Media Riot's Blog

MongoDb + MVC

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:40:05 -0500

MongoDb + MVC

Session scoping with Ninject

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 12:45:15 -0500

Session scoping with Ninject

Good article for solving WCF binding problems

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:03:49 -0400

Good article for solving WCF binding problems

HTML5 Boilerplate is 2.0

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 09:31:54 -0400

HTML5 Boilerplate is 2.0:

H5BP is a year old! We launched on August 10th, 2010 and now we’ve got a plethora of new, exciting changes that comprise our 2.0 release. We’ve also added Mathias Bynens and Nicolas Gallagher, two very talented frontend researchers and developers, to the core development team. The highlights of 2.0 are below, followed by a more comprehensive changelog.

20 Database Design Best Practices

Mon, 25 Jul 2011 16:16:01 -0400

20 Database Design Best Practices

DropKick.js

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:53:57 -0400

DropKick.js:

decodering:

Painless custom dropdowns, a jQuery joint

Creating custom dropdowns is usually a tedious process that requires a ton of extra setup time. Oftentimes lacking conveniences that native dropdowns have such as keyboard navigation. DropKick removes the tedium and lets you focus on making s@#t look good.

nLog and WCF Service

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 07:46:34 -0400

Recently we deployed a new WCF web service app but quickly noticed nLog didn’t work on our production IIS stack.

We checked permissions on the log folder, checked for errors in the nLog configuration file. All with no luck.

We then noticed the nLog configuration file when deployed was located in the bin folder. We simply moved the configuration file from the bin to the root folder of the web service, restarted the IIS website and it started working. This has been a very tricky problem for us to solve but we wanted to share it with other web developers that may come across this problem in the future.

Protecting your web apps from the tyranny of evil with OWASP

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 03:40:05 -0400

Protecting your web apps from the tyranny of evil with OWASP

Favorite programming Mistakes

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:20:06 -0400

Paul from Smashing Magazine describes some of his favorite programming mistakes:

http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2011/07/07/my-favorite-programming-mistakes/

Essential E-Commerce Website Features: Tips and Examples

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 03:40:06 -0400

Essential E-Commerce Website Features: Tips and Examples

ReSharper 6 is out: JavaScript/CSS/Razor support, new refactorings, code inspections and more!

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 08:53:17 -0400

ReSharper 6 is out: JavaScript/CSS/Razor support, new refactorings, code inspections and more!

Generating Entity Framework Code first from an existing database

Fri, 08 Jul 2011 13:03:46 -0400

Generating Entity Framework Code first from an existing database

decodering: CSS3 Buttonize Framework

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:32:08 -0400

decodering:

CSS3 Buttonize Framework

Common web design mistakes

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:31:47 -0400

If you’re a small business owner, your web site is the central hub of your company, and it’s a pivotal part of your marketing and branding.

Potential customers visit your web site specifically for its content, meaning its appearance and usability are critical to its success and how those users view your company. However, getting your web design wrong can have a negative impact on your business.

Here are 5 common web design mistakes you must avoid to create a great user experience and grow your bottom line.

1. Poor Web Design Navigation

Many small businesses fail to make navigation a priority, but without careful attention to how people navigate your site, you could unintentionally be creating a frustrating experience for any potential visitor. People visit your site for specific information, and if they cannot find it they will quickly go elsewhere, leaving with the impression that your business is disorganized in more than just its website.

A good navigation structure should be seamless and will keep visitors on your site longer, which means potentially more readers, subscribers, sales or leads — whichever is your primary objective.

Website navigation affects both usability and accessibility, so it’s important to make it a primary concern. Most websites and blogs use common navigational techniques that are expected by the average visitor. The pages and sections of the site should be easy and logical for visitors to maneuver. Don’t make your visitors think about how to navigate your site; it should be effortless and natural.

There are several principles you can follow to create an effective navigation structure:

Use icons to aid navigation. They’re both visually appealing and easy to use and understand.
Create logical groups of related links, with the most important links on the top-level navigation bar and functional (dashboard, account, settings, etc.) and legal (copyright, privacy, terms) located elsewhere.
Provide location information so users know where they are on any given page and how to proceed to another area of the website. This can be achieved by using Breadcrumb navigation.

2. No Clear Calls To Action on a Web Page

The fundamental error of many small business web sites is the lack of a clear call to action. We’ve all seen bland small-business brochure web sites with nothing but endless descriptive paragraphs. If you aren’t leading users to commit to an action (buy a product, contact you or subscribe, for example), then you are losing them.

Driving traffic to your web site is important, but that traffic is useless if your primary call to action is a plain “click here” link buried in a sea of text. Call-to-action buttons are a great way to grab the user’s attention, and these buttons can be the key to higher conversions. Investing time and consideration into creating successful calls to action can help guide users and address their needs while achieving your own business goals.

It’s important to keep the following best practices in mind when creating an optimal call to action:

The design of a call to action can be broken down into 4 simple elements — size, shape, color, and position. Each plays a vital part in determining how effective the call to action is in directing the user.
Don’t make your users work or think, or they’ll leave. It’s not that they aren’t smart, it’s that they want access to information quickly without spending unnecessary time searching for it.
Don’t overdo it with multiple, competing calls to action on every page. Decide what your primary target is and then define a clear objective per page. Your content should have answered, “What’s in it for me?” and your call to action should now answer, “What do I do now?”

People visit your web site for its content, and how that is structured is a huge factor in its success or failure. Unfortunately, an overwhelming number of small businesses get so caught up in overloading the user with information that they overlook how that information is presented.

Most people do not read unless it’s absolutely necessary, and they prefer to scan through information quickly to get to the points of interest. This is why it’s so important to establish a strong visual content hierarchy so users can quickly scan your site and sifting through relevant information. A logical content hierarchy also acts as a guide through each page and creates a more enjoyable user experience.

So when focusing on your content, it’s best to keep in mind these three tips:

White space is possibly the most important factor to consider. It will allow the user to focus on the meaningful content within each section.
Break up lengthy pieces of information into digestible blocks of text, utilizing headings, sub-headings, bullets, blockquotes and paragraphs.
Readable content is important, so use a good line height that is large enough to make content scannable. Margins and letter spacing also need to be taken into consideration.

When talking about content, spelling and grammar cannot be underestimated.

We all know at least one small business web site that seems to include everything but the proverbial kitchen sink. Many small business owners tend to cram as much as they can onto a single page — the end result is a busy, cluttered and unreadable web page.

The more extraneous items there are on a web page, the more unprofessional it looks, and it becomes overwhelming, confusing and distracting for the user. A cluttered website will also affect traffic because visitors won’t return if they can’t understand or follow the content, which leads to low traffic, a high bounce rate and possibly a poor Page Rank.

Clutter also applies to images. Too many can be a huge distraction and just plain annoying. Images should be used to illustrate, capture attention and guide the user where required.

Follow these guidelines for a more streamlined visitor experience:

Challenge every item on each web page and ask, “Does it really need to be there? Does it serve a specific purpose? Can I live without it?”
The key is to aid the visitor in finding the information they’re looking for, so make sure to differentiate between areas of content, advertisements and promotions.
Prioritize your content and decide what is the most important to your visitor and potential customer — and sell it well.

Even the greatest content can become lost in a mess of words and graphics, so de-cluttering is essential.

These are just five web design mistakes that many small businesses make. What other mistakes have you noticed on small business websites?

Color & Contrast

Color and contrast aren’t usually high up on the list of priorities for a small business owner when it comes to creating a website. But it should be, because if your web site text does not have sufficient contrast compared to its background, people will have difficulty reading your content, especially people with poor vision or color-blindness.

Aside from plain readability, color and contrast are important because they can be used to create visual interest and direct the attention of the user. It can equally be effective in organizing and defining the flow and hierarchy of a page, and it’s therefore an essential principle to pay attention to during the design process. Here are some tips:

Using a free a Color Contrast tool (which conforms to accepted standards) you can easily check to see how the contrast on your website measures up.
Research how major sites use color and contrast to improve readability and highlight specific sections, and use this knowledge to experiment with color schemes.
One of best ways to enhance contrast is by creating size differences between elements, making some things appear larger than others. This works especially well within a minimal color scheme, and it means you don’t have to necessarily rely on color.

This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.

http://mashable.com/2011/04/10/5-web-design-mistakes/

Google Swiffy

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:31:12 -0400

Google Swiffy:

gregbabula:

Swiffy converts Flash SWF files to HTML5, allowing you to reuse Flash content on devices without a Flash player (such as iPhones and iPads).

Google Web Fonts V2 New, improved, bigger, better, etc.

Wed, 29 Jun 2011 09:25:37 -0400

Google Web Fonts V2

New, improved, bigger, better, etc.

Solution: Explorer open each folder in same window error and SQL Management Studio, IE and Team Explorer errors

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:50:29 -0400

Solution: Explorer open each folder in same window error and SQL Management Studio, IE and Team Explorer errors

Why clean code is more important than efficient code

Mon, 20 Jun 2011 08:49:57 -0400

Why clean code is more important than efficient code:

There was a time, long ago, when the most important thing you could do with your code was to make it more efficient — in terms of how much functionality you can pack into every kilobyte of storage, how tightly it compiles, how little RAM it uses, how much you can communicate in every network packet sent, and so on. In those days, many computers did not even have random access persistent storage, you could only run one program at a time, and RAM was measured in bytes rather than gigabytes. Those days are long gone.

Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 14:03:51 -0400

Download the latest Web Standards Update for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1. This update integrates HTML5 and CSS3 support in Visual Studio 2010.

You can also learn about some of the new syntax for HTML5 and CSS3 by visiting any of the following links:

Until next time!

EXIF Date + Windows Create Date

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 00:44:12 -0400

Today, I downloaded all the photos I have taken over the years from my android phone onto my PC. After bulk renaming the files and re-uploaded I noticed the sort order of my photos were out of order. It appears that android displays photos in the gallery based on the file create date. Since I did a bulk rename on my files all the create dates were set to today’s date.

I needed a way to reset the create date to the photo taken date, enter EXIF Date Changer, this tool will scan all the files in a specified folder and reset the dates, if can do:

EXIF Create Date -> Window File Create Date

Window File Create Date -> EXIF Create Date

Until next time!