Lowter - Blog Entries from November 2008

Sponsor: The JavaScript Anthology

The JavaScript Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks & Hacks (external link)

Browse Blog Archives

« October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 »

Blog Entries from November 2008

Specific Password Requirements

By Frans de Jonge

Republished from The One with the Thoughts of Frans (external link).

Have you ever visited a website with specific password requirements? Nearly every website has requirements for minimum length. Various websites want capital letters, numbers, or - more commonly - both. In itself, this isn't so bad, but I keep forgetting all of these requirements. Websites should list their password requirements on places other than when creating an account and when changing said password. I don't want it to pollute the main page or the login interface, but when I enter the wrong password, I want to be informed of these requirements.

Note:
I'm not a fan of capitals in passwords actually, but I recognize that they may make passwords more secure. However, I very much doubt that EaRLGr3Y is more secure than m4h.d0gg.has.bad.br3ath!. I must admit that I didn't run any password generation tests, though. Regardless, it would be easy to throw one or more capitals in there and that's not the problem.

I have a password formula that I consider to be secure and it is based primarily on length. Small sentences are easy to remember for me and it's not terribly hard to remember where to alter a few things to make it a secure password. My primary caveat is with pages that have (in my opinion) ridiculous maximum length requirements. I've managed to come up with a 12-character password for this issue because, in my experience, most of my issues seem to be related to this maximum password length. However, this has significantly impaired my ability to incorporate a capital somewhere. Anyway, enough of that. The problem is that when I go to a site with such annoying requirements, I try to log in with one of my usual set of passwords and fail. Of course, to make matters more annoying, after three failed tries they lock up for 30 minutes. Most of this could have been avoided by what I have said above. If, for some reason, you see the need to restrict password lengths, inform me when my login fails.

In summary, after a failed login I want to see something in the spirit of the following:
Login failed. Are you sure you've entered the correct username and password?
- If you forgot your username, you can enter your e-mail address to have it e-mailed to you.
- If you forgot your password, you can request an e-mail with a link that will enable you to change your password, but, before you do so, please consider:
- The password needs to be at least 8 and at most 12 characters long.
- The password needs to contain a capital letter.
- The password needs to contain an integer.
- The password needs to contain one of the following symbols: ;:.?`
- And so on and so forth...
If you thought that this was primarily a rant about requirements on passwords that I consider unfortunate, you are correct. While I can imagine that it might not be easy to fix this issue, my proposed semi-solution is easy to implement. Given the nature of hashes, there's no practical reason to enforce a maximum password length, so please don't. Aside from that, I'd still like to be informed when capitals are required.
Top 10 Tech Gifts for the Holidays

By Ethan Poole

For those not familiar with American-consumerist culture, this coming Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) is Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year in the states. I've put together a list of the top ten coolest gadgets for the holidays, some expensive and some rather cheap. They are in no particular order.

iPhone 3G

The iPhone (external link) has become the best selling handset in the US and would make a great, more expensive gift for a family member, particularly for teens and businessmen. Whilst the iPhone 3G isn't exactly cheap, it is probably something most people would want.

TiVo HD XL DVR

The TiVo (external link) is by far the best DVR box available on the market. Their latest stand-alone box can hold 150 hours of high-definition video thanks to a massive one terabyte hard drive! You also get the amazing TiVo interface. Again, an expensive gift, but perhaps a great gift for the whole family.

Canon PowerShot SD850 IS

A nice and affordable point-and-shoot camera (external link). It's not the best camera on the market, but it's excellent for its price.

DOTS Gloves

DOTS Gloves (external link) are probably the best stocking-stuffer for anyone with touchscreen devices.

Last.fm subscription

Subscriptions can make excellent Christmas gifts and a Last.fm subscription (external link) would make a great gift for any music lover on your Christmas list.

Moixa Energy USBCell AA NiMH batteries

The usefulness of these batteries (external link) is questionable, but their coolness factor makes them a good tech gift.

Apple TV (with Boxee)

Thanks to the Boxee service, Apple TVs (external link) make a great portal into tons of streaming content in addition to your own media collection. You also gain easy access to purchase iTunes content right from your couch.

Dell Inspiron Mini 9

Netbooks are becoming the latest rage here in the United States. In my opinion, the Dell Inspiron Mini 9 (external link) is one of the better netbooks on the market. These are great laptops for students who only need to browse the Internet and to do word processing. They aren't nearly as powerful as normal laptops, but they are significantly cheaper at the same time.

Amazon Kindle

Great for any avid readers on your list. The Kindle (external link) is severely overpriced for its functionality, but it is leaps forward compared to other eBook readers and is pretty cool.

Sling Media Slingbox Solo

I've always found the Slingbox (external link) to be the best gadget for TV-addicts, allowing you to access your TV virtually anywhere. This third-generation model doesn't provide really anything new in comparison to the last two models, so there is no reason to replace your old Slingbox if you happen to have one. Nonetheless, a Slingbox is a must-have for anyone media-oriented.

If you have a slightly large chunk of money to spend on someone for the holidays, then you might look into some of these neat items! If you have any other gadgets you think would be great holiday gifts, then feel free to post them in the comments below. Have a nice Thanksgiving for all those in the US!
3 Cool Tech Products for Cold-weather Climates

By Ethan Poole

Now that I'm living in Minnesota (or Minne-snow-ta), I've taken up an interest in gadgets and technology designed for winter. Here are three of my favourite gadgets for cold-weather climates:

Philips Wake-up Light

One of the things I hate most about winter is the darkness. The sun rises really late and sets way too early. I also get up really early for work, way before the sun ever rises. Philips Wake-up Light (external link) simulates a sunrise so that you wake up naturally. It has some proven health benefits they claim, but I personally just like waking up gradually, which is why I wish I had this gadget. It is pretty expensive, but that doesn't really matter to me because it doesn't seem to be available in the United States anyway, only the UK.

DOTS Gloves

Like most people, I wear gloves when it is really cold. However, since the iPhone lacks physical buttons to control music playback, I have to take off a glove in order to control music playback. This dilemma also applies to anything with a touchscreen or that is touch-sensitive (like the iPod's click-wheel). However, these gloves (external link) solve this problem with tiny metal dots on the fingertips that allow you to use your touchscreen without taking your gloves off and subsequently freezing your hands.

SkyV Skylights

Winter weather can be very depressing, but these skylights (external link) are LCD monitors with high resolution video of more uplifting scenery that will brighten anyone's day! It would certainly lift my spirits if this were on my roof, especially on those really gloomy days. Of course, it's probably really expensive and more of a conceptual technology probably not available to consumers yet.

Sadly, I don't own any of these gadgets yet, although I am thinking about purchasing a pair of DOTS gloves because my hands get cold rather easily.
Download SitePoint's "The Art & Science Of CSS" Free

By Ethan Poole

SitePoint has an offer going on for the next few days where you can get a free download copy of The Art & Science of CSS (external link) for free just by following them on Twitter! This is certainly a creative way to promote their new Twitter channel (external link). It certainly has proved popular as well because they now have over 10,000 followers! Not only is this book free, but, in my opinion, it's one of SitePoint's best books too. Go follow them on Twitter and get your free copy before it's too late!

Anyone can follow me (external link) on Twitter too, but I don't have anything to give away for free, sorry.
Gmail Gains Themes

By Ethan Poole

The Official Gmail Blog announced today the availability of themes for Gmail! They look pretty snazzy, I must say so myself, and certainly look leaps better than the default Gmail interface's colours. The new themes are being rolled out to all Gmail accounts in the next few days, so if you don't see the new Theme tab under Settings don't freak out. You can read the blog post (external link) to see a grid of some of the cool new themes that are going to be available.

I'm just waiting for my account to be upgraded! Hurry up Google I want to try out the new themes!
Not Liking the MacBook's New Trackpad

By Ethan Poole

Last weekend I was at the Mall of America with a friend and we went inside the Apple Store. I always make a habit of going to the Apple Store when I am at the Mall of America because it seems that there is always some new Apple gadget I haven't seen in person yet. This time I hadn't seen the new MacBooks and MacBook Pros, so I wanted to stop in and to see them in person.

Wow, the new trackpads suck. The glass part of the trackpad is nice and it certainly looks sleek without the separate button. However, the new clickable trackpad is absolutely awful. I don't see a reason for getting rid of the much-more-functional, separate button. The new clickable trackpad sounds like a good idea on paper, but in practice it just doesn't work well. It also is not as responsive as a normal button.

I don't think the new trackpad will be a deal-breaker for anyone, but I think it certainly will become an annoyance. Apple could improve the new trackpad a lot, primarily by increasing its responsiveness so that it isn't an utter pain to use. I can see how the clickable trackpad evolved - because nowadays many people are fans of the tap-to-click ability of trackpads - but I just don't like the physical button being removed.

Oh well, everything else about the new Apple laptops is pretty sweet. Oh wait ... except the whole FireWire thing...
How Will the Web Fair with the Financial Crisis?

By Ethan Poole

With the current state of the world economy, everyone is questioning the future of their market. I don't think that the world economy has entirely collapsed yet, as many people seem to assume. We are no where near Great Depression conditions, but it is still important to expect some financial hardships for most markets in the coming years. How will the Internet fair in the declining economy? Of course, this is a bit hard to predict, but I think that we can at least examine a few factors that shed some light on the future of the Internet.

One interesting bit of information I remember from American History class is that board games were very popular during the Great Depression because they were a cheap form of entertainment. The Internet also offers a lot of similar forms of relatively cheap entertainment. For example, for only $15 a month, someone can play World of Warcraft, a game that basically never ends and is constantly improving and changing. Tools like Facebook and MySpace are free ways to communicate that are much cheaper than cellphones and landlines. The Internet is full of free and cheap forms of entertainment. I think that the Internet will survive (and possibly thrive) simply because it offers so many affordable services and products. In the next few years, I imagine that expensive forms of entertainment will decline, like building pools and going on vacations. Things like watching movies at home, playing video games, and social networking will thrive because they are cheap.

Granted, the ad market might take a hit, which would negatively affect content websites. SitePoint posted a blog entry (external link) about the potential decline in online advertising. A decline in the ad market may eliminate a lot of smaller websites, but I don't think the big players will close down. They may not be as profitable, but I think they'll be able to weather the storm, as long as they are run efficiently.

Kevin Rose even considers this a good time to launch a company (external link) because there will be less competition in the market. There is some validity in his statement because anyone with some free time has the opportunity to make something big. Also, a lot of tech companies with deep pockets (like Apple and Microsoft) will have plenty of cash to invest and to innovate in the cheaper market.

I personally think that the Internet as a whole is going to fair well in the economic slowdown because it is a cheap form of entertainment. Some fat will be trimmed off of the Internet, but I think the Internet will still remain a growing, strong platform. Of course, I'm not a market specialist or a financial analyst, so feel free to share your opinions on this matter in the comments below!
Are Resizable Layouts Dead?

By Ethan Poole

I've noticed in the past few months that fewer and fewer websites have resizable layouts that can properly shrink for an 800x600 resolution. The few resizable layouts I've encountered will only shrink for an 1024x768 resolution, which I guess they assume is the most common monitor size now, and slightly expand for anything larger. It was only a few years ago that most websites catered to an 800x600 resolution! Now it seems the era of resizable layouts is dying out.

Resizable layouts are ultimately better for the user because they don't restrict their browsing experience by requiring them to expand their browser window to see all the content. It also improves accessibility for users who simply have smaller monitors and furthermore for users who don't realise there is a horizontal scrollbar. I don't see any reason not to have resizable layouts, except because of the fact that a fixed-width layout is 100% easier to code and to design. From what I understand, a significant number of web users (particularly those in developing nations) still have smaller monitors with a maximum resolution of 800x600. Are web designers just ignoring this in favour of an easier design process?

The trend of non-resizable layouts seems to correspond with the development of Web 2.0. Just a few years ago, resizable layouts seemed to be the "holy grail" of web design with most web designers aiming to have their layouts work across browsers and across screen sizes. Most non-resizable layouts would at least work in an 800x600 screen resolution too. Has this trend just entirely died out? Why are so many websites leaving smaller monitors in the dust? Plus, Web 2.0-style layouts are generally easier to make resizable!

Both MSN and Yahoo! require horizontal scrolling on their homepage in the 800x600 resolution. Luckily, most of Google's services are still resizable, but Google tends to sacrifice design for the sake of accessibility in more cases than Microsoft and Yahoo! do. Of course, I was devastated when SitePoint's latest design (external link) update didn't shrink for 800x600. Web design websites I figured would hold out for screen-resolution accessibility. The day Google's normal search pages don't resize for different screen resolutions will be a very, very sad day.
Opera Mini Never Submitted to Apple

By Ethan Poole

The New York Times' blogger Saul Hansell has reported a clarification about Opera and the iPhone. He went and further questioned Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, Opera's chief executive, about Opera Mini and the iPhone for extra clarity:

Quotation by "Saul Hansell"
He [von Tetzchner] said that the development of the iPhone browser was more an "internal project" of some engineers than a product that management was committed to introducing. Indeed, development was halted after the company looked at the details of the license agreement in Apple's software development kit and realized that it would not be permitted.

Hansell was the one to report originally about Apple rejecting Opera Mini, so I guess he got the story wrong. I figured it would be good to post about this article considering I posted a blog entry about it last week and the topic was brought up in the forums (external link). You can read the clarifying blog post (external link) yourself on New York Times' website.
Obama Expected to Appoint a CTO

By Ethan Poole

Before being elected as President, Obama promised that his new administration would embrace technology in order to incorporate citizens more into the democratic process. One way he plans to do this is to appoint a Chief Technology Officer (external link) (CTO) to his cabinet "to ensure that our government and all its agencies have the right infrastructure, policies and services for the 21st century". Beware that this position will probably only be symbolic, but it's a step in the right direction.

There is a lot of speculation about whom Obama will appoint as CTO, but there is a good chance it will be a Washington outsider. You can read more about the specifics of Obama's "search" for a CTO on CNET (external link). I'm anxious to see who Obama seeks out myself, but there are still over seventy days until his inauguration, so I don't expect that anything will be announced soon.

On a side note, has anyone seen Obama's Change.gov (external link) website? He must have some brilliant web designers working for him because all his websites look absolutely stunning. Also, how did he get the change.gov domain?
PunBB 1.3 Officially Released!

By Ethan Poole

PunBB 1.3 has finally been officially released just today! This release brings tons of improvements from 1.2, particularly the new extension system. Here is a small list of improvements (from the official news post (external link)):
- Extension system based on hooking technique. One click extension installation, no need to modify forum's code anymore.
- Full UTF-8 support.
- More customisable styles, templating system.
- New layout: markup, CSS, language files updated, markup helper functions added.
- URL rewriting schemes, nice URL's built-in.
- Split/merge topics functionality.
- Multiple groups for moderators allowed.
- Searches are now case-insensitive, extern.php improved, more global, per-group and per-user options added.
- Certain "bad" characters are silently stripped out from the text input.
- Got rid of extras folder, README added.
- Hotifx system based on extension system for quick bugfixes.
Since the start of PunBB 1.3's development, the project has also undergone a change in ownership as Rickard Andersson (external link), the lead developer, moved on to new things. The code base has improved a lot as well, although I guess that isn't as exciting of an issue with the hook-based extension system.

Personally, I like the new default layout. It's much more slick than the old one and a nice facelift.

Lowter will probably upgrade our PunBB installation in the coming weeks, for anyone wondering. You can download (external link) the official release of PunBB 1.3 from the PunBB website.
Increasing Productivity with Virtual Desktops

By Ethan Poole

When you're designing a website you know how many windows you can have open: code editor, web browser(s), Photoshop, terminal window (for SVN or CVS), etc. You're desktop gets crowded! Sure, there are various windows management tools in every operating system, but when you have five or more windows open it still gets crowded. This problem is quickly solved by virtual desktops, which allow you to group sets of windows into their own "desktop".

Before I purchased my Macbook, I just dealt with one desktop, largely because I had two huge monitors (where overlap was uncommon), but also because there weren't many good virtual desktop solutions for OS X. However, I have finally started to use Spaces - a new feature of OS X Leopard - to organise my workspace environment and hence to increase my productivity. It's alleviated a lot of window searching and allows me to multitask a little bit more (which is something I try to avoid, but do nonetheless). Apple did a good job with Spaces because it's intuitive and integrated well with the rest of the operating system.

I wish they would have added a little icon on one of the function keys for Spaces, like they did for Expose and the Dashboard. Rather, the default keyboard shortcut is F8 and on a Mac laptop that's already assigned to the play/pause function, so you have to press the function key too. Only a minor annoyance, but they could've done better with that.

If you're not using OS X Leopard (which I assume is most of you), then here are a few other virtual desktop applications for Windows:
GNOME and KDE have virtual desktop support built right into them, so you don't need anything extra! I hope that using virtual desktops helps to increase your productivity!
Opera on the iPhone Soon?

By Ethan Poole

Last week there were a number of reports on the Internet about Opera's mobile browser being rejected from Apple's iPhone App Store. To clarify, Apple apparently rejected Opera Mini, not Opera Mobile. I guess some people were confused (external link) and didn't realise that Opera has two mobile browsers. Apparently, Opera Mini was rejected because it was running a Java ME runtime on the iPhone, although this is only speculation. This of course violates the iPhone's SDK agreement. Still, if Opera were to redevelop Opera Mini using the C API, Apple would probably still reject the application because it directly competes with Safari.

I could understand Apple rejecting Opera Mobile, but Opera Mini isn't a full-fledged web browser at all, like Safari, but rather a "mini" browser. With Opera Mini, webpages are sent through Opera's servers and processed into a smaller file format before being sent to Opera Mini. This method puts most of the rendering job on Opera's servers, which allows Opera Mini to work well on older mobile phones and to reduce bandwidth usage drastically. Overall, it is a severely limited Internet experience, especially in comparison to Safari. The target market of Opera Mini is different from that of Safari.

Hopefully, Opera will devote more resources to getting Opera Mini and Opera Mobile to run on the iPhone properly and then push Apple to accept them as applications. I would really like to see both Opera Mini and Opera Mobile on the iPhone in the near future. When the App Store was released, I expected that eventually Opera Mobile would be ported to the iPhone because it is the most powerful mobile browser on the market. However, Apple's recent anti-competitive practices are making me sceptical of the iPhone as a development platform. Please! I want Opera on my iPhone!
Windows 7 Pre-beta Leaks onto Bittorrent

By Ethan Poole

CNET's News.com is reporting about Windows 7 having quickly leaked onto Bittorrent sites (external link), such as The Pirate Bay and Mininova:

Quotation by "CNET News.com"
The pre-beta version of Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system released to developers at the Professional Developers Conference has already made it onto prominent BitTorrent sites, where thousands of enthusiasts around the world are currently downloading it.

Windows 7 leaking out onto Bittorrent is no surprise at all, it happens with everything nowadays. It would be nice if Microsoft just gave out the pre-releases for public scrutiny, sort of opening up the development process more.

I hope that Microsoft learnt a thing or two from Windows Vista, which was largely a failure. Whilst most of the bugs and the issues have been ironed out by now, Vista's launch was nonetheless an utter failure. I don't know too much about Microsoft's planned improvements for Windows 7, but it seems to be mainly under-the-hood bits from what I hear (much like OS X Snow Leopard). It would be nice to see a lot of the features that were originally meant to be in Windows Vista, but scrapped to meet the release date (WinFS anyone?).

I actually feel excited about Windows 7 because I think that Microsoft has learnt a lot from releasing Vista. It's also an opportunity for all the cool stuff originally in Windows Longhorn to debut finally in Windows 7. Even at the worst, it'll at least bring some improvements to Mac OS X through competition.
WordPress' Plugin Platform Rocks!

By Ethan Poole

Many of my client projects have utilised WordPress (external link) as the foundation for each website. This is usually the client's choice because they don't want to pay for an entire custom CMS, no matter how much I push for it (because I find it the best solution in most cases). Hence, I have to find ways to build off of WordPress in order to meet the client's specifications. Luckily, the WordPress development team has made one of the best plugin platforms I have ever worked with.

Creating new plugins and modifying existing plugins for WordPress are extremely easy. There are tons of hooks built into the platform so your code can easily integrate into WordPress without having to modify WordPress' actual source code. Also, there are already hundreds of WordPress plugins that take only a few minutes to install. WordPress' plugin platform and plugin repository make building a customised version of WordPress a snap.

PunBB (external link) 1.3 has a plugin platform similar to that of WordPress, although it is still in development. I cannot wait until an official, stable release of PunBB 1.3 is released, because then I can migrate a lot of the modifications made to Lowter's PunBB installation to plugins. Development of PunBB 1.3 seems to be pretty slow, but it's a huge improvement all around, not just with the plugin platform.

Anyhow, I just wanted to give props to WordPress' great plugin platform! It's made my life a lot easier numerous times!