• Internet Explorer users account for between 65% and 85% of all visits
• Firefox and Safari account for almost all the rest of the traffic, and Firefox tends to have 2-3 times the share of Safari.
• 70% of IE users are browsing these sites with IE7. There was very little variation here, even though the percentage of IE users in general varied by 20% across sites.

(Observations are based on the last month of data, across a sampling of sites based around the United States. Visitors were primarily from the US.)

It’s unfortunate to see how dominant Internet Explorer is sector, but progress is evident. It’s a relief to see that IE7–a fairly capable browser in its own right–has seen increased adoption recently.

Just a little mid-week levity. The moral of the story: think carefully about your calls to action. You need to make it clear to your readers what you want them to do and why they should want to do it. Give them a reason to click your banner or sign-up button. And if something isn’t an advertisement, make sure that it doesn’t look like one. This banner looks like a paid ad for who knows what and I never would have clicked on it if I weren’t planning to write this post poking fun at it. It doesn’t represent a compelling call to action for me. At face value, I can’t tell what I’ll find once I click, or even if I’m supposed to. After all, I’m not President-Elect Barack Obama. That’s some other guy.

1. Think about what you would type into Google if you were looking for whatever information you’re about to post. Make it specific.
2. Put that in the title. You can add some more detail to make the title more “punchy,” but make sure your search phrase is in there.
3. There is no step 3.

If a searcher sees exactly what she typed in the title of a search result she’s going to click. The trick is that your content has to support the title you picked. Otherwise, even if you trick the search engine, your site visitor will take one look and hit the back button.

Also my new thing is writing updates of exactly 140 characters. The one before last only made it because I put an extra word in by mistake.

Shortly thereafter, Sean Bossie, a client of the company I work for and all around cool guy replied:

@scottnelle That cracks me up Scott…I am now joining The 140 Club. So the thing is: Can you end with incomplete words or must be dead on??

Sensing an opportunity to get a chuckle out of Sean, I bought a domain, cracked open Photoshop, and got to work over my lunch break. An hour later I had designed, built, and launched the140club.com. Talk about agile. :-) The 140 Club is currently accepting new members, so why not join up?

<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
/**
 * MY_Form_validation Class
 *
 * Extends Form_Validation library
 *
 * Adds one validation rule, "unique" and accepts a
 * parameter, the name of the table and column that
 * you are checking, specified in the forum table.column
 *
 * Note that this update should be used with the
 * form_validation library introduced in CI 1.7.0
 */
class MY_Form_validation extends CI_Form_validation {

	function My_Form_validation()
	{
	    parent::CI_Form_validation();
	}

	// --------------------------------------------------------------------

	/**
	 * Unique
	 *
	 * @access	public
	 * @param	string
	 * @param	field
	 * @return	bool
	 */
	function unique($str, $field)
	{
		$CI =& get_instance();
		list($table, $column) = split("\.", $field, 2);

		$CI->form_validation->set_message('unique', 'The %s that you requested is unavailable.');

		$query = $CI->db->query("SELECT COUNT(*) dupe FROM $table WHERE $column = '$str'");
		$row = $query->row();
		return ($row->dupe > 0) ? FALSE : TRUE;
	}
}
?>

You’ll want to save this file as system/application/libraries/MY_Form_validation.php (instead of MY_Validation.php.)

When you load the library, don’t forget that it’s now called form_validation instead of just validation. There have also been some changes to the way you set your rules for the new form validation class. You can read all about this in the class documentation. Here’s the basic format, including usage of the “unique” rule from the extension:

$this->form_validation->set_rules('username','User Name','required|min_length[5]|unique[users.username]');
$this->form_validation->set_rules('emailaddress','Email Address','required|valid_email|unique[users.email]');

I’m working on small web application and I’m building it with CodeIgniter. Like most web applications, mine requires user registration and login. And like most login systems, mine is happiest if each user has a unique username. While the CodeIgniter validation library is pretty robust, it doesn’t come with a function for checking a value to see if it is unique or if it already exists in the database. Fortunately there are a couple of ways to remedy that.

The first way is outlined in the documentation for the validation library under the heading “Callbacks: Your own Validation Functions.” I tried this and it works well, but it requires you to write the functions in your controller or model. I thought that looked messy and I wanted something a little more streamlined, so I decided to extend the validation library with my own function. Extending CodeIgniter’s libraries is pretty easy. Here’s what I came up with–I’ll explain the important lines afterward:

Updated September 12, 2008: Made some changes based on suggestions from the super-helpful CodeIgniter community. Thanks guys!

<?php if (!defined('BASEPATH')) exit('No direct script access allowed');
/**
 * MY_Validation Class
 *
 * Extends Validation library
 *
 * Adds one validation rule, "unique" and accepts a
 * parameter, the name of the table and column that
 * you are checking, specified in the forum table.column
 */
class MY_Validation extends CI_Validation {

	function My_Validation()
	{
	    parent::CI_Validation();
	}

	// --------------------------------------------------------------------

	/**
	 * Unique
	 *
	 * @access    public
	 * @param    string
	 * @param    field
	 * @return    bool
	 */
	function unique($str, $field)
	{
		$CI =& get_instance();
		list($table, $column) = split("\.", $field, 2);

		$CI->validation->set_message('unique', 'The %s that you requested is unavailable.');

		$query = $CI->db->query("SELECT COUNT(*) dupe FROM $table WHERE $column = '$str'");
		$row = $query->row();
		return ($row->dupe > 0) ? FALSE : TRUE;
	}
}
?>

Save the above code as system/application/libraries/MY_Validation.php and you’re ready to go. You can now add the “unique” rule to your existing validation, like so:

$rules['username'] = "required|min_length[5]|unique[users.username]";
$rules['emailaddress'] = "required|valid_email|unique[users.email]";

This will check the values that entered for username and emailaddress to make sure they don’t already exist in the username and email fields in your table called users. The general format for the rule, then, is : unique[table.column]. This matches the SQL syntax for specifying fields when field names are ambiguous. Pretty cool.

So here’s what’s going on in each of the important lines.

$CI =& get_instance();

This creates a reference to the CodeIgniter super object and allows you to use it’s functions in your library. See the user guide for an explanation (under the heading “Utilizing CodeIgniter Resources within Your Library.”)

list($table, $column) = split("\.", $field, 2);

This line parses out the table name and column name. Note that it only returns 2 strings. This way you can specify something like unique[users.email.address], which would check the users table for a column called email.address. In mysql periods are allowed in field names but not table names, and the validation rule reflects that.

$CI->validation->set_message('unique', 'The %s that you requested is unavailable.');

This line sets the error message in case the value isn’t unique. %s will be replaced by the field description you enter in your validation fields. This would be better off in a language file, but for ease of use I’ve stuck it right in the library. CodeIgniter allows you to replace entire language files but not simply extend them with a single line. If that changes in the future I’ll revisit my decision.

$query = $CI->db->query("SELECT COUNT(*) dupe FROM $table WHERE $column = '$str'");
$row = $query->row();

Here’s where it checks the database to make sure your field is unique. In the query I assigned the row count to the keyword “dupe” (for duplicate.) I wanted to use “exists” or “match” but both are protected words in mysql. Oh well. Note the use of $CI->db->query instead of $this->db->query. That’s explained in the documentation link earlier in this post.

return ($row->dupe > 0) ? FALSE : TRUE;

Finally, this line returns the result of the validation check. In case you’re not accustomed to using ternary operators, here it is as an if/else:

if ($row->dupe > 0)
{
	return FALSE; // a match was found, validation fails
}
else
{
	return TRUE; // value is unique, validation passed
}

So there you have it. A quick extension to CodeIgniter’s validation library that allows you to check your database for unique values.

SQL Buddy is a web-based MySQL Administration tool that’s free, open-source, and easy on the eyes. I’ve installed it on my development machine and I’m loving it so far. Most web developers are probably familiar with PHPMyAdmin, and this does pretty much the same thing, but it does it while looking quite a bit nicer. It’s also got some tasteful interface enhancements (yes, that’s code for AJAX minus the abuse) to make the whole thing feel a bit faster. I haven’t done proper benchmarking, but it sure feels faster than PHPMyAdmin on my machine while managing my little databases. And the interface seems pretty well considered. It allows you to easily edit multiple records on a single screen.

It was REALLY painless to install. The download for the program is only 167KB zipped. To install it just unzip and drop it on the server. That’s it. Then point your browser to wherever you placed it and log in as one of your MySQL users. Easy.

I only have minor issues with SQL Buddy. The interface for browsing records in a database looks so much like a regular desktop application that I expected it to work like one, allowing me to click on rows and edit the data in place. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. You have to check a box and then hit the edit link to edit all selected rows on another page. It’s a minor issue but I’d like to see it changed. Due to the open-source nature of SQL Buddy I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone adds edit-in-place.

SQL Buddy is a nice, simple piece of software that allows you to easily edit your databases from the web browser. I don’t know if it will ever be more popular than the deeply-entrenched PHPMyAdmin as the de facto standard database editor for web hosts and developers, but it’s quickly become my favorite web-based editor. Highly recommended.