Online publication for web professionals, A List Apart, is administering the first of an annual survey of web professionals. Respondents are eligible for a few prize drawings, but the real value is going to be when they publish the collected data. The survey goes pretty quickly.
I almost didn’t write on this topic. There are a lot of people out there who know more about indexing than I do. The problem is all of the knowledge on the subject is being presented by and for database specialists. While their need is probably greater, I contend that web programmers who create dynamic sites need this information as well. So I’m going to share what I’ve learned to make my queries faster over the years. If there are any gaping holes of information, than hopefully those will get addressed in the comments.
An index is created on a particular table in your database. You specify one or more columns that you’d like included in the index, and the database then has a snapshot of what the table looks like when all the records are sorted on those columns. The idea is that the table will be able to return query results involving those columns more quickly. Here’s how it works.
The habit is easy to fall into. I find myself from time to time thinking of text as just an expandable block element I need to account for in my design. And truthfully for the role I as a designer and programmer play in the birth of a web site, maybe that’s all the thought I need to give it. But the fact is that content and design are both critical to the long term success of a web site. Where does the text on the finished site come from?
Did the client decide to leave the dummy text that I thoughtlessly spit out during the design process as a placeholder? Did the client rewrite everything? Do I even care? Maybe it’s an ego thing, but I want the sites I create to be useful and effective for my clients. Since content plays such a big role in determining that sucess, I do care.
With that in mind, I asked Theresia Whitfield of Fletcher Communications what words of wisdom she would share with web designers on the idea of web content. The rest of this post is her response:
One of the blogs I read regularly is that of AJAX designer Jesse Skinner. I’ve never had an extended conversation with the man, but he stands out in my memory in part because we started full-time freelancing at almost the exact same time. Naturally when he made a post about his first 2 months of freelancing, I did the same. He’s just added a post to his blog about his first 8 months of freelancing, and for some reason I’ve convinced myself I must do the same. (I plan on beating Jesse to the punch next time around, so keep your eyes peeled for my future post, Lessons Learned in the First 8.5 Months of Freelancing. I’m not taking any chances.)
I came across a good article yesterday with the title, The business case for Web standards-based development. I like the break down at the end of the article of all the benefits that come with designing a standards compliant web site.
It got me thinking about the clients I’ve had in the last year. Most of them don’t really know or care that I did my best to adhere to standards when designing their sites, and I think that’s probably typical of most of the clients of freelance designers. In truth that’s probably my fault. I’ve always made the assumption that the advantages of standardization really only apply to larger sites with high profiles and lots of traffic. As I look at this list, though, many of them hold just as much appeal for the “little guy”.
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