Rudd-O.com » Web authoring

Do not open new browser windows, ever

Rudd-O — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:12:29 +0000

When I was in college, I had a stubborn teacher who absolutely demanded that certain parts of our project (Web site / application) open in new windows. I tried to explain to him why this was a big no-no. He didn’t understand.

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¿Justificar mi texto? No, gracias.

Rudd-O — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 19:53:05 +0000

Acabo de leer un consejo para blogging que parecería ser bueno, pero no lo es.

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Enjoy: Favicons!

Rudd-O — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 07:41:57 +0000

I just launched a new Web service: Favicons! (more…)

Webmaster: dead on arrival

Rudd-O — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 11:38:47 +0000

We all know the Webmaster, a long-gone profession revered in the late 90’s, is dead.

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ACAP: fixing what ain’t broke

Rudd-O — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 10:04:29 +0000

The article at piBlog » Blog Archive » ACAP: A way to make AJAX search-friendly? wants to spread the usage of a new protocol on the World Wide Web. This protocol, named ACAP, is supposed to be the cure of modern Web indexing problems.

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Creación de una revista en línea efectiva con WordPress: resultados preliminares

Rudd-O — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:52:49 +0000

Recuerdan el reciente artículo making a magazine out of WordPress? Hoy podrán ver, en exclusiva, un avance preliminar:

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Creating an effective online magazine with WordPress: the HTML mockups

Rudd-O — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 02:04:14 +0000

Remember yesterday’s post about making a magazine out of WordPress? Today, you’ll get to see an exclusive sneak peek:

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The Iconfactory is being renewed

Rudd-O — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 03:03:49 +0000

The Iconfactory is being renewed. These videos that depict the renovation process… ah, they are hilarious!

At least if you’re into Web development and design.

Nonces and WordPress

Rudd-O — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 18:24:37 +0000

What is all this Nonce-sense? - Asymptomatic gives us a quick introduction on nonces.

Nonces alone sound very stupid to me. Instead of having implemented nonces alone, what the WP team should have been doing all along is obvious: every action that is not idempotent should be done through POST. Technically, it’s quite simple. Programmatically, it’s harder to do than GETs. But surely coding GETs + nonces must be much harder than simply coding POSTs.

No one is discussing how useful nonces are. They are useful. But in the context of the greater picture, they’re used to avoid WP admins from being tricked — which is exactly why POSTs should be used as well. Sure, POSTs alone don’t buy us a whole lotta security. But they surely do buy us some.

(Please don’t tell me I haven’t read the whole thread. The fact that nonces were introduced does not contradict one iota the fact that POSTs should be used for destructive operations, and that’s it.)

Update: to visitors from the #wordpress channel: I updated the article, correcting statements of fact. I’m very glad to see that you’re receptive to the POST idea. It’s no surprise that it has been floated before as an issue.

Five tenets of high-quality Web application building

Rudd-O — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 00:14:12 +0000

Here are the five most important tenets to keep in mind when building high-quality Web applications. I won’t go into standards compliance here, because that topic has already been debated to death, and the conclusions are old news now. Instead, let’s review the modern tendencies applied in high-quality Web applications:

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Common mistakes that lead to invalid XHTML

Rudd-O — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 01:28:06 +0000

When writing HTML by hand, these are the most common mistakes that lead to invalid HTML or XHTML:

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On blog validation and Section 508 compliance

Rudd-O — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 00:55:53 +0000

I’ve been talking regularly about the importance of HTML/XHTML validation in Web pages and blogs.

Well, now, there’s a new reason… or, actually, it’s a pretty old one. Section 508 of the US Rehabilitation Act makes a few requirements for public Web sites and blogs, to improve accessibility for their users.

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Is HTML/XHTML validation important?

Rudd-O — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 01:26:00 +0000

thTeong WebLog|Blog About Everything asks whether validation is important.

Here’s my take on the issue: it’s very important.

Why is HTML/XHTML validation important?

If your content does not validate, your RSS feeds might be broken as well. Most feed readers will barf when fed broken XML/XHTML. That means fewer readers.

Validation is also important in another sense: when you focus on validation, you inevitably end up doing somethign about semantics in your markup. Everyone benefits from this, especially you, the author, because Google and other search engines benefit from semantic markup.

Plus, broken HTML/XHTML may render in unpredictable ways with different browsers. XHTML-based blogs may not even render under certain circumstances (we’re talking about the famous application/xml+html content type here). I don’t suppose you’d want to harm your readers’ reading experiences, do you?

To help you in your thankless task of ensuring that your WordPress blog always remains valid HTML/XHTML, I’ve written a special plug-in for it: the WordPress XHTML validator. Download it today!

By the way, thanks for the reference link, thTeong!