Issuu Really Wants to Kill The Document Download
Posted by Erick Schonfeld | Filed under Web Design
One thing that I find increasingly anachronistic on the Web is the stubborn persistence of the PDF download. I really don’t need to download more junk onto my computer, especially if it is only something I am going to look at once or twice. Every document should just be viewable (and searchable) on the Web. That is why I am a big fan of services like Issuu, Docstoc, and Scribd that let you embed PDFs and other documents on any Webpage.
Today, Issuu (which raised $5 million in October) is introducing something it calls Smart Look, which turns all the document-download links on your site into browser-viewable documents. It works for PDFs, slideshows, or regular text documents. You just insert some code onto your site, and it does the rest. Instead of an embedded viewer, it launches a new overlay window where you can see the document in all of its glory, search it, page through it, and even print it (if you still do that kind of thing).
Once you insert the code, it turns on this feature for all document downloads on your site, instead of requiring you to create an different embedded viewer for each document.
You can check it out some on this sample site or watch the video below:
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Building a Blog in 15 Minutes with Rails 2.2: A New Screencast
Posted by Peter Cooper | Filed under Web Design
Anyone who got into Rails a few years ago should remember a very popular "building a weblog in 15 minutes video" by David Heinemeier Hansson. It was potentially responsible for most of Rails' ongoing success as the video demonstrated all of the beauty of Rails in an easily digestible way (if you still want to see this historic video - based on Rails 0.5! - click here). Now, Ryan Bates of Railscasts.com fame has recorded a new 15 minute "creating a weblog with Rails 2.2" video (50MB, Quicktime format).
For more information generally, go to http://rubyonrails.org/screencasts
jQuery on Rails: Why Bother?
Posted by jnunemaker | Filed under Web Design
In which I explain why I use jQuery at times and how you can as well. Oh, and I provide a wealth of links. Links are fun!
A few people have suggested that I post about how to use jQuery with Rails. I thought about it and felt that others have already covered it quite well but why not collect their posts here for you to enjoy, right? Plus, I do all my JavaScript from scatch so I do not really ever use the helpers Rails provides and as such could not post intelligently on them.
So John, When Did You Quit Prototype?
I haven?t! I do not intend to ever quit using Prototype. Honestly, I have used jQuery quite a bit less than Prototype. I have found that jQuery and Prototype are both great and in different situations I will use a different library. The one thing I will say is even if you don?t actually switch to jQuery, I think it is important to learn new things and stretch yourself. It is good to feel frustrated and like a beginner. Also, jQuery takes a very different approach which has actually helped me write better Prototype code. Hope this is helpful and not overwhelming. 
Creating A Plugin
Today, I wrote an article on How to Create a jQuery Plugin From Scratch over on my Addicted To New site. I picked out the most basic thing a plugin could do and explained each step in a lot of detail. Give it a read if you are into Prototype but are curious about jQuery.
Live Search and Fancy Zooming
After creating my live search with quicksilver for prototype example, I decided to port it to jQuery (view demo). Then, humbly, I was corrected by the jQuery man himself, John Resig, who re-ported my port in a more jQuery-ish functional style. For those that are curious, I also massaged the AJAX-RDoc project to use quicksilver searching. This is really helpful when you can?t quite remember a method name.
Likewise, when I created fancy zoom for prototype, my partner in crime, Steve Smith, created a port of fancy zoom for jQuery (view demo). Fancy Zoom is great for showing text and images with an Apple-esque, in page zoom transition or even Flash if you have a video you would like to feature.
jQuery Railscast
Ryan Bates did an awesome job showing how to use the jQuery on Rails plugin with Rails in a recent screencast. He also gave a really quick example on how to create a plugin. I would recommend watching this and subscribing to his Railscasts, which are great.
jRails Plugin
jRails is a drop-in jQuery replacement for Prototype/script.aculo.us on Rails. Using jRails, you can get all of the same default Rails helpers for javascript functionality using the lighter jQuery library. Ryan shows how to use it in the screencast mentioned above, but I thought I would also mention it separately. If you are a fan of the Rails javascript/ajax helpers, this plugin is for you. It makes each of them work with jQuery and has some nice demos on the site.
Link Love
While dispelling the myth that Rails is tied to Prototype, DHH gave some jQuery examples.
Brandon showed how he includes the authenticity token using prototype and the pug automatic shows how to do the same using jQuery.
Ben Curtis has a tutorial on how to do drag and drop sorting with jQuery and Rails.
Yehuda Katz has a year old presentation on jQuery and Rails that is still worth a look.
Nutrun has a more full post on how to do unobtrusive ajax with jQuery and Rails
ErrTheBlog (errtheblog is dead. long live errtheblog!) gave jQuery some serious love a while back in their jSkinny article. Chris also created a plugin named Facebox that is used extensively on GitHub and has a short post that shows how to get jQuery working with respond_to.
If you are a fan of Low Pro, Dan Webb has created a port of Low Pro for jQuery. (article #1, article #2)
In some Rails Rumble observations, it was noted that jQuery was more widely used than Prototype.
Don?t forget that ?jQuery UI provides abstractions for low-level interaction and high-level, themeable widgets, built on top of the jQuery JavaScript Library, that you can use to build highly interactive web applications.? Be sure to check out the demos.
If you are a fan of Twitter, you can follow jQuery for links to articles and such.
Nathan Smith gave a crash course on jQuery that includes a sweet airline seat demo.
jQuery does not come with all of Prototype?s functionality out of the box, but you can usually find a plugin that does what you need if you are too lazy to make something yourself.
Lastly, one of my favorite jQuery resources is Visual jQuery. I found this site a blessing when I was trying to learn jQuery.
Feel free to post your favorite jQuery/Rails resources as a comment below.
Myth #1: Rails is hard to deploy
Posted by Web Design and Programming on NewsGator Online | Filed under Web Design
(If you don’t want to bother with the history lesson, just skip straight to the answer)
Rails has traveled many different roads to deployment over the past five years. I launched Basecamp on mod_ruby back when I just had 1 application and didn’t care that I then couldn’t run more without them stepping over each other.
Heck, in the early days, you could even run Rails as CGI, if you didn’t have a whole lot of load. We used to do that for development mode as the entire stack would reload between each request.
We then moved on to FCGI. That’s actually still a viable platform. We ran for years on FCGI. But the platform really hadn’t seen active development for a very long time and while things worked, they did seem a bit creaky, and there was too much gotcha-voodoo that you had to get down to run it well.
Then came the Mongrel
Then came Mongrel and the realization that we didn’t need Yet Another Protocol to let application servers and web servers talk together. We could just use HTTP! So packs of Mongrels were thrown behind all sorts of proxies and load balancers.
Today, Mongrel (and it’s ilk of similar Ruby-based web servers such as Thin and Ebb) still the predominate deployment environment. And for many good reasons: It’s stable, it’s versatile, it’s fast.
The paradox of many Good Enough choices
But it’s also a jungle of options. Which web server do you run in front? Do you go with Apache, nginx, or even lighttpd? Do you rely on the built-in proxies of the web server or do you go with something like HAProxy or Pound? How many mongrels do you run behind it? Do you run them under process supervision with monit or god?
There are a lot of perfectly valid, solid answers from those questions. At 37signals, we’ve been running Apache 2.2 with HAProxy against monit-watched Mongrels for a few years. When you’ve decided on which pieces to use, it’s actually not a big deal to set it up.
But the availability of all these pieces that all seem to have their valid arguments lead to a paradox of choice. When you’re done creating your Rails application, I can absolutely understand why you don’t also want to become an expert on the pros and cons of web servers, proxies, load balancers, and process watchers.
And I think that’s where this myth has its primary roots. The abundance of many Good Enough choices. The lack of a singular answer to How To Deploy Rails. No ifs, no buts, no “it depends”.
The one-piece solution with Phusion Passenger
That’s why I was so incredibly happy to see the Phusion team come out of nowhere earlier this year with Passenger (aka mod_rails). A single free, open source module for Apache that brought mod_php-like ease of deployment to Rails.
Once you’ve completed the incredibly simple installation, you get an Apache that acts as both web server, load balancer, application server and process watcher. You simply drop in your application and touch tmp/restart.txt when you want to bounce it and bam, you’re up and running.
But somehow the message of Passenger has been a little slow to sink in. There’s already a ton of big sites running off it. Including Shopify, MTV, Geni, Yammer, and we’ll be moving over first Ta-da List shortly, then hopefully the rest of the 37signals suite quickly thereafter.
So while there are still reasons to run your own custom multi-tier setup of manually configured pieces, just like there are people shying away from mod_php for their particulars, I think we’ve finally settled on a default answer. Something that doesn’t require you to really think about the first deployment of your Rails application. Something that just works out of the box. Even if that box is a shared host!
In conclusion, Rails is no longer hard to deploy. Phusion Passenger has made it ridiculously easy.
Wordpress Easy Paypal Payment or Donation Accept Plugin | Tips and Tricks
Posted by ivanoats | Filed under Bookmarks, wordpress
‘Wordpress Easy Paypal Payment or Donation Accept Plugin’ is an easy to use Wordpress plugin to Accept Paypal payment for a service or a product or Donation in one click. Can be used in the sidebar, posts and pages.
Tags: Bookmarks, paypal, plugins, webdesign, wordpress
PaperClip: An Alternative Attachment / File Upload Plugin for Rails
Posted by Peter Cooper | Filed under Web Design
In Goodbye attachment_fu, hello Paperclip, The Web Fellas present a walkthrough of Paperclip, a new(ish) Rails plugin that makes file (and particularly image) uploads easy. It's well worth a read, especially if you're just starting to develop a new app and are looking at which file upload technique to go with.
Paperclip is compelling firstly because it's developed by thoughbot, a team of ridiculously talented Rails developers who've released a lot of awesome Rails-related projects (such as Shoulda, Factory Girl, and Jester). Secondly, it offers some awesome features: no extra database tables needed to refer to files/attachments, only one library required for image processing (ImageMagick), and a very easy way to refer to files (as attributes on the main model, basically).
The official documentation is here, but Jim Neath has also written a full Paperclip tutorial that will take you from start to finish.
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GoodGuide Takes Top Prize At Web 2.0 Summit Launchpad
Posted by Jason Kincaid | Filed under Marketing, Web Design
One of the featured events at this week’s Web 2.0 Summit was the Launchpad, a showcase of six companies that were each given 5 minutes to pitch a room full of VC’s, entrepreneurs, and other notables in the tech industry. The companies were judged by a panel of venture capitalists, consisting of: Chris Albinson (Panorama Capital), Patrick Chung (New Enterprise Associates), Michael Goguen (Sequoia Capital), Erik Straser (Mohr Davidow Ventures), and Todor Tashev (Omidyar Networks).
As soon as the presentations were concluded, the audience was asked to vote on its favorite company using an instant-SMS voting system. After only a few minutes GoodGuide, a TechCrunch50 finalist, emerged as the crowd favorite and took the top prize.
Below are profiles of each presenting company, along with some of the input offered by the VC panel.
CarbonNetworks
CarbonNetworks is an emissions management software platform that allows companies to effectively keep track of their emissions and monetize them. The site offers price forecasting so companies can determine if their carbon credits will be financial asset or liabilities, and helps them deal with them accordingly. The site isn’t exclusively involved with carbon offsets, as it also looks at different sources or energy and offers consulting services.
Michael Goguen - I question the timing. One has to wonder if the priorities are shifting. Are companies really going to be spending on this at this point, instead of cutting costs? While SaaS model has lots of appeal, it seems to work best when you can justify paying for it constantly, instead of just upfront once. Once I get my act together would I still want to pay for it?
EveryScape
EveryScape is like a Google Street View for everything, offering 3D interiors of restaurants, salons, salons, retail stores, or any other interior users might be interested in. The site takes ground level photography using what founder Mok Oh called a “highly affordable and scalable technique” (though he didn’t specify how it was any more affordable than the technology that already exists).
Users are presented with an interface that looks much like it would on Google Maps Street View, which they can use to navigate throughout the building. Examples of possible applications include allowing users to point out a specific table in a restaurant where their friends should meet. Eventually the site hopes to bring its technology to mobile devices like the iPhone.
Patrick Chung - My question is, is it a street view add-on? You’re gong to have trucks drive around to assemble the database. The images are going to be 2D, they aren’t going to have physics… If I wanted to see what something looked like at night, summer, winter, you’d have to duplicate by sending a truck out again.
Michael Goguen - People do still go out in the real world. There hasn’t been a good connection between the web and the real world. This could apply to a large number of industries.
GoodGuide
TechCrunch50 runner-up GoodGuide presented its new iPhone application, which takes its database of the safety and “Goodness” of consumer products to the mobile platform. You can read our full review of the application here.
Erik Straser - Terrific job on providing motivational context. My concerns: This is a company where I’m not convinced this is a better startup or a better public service. So one of my questions would be, to what extent could you really build a high velocity transaction model off of this? Also, what’s the ongoing costs of content updating? Also, I wonder about localization, and if what water I buy might depend on where I live.
Todor Tashev- I think the service is very compelling. It seems like you have figured out a way to leverage credible data, helping consumers come to informed decisions. Two-fold values: I can make informed decisions. Also, the informed behavior of individuals could lead to a massive change that changes how a company designs products.
Predictify
Predictify is a prediction platform designed to help users get an extra dimension of interactivity from the news, helping to drive engagement. The site also aggregates demographic information along with votes into a data-set. To ensure accuracy, users can get reputation scores, and can be identified as “experts” in fields.
To generate revenue, the site charges customers a per-answer fee (around $1), which gets split between Predictify and its users, depending on how accurate they are. You can read our initial introduction to the site here.
Chris Albinson - There were some interesting things. I like the engagement, the digg-like rating system. Patrick won’t like me for saying this, I didn’t get there. Challenge for me is that there are so many of these companies. I just don’t know how you build a big business. Facebook has own system on an established platform, but that didn’t have much value.
Patrick Chung - I thought you did fantastic job. I think you have amazing data possibilities. If you can do it better than Reuters… I think you’re eon to something big, I would stick to game models so you aren’t regulated by the SEC.
Qik
Qik, which we’ve covered extensively, is a mobile video studio for your phone. Users can broadcast video live from their cell phones and stream directly to the Qik website as well as embedded widgets found throughout the web.. The service can also be used to share and also as a one-button camcorder. You can read more of our coverage of Qik here.
Todor Tashev- It’s interesting. My concerns: it’s a very crowded space ,you have startups and then bigger guys like Yahoo. How can you make a long term competitive advantage? I was glad to hear that you’re working on partnerships with carriers. But I’m not sure it’s enough at this stage
Chris Albinson- I was skeptical myself. I was worried about complexity. Monetization of video continues to be a challenge. But I have to say you won me over. I think you have a differentiated platform. I love the extensibility of it. I think the company is on a great path.
Sungevity
Sungevity sells solar panels to consumers using an online platform that can expedite the installation process significantly while also making it much easier. Sungevity uses services like Google Earth and Microsoft Virtual Earth to look at rooftops and give near-instant price quotes. The company also says that it is 10% cheaper than the average solar panel installer in California. The company has been on the market since April 2008, and has projected revenues of $2.5 million. In the future the site hopes to license the technology out to other solar panel installers around the world.
Michael Goguen- This solves a problem because the industry is archaic. My problem is that a lot of companies have the same idea to use google Earth etc to do online quoting. So if you take that away as differentiation, you wonder where this business goes. Right now it’s a rat race.
Chris Albinson- I take the oppostie view. I understand the thesis. If you look at the growth, the growth and execution has been phenomenal. The key thing is that the financial crisis has killed the commercial market for solar. But there’s a huge market for consumers. How do you make it simple enough for consumers?
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Tags: goodguide, sustainablemarketing, web2.0
How to Practice Green Graphic Design
Posted by Thursday Bram | Filed under Sustainability, Web Design
Sustainable graphic design is the focus of a book due out at the end of November. The author of Green Graphic Design, Brian Dougherty, covers such topics as how to find paper made with sustainable technology, environmentally friendly printing and techniques for using new materials.
By focusing on the environmental concerns associated with just one area — selecting the best paper for a design job — Dougherty covers a lot of ground: sustainable forestry, water conservation, energy use in manufacturing and concerns about the chemicals in paper production. And that’s before he even gets to the design constraints inherent in using sustainable paper.
Throughout his book, Dougherty highlights simple changes that graphic designers can make that don’t require designers to learn new skills or work with new materials. His tips on paper, printing, binding, shipping, packaging and budgeting increase awareness of the environmental concerns in the field and help designers find a new approach to their projects. Occasionally, his advice even makes the process more affordable.
Dougherty is a founding member of the board of advisors for the AIGA Center for Sustainable Design. He practices green design as a member of the Celery Design Collective. The book can be pre-ordered on Amazon.
Tags: graphicdesign, green, marketing
The Lazy Blogger?s Guide to Finding Great Post Images
Posted by Sonia Simone | Filed under Web Design
Writing a great blog post is a lot of work. There’s the planning, the headline, the writing, the rewriting, the rewriting, the rewriting.
As the cliché goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So why not let your images do some of that writing for you?
When you’re trying to get the biggest bang out of a blog post (while putting in the least amount of work), it’s smart to let strong imagery do some of your heavy lifting. But what’s the difference between an image that works hard and one that just looks good with your blog theme?
Images are steroids for your headline
You may remember the immortal advice of copywriting genius Joe Sugarman: the job of the headline is to get the reader to read the first line of your ad. (And the job of the first line is to get the reader to read the second line of your ad.)
Let’s face it, writing great headlines is hard. (Worth the effort, but still. Hard.) A great image can give your headline a big boost. The image might be beautiful, odd, heartwarming, instructive or just curiosity-provoking, as long as it makes the reader want to read that first line of your post.
Set an emotional tone
A powerful image zaps right into the primal bits of your readers’ brains and gets them in the emotional state you want. In an instant, a terrific image can create an emotional reaction you might otherwise slave for hours to craft with words.
Images of puppies and cute little children will set one tone for your blog. Gritty street scenes will say something very different. I use a lot of images of apes and monkeys over on Remarkable Communication, in part to convey the primate emotional drivers that shape our communication, and in part because, hey, everybody likes monkeys.
In fact, “lighten up” is a major Remarkable Communication theme, and that’s consistently reflected in the images I choose.
Some images just make people feel good. And associating yourself with feeling good is a smart move if you’re trying to persuade. While a steady diet of kittens and rainbows gets cloying, it can be a good move to choose a photo just because it makes you smile.
What’s the personality of your blog? Funny? Combative? Compassionate? Goofy? Imagery can set the emotional tone of a single post or for your whole blog.
Lazy Blogger Tip: If you can’t find a good, relevant match for your post’s main idea, look for an image that conveys the emotional content of your blog as a whole.
Arouse curiosity
Just like making a ridiculous comparison can intrigue the reader and get her to keep reading, a striking image can work in the same way. The image can either create a seeming paradox with the headline, or just amplify the headline in a surprising way.
(The most notorious example to date on Copyblogger was probably on my own Feel Great Naked post.)
A feeling of “What is this doing here?” can move the reader forward and right into your terrific post. The effect shouldn’t be too jarring, but a little unexpected juxtaposition can be just the ticket.
Where lazy bloggers go to find great images
There are free sources for stock photography out there, but in my opinion it takes more time and energy than it’s worth to dig around and find what you need.
I use two sources for nearly all images I use. The first is iStockphoto, which has a wide selection of stock photography at very good prices. For a blog post, you can use their smallest size image, which will run you a little over $1 depending on how many credits you buy at a time.
The great thing about iStockphoto is that it’s cheap and efficient. You use their search tool to find a couple of options, click, click, click, and you can get back to scrolling through the latest LOLCats.
The second source I like is the Flickr Creative Commons. I shied away from this for a long time, thinking the licensing issues would be too complicated. Skellie set me straight on that with this useful, comprehensive post. Just search for images under the Attribution license and you’re set. The only thing that’s required is a credit, which is satisfied by a pleasingly effortless link back to the photographer.
Other Creative Commons licenses have limitations on whether you can modify a photo (such as cropping it) or use it in a commercial context (which could be a factor if you’re monetizing your blog). Stick to the Attribution license and you won’t have to give any of it a second thought. Trust me, there’s virtually no limit to the fantastic Attribution images to choose from.
The quality you can find on Flickr Creative Commons is as good or better than what you’ll get for iStockphoto, but each has different strengths. Flickr has terrific macro, landscape and botanical photography, and you can find great (and unusual) images of people. iStockphoto often does better than Flickr for animals and machinery, and offers high-quality shots of any object you can think of isolated against a white background.
More lazy fun you can have with images
Flickr isn’t just a great resource for images, it’s a magnificent way to waste hours and hours of your time. Try doing some searches on your major themes from time to time, and mark your favorites for later posts. Instead of “procrastinating,” you get to call it “building your image library.” You can do the same on iStockphoto, building extensive lightboxes of subjects you tend to use again and again.
As a lazy rule of thumb, the more iStockphoto imagery you use, the more professional your blog will feel. Using more Flickr images will create an artier, quirkier flavor.
Try letting your images do a little more of the work in your blog. Your posts will be more effective, and you’ll save precious energy you could be using to play Rock Band.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is an Associate Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
Tags: webdesign
Ruby on Rails MySQL Admin
Posted by Ivan Storck | Filed under Web Design, rubyonrails
This is about to kick phpMyAdmin’s ass:
rbDB web-based mysql admin with conventions from Jessy Bernal on Vimeo.
UPDATE: it’s on GitHub now! Try it out!
Tags: mysql, phpmyadmin, ruby on rails, rubyonrails, Web Design
