjoy full-time freelancing — enough to stick at it through the tough times and make a success of your adventures. No one knows what’s in store for your future, and whether freelancing will remain compatible with the turns your life takes.

But if you feel wholly ready to try full-time freelancing, it won’t matter: you’ll want to give it your best shot. Whether your freelance career lasts five weeks or fifty years, you’ll know that you gave it everything you could, without hesitation, doubt, or half-heartedness. And while I can’t guarantee you won’t have any regrets, I’m pretty sure that, whatever happens, you’ll know you embarked on full-time freelancing wholeheartedly, for the right reasons.

These were the key signs that told me I was ready to try freelancing full time. What other indicators would you look for?

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iPhone Basics: Memory Management

Thu, 09/02/2010 - 07:57

One of the biggest sources of confusion for new iPhone developers is memory management. If you’re accustomed to using convenient, garbage-collected scripting languages, you may be wondering why memory management is even necessary. Although Cocoa does support garbage collection, it was deemed too great an overhead for a phone platform. Therefore, it’s important for developers to know how to allocate and release objects correctly.

By following some simple guidelines, you can avoid the majority of memory management problems.

1. If you allocate an object, you should release it once you’re done.

When you allocate an object, you “own” that object, and you’re responsible for releasing it when you’ve finished using it:

Widget* widget = [[Widget alloc] init]; // Do something with widget... [widget release];

You can think of release as saying relinquish ownership of this object, rather than destroy this object. Behind the scenes, Cocoa performs reference counting to keep track of ownership. If no one claims ownership, the object will be destroyed, and the memory it occupied will be reclaimed.

2. If you did not allocate an object directly, you should not release it.

Once you get the hang of release, it’s tempting to go around releasing objects when you shouldn’t. A common example is when you’re using factory methods:

NSString* label = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"Title: %@", widget.title); // Do something with label [label release] // Whoops, incorrect.

In this example, a new string object has been created, but we didn’t allocate it, and we don’t own it. Therefore, we must not call release here — doing so can cause an over-release, which can crash your app.

tip: How is this object released?

Behind the scenes, NSString has called autorelease on the string before returning it, which we’ll look at in a moment.

3. If you need an object, you should retain it (and release it when you’re done).

This rule applies when we receive an object that’s been created by someone else. For example, consider a setter method:

- (void)setName:(NSString*)newName; { [newName retain]; // we need the new string object. [name release]; // we don't need the old string any more. name = newName; }

retain signals that we claim ownership of the object; it will not be destroyed when the original owner releases it. But, now that we own the object, we must release it when we no longer need it. Under the hood, retain and release update the reference count of the object, incrementing and decrementing respectively.

Following this pattern simplifies memory management a great deal. When passing an object to a method, we can assume it will be retained (if necessary) and we can release it immediately afterwards:

UIButton* button = [[UIButton alloc] initWithFrame:myFrame]; [self.view addSubview:button] // Here we can assume that view // has retained button, [button release] // we can safely release it.

Another common example arises when we use collection objects, which retain the objects added to them:

NSMutableArray* widgetList = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; // ... Widget* widget = [[Widget alloc] init]; [widgetList addObject:widget]; // retains widget [widget release]; // we can release widget //... [widgetList release] // objects in collection will be released.

4. If you create an object and don’t retain control of it, use autorelease.

Say you want to create your own factory method for Widget. Here, we create a new Widget object and return it from a class method:

+ (Widget*)createBetterWidget { Widget* widget = [[Widget alloc] init]; [widget setAwesome:11]; return [widget autorelease]; }

We’re still responsible for releasing the object, so we call autorelease before returning it. autorelease signals that the object should be released “eventually.” The object is added to a pool that’s cleared at the end of an application run loop.

It may seem tempting to autorelease everything as a solution for memory management, however this is not recommended, as it’s possible for your app to run out of memory before the autorelease pool is drained.

The best approach is to take a simple, unambiguous approach to allocating and releasing objects. Follow these simple rules and you’ll be well on the way to creating bug-free and efficient code.

For in-depth coverage of these topics, the Apple Memory Management Programming Guide is essential reading for new developers.

Image credit: Dezeen

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Are You Strategic?

Wed, 09/01/2010 - 18:30

Did you know that September is International Strategic Thinking Month? That alone might not mean much to you, but what if I told you that thinking strategically can make you more confident, improve your leadership skills, help you problem-solve, and give you the tools you need to make better decisions? Not a bad deal, right?

Strategic thinking is the process of gathering information, analyzing the data and the impact it could have on you and others, and planning to act in a deliberate and measured way. Many of us already think strategically in different aspects of our lives without consciously doing it, but once you put your intent behind the thought process it could be even more effective.

Measures of Strategic Thinking

Here are a few common traits, characteristics and capabilities common among effective strategic thinkers to help you identify areas where you can improve.

Flexible Thinking – You can shift and change your thought pattern to accommodate new ideas.
Active Listening – You successfully listen to what others are saying and are able to interpret the meaning behind their words.
Big Picture Focus - You frequently step outside your immediate situation to analyze how action (or inaction) will impact you, your business, your colleagues, your clients, or anyone else…now and in the future.
Clear Objectives - You take time to identify your objectives before beginning the data gathering and analysis stage.
Trend Recognition - You are able to notice recurring patterns and underlying themes, even in what seems to be unrelated topics.
Creative Problem-Solving – You gather information, sort, categorize, connect and use the resulting information to creatively solve problems.
Self-Challenging - You play devil’s advocate and challenge your own ideas and assumptions to gain further clarity.
Prioritization – You can rank data gathered by determining what’s critical and what’s irrelevant.
Objective Assessment - You wait to make decisions until you’ve analyzed the advantages, disadvantages and consequences, and fully understand any necessary trade-offs.

Developing Your Ability to Think Strategically

If you’re generally analytical, curious and open to new ideas, you already have the makings of a powerful strategic thinker, and it won’t be a stretch to fine-tune your strategic thinking skills even more.

Strategic thinking can be taught and developed. You can improve your ability to think strategically by forming habits that will make the process easier. Some of these habits include:

Avoiding knee-jerk reactions; don’t act until you have all of the facts.
Allowing your creativity to come through in your thoughts and actions.
Trusting in your intuition and “gut” feelings.
Being willing to take a chance and accept a new point of view.
Connecting with others, valuing their perspectives and listening well.
Broadening your knowledge of all areas related to the topic.
Tracking your thought process so you can measure effectiveness and areas for improvement.

Your Turn to Weigh In

Do you consider yourself a strategic thinker? I do, but there are a few strategic thinking capabilities that I need to work extra hard to incorporate into my thought process. I find, for example, that the self-challenge element always takes a little extra work on my part. It usually results in a better and more well-rounded process, so it’s worth the extra effort.

Which of the strategic thinking characteristics outlined do you struggle with the most?

How have you benefited from strategic thinking?

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H.264 Is Royalty-Free: Will it Become the HTML5 Video Standard?

Wed, 09/01/2010 - 18:18

MPEG LA, the group that licenses the H.264/AVC codec, has announced that web streaming of video files encoded using the format is free. The group had previously stated it would remain royalty-free until 2016, but that deadline has been lifted. MPEG LA have not given specific reasons for the change, but the arrival of free codecs such as WebM would have influenced their decision.

The big question: how will this affect HTML5 video?

Although the HTML5 specification includes a <video> tag for native browser playback, it doesn’t specify a codec…

Google, Mozilla and Opera support Ogg Theora, Ogg Vorbis and are introducing WebM in new builds. They had refused to support H.264 because the patent could have imposed licensing fees for the vendor or users.
Apple’s Safari browser uses any codec supported by Quicktime, but H.264 is the most common format. Their mobile devices include H.264 hardware decoding to ensure video playback remains smooth. Apple is the only vendor yet to embrace WebM — it should work on a Mac with the codec installed, but it won’t work on their mobile devices.
Microsoft IE9 supports H.264 and any codec installed on the user’s PC. That includes WebM, but it won’t be distributed with Windows or the browser.

The codec chaos affects web developers wanting to adopt native video. To ensure cross-browser video playback, you must encode clips in three formats: Ogg Theora/Vorbis (or eventually WebM), MP4 H.264 and Flash video for older browsers.

Until now, I expected WebM to become the ’standard’ HTML5 video codec. Apple would have stood alone as the only vendor without support for the format, but iPhone and iPad users don’t have Flash — they are already used to a video-less web.

But could the MPEG LA announcement flip the industry on it’s head? Are Mozilla and Opera free to add H.264 support? Google may be backing WebM but there are few reasons to prevent them adding H.264 to Chrome. Would H.264 finally become the single most reliable HTML5 video format?

Perhaps I’m being cynical, but I doubt it. H.264 only remains free at the point of delivery — when you’re viewing a video. The initial encoding, server technology, and browser decoding software incur a royalty payment to MPEG LA. Even if a vendor pays for the decoder, H.264 could not be implemented directly within an open source product because the source must be freely available to anyone. Licensing issues arise for Mozilla Firefox, Google Chromium and Linux distributions.

By contrast, manufacturers can add WebM to video encoding software, server solutions, operating systems and browsers without restrictions or royalty payments. Assuming it’s easy to install the codec on Windows, a significant proportion of web users should be able to view WebM videos by this time next year.

Web developers don’t want to waste time, money and bandwidth supporting multiple video formats. While I welcome the H.264 announcement, the license probably remains too restrictive for the open web. WebM has potential, but support will remain patchy for many months. If you only want to encode your video once, there’s only one technology which currently offers reliable video playback in most browsers — Flash.

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7 Ways to Keep It Together With Work When You’re Sick

Tue, 08/31/2010 - 21:41

Yesterday, I wrote about how to build and sustain momentum in your business. One of the worst things that can happen to cause you to lose momentum is getting sick. And the most frustrating part is, even if you take care of yourself and try to avoid illness, you don’t have complete control over the situation.

As the seasons start to cool off here in the northern hemisphere (soon, I hope!), everyone starts to feel a little off. It may be just a sniffle, or it could be a full blown cold or even the flu. If you’re on the unfortunate end of the spectrum, what can you do when you’re smacked upside the head with a nasty cold that strips away all of the momentum you had working for you? Here are some ideas.

Ditch Your Task List

One of the worst things you can do when you’re sick is look at a long list of your responsibilities and know that there’s no way you’re going to be able to tackle them today. This results in added stress and anxiety that doesn’t get anything accomplished and can make you feel worse in the process. Pull out only the most urgent of your tasks and tuck the rest away until tomorrow.

Pick One and Push Through

From the short list of your most important priorities, pick one. Just one. It’s always much easier to face one important thing than a handful. Focus on the one most important task and ignore everything else until you’re finished. Then take a break and come back later if you feel up to it and pick one more. Breaking it down into small chunks can help you maximize the time you spend working and not get locked into a marathon work session.

Dumb It Down

If you don’t feel up to tackling anything major, but want to stay productive, it may be a good time to focus on the minor routine tasks on your list. Anything that doesn’t require a lot of thought or analysis is probably a good candidate for a light work day.

Keep Everyone in the Loop

As you’re modifying your work day to accommodate some extra rest, make sure you keep everyone who needs to know in the loop. This is especially important if deadlines will need to be adjusted or meetings rescheduled.

Pass It On

If there is a lot of work that needs to get done and you just feel like you can’t handle it, it’s a good time to call in reinforcements. Reach out to colleagues you have outsourced to, collaborated with, or even peers you’ve networked with socially. You may be surprised how willing your peers will be to jump in and lend a hand when you need it.

Institute Your Sick Day Plan

If you have a solid business continuity plan established, you probably already have a plan for handling sickness — a team to reach out to, a process for communicating with clients, a plan for making up lost time. If you don’t have a plan that covers minor emergencies, you may want to add this to your list to tackle once you’re well and fully back to work in preparation for the next time you get bit by the sick bug.

Call It a Day

Once you’ve completed your most important work, contacted everyone who needed an update and assigned the rest out, it’s time to get away from the computer. Pushing yourself to continue working when you’re sick rarely accomplishes anything except potentially making the illness linger or come back in a few days with a vengeance. Make sure you take time to get well.

What do you do when you’re sick, but the show must go on?

Image credit: Egahen

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Save The United Airlines Iconic Tulip

Tue, 08/31/2010 - 16:00

A Facebook page has been set up by a group of lovers of United Airlines tulip logo in a bid to save it from obliteration in favor of a “mash up” of Continental Airline’s blue and gold globe logo. Continental and United are merging and the airline’s CEO’s have reached an agreement to place Continental’s stylized globe logo and blue color scheme on all jets operated by the new United. After the merger United will be one of the world’s largest airlines, but the tulip will be gone.

The new merged logo

Current United Airlines Logo

The Tulip

A short history of the tulip appears on the Facebook page:

The tulip was designed for United in 1974 by graphic designer Saul Bass. Saul Bass created other famous trademarks as well, such as the AT&T world and even Continental’s old logo, the Jet Stream Globe (which was replaced in 1991 with Continental’s current look). It has graced United’s planes through three different livery designs during this time. Before the tulip, United’s logo was a red, white, and blue shield since 1936.

A short visual history of the United Airlines logo. Image from the Save the United Airlines Tulip Facebook Page

Continental’s most recent blue and gold logo was designed by Dutch designer Roger van den Bergh of Oonama Design. Other identity work by van den Bergh includes Shandong Airlines, Daewoo Motors, Midwest Airlines, Eos Airlines, The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, and the Boeing Company.

Funnily enough, an early version of the Continental logo was also designed by Saul Bass.

The new merged logo will appear on all aircraft

How do you feel about the change from Tulip to Globe? Does it make much difference to the overall branding of the newly merged airline?

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How to Roll Your Own JavaScript Compressor with PHP and the Closure Compiler

Tue, 08/31/2010 - 10:21

In my previous post, I discussed the Closure Compiler’s REST API. In this article, we’ll develop a small PHP program that shows how the API can be used to compress JavaScript code whenever you need it.

Why write your own system?

You’ll find that several free tools handle this task; one of the first PHP JavaScript compressors was written by Ed Eliot. Sometimes, however, they require technologies you don’t use — such as Java — or may not cater for internal workflow processes, including:

distributing uncompressed JavaScript to developer PCs
integration with source control systems
automating your build, and so on

Important: This is not production-level code!

The code below implements a rudimentary JavaScript compressor in PHP to illustrate the basics. The code calls the Closure Compiler compression API every time a request is made, so it’s likely to be slower than multiple uncompressed JavaScript files. You should add your own functions to handle caching to a file or database.

The HTML

Assume you normally include the following script tags at the bottom of your HTML:

We’ll replace this block with a single script tag that references all three files.
The .js is removed and the file names are separated with an ampersand:

We now require an index.php file within our script folder. The first code block transforms the GET parameters into an array (file1, file2, file3) and initializes the variables:

<?php // fetch JavaScript files to compress $jsfiles = array_keys($_GET); $js = ''; // code to compress $jscomp = ''; // compressed JS $err = ''; // error string

We now loop through the JS files, read the content, and append it to the $js string. If a file is unable to be found or read, its name is appended to the $err string:

// fetch JavaScript files for ($i = 0, $j = count($jsfiles); $i < $j; $i++) { $fn = $jsfiles[$i] . '.js'; $jscode = @file_get_contents($fn); if ($jscode !== false) { $js .= $jscode . "\n"; } else { $err .= $fn . '; '; } }

If any files are missing, we can generate a JavaScript alert to inform the developer:

if ($err != '') { // error: missing files $jscomp = "alert('The following JavaScript files could not be read:\\n$err');"; }

If there are no errors and we have some JavaScript code, we can proceed with the compression. The $apiArgs array contains a list of Closure Compiler API options — you can add, remove, or modify these as necessary. The arguments are encoded and appended to the $args string:

else if ($js != '') { // REST API arguments $apiArgs = array( 'compilation_level'=>'ADVANCED_OPTIMIZATIONS', 'output_format' => 'text', 'output_info' => 'compiled_code' ); $args = 'js_code=' . urlencode($js); foreach ($apiArgs as $key => $value) { $args .= '&' . $key .'='. urlencode($value); }

We can now call the Closure Compiler API using PHP’s cURL library. The compressed JavaScript is returned to the $jscomp string:

// API call using cURL $call = curl_init(); curl_setopt_array($call, array( CURLOPT_URL => 'http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/compile', CURLOPT_POST => 1, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS => $args, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER => 1, CURLOPT_HEADER => 0, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION => 0 )); $jscomp = curl_exec($call); curl_close($call);

Finally, we return our compressed code to the browser with the appropriate MIME type:

} // output content header('Content-type: text/javascript'); echo $jscomp; ?> Download the Code

Save yourself some typing and download the example code. It includes a small JavaScript library shrunk to a third of its original size, and incurs fewer HTTP requests.

Over to You …

You can now adapt this basic code to implement features such as:

Error handling — Your code should check for API call failures or compression problems reported by the Closure Compiler.
Caching — Once you have the compressed code you can save it to a file, so there’s no need to repeatedly call the API. You could compare creation dates to check whether a JavaScript file has changed since it was last cached.
Browser caching — HTTP expiry headers can be set so that compressed JavaScript files are cached by the browser indefinitely. You could add a "last-updated" argument to the script tag URL to ensure more recent code is always loaded.
JavaScript code reports — The Closure Compiler API can be used to highlight problems not reported by browser parsers; for example, unused variables or a comma after the final item in an array.
Build processes — Your system could distribute uncompressed JavaScript code to a developer and compressed code to everyone else.

I hope you find it useful. Will you use the Closure Compiler API to automate your JavaScript compression processes? Respond via the blog entry link below.

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How to Build Momentum in Your Business

Mon, 08/30/2010 - 23:18

Momentum can be powerful, whether it’s about knocking out your to-dos for the day, making progress on your long-term goals, or just developing an ongoing sense of achievement. It’s also a great way to prevent falling into and getting stuck in a rut.

Here are a few of my favorite ways to build momentum when I’m starting to feel a bit sluggish with my work.

Shake Up Your Goals

I get bored easily, so I typically have a few personal projects in the works at any given time to keep things interesting. When I start to feel a little under-challenged, I’ll take a break from my everyday goals and go for something entirely new and different, something I’ve never done before. This can be extremely motivating, not only for the new project, but that motivation can continue when I move back to my normal activities.

Take Care of Yourself

Burning out is a sure way to lose your fire and momentum. As soon as I see the signs of burnout, I know it’s time for break. I’ll schedule a day off, a short weekend away, some extra sleep, or anything that gives me enough out-of-office time to regroup, recharge and get excited about work again.

Look at Your Brag Wall

Do you keep a mental or even physical list of your accomplishments? If not, you should! A quick cure for feeling blah with your work is reminding yourself of some of the big wins you’ve experienced in the past. It’s a great way to remind yourself what you’re capable of.

Boost Your Adrenaline

No, I’m not talking about downing a caffeine drink. I mean natural adrenaline. For me this means going for a run, listening to some music or mentally psyching myself up. Then I give myself a short burst of dedicated work time with as few interruptions as possible. I’m always amazed how much I get done in the chunk of time when I’m working on the heels of an adrenaline boost.

Go for a Change of Scenery

It may seem silly, but I can often reinvigorate my work routine and build momentum by changing my workspace for a day or two. I may leave the house, go to a different room or even work outside to add some variety.

tip: Warning: Motion is Not the Same as Momentum

Don’t confuse motion with momentum. Moving for the sake of moving isn’t necessarily going to help you build and sustain momentum. Keep a targeted focus in mind for all of your momentum-driving activities to ensure you’re really pushing yourself forward and not just spinning your wheels.

Momentum is one of those things that can carry you through the most difficult challenges and keep you going when you’re tempted to throw in the towel. And once you have it, it’s not that hard to keep it going if you give it a little attention from time to time.

What works for you? How do you build and maintain momentum?

Image credit: cienpies

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Easy JavaScript Compression with the Closure Compiler REST API

Mon, 08/30/2010 - 16:11

The days of tiny JavaScript files are long gone. Today’s monolithic web applications contain client-side code running to thousands of lines. Browsers and download speeds may have improved, but optimizing JavaScript has become increasingly important. The techniques adopted by professional developers include:

Placing script tags at the end of the HTML body so the content appears quickly and is not delayed by code loading and execution.
Reducing HTTP requests by merging multiple JavaScript files into one.
Reducing JavaScript file sizes by removing unnecessary whitespace, shortening variable names, and running other optimizations.

There are several JavaScript compression libraries and online tools to help you shrink your code. However, steps 2 and 3 often remain a manual process for many developers.

If you’re fed up with manual JavaScript compression, you’ll be pleased to hear Google’s Closure Compiler recently added a REST API. You can now call a web service to compress JavaScript — there’s no code to install or maintain.

The API makes it easy for developers to create their own JavaScript merging and compression system. For example, you could:

generate reports highlighting code errors and warnings. The API can check for problems which are not normally reported by browsers such as unused variables or a comma after the final item in an array.
distribute uncompressed code to application developers
compress code for testers and end users
implement version control mechanisms
integrate compression into your build when updating the live system.

Not sure where to start? Read my next post — How to Roll Your Own JavaScript Compressor with PHP and the Closure Compiler…

For more information, refer to:

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Use Channels To Create A Silhouette In Photoshop

Mon, 08/30/2010 - 11:39

In recent times silhouettes have been associated with the Apple iPod ads, but they have been used as an eyecatching graphic design device for years in everything from logos to poster design. This tutorial is in two parts, the first part is how to select the object you want to make a silhouette from using Channels, the second part is how to create that silhouette and add a color layer.

1. Open an image that contains an object that you want to turn into a silhouette. I’m using an image of a cute little kiwi by mmgallen which is free to download from Stock Xchng.

2. Open the Channel panel and click through each Channel (Red, Green and Blue) to see where the kiwi appears darkest. Usually this is the blue channel.

3. Duplicate the blue channel by Right-Clicking (PC) or Ctrl-clicking (Mac) the channel in the Channels panel and select Duplicate Channel from the shortcut menu. We’re duplicating it so that any changes we make will not adversely affect the original image. Photoshop puts the duplicate channel at the bottom of your Channels panel and names it “Blue copy.”

4. Choose Image > Adjustments > Levels to adjust the duplicate blue channel’s Levels to make the kiwi black and the background completely white. To make the kiwi darker, in the
Input Levels section of the dialog box, drag the shadows slider (the little black triangle) to the right until the kiwi turns almost black. Don’t close the Levels dialog box yet.

5. Using the white eyedropper on the right side of the dialog box, click on the blue gray background to make it white. This technique is known as “resetting the white point. Click once to select the eyedropper mouse over to your document, and then click a gray part of the background. Keep clicking on different gray areas until the background is white. When you’re finished,
click OK to close the Levels dialog box.

6. If you want to you can easily, touch up the kiwi with black paint and the background with white paint, but you should have a fairly good black and white image now.

7. In the Channels panel, load the duplicate blue channel as a selection by Ctrl-clicking (PC) or -clicking (Mac) the channel’s thumbnail or clicking the “Load channel
as selection” button (the dotted circle) at the bottom of the panel.

This makes a selection around the background of the image, so choose Select > Inverse to make the selection go around your Kiwi instead of the whole document. That completes our selection setup using the Channels. This is a good way to make some fairly intricate selections, note the little hairy bits on the kiwi’s behind which would be quite difficult to select with a selection tool.

9. In the Channels panel, turn on the composite channel (RGB) so you can see the full color version of your image and hide the duplicate blue channel.

10. Add a new layer at the top of your layers stack by clicking the “Create a new layer” button at the bottom of the panel. Then drag the new layer to the top of the layers stack and turn
off the visibility of the original photo layer.

11. Fill your selection with black by choosing Edit > Fill and pick black from the Use popup menu, and then click OK to close the Fill dialog box. Your silhouette is finished. Now you can add any color background you like.

12. At the bottom of your Layers panel and click the Adjustment layer icon. Choose Solid Color from the menu that appears to make Photoshop
open the Color Picker; pick a bright color and then click OK.

13. Drag the new Fill layer below the silhouette layer in the layers stack.

If you want to go back and change the background color simply double-click the Solid Color Fill layer and pick a new color from the resulting Color Picker.

To finish up, I added some text on top of black rectangle.

As a final step you could sharpen the silhouette by using the Unsharp mask. Choose Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Et voila!

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I Love a Good Challenge

Mon, 08/30/2010 - 05:35

This week the focus of the SitePoint community is Facebook. There are a couple of exciting things happening and both of them involve me giving free stuff away to you! It doesn’t get much better than that, right?

The first of the things is the culmination of my first monthly ‘Get To Know Us’ campaign. Those of you that follow us will know that the campaign involved weekly biographies of staff members with a focus on Wordpress and how they specifically use it in their work for SitePoint. We heard from developers Mark Cipolla and Andy White, as well as Creative Director Matt Magain. Right now there are 2 days left if you would like to enter the Wordpress quiz which wraps up the campaign for this month. You have the chance to win a copy of our newest book “Build Your Own Wicked Wordpress Themes.” Next week I’ll be kicking off a new subject – cloud computing.

The second Facebook related thing that’s going on started with a challenge from my colleagues. Every couple of months we have what we call an ‘All In’ meeting. Staff from across the three companies (SitePoint, 99Designs and Flippa) all get together to talk about what we’ve achieved since the last meeting. My workmates have challenged me to pick up 300 new Facebook fans before the next meeting (which is this Friday). In order to do that I am appealing to our current fans to tag us on their walls with something that they love about us. I want your friends to like us too! To show you how much I appreciate your help, I’m giving away one of our orange retro SitePoint t-shirts every day. If you’re keen on getting your hands on one of those shirts (which are no longer available for sale) then jump onto Facebook and help me out!

Anyway, that’s enough on Facebook – I do appreciate that some of you choose not to use it. So let’s look at what’s happening at the forums this week. We have a winner in the August programming competition, and that winner is wwb_99, who knocked together a fantastic PM utility using ASP.NET. So here’s your chance to join me in congratulating Wyatt for a job well done.

We have a new forum in our Content for Your Site section. If you are a Facebook developer or have an interest in learning FBML & FBJS, then our Facebook forum is definitely worth checking out.

If you prefer to be a part of our community via Twitter, then don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten you. My next competition is going to be Twitter based and I’m working on something that should be a bit of fun. Stay tuned for more details.

Last up for this week is that subject that I’ve been teasing you with for way too long now… t-shirts. I am in the final stages of finalising our store and I’ll have something for you any day, I promise!

Hot Topics This Week
Part IV in our series of Photography Principals series of tutorials is out – this time the subject is Focal Length and Angle of View II. If that is something you are interested in, head on over to the Photography forum and check it out.

In the Web Page Design forum the discussion is all about alternatives to Google in terms of analytics and advertising. Do you have anything to share?

In the Apache Configuration forum people are rallying around to help someone with issues with his mod rewrite code.

Do you know your FBML from your HTML? If so, jump on over to our new Facebook forum where the conversation is about Facebook forms.

The last one for this week comes from the Wordpress forum. If you know anything about creating image galleries in Wordpress then check out the thread.

That’s it from me. Have a great week.

Feature image by Chris Roberts from Digital Precision

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SitePoint Podcast #76: Wicked WordPress Themes with Allan Cole and Jeffrey Way

Mon, 08/30/2010 - 04:39

Episode 76 of The SitePoint Podcast is now available! This week, Brad Williams (@williamsba) interviews Allan Cole and Jeffrey Way, two of the four authors of SitePoint’s new book, Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes.

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Play this episode directly in your browser! Just click the orange “play” button below:

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You can also download this episode as a standalone MP3 file. Here’s the link:

SitePoint Podcast #76: Wicked WordPress Themes with Allan Cole and Jeffrey Way (MP3, 1:01:41, 56.5MB)

Subscribe to the Podcast

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Interview Transcript

Brad: August 27, 2010. We’re talking WordPress themes—creating, planning, frameworks, GPL, selling, and more! I’m Brad Williams and this is SitePoint Podcast #76: Wicked WordPress Themes with Allan Cole and Jeffrey Way.

And welcome everybody to the SitePoint Podcast, I’m your host Brad Williams and today I’m flying this plane solo, so strap yourself in and get ready for a fun and possibly bumpy ride. And today I’m actually joined by Allan Cole and Jeffrey Way, two of the four authors of the latest sitepoint.com book, Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes. Allan Cole is the owner of Fthrwght, a Brooklyn New York based development and design company, and Jeffrey Way works for Envato managing the code marketplace called CodeCanyon, and runs a very popular WebDev tutorial site Nettuts+. Welcome to the show guys!

Jeffrey: Hey Brad.

Allan: Hey, how’s it going Brad?

Brad: Great, real good. So before we get into some of the WordPress topics that everyone’s dying to hear about, let’s talk a little bit about how this book came to be. I’m always interested, being an author myself, about how people really kind of get started in having a book published and writing about something they’re passionate about. So how did you guys both become involved in this project in the first place?

Jeffrey: Well, at least for me it actually kind of fell into my lap, I didn’t even have to look for it. I was contacted by Andrew Tetlaw; I think he’s moved on from SitePoint now, but no I guess he was familiar with me through themeforest.net which is a hugely popular theme marketplace, and he emailed me about contributing maybe a couple chapters for actually taking a finished WordPress theme and profiting from it, and you know that’s what I specialize in, running ThemeForest is determining what kind of themes sell and then what themes don’t, and kind of figuring out what is different about this theme as compared to that one. So, he kind of contacted me and I was very interested in it, and I’ve always been impressed by SitePoint and, you know, that’s the extent of it.

Brad: So what about you Allan?

Allan: Louis Simoneau emailed me shortly after I did a WordCamp in San Francisco, and he just contacted me about contributing a few chapters to a SitePoint book and I was definitely interested, and so it’s not too much different I from what happened with Jeffrey where it kind of fell in my lap I guess.

Brad: Now have either of you had experience writing a book prior to this, or was this the first writing endeavor?

Jeffrey: I do some writing for Envato’s publishing branch which is called rockablepress.com, so I’ve written a Photoshop book and I have a book on coding for Tumblr coming out actually in the next couple of weeks. So, yeah, I’ve done that and in addition to running Nettuts where I’m writing these big tutorials every week so, no, I felt pretty comfortable with it.

Allan: Yeah, I haven’t actually done too much writing outside of just the stuff that I blogged about on one of my other WordPress sites, but yeah, nothing too crazy other than mostly just explaining code and explaining how things work and how themes work just through the blog outlet, but that’s really been about it. So this was definitely an interesting challenge for me, but it was a great experience for sure.

Brad: I’ll bet. Now that it’s all said and done would you do it again?

Allan: Oh, surely, surely. Like it was actually, you know, you kind of learn a lot, you’re basically kind of pulling out stuff that’s kind of already in your brain, and so it makes — I feel like I’ve definitely gotten a little bit sharper with a lot of the coding stuff that I ended up talking about in the book itself. So, yeah, just off of the learning experience I think it’s a great thing that I’d definitely love to do again.

Jeffrey: Yeah, absolutely. The greatest thing about writing is that when you have to do it, it forces you to understand what you’re teaching perfectly so you can’t get away with any of that, you know, like “oh this is kind of how it works.”

Brad: (Laughs)

Jeffrey: Or “Here’s the basic idea behind it”; it forces you to know it works because of this, this is what’s happening, and so that’s my favorite thing about writing because you really have to dig in and sink your teeth into some of these concepts and totally understand them, so it’s kind of a learning process yourself when you have to write the book.

Brad: Yeah, using little pieces, hacked pieces of code here and there you just can’t get away with when it’s published material.

Jeffrey: No, you have to dig in. (Laughter)

Brad: Absolutely. So the book’s broken up into eight chapters, and the first one is Introducing WordPress, so why don’t we do that, let’s just dive right into what is WordPress and why should web designers and developers look at WordPress if they’re not currently using it.

Jeffrey: I think basically the biggest reason is because it’s so huge. You know, that seems a little silly but why would you choose a certain framework or a library that doesn’t have huge adoption rate, you know, that would be my main reason for recommending even like in JavaScript a library like jQuery over some of the others is because it’s so much larger the user base is going to be bigger, and that means education is going to be much larger. So you have a larger community, you can learn more from them. That would be my number one reason for recommending WordPress above everything else besides the fact that it’s developed by so many people; just the fact that it’s become so big is a huge reason to choose it.

Allan: Yeah, just to piggyback on that like, it’s huge, it’s a gigantic community, and it’s a great community too, like the people that you meet online and offline that are really involved with WordPress it’s generally like a really good experience like from the WordCamp’s to the various meet-ups that go on all over the world, it’s just a great experience and a great way to learn how to publish yourself and others on the Web. Yeah, so that’s always been my main reason for kind of gravitating towards it, especially in the beginning, like just the huge community of people who — sometimes a little bit tough to get help, but it’s there and if you stick with it you can get to what you need to know. And so, yeah, that part of it is essential for me at least.

Brad: Yeah, just to kind of put a number to that, I mean WordPress 3.0 came out June 17th, so just over two months ago, and it’s already been downloaded over 13 million times which is insane because I believe 2.9, the previous version, wasn’t downloaded that many times already, so it’s already smashed through that within like a few months. So, you’re right, it’s certainly monstrous right now which is great because there’s a vibrant community, there’s great resources like this book out there, and I think that’s only helping WordPress get more popular.

So we understand WordPress is big, everybody loves it, so what advantages does a platform like WordPress have for designers and developers, people out there looking to make a living using WordPress or some other platform? What advantages would WordPress have maybe over the competition?

Jeffrey: You want to go first Allan?

Allan: Sure, well for me when I first started using WordPress I was just coming in mostly as a designer, a front-end designer, I did it— In school I mostly did print design and then when I got out of school I did a lot of, you know, it’s a little bit easier to find jobs that were related to web because it was still fairly, and it is still fairly kind of a new industry. And so when I first got into it just the ease of use I think was the most gravitating thing, outside of the community, or the big support community that’s out there. Just the ease of use and the ease of developing themes, and not really having to deal with too much code. Like for me, you know, coming from a more print background initially I didn’t really want to jump into learning PHP and complex functions and stuff like that; like that wasn’t of interest to me. I knew HTML and I knew CSS, and so I wanted to have something that just gave me the bare minimums, did it well, and then allowed me to expand on it and build on top of it, and WordPress just creates a great platform for doing that.

Jeffrey: Yeah, I’d have to agree. Everyone knows that feeling when you first started working with WordPress where you start building your theme and you realize with 20 lines of code you’ve already built a working theme, it may not look pretty but it works, and that’s such a great feeling when you put 10, 20 lines down and then somehow you already have an index page and you can display full posts, when you know normally by hand you’d have to do pages and pages worth of coding, so that’s such a great feeling. And then the Codex, the documentation’s just insane for WordPress. And you know, again, that’s such a huge thing, and I think a lot of frameworks they don’t take that seriously enough, you know the same thing’s true for, as I said before, with jQuery or even a CodeIgniter or a PHP framework, the documentation is insanely good, and that’s the number one reason why I would choose that over anything else is because with other ones if you don’t exactly know what you’re doing, which none of us do at first, you don’t really have anywhere to turn, but with that Codex it has just every single entry you could ask for.

Brad: And you mentioned creating themes, so why don’t we kind of break it down: what exactly is a theme in WordPress and how does it work exactly?

Jeffrey: A theme is just basically the visuals, how it looks, the way it’s laid out; WordPress is the framework, obviously that takes care of all the backend work of the database access and all of that, and the theme is just the visuals, and that’s what’s great about it is it’s completely separate from the framework, so anyone who knows WordPress knows directly from the dashboard you can easily switch between themes because they’re not dependant upon any specific unique code, it all hooks into WordPress’ function and filters.

Brad: Alright, now that we know we want to use WordPress, everybody uses it, everybody loves it, let’s talk about planning your theme, your first theme. So what advice, and this question actually comes from Andrea Rennick of wptavern.com; what advice would you give to someone looking to design their own themes? Where should they start?

Allan: I always feel like it generally just starts with an idea, and that idea can take a number of different forms, and it is largely based in what you’d like to, I guess, contribute to the Web community, or either your community of network of folks who you’d like to visit the site, or for new folks who might not have any idea who you are but you may have something interesting to contribute. And I think it just starts there, just kind of understanding what you’d like to contribute and put out into the Web or the world really. And then from there there’s just kind of an approach like for me coming from design I’m kind of always backing my, you know, like the many concepts to — just backing them up with design. And so figuring out a way to take what you’d like to contribute and figuring out a way to make that interesting and easy for people to access. And that’s where I think the theming part of it comes in where you are, you know, once you have your idea of what you’d like to contribute or put out into the world using a theme to make that process of on one end you contributing that concept and using the theme to make that part of it easy, and then also on the other end using the theme to make it easy for folks to come in and also absorb that content or that thing that you’d like to contribute. So I generally would start there just figuring out what you would like to talk about or if it’s a client thing what they’re interested in and putting out into the world informing people about. And from there I think the rest just kind of falls in place, the ideas of all of the smaller details of interface and stuff like that just kind of fall into place once you have a good solid idea that you think people will gravitate towards.

Brad: Jeffrey do you want to add anything to that?

Jeffrey: Sure, sure. You know it really just depends on what they’re hoping to get out of it. As Allan said, if you’re building a blog for yourself then you need to figure out what’s your voice, what are you focusing on, how are you going to be different from somebody else? Now if we’re talking about just building your first theme, getting started with WordPress, how would you go about that; I would say pick up our book or just do a Google search for building your first WordPress theme. You wouldn’t believe, there’s dozens upon dozens, I’ve written some myself, you know, building your first WordPress theme I’d say don’t worry about, you know, maybe don’t even worry about the design at all, just figure out exactly what the core functions are, what is the WordPress loop, how does that fit into your code. And you know just take it piece by piece, that’s my big thing that I focus on a lot is stripping out everything that’s not important. So if you’re trying to learn WordPress strip out the JavaScript, strip out the CSS, and just figure out exactly what that one or two or three lines of code do. And then slowly add a little bit more and learn about all the different template files available with WordPress, and then learn about more maybe working with archive pages or creating your own options panels, and then just keep learning more and more, and then eventually you can begin building themes for profit.

Brad: Yeah, now, would either of you recommend starting with say a free or premium theme as kind of a base, or do you think that a new designer or developer getting into WordPress should just open up Notepad and start from scratch? I mean what’s the better starting point for someone who’s just getting involved?

Allan: For me it’s been a lot easier just kind of looking at other people’s code. I think almost the first, actually I don’t even remember the name of the first theme I think that I tweaked; it was one of Ian Stewart’s of ThemeShaper, it was one of his earlier themes, and yeah, just basically cracked it open, looked at the code, figured out what things were generated, because at this point I had no idea what PHP really was, and so I basically just figured out where the — what was generating the HTML and how to change that with the style sheet that was there within the theme file. It’s very much kind of a — I always tell people to get messy and kind of make mistakes and kind of break things a little bit just so you know your way around. Like once you break something and crash your site you’ll know never to do that one thing again, you know. and it’s kind of a thing where you can kind of look at what’s already there and kind of piece together where it fits in with what you’d like to do. Because there’s so many different types of themes that do so many different types of things you can kind of find themes that are fairly similar to what you’d like to do, and take that and then either build on it or strip out the things you don’t need to make it your own. And that’s essentially how I’ve learned most of it myself, and then once you start to come up with ideas that aren’t already out there then you’ll more or less know your way around so you can start to ask the right questions to get the right answers on how to do things that haven’t been done just yet. But, yeah, I definitely suggest just building off of either I think, theme, what is it, Thematic is a really popular one that I use for a lot of my sites, it’s actually a theme framework. Another one is Starkers which is a base theme that’s, I forget the name of the guy who coded that one, but it’s called Starkers and it’s just a very base theme, it doesn’t have any styling or anything other than like the basics, and it just has clean good HTML markup, and you can use that to just kind of play with things and break things and get it to do what you want.

Jeffrey: Yeah, I think I learned about the first Starkers theme from I think Chris Coyier, if you guys know him over at CSS-Tricks, he did a big series on converting a PSD to WordPress, those are so popular. And he kind of introduced Starkers which is just a completely naked theme for WordPress, and that would be what I would recommend because it has everything you need and nothing else so you can just break it down to little chunks, as I said before, and you know then begin to build on and figure out, you know as Allan said, break it and then figure out what doesn’t work and then what not to do again, I think that’s really good advice.

Brad: Yeah, absolutely, and Allan I think you mentioned as a perfect segue into the next topic which is theme frameworks, and I know if you ever mention theme frameworks to someone who is not familiar with what they are it sounds a little intimidating, so why don’t we explain that. What is a theme framework and how does it differ from a standard WordPress theme?

Allan: A theme framework is essentially a souped-up parent theme. And what that means as far as WordPress is concerned inside of your theme folder you have your parent theme or framework which will have all of your main code, and there are all of your template files, your main functions, it’s essentially just the core of your WordPress theme. And what you can do with it when you use it as a framework you use it in relation to a child theme which basically you use to build off of the parent framework theme. And what that allows you to do is to make a very dynamic and in some cases complex changes to the framework theme without actually editing the theme files themselves. The advantage of doing it that way is as WordPress gets updated and even the theme gets updated you don’t lose those changes. Generally if you take a theme and you tweak it directly, and let’s say you worked on it for two months and then that theme gets an upgrade that adds a bunch of new functionality, when you go to do that upgrade you basically lose all of your changes, which sucks a lot (laughs), it’s never a good thing when you spend a long time on something and then you go to make an upgrade and all of your changes are gone. And so using this framework model you can basically use the child theme to basically make all of your changes, so your changes are more or less compiled into the child theme, and then the parent theme more or less stays the same so it can withstand upgrades and changes and improvements along with WordPress while you’re styling and, you know, your custom functionality all exists within the child theme separately so that you don’t lose changes. And there are a number of different actual implementations of it, I kind of mentioned them both, and just to kind of clarify really any theme can be a parent theme, meaning you can build a child theme off of any theme, so any theme that you have may have updates or anything, you should just out of the box when you’re ready to tweak it start it off as a child theme. When it comes to frameworks, which is kind of separate deal, frameworks are more or less kind of a, and like I said earlier, a souped-up version of a parent theme that’s just more or less built with custom coding to allow you to do a lot more with your child theme then what you’d be able to do with a generic parent theme. But, yeah, I think they’re really powerful, I use them for all of my client-based work and even some of the themes that I sell are all based on — are all child themes that are built on top of the framework. And, yeah, I think it’s just a really great way to develop, it’s super fast, it makes the whole development process really fast because you don’t have to repeat nearly as much code as you normally would if you had to go back and basically kind of copy and paste code throughout different template files, you don’t have to worry about a lot of that with the child theme framework relationship because the themes are so much more, or because most of the coding is already handled for you, and so any changes you want to make you just do in the child theme and it just kind of changes the framework theme in a way that makes it very expandable. So, yeah, I love them, I use them all the time. That was really longwinded huh?

(Laughter)

Brad: It’s certainly a topic that requires some detail because there are a few things going on versus a standard theme. And so I guess this goes back to what we were talking about a little bit ago which is if somebody is just getting into WordPress theming and creating designs for WordPress, does it make sense to dive right into kind of a standard or traditional theme or should they start out looking at these theme frameworks and maybe find a framework they’re comfortable with and then just kind of master it inside and out? What makes sense for kind of the newbie in the WordPress theming world?

Jeffrey: I think it’s the same for every language, never start a language and immediately jump into a framework; you need to learn the fundamentals, the basics. So personally would I recommend somebody jump into, for instance, the thematic framework? No, I would tell them learn exactly how WordPress works, learn about the loop, learn about all the various kinks of working with WordPress and then maybe even a year, maybe more, after you’ve worked with it then jump onto a framework because you know I would never recommend somebody use a framework without understanding, at least as much as they can, understanding a little bit of what’s going on underneath. The same is true for a PHP framework, for a JavaScript library, I think for a JavaScript library you need to know how JavaScript works, you don’t want to just jump in because then when something breaks it could be just a standard language specific issue that you don’t understand so, no, I would say learn WordPress first. But then definitely then move up, and then at the point when it becomes more about how can I work quickest then jump into a framework like Thematic or there’s a handful of them, I think there’s about a dozen, and then it becomes more of an issue of how can I work as quick as possible, how can I do these freelance projects, or if you’re a theme designer maybe for ThemeForest how can I develop these themes as quickly as possible yet definitely use a framework.

Allan: Yeah, I’d like to add a little bit to that. Like the speed I guess is a thing that you really can only utilize the speed that using a framework offers when you understand what’s going on. Like the whole thing about the framework is that it allows you to — it more or less kind of allows you to kind of create shortcuts to doing things that you normally have to do over and over and over again. But, if you don’t understand that the thing that you’re changing, or if you don’t understand how the thing that you’re changing is being utilized by the framework then you won’t really be able to take advantage of the speed, and so you’ll end up not really learning much and generally the child theme might not come out too great. But, yeah, I think it’s definitely a thing that you definitely have to know the basics just so you can take advantage of all of the cool stuff that frameworks allow you to do.

Brad: Yeah, and your book actually features an entire chapter dedicated to theme frameworks which I thought was a really good chapter, it’s very detailed, and you even go into a working example of making a child theme for Thematic. So certainly anybody looking to kind of dive in and really get a true understanding and grasp of theme frameworks and developing child themes versus parent themes, you know, that chapter’s probably worth the price of the book alone, so I would certainly recommend that.

So moving on, this is another topic that is always a good debate and one that I’m a little passionate about, and that’s theme options. And a lot of people think, oh, theme options, you know, the more options the better. Well, I shouldn’t say a lot of people, some people think that, more options the better; some people think less options the better. So I guess my question is where do you guys stand on that? What do you think about theme options, like how many options are too much and at what point should some of these options maybe exist in a plugin versus a theme? So maybe you can both touch on that.

Jeffrey: I think it really just depends on the project, you know; that’s a big question. If you’re building a basic theme options page I wouldn’t do too many, cover the basics, yeah, that’s a tough one. One of the cool things that are coming out now are people are creating these theme options pages that are dynamic, so they implement some JavaScript where you can create your own keys and values, that way you’re not dependant upon some predefined value within the theme options page, you can create your own. So, if you use like the get_option function you can choose the keys that you want and the values that you want to apply to that. So at that point maybe the length becomes a little bit moot because it can be as extensible or as minimal as you want it to be. So that’s kind of what I’m excited about, I’m actually working on something like that myself; I know the company I work for our head dev, Derek, he’s working on something very similar to that called Option Tree, so I think you’re going to see that especially over the next year or so really become a big thing in the community are these dynamic options pages.

Allan: Yeah, I think that actually sounds really cool. I would love to check some of that out. I was going to say that when it comes to options it’s definitely one of those things where you kind of need to consider who’s going to be using your theme, or who’s really going to be using those options. If it’s a framework or something like that where the developers are generally your end user then your options page will look completely different than if it’s like for a consumer type of thing where everybody is going to be using this theme to do everything, then you’ll have to completely different looking options pages because there’s things that are relevant for a developer to want to go in and change quickly through options, and then there’s things that your average user who just wants to start a blog about dogs or something (laughter), you know, their options page would look completely different. And so that has had a major, or will have a major effect on what things you’d like your users to be able to change through the theme itself.

Brad: Sure, OK. So are there any options that you feel like should exist in every theme out there? Obviously not every theme has an options page, but are there a set of options that you feel strongly should exist in every theme, or is just like you said kind of a case by case basis depending on the theme and who that client is going to be?

Allan: It’s a little bit easier to, yeah; I would say it’s probably a little bit easier to basically not repeat options that are already built into WordPress. A lot of times when some themes that I’ve used before you’ll see things there that are already built into WordPress it’s just that the theme has its own way of doing it. In general sometimes it’s appropriate but in most cases it really isn’t. A lot of times what happens is once your end users get it if they know how to do one particular thing but then when they go to do that thing in the theme and there’s a separate option that does that same thing then they’re confused and it appears that the theme doesn’t work. And so I generally like to, as long as the options aren’t repeated with WordPress or with functionality that you can maybe have WordPress do with its built-in functions, I would try to stay away from doing that. And I find that in general the learning curve is a lot better when there’re less options that have to do with things that are already in WordPress because you know you’ll have users who can generally get their support from the generic WordPress outlets as opposed to just going to your support forums and finding out about it that way; it kind of opens up the support for it to be a lot easier and for people to have access to it. So I’m not sure I would say that there are options that definitely need to be in WordPress, but there are ones that I think can be — that don’t need to be repeated, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey: Yeah, I think Allan really nailed it; it really comes down to the end user. So if your end user’s going to be a developer or somebody who’s comfortable maybe with the WordPress Codex or researching functions then you have a little more flexibility with them. But what I found in my case is usually the people I’m developing for I have to record video tutorials for them just to show them here’s how to create a post, here’s how to edit a post, here’s how to create a page, here’s the difference between a page and a post; you know, for them, so you need to be much more hand-holding with them. So, what they’re going to be wanting is whatever it is can be accomplished they’re going to be wanting things like how do I change my logo or how do I change my background or just those kinds of things, how do I add a banner image here. So in those cases I’d say make it as easy as possible for them even if it can be accomplished elsewhere just throw it all in there and make it, you know, treat them like they’re a three year old and they’ll thank you for it.

Brad: Absolutely, and I think a perfect example of kind of not reinventing the wheel is the new menu management system that shipped with WordPress 3.0, and I know a lot of themes out there have over the years built their own menu management system because it was an obvious issue that needed to be addressed, their users and client base wanted some easy way to handle menus. Now it’s a part of core so I would expect to see those options eventually being removed, so there’s really no point in competing with the core of WordPress, like you said, so I think that’s a great point.

Jeffrey: Absolutely.

Brad: So let’s talk about money. Everybody here, everybody listening, likes money I hope; I know I do. And a lot of people are going to sit in selling their designs, and WordPress is no different. So I’ve made this awesome theme that’s going to make me millions of dollars and now I want to go about selling it, so what are some of the things I should consider first prior to just throwing it up on the Internet with a price tag? What are some of the topics or issues I should think about before I do that?

Jeffrey: I think you need to think about exactly what you want to do. So if you just want to, you know, you’ve developed a theme and you’re like, hey, maybe I can make a couple bucks, that’s going to be a very different process then if you have been doing this a couple years and you decide, okay, I’m going to build WordPress themes full time. And that’s fully achievable; you would be surprised that the marketplace I ran, ThemeForest, we had guys literally making four and five figures every single month, way more than me, it’s insane the potential for WordPress themes right now. So you have to first decide what am I going to do, and then you have to really invest your time in it. So this isn’t kind of an industry anymore where you can spend a day on a theme, upload it to a marketplace or sell it on your own site and expect to make some money. You might make a sale or two but that’s not where the money’s going to come in, the guys that really make the money here are the guys that it’s a full-time job for them. I reference that in the book a few times, it’s a full, full-time job, so they’re marketing, they’re building the theme, they are selling it on their own site, they’re buying banners, they are creating video tutorials, they’re creating regular WordPress tutorials to promote their name. This is what they do day in, day out, and I see it on Twitter everyday, these guys just don’t stop. And that is why they are so much more profitable than everyone else because it’s not just a little situation where you build a theme and you throw it out in cyberspace and you wait for the money to come in. And then you also have to think about how am I going to bring this money in, so are you going to sell it on your own sites? Well, if that’s the case fine, but then you have to think about how are you going to promote it, are you going to purchase banner ads, are you going to work with Google? And then you have to think how are you going to sell the theme; are you going to use PayPal? So there’s all these different variables that have nothing to do with building themes that you have to factor in. And so that’s why a marketplace like ThemeForest has just skyrocketed, we’re one of the most popular sites on the Web, it’s because it takes all of that out of the process. So rather than thinking of payment gateways and all that we take care of that for you, and then all you have to do is become an author, it’s free, you can then upload your WordPress theme, you can still market it yourself, but then you have a station to sell your portfolio and to advertise your portfolio. Because I know for me as a buyer, you know, if I’m Googling for some WordPress theme and I come to a guy’s website I don’t know how much I’m going to trust him if I don’t know him, it’s a random website. But if you can sell it on a reputable marketplace, whether it’s WooThemes or ThemeForest, or there’s a plethora of them, I think the buyer is going to be much more trusting. Plus, with marketplaces like that the buyer can be rest assured that these things have been reviewed and they meet a certain level, because otherwise you know as well as I do there are hundreds and hundreds of themes that are really low quality, and that’s fine, everyone’s on their way learning how to do this and we’re all trying to make money off of it, but by going with a marketplace you can really count on the fact that it’s going to be a very high quality theme.

Brad: Yeah, that’s great, and I think another important point that we should certainly talk about is the license in which you are going to sell your theme under. And I think everybody knows what’s coming next, and that’s everyone’s favorite three-letter acronym GPL.

Allan: GPL.

Brad: So it’s sad that when you say GPL it almost, anyone that’s familiar with the different debates that have gone back and forth, especially recently, it kind of sends a little bit of shiver down the backs of anybody trying to make money off of open source software. So why don’t we talk about GPL, let’s get it out of the way. So what is the GPL and how does it affect themes in WordPress?

Jeffrey: The GPL is, if you didn’t know what the GPL was a few months ago you do now probably after the huge Matt and Chris debate which was so much fun to listen to. The GPL is pretty much a license that says that WordPress is based on the GPL, and WordPress comes from a framework called B2, and that was based on GPL, so WordPress is; and that means that at the very least the PHP code that hooks into WordPress’ function filters needs to be GPL, so this created all of this controversy on is that true or not. That’s up to the lawyers, not me, but for at least in my sake I’m going to abide by that. So, the basic overview of GPL is if I sell you a theme, which is perfectly fine, I can sell you a theme for $30.00, but according to the GPL you must then be afforded that same freedom, quote-unquote, to sell that theme as well, so you cannot prohibit these freedoms. So that’s really, to break it down to a single sentence, you cannot restrict people’s freedoms. So you are free to charge $1,000.00 for a WordPress theme if you want, but the buyer of that theme technically can then if they want they can go on a torrent and redistribute it because they are then afforded that exact same freedom that you are.

Brad: Yeah, I think the word freedom I think when you hear ‘free’ that’s the biggest misconception about the GPL; when you hear free you think, oh, it’s free, I’m not allowed to sell something and it still be licensed under the GPL when it’s actually not true at all, you can sell it however you want. The free part has to do with freedom rather than the price tag, and I think it’s obviously confusing, but it’s certainly something everyone should, if you’re looking to make money off of themes or to work with WordPress at all, it’s definitely something you should understand. You want to protect yourself and make sure you don’t get into a situation where you are violating the WordPress license, so if you’re not familiar with it you should definitely read up on it, and it couldn’t be a more dry topic but it’s something you should do. And, you know, there’s kind of a second section of this I want to touch on, too, and that’s dual licensing, and this is where it gets even more interesting; dual licensing or split licensing, so maybe one of you guys can kind of talk on the difference between something that’s 100% GPL versus something that’s dual or split licensed.

Jeffrey: Sure. Okay, according to Matt himself, Matt Mullenweg himself, the PHP code that hooks into, as I said before, WordPress’ function and filters needs to be GPL; it’s dependant upon WordPress so if you were to strip out that PHP it would not function therefore it needs to be GPL. But that does not include other assets, so it doesn’t include your JavaScript; a WordPress framework can’t have any control over your custom JavaScript or for that matter your images or your CSS files. So, a dual licensing structure means any PHP code is going to be bound to the GPL. On the other hand any other assets, namely your CSS and JavaScript, you can if you want to you can use a proprietary license. So this is how marketplaces, many marketplaces function, it really depends on the marketplace. So, for example, I believe WooThemes is 100% GPL, so you can take their code, as I understand it, and do whatever you want with it. ThemeForest is dual licensing, so that means you cannot buy a WordPress theme and then upload it to RapidShare or whatever you want to do that’s rude, because they will send takedown notices, and we have the right to send these takedown notices is because, as I said before, these themes are sold with dual licensing and that’s perfectly fine. I believe after the big debate between Matt and Chris, Chris finally relented; correct me if I’m wrong but I think he relented and now they’re using a dual licensing structure for his work.

Brad: Yeah.

Allan: Yep.

Brad: Yeah, he is.

Jeffrey: Yeah, and that’s a simple idea is that WordPress has no control over your JavaScript and your CSS, so if you want to, and you have to first decide is this something I want to do. Many people would say it’s arguable that — Matt would say it even; going 100% GPL is the smartest solution because people will trust you more and you’ll make more money in the end. So it’s really up to you as a theme creator or as the listener to determine what you want your code to do. Do you want to abide by the GPL 100%? Do you want to completely disregard it like some people do and do a 100% proprietary license? I’d personally recommend against that but to each his own.

Brad: Yeah, I think it’s also important to note that wordpress.org will actually feature commercial theme websites as long as they are 100% GPL, which is obviously going to bring a lot of attention to your designs and your service that you’re selling, so it’s definitely a big decision but I think before you sell anything related to open source software I think the licensing around what you’re selling you need to make sure you understand it and you’re doing the right thing. So I’m on the same boat as you, Jeffrey, I think everything should be 100% GPL, I don’t think WordPress would exist if it wasn’t, but to each his own. And I actually have a question from the user ImTiedUp, and I’m not making that up, that’s his username, or hers.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey: Nice.

Brad: They ask, “What do I do if I’m using a commercial product like WooCanvas or Genesis,” as their framework, so a theme framework, “because so much of the underlying code was written by their people I’ve always wondered if it was even okay to consider selling custom themes when I use other themes as my engine?”

Allan: Yeah, that’s perfectly fine. To take it back to Thematic, Ian actually sells his own themes on there, and initially I don’t think he was doing that, but as soon as I saw that that was available I didn’t even consider it. Like after developing a few child themes, just randomly a few of them, I was like, okay, this may be something that I can sell but it might be weird to sell because it’s a child theme, it has all of these extra files and all of this other stuff that might make it more complex or even harder to sell with the GPL and stuff like that. But once he put up his themes that he had on there I was like, okay, let me look into it a little bit more. I read up a few articles about it and, yeah, it pretty much just works like any regular theme it’s just that it just requires the parent theme to work like the way the GPL and everything else works it pretty much just ties in to how it would work if you were to do a theme from scratch, so, yeah.

Brad: And then one last point I wanted to kind of touch on, and this is a nice section in the Selling Your Themes chapter, and that’s that you’re not only selling your theme for WordPress, but there’s a lot of other things that are involved with selling a theme, and I think the primary one is support and probably a lot of people don’t think about this and what’s all involved with that. So maybe we can touch on some of these topics, or some of these items that kind of go along with selling a theme and things that people should think about and make sure they have everything set up prior to releasing that theme for sale. So what are some of the things other than support, we have documentation, so what else should people kind of think about before that’s kind of outside of the theme design but is more that goes along with it?

Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s a good point on support. I think a lot of theme designers first getting started don’t even think about that, is that support is easily maybe even more important than the theme itself, it’s extremely important. You know as developers or designers we forget that a lot of the people who are purchasing these themes don’t know anything about WordPress, they don’t even know what WordPress is, they’re just searching for something that looks pretty, so for them support is huge, you know. So for my marketplace that was something I recommended to authors so much is don’t underestimate the need for support, and a lot of people, you know, and that’s fine if they want to but they can sell a theme and it’s pretty much what you see is what you get, you have a problem, not my problem, you know (laughs). But that’s not really smart, and I can tell you from personal experience the guys who are the most profitable selling WordPress themes on the Web have amazing documentation, so it comes in the form of something as simple as personal emails to having full support forums, even to simple things like maybe if you send them an email they’ll have an auto-reply with a huge frequently asked questions thing for the people who maybe need to have something fixed immediately but don’t know what the problem is. So you can’t devalue the requirement of good support, good documentation, and things of that nature. Then you asked what other things are really important, anything and everything, you know. Things like as simple as color themes, people love color themes, so if you’re going to create a theme why not offer three different three different color themes, why not offer a dozen? Brandon, who contributed to this book, he’s a very, very popular theme designer and you can see with every single theme he launches he has at least a half a dozen to a dozen different color themes. It seems trivial because we know how to adapt it ourselves, but you’ve got to remember that other people don’t. So if you’re going to have red, blue, green, every color under the sun, it’s going to be way more appealing to just a common buyer than not having it. And then we talked about options panels, that’s kind of become the standard lately, I’ve noticed with all the popular themes they all have some kind of backend options panel, okay. Even, like I said, with support people can record video tutorials and things like that, that’s becoming so popular for the people that want a little more hands-on approach. What else? Maybe mobile themes, so, you know, if you look at the charts, the iPhone and Android, the mobile browsing is just skyrocketing right now. So if you can offer a theme and you can add it to your little checklist of selling points that if your theme also has it’s mobile optimized or it has a special style sheet, or what have you, that’s going to be another huge incentive for somebody to choose your theme over somebody else’s. And that’s the huge deal here is there’s thousands of themes on the Web, so what separates your theme from somebody else’s, and it’s all of the above: it’s color themes, it’s mobile browsing, it’s maybe custom fonts, it’s the PSDs, it’s the support, it’s the video tutorials, it’s everything you can think of to factor into it, so it’s like a little package, you know, so the bigger you can make this package the more people want to purchase it.

Allan: And then also another kind of really major one is pricing and how much things should cost and how much you think, or not really even how much you think, but how much you can maybe gauge people needing support and how much time that would take and how that might factor into your pricing. And then also, too, just the development of everything that you just mentioned, Jeffrey, the development and the time that it would take to put all of that together and then figuring out a price that is reflective of that, that’s fair, it won’t scare people away, but won’t seem too cheap to make it seem like the theme is worthless, you know. And that’s been kind of a major one that I’ve experienced on my end in a lot of different ways.

Jeffrey: Yeah, that’s a great point. I think on both ends of the spectrum if you’re selling your theme for $5.00, you know, you get what you pay for, so I think a lot of maybe younger people even think, okay, I’m going to sell this theme for five bucks and then if it sells 500 times I make 2,500 bucks, okay, well that’s not really the way it works. First, it’s probably not going to sell that much at the start until you’ve really built up a reputation, and second, people see through this, so people see a $5.00 theme and they think alright, you know what, if it’s $5.00 it’s going to be worth $5.00, but then on the other end of the spectrum you can’t expect, especially with WordPress themes for some reason, you’re not going to get $300.00 for a theme, it doesn’t matter if you put a hundred hours of work into it the simple fact is themes are selling right around the $30.00 to $70.00 range, and you know that’s just a fact of the matter. You know the same thing was true for the app store, the iPhone app store, is sort of all these apps came out and then all these $0.99 ones came out and there was — they all just kind of went skyrocketed, or the opposite of skyrocketed, they came down to $0.99 and they just killed the profits. So, you have to accept going in that you’re going to make roughly, roughly $20.00 to maybe $100.00 per theme. This can extend depending upon what you’re offering, so you can maybe get a little bit more if you’re going to be offering high-level support and things of that nature, but in general single one-offs, single licenses, you’re not going to get too much, but what you have to think more is rather than is this $40.00 theme worth my time you have to think about the compound effect of, okay, what’s $40.00 times 300 sales or a thousand sales, and then it becomes amazingly profitable, and that’s what a lot of theme designers around the Web are finding right now is don’t rip people off, you know, people want a good bargain, so accept that you’re going to make a decent amount per sale, but then once it sells 100 times you’re making a lot of money.

Brad: Yeah, these are all great points and certainly something anyone who’s looking to make any kind of money off of themes in WordPress definitely needs to consider, and the book does a great job kind of going into each one of these in detail, so, bravo guys, great job on that.

I have a few more questions here. We’re getting to the end; I can see the finish line, so you guys made it, congrats (laughter). I guess I have a couple of real specific questions to each of you because you both have pretty impressive resumes so I had a couple specific questions I wanted to throw your way. So I’ll start with you first, Allan, now you have some themes for sale which are really great, really awesome themes, so you have Basic Maths, which I didn’t even realize that was your theme until today, but I saw it when it launched, that’s an awesome theme. And you also have AutoFocus, and then is it Neutica Plus or Nautica plus?

Allan: Neutica.

Brad: Neutica Plus, and AutoFocus and Neutica are both Thematic child themes. So my first question is: is that going forward, are you going to stick with the child theme route and just kind of keep selling? And these are all paid themes except for AutoFocus which does have a free version, just to note, is that correct?

Allan: Yes, that’s correct.

Brad: Yeah, I was just curious; do you plan on sticking with the child themes? Because I know Basic Maths is not a child theme so I was curious what your plan going forward was.

Allan: Well, yeah, it’s been getting a little tough, like I still think people are more or less kind of new to the child theme, parent theme relationship, and what I’ve been finding is with the child theme, well, with the child themes that I do have that are out there some folks get it, you know, they have to install Thematic for it to work, and then a lot of folks don’t. And so I’ll get a lot of emails and support requests about the theme not working as soon as they put it in, but what happens is they generally just either didn’t read the instructions or missed the bit that’s right under the title that says it’s a child theme and that you need to install Thematic. And so that’s been a little problematic with things, but in general like for me the child theme route has been really just easy to develop for, and so just as far as the speed thing I think that I’ll continue to develop child themes, but I do think that the next run of themes that I’ll probably be doing will be more either framework or just kind of packaged parent themes that had basically all of the functionality that I end up using for the type of design and work that I do, and then just develop the child themes off of that. And how that all is going to be structured I’m not 100% sure on just yet, but I think it’ll kind of be a blend of both themes developed from scratch and then with a little bit of child themes stuff mixed in.

Brad: Yeah, and as I mentioned before, AutoFocus does have a free version, so I’m curious, and if you can divulge this information, but is there — have you noticed an increase in sales by not offering a free version of the other two themes or maybe vice versa, you have an increase of sales with AutoFocus because there is a free version?

Allan: To be honest I’m not really sure. I think that the people — most of the reason that I even kept the free version was more of a thing like the community that’s built around WordPress is just really great. Like initially even before this AutoFocus Plus theme there was this original one that’s just AutoFocus like that doesn’t have the Plus, and that one was on the wordpress.org theme site and it did pretty well there. And I had no idea, that was maybe my, I think, second or third theme that I developed, I was still learning stuff, but the feedback for it was really great. And so I kind of wanted it to be a situation where I wanted to kind of more or less give back to people who supported it and were there downloading it and then asking some core questions and offering suggestions and helping to improve it. And so the free version is more or less there just to kind of give back and not really lock out people who adopted the original version and then lock them out from getting some of the improvements of the child theme AutoFocus Plus version. And so, yeah, I just kind of wanted to keep that free just to cater to those folks. And then the Plus version has its own kind of headaches involved with developing it, and stuff like that, and so it also comes with a bunch of extra features; the development on it is going a lot further, I’ll be pushing it a lot further before the year is out, and so I wanted people to kind of get a lot more out of that one. But, yeah, I don’t think there’s really been too — I haven’t really been able to tell specifically if there’s been much of a difference. The Neutica is kind of in a similar situation in that it initially started out as a regular theme that was on wordpress.org that was just a regular; I think it was based off of Sandbox. And then this newer version is a Thematic child theme that doesn’t have a free version, and I don’t really think there’s too much of a difference as far as sales. I do know that the AutoFocus theme, you know, there were a lot more users that were originally using it, and so there were people looking for that one a little bit more, and so the sales are a little bit higher for that one just because it’s a little bit more popular. But I don’t really think there’s any too much of a correlation between having a free version versus a paid version of it, at least from what I’ve been able to notice.

Brad: Well, yeah, and if you haven’t checked out AutoFocus it’s a really slick kind of image-centric theme, and I love seeing themes that kind of do different things with WordPress that’s not the standard kind of blog layout or even the CMS layout which is almost getting standard at this point. And this is a great example of how you can kind of take your images and make them front and center, so it’s a really nice theme, definitely check that out, and we’ll certainly have links in the show notes.

Jeffrey I’ve got just a couple questions for you too. So you work at codecanyon.net which is a pretty cool site, and one I wasn’t super familiar with. So it’s as I understand it you basically sell code, scripts, and snippets for all sorts of different languages. So I was wondering if you could explain how exactly does that work?

Jeffrey: Okay, sure. It’s codecanyon.net, so the company I work for, Envato, we have two branches, so in one branch we educate people, so we have this big string of tutorial sites like if you’re familiar with psd.tutsplus or Nettuts, the one I run, or we have a huge number of them, AudioTuts; anyhow, on the other side we have our marketplaces, and this is where we help people sell digital goods for a range of things, video, audio, themes, in this case WordPress themes. So I ran themeforest.net for a long time and that’s what would appeal to the people listening to this podcast, is it’s where you can develop WordPress themes and then sell them and they make fantastic money. But then we decided at one point on ThemeForest we thought you know what, what if we sold scripts and components, and what if we sold like .NET components or PHP scripts. So maybe for two dollars somebody could buy a really cool Ajax contact form that’s really tested and cool and it’s cheap. So we launched that and it just skyrocketed and we realized, okay, you know what, we need to develop a whole marketplace for this because there’s obviously a huge community for it. Okay, so this is where CodeCanyon comes into play and so I moved over from ThemeForest over to CodeCanyon, that’s what I run now, and we sell components, scripts, snippets, everything you can think of, PHP, JavaScript, .NET plugins, so also people focus so much on premium WordPress themes that they forget that there’s a lot of money to be made with premium WordPress plugins, and that’s something that’s really seemingly beginning to take off right now. So, for example, we launched a — I don’t mean to advertise but it is applicable, we launched a premium WordPress plugins category and it’s going like crazy. For example, the best seller in the last couple months generated like $10,000.00 worth of gross sales, and this is for a plugin. So, maybe myself included at first kind of thought you know what, the plugin market’s kind of saturated right now, there really isn’t any money to be made there because there’s so much fantastic stuff. But what we’re finding out is that’s not really the case; you can find more niche-oriented plugins or more just really in depth plugins that you can’t find elsewhere, and then again you factor in the support, so somebody can get a plugin, they can pay, I don’t know, $20.00 for the plugin, and then they get free upgrades for life, of course, and then they get the free support, if they don’t know how to use it the author will give that to them for free. So that’s the basics of CodeCanyon, it’s a place where authors can sign up, for free of course, and then sell whatever they create whether it’s something as simple as a cool contact form up to a massive extension for WordPress or Expression Engine or Magento, anything you can think of.

Brad: Yeah, I was just going through the WordPress plugins list and there’s some pretty impressive ones on here, in fact, a few I’m going to have to check out like this calendar plugin (laughs).

Jeffrey: The Calendar plugin’s awesome.

Brad: That’s certainly a void that needed to be filled because unfortunately the calendar plugins out there aren’t the greatest so, yeah, this is really cool. And when I first saw it kind of researching for this show I made a note that I wanted to go through here and spend a bit of time to learn more about it. So definitely if you’re unfamiliar check that out. And then the last question for you, Jeffrey, is you also write for Nettuts+, which is a really, really popular web developer and designer kind of hub with some awesome tutorials. So I’m curious how you got started writing these great tutorials.

Jeffrey: I got started writing these tutorials years ago, and you know what, I was writing these tutorials that I had no business writing (laughs), you know unfortunately that turns out to be the case moreso than not where you’re reading tutorials on the Web and the truth is the author is probably just learning it and they’re like, hey, I learned this, I’m going to show other people. So that’s why Nettuts is awesome because we’re taking people that really know their stuff, so it’s net.tutsplus.com by the way. So you take people that really know their stuff, and every single day we have a new tutorial. So the way I got started in it is a couple years ago I would just write these, or a few years ago maybe, God, time goes by so fast, I was writing these articles and I think it was on .NET because I was learning that at the time, and it’s amazing, it just seems like the community, the Web development community’s so huge; I would write a couple articles, maybe submit them to a few sites, that’s the way it worked back then, I’d submit them to cssglobe.com and any of these aggregators you can think of, and I started getting all these page views. And I remember even the first time I got a couple thousand page views in a day I thought that was insane, you know. So I came across Envato and Collis and Sian who are the CEO’s, and I contacted them about writing for them and they were very open about it, they’re great people, and so I wrote a couple articles for them and I was very nice to them, and then they offered me the job of actually running the site. And I’ve been doing that ever since and the site’s just skyrocketed since then, we started with a good number, maybe 7,000 subscribers, and now we’re up to well over 70,000 after a couple years. And I love it because, like I said earlier in the show, when you have to write and teach people how to do stuff it forces you to really sit down and learn exactly what you’re doing, so I’ve learned so much in the last couple of years because of it.

Brad: That’s great. So before we go today why don’t you both tell us where you can be found online, websites, blogs, Twitter; why don’t we start with you Jeff?

Jeffrey: You can find me at net.tutsplus.com, codecanyon.net; on Twitter you can find me @nettuts, or you can visit my personal site at jeffrey-way.com.

Allan?

Allan: Yeah, for me most of my WordPress themes are available on fthrwght.com, but it’s a weird spelling, it’s fthrwght, it’s basically the word featherweight without any vowels. And the same goes for my Twitter handle, it’s just @fthrwght, you can follow me there, and then also my personal site is just allancole.com.

Brad: Great. Well, thank you guys both so much for being on today and taking time out to talk some WordPress and about your new book. Again, that was Jeffrey Way and Allen Cole, co-authors of Build Your Own Wicked WordPress Themes, it’s a new book from SitePoint and it can purchased on sitepoint.com, amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and wherever fine books are sold.

And that’s it for another episode of the SitePoint Podcast. You can follow me on Twitter @williamsba, and SitePoint @sitepointdotcom. Visit us at sitepoint.com/podcast to leave comments on this show and to subscribe to receive every show automatically. The SitePoint Podcast is produced by Karn Broad, and I’m Brad Williams. Peace!

Theme music by Mike Mella.

Thanks for listening! Feel free to let us know how we’re doing, or to continue the discussion, using the comments field below.

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IE9 Screenshot Leaked to the Web

Mon, 08/30/2010 - 00:37

Internet Explorer 9’s new interface has been revealed following an article published on a site run by one of Microsoft’s Russian subsidiaries. The screenshot was removed almost immediately, but it was too late — the image quickly dispersed throughout the web:

Microsoft has refused to publicly comment about the leak but, if it’s a fake, it’s very good one.

The screenshot shows a minimalistic user interface reminiscent of those implemented by Chrome, Opera and Firefox 4. However, the style and layout of the back/next buttons, address bar and icons will be recognizable to IE8 fans (I’m sure they must exist somewhere?)

All the controls have moved to a single toolbar. It doesn’t leave much room for multiple tabs but it maximizes the web page viewing space. I’m surprised tabs haven’t been moved to the empty title bar area — Mozilla recently determined that tabs above the address bar is a more logical layout.

The Russian website also revealed IE9 would offer a unified search/address bar, a simplified set of toolbar icons, and tear-off tabs which can be snapped to a part of the screen. Windows 7 already offers this last option as “Aero Snap” so it may not be a feature implemented directly within the browser.

The IE9 beta will be released on September 15 2010 so we’ll soon know whether the leaked screenshot is real or not. The final version is unlikely to appear until 2011 so the interface may undergo radical changes before then.

Of course, it could be a Microsoft publicity stunt to raise awareness of the browser. I somehow doubt that — it’s been far more successful than many of their real campaigns! (Did anyone actually attend a Windows 7 party?)

What do you think? Is the screenshot real or fake? Do you like it?

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Simultaneous Multiple-Browser JavaScript Testing With Yeti

Sat, 08/28/2010 - 11:03

Developers detest tests. It’s tedious to verify code which is obviously perfect. To make matters worse, the humble web developer rarely knows what OS or browser a user will choose and must test a variety of platforms. The top 5 browsers may be relatively easy, but they’ve been joined by an increasing varied and powerful array of mobile devices.

JavaScript is particularly problematic. Developers are creating complex client-side applications and unit testing has become essential. There are a number of libraries which can help, including YUI Test, FireUnit and JsUnit. Unfortunately, it remains a largely manual process since only one browser can be tested at a time.

Yahoo’s YUI developers have some of the most stringent processes: they currently support 11 browser environments and test several emerging mobile platforms. Testing JavaScript functionality on one browser at a time was laborious and automated testing tools were complicated to configure and maintain.

To help ease the burden, Yahoo has released Yeti — The YUI Easy Testing Interface. It’s an open source project built on node.js which allows unit testing from the command line:

$ yeti mytestpage.html ✔ DOM Tests from Safari (Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_4; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.16 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0 Safari/533.16) 20 passed 0 failed

However, it’s Yeti’s multi-browser capabilities that will excite most developers. Running Yeti without arguments starts a web server at http://localhost:8000/. Any browser can be pointed at that URL — including mobile devices if you use a system such as localtunnel to create a public address for the local server. Every test you then run is automatically executed on all browsers visiting the Yeti URL and the results are returned to the console. Amazing.

Yahoo admit Yeti’s not complete, but you can download the v0.1 code today. It’s only been tested on Mac OS X, although it may work on a Linux PC with node.js. Once it’s running, any browser running on any OS can be pointed at the server.

Yeti has the potential to make JavaScript unit testing far easier than it is today. It’s certainly a project we’ll watch with interest.

Sketchnoting UX Australia 2010: Day 2

Fri, 08/27/2010 - 16:06

Day 2 of the UX Australia conference was packed full of excellent presentations, and after a bunch of encouraging comments from folks who saw my sketches from yesterday, I drew some more for today’s sessions.

Rather than rely on my phone camera, this time I scanned today’s sketches to ensure that the images are of a higher quality.

One of the highlights for me was finally meeting Daniel Szuc, who co-authored SitePoint’s Usability Kit a few years back (and which I edited.) A huge thanks to the UX Australia organisers for putting on a well-run and well-catered event that delivered a ton of high quality presentations. UX Australia will run in Sydney next year, and comes highly recommended.

See my sketchnotes from Day 1 of the conference (click on each image to view a larger version).

Daniel Naumann: Working with clients to get better solutions, and Sally Bieleny: Users don’t always help