Beginners Guide To XAMPP.

XAMPP is made by Apache Friends (http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html). It allows you to setup your http server with ease. If you have tried setting up Apache on your desktop PC it can be very hard to configure especially for Windows machines, XAMPP allows you do basic setup all you need in one setup file.

It will offer to install Apache, PHP, MySQL and Perl instead of installing them separately.

So I’m going to talk you through the installation to check your doing it all right so we are going to download XAMPP i downloaded XAMPP Windows 1.5.4a you can download it here (http://www.apachefriends.org/download.php?xampp-win32-1.5.4a-installer.exe).

So i went throught the installation before hand this is my results

Choose language

Install destination (C:\program files)

Waiting for install…

Finish

Popup “install XAMPP Servers (Apache, MySQL or Filezilla FTP) as service?” Yes

Popup “install Apache 2 as service?” Yes

Popup “Apache 2 service was installed successfully! (ports: 80 +443)” Ok

Popup “Install MySQL as service?” Yes

Popup “MySQL service was installed successfully! (port: 3306)” Ok

Popup “Install Filezilla FTP service?” Yes

How Our Computing Lives Are Changing!

As we can see from the major search engine Google things like MS Office and Open Office, may be a think of the past if you look at docs.google.com you will see that you can now create documents and spreadsheets online.

The document creator you might be able to see that it works like a lot of word processors, right click your get the usual options like copy and paste you have tool bars with fonts on them.

So what plus sides are their from Google Docs & Spreadsheets?

Well think about it imagine doing some of your work as home then no need to carry and flash drives or laptops you can just log on to Google and get your documents your created earlier!

So maybe this could be the way to the future?

No more laptops, no more flash drives just Google.

5 Web Designing Do’s and Don’ts

1. Different visited link colour rather than just having all your links the same colour it’s just annoying for visitors if you don’t have visited colours.

2. Fully flash sites big no no, if you’ve notices that flash player has only just been released on Linux so a lot of them won’t be able to see your site or some windows users still don’t have flash player so avoid flash at all costs.

3. Do not design over 800×600 this is obvious I hope I don’t really need to explain it.

4. JavaScript do not use a lot of it and don’t depend on it. You will find that your visitors may have it disabled.

5. Do not use Tables, if you’re a web designer you should already know this for your layout never use tables as it slows your users loading time down css layouts are a lot faster with a external sheet style.

Search Engines We Take Them For Granted.

Think of the term “Google it” now you have to admit that you’ve heard that a lot you ask someone a question they just say “Google it” but imagine for a second their was no such thing as search engines, you need to find information for your class your pretty much stuffed their aren’t you, you would have to go in your local library or something like that, the internet would not be as popular mainly because you cant search for something, you wouldn’t know where to go you would need to rely on word of mouth to get a website popular.

So next time you do a Google, Yahoo or any other search engine think about it, think about where the websites came from do some research on them and thank them for supplying us with a search engine.

Web 2.0, who cares?

Well if you’re a web designer or developer you would of heard about web 2.0 a lot, and I have done a little bit of research and it seems that no one really understands it especially me, so all I’ve seen is people showing us you know things like “rounded corners” you ether have them or a full screen one. Now I think this is just a waste of time design your site how you like it don’t follow the “web 2.0” phase, yeah they look nice but no one can put their finger on what web 2.0 is, if you read up on it in it you will see the words “Ajax”, “rounded corners”. But let’s think about this for a min Ajax isn’t that JavaScript?

If it is surely you shouldn’t be using it as certain visitors won’t be able to see it because they turn it off, rounded corners ok knock your self out using them.

So my post is saying don’t follow this craze soon it will be something better with less of a ‘shiny’ affect people haven’t thought it through enough all I’m seeing is icons everywhere and horrible shiny effects.