Making comparisons between Joomla and Drupal are very common these days as they are currently considered the top two open source content management systems (CMS) out there.

Most people claim that Joomla is too difficult and Drupal is easier, but it really depends on how used to one you become over the other. I found Drupal easier when I first started using it than Joomla, but I find that Joomla has better looking templates.

Both CMS systems allow you to edit the live pages as soon as you are logged in as an admin, but Drupal has much better user management which you can assign custom user roles to any content type. Joomla’s user management is not that great as you are limited to only 6 user types, while Drupal allows you to create as many as you need. I created a web site for an online podcast conference at www.Podcamp.Info and created user roles for speakers and another for attendees. Speaker roles can create sessions. Also, what I like about Drupal’s user management is the Auto Assign Role module which allows people to register for more than one role at the signup form or to automatically assign a role. I have not seen that from Joomla.

Joomla has good plug-ins and components to manage users, but out of the box, Drupal gets my vote for the better CMS when it comes to user management.

What are your comments?

CSS Frameworks are now making their way into the hearts of web designers. I know how we all disapprove of using tables for multi-column web page layouts. Some web designers still use tables because CSS flops in some browsers. Most web designers still do not know the difference between fluid CSS and fixed CSS.

I recently discovered CSS frameworks and found that they do make CSS easier to use. Actually, the CSS layout is already done for you. You simply add the classes to DIVs, like you would your own. I checked out Blueprint CSS framework. It works on a grid system. Has anyone tried this or a similar CSS framework yet? Blueprint is cool, because they offer a grid section of 24 columns. You simply add classes called span-#, where # is the number of the column. You simply specify what column you want that DIV to be in and it moves it to that column. Each column in the grid is 30 pixels wide with 10 pixel margins. You can always override that if you need to. Now, how good is this system?

I applied it to a few client web sites and it worked really well. The cool thing is that it took 45 minutes to redo the entire CSS using Blueprint. I know about 960GS, but have not used it. Has anyone had luck with it?

The MDP has a nice splash page as well and features Myspace applications every single day. With almost 25 categories in which to place your application, you really can develop an entire suite of Myspace applications for comedians, musicians, and more. The page I am looking at now features a Family Tree, Family Guy application, Texas Hold Em, and a Travel application called Where have I Been?

I have not gotten too much into the MDV as of yet, but when I do, I will surely develop an application or two and let you know how the process is. So far, from a quick glance, I like Myspace’s Rest API section that allows web developers to access their own web page from Rest (Representational State Transfer) connections and uses two flavors Low Rest and High Rest. It uses HTML GET, POST, PUTs, and GETs, which allow you to access elements of your web site over XML or JSON.

Using Google’s new open social API os what the Myspace Developer Platform is created on. So, Myspace developers will need to join iGoogle first and learn the basics of Open Social.

Using MDV, you can write applications for your Myspace friends, groups, and more. Give it a try.

Web designers who take the time to learn the WordPress API will prevail in the long run.

Allowing web sites to interact with their visitors is key to increasing online sales and traffic.

What do you think?

Until both browsers make it easy to render tableless CSS, designers promoting its benefits are not going to win the battle and tabled web sites will still prevail.

Some practice can be handled on CSS dominant web sites like CSSZenGarden.com and CSSBeauty.com.

The best advice I give to my web design readers is to practice on both Firefox and Internet Explorer.

If you are a web designerlooking for more interactivity on your web site without the need to learn tricky cross browser Ajax, you may want to give MooTools a try.

At the moment, Mootools works well with Internet Explorer 6.0 and higher as well as Firefox 2.0 and similar Mozilla browsers.

I tried Moo Tools and was impressed their plugins which included:

• Objected oriented classes
• Drop and Drag effects
• Window manipulation utilities
• and more

Moo Tools works with DHTML, CSS, and HTML forms for advanced interactivity of your web site visitors.

Give Moo Tools a try at mootools.net.

It is true that most web designers love Flash and Flash makes a great looking web site with smooth animated graphics and interactivity, but it is still bad for search engine ranking positioning.

Most web sites are now turning to a simple HTML look like Craigs List, Google, and other plain text web sites. Although these web sites do not look as professional as all-Flash web sites, they gain higher Google and Yahoo rankings. This is the tradeoff.

So, what I do in this case it create an all Flash site with a similar all-HTML site and this is what you need to do if you have all Flash site. If you have a very high traffic web site from offline marketing, then this is fine, but most web sites do not have this content.