I was very fortunate to have learned the concept of data normalization around the same time I learned to build a simple web page. Theoretically I could design a fully normalized relational database early in my career but in practice, things were a little messier than that. This was mostly due to the fact my ability to write effective join queries developed much more slowly. Without a solid understanding of SQL it is really impossible to work with a well designed database. (more…)

I was originally taught to build dynamic web pages with Coldfusion. If you are not familiar with Coldfusion (CF), its key strengths include functions that make it very simple to connect with a database and work with result sets. Functions like <CFQUERY> and <CFOUTPUT> bundle low level, common commands and make them easy to understand by eliminating the need to comprehend programmatic concepts like arrays. This is great for a beginner but eventually, if you stick with programming long enough, it becomes necessary to deal with more complex languages. For web development, PHP is a great interim step to programming in C# or Java. (more…)

In our last article we discussed how to create a screen takeover ad on a web site. In the takeover example we stuck to basics for the sake of simplicity. Although this means it could be useful to the widest audience, there wasn’t much to it. For instance, what if the creative in your screen takeover ad will work different on various sized monitors? In this case you might want to determine in advance what the user’s monitor size is and then write a program to make decisions based on this information. (more…)

Earlier this year I worked on a project where a client wanted to reveal their new web site design to all the visitors on the first two days with a screen takeover that was co-branded with a new cell phone. Once it was complete it was all very slick and cool. However, while creating the ad piece I struggled to find anything online that discussed how it is done so I decided to share my approach. (more…)

A while back myself and some other developers began discussing ways to improve the general usability of web based forms. I mean, let’s face it…This is one area on many web sites that requires a lot of work. Who hasn’t had a frustrating experience with a form?

One approach we’ve been developing is a mechanism to provide users with validation hints while they fill out the form, instead of waiting for them to completely submit it. In this way it is possible for the user to see immediately when there is a problem and get immediate feedback as it is corrected. This approach doesn’t work for every type of validation but it is great for rules about data formatting. (more…)

Continuing my series on web development stuff for hacks, this post includes the necessary information to detect a user’s IP address (as well as other variables) with SSI on an Apache server. SSI stands for Server Side Includes and they are directives which are placed in HTML pages and evaluated on the server while the pages are being served allowing for some dynamic content. For more information on SSI, Apache has a pretty good tutorial. (more…)

Some web coding fixes turn out to be so simple that there is not a lot of good direction on the topic easily found online. Ironically, what little information I could find all turned out to be overcomplicated and didn’t work. For a self-taught hack like me this means figuring it out for myself. To save you the trouble, in case you are anything like me, I will try to share what I learned. If you have questions please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments. (more…)