Why Dont You Blog?

I have tried to hold off commenting on this month’s issue of .Net magazine. In recent months, the magazine has been showing signs of greatness and some of the recent articles have been inspirational and educational.

Not this time.

Generally speaking, the May 2007 issue (number 162) is completely dull. The cover articles range from potentially interesting “The Power Of Type” to ones you know will be dull, namely “Can the Web save the world?” Forgive me, I never realised I’d bought the Economist by mistake….

The saving the world article is about the OLPC project. This is a project to get children in the third world laptops. I am going to steer clear of any potentially dangerous topics, but I can’t help but think that giving them food, water, shelter and the like would be a lot better. Giving them laptops (and I assume net access) is not going to feed them. I hope they are English speakers as well…

For a while I thought there was some webdesign links to the OLPC, but as the site appears to be unavailable, I can’t confirm. Suffice it to say, it struck me as three pages of filler content.

The filler content thing seems prevalent this month. Reading the magazine I got the definite impression that, although a magazine had to be published, they had nothing to say. Every one of the articles is excessively wordy, and the use of pages of graphics has reached new highs. The “advice” section is pretty poor, for example the graphics teach you how to design a type face. This basically consists of write the text you want, scan it in and use it… Seriously (4 pages though). In the “Expert Advice” there is a box out titled Understanding ID and Classes. I defy any one who doesn’t already understand them to understand them after reading this…

All in all, this is certainly not an issue of the magazine which you read and then run to the computer, fire up Dreamweaver (or Bluefish) and get coding. Even the reviews section is sparse. If I wasn’t a subscriber, I wouldn’t have bought this in the shop.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Popularity: 23% [?]

Nearly a year ago, there was a bit of debate on this blog about the difficulties finding good on-line tutorials about AJAX. Things have certainly not changed. Still today a search on a famous search engine produces little of value. It seem that a lot of the AJAX furore was just a version of web-based-Vapourware. Who would have thought it.

Even today, the idea that putting AJAX onto a site is a “GOODTHING®” holds sway on lots of web designer magazines and websites. Part of me thinks this is total nonsense, and I have yet to see a compelling example of how AJAX can really benefit websites. I mean, does it actually add value, or is it like rounded corners - just something which looks cool? All the demos I can find fall into two broad categories. One type have some implementation of Google maps with cool little pointers telling you things like the most likely place to get mugged. Nice but of certainly limited value. The other type (this blog included) make use of AJAX to do “cool” things like show images in floating boxes (try it here!), again light boxes are undeniably cool but it could be questioned how much value they really add.

Despite this, I am still trying to learn it. There is the off chance that I can come across something which will change my mind and make me think it is all worthwhile. Even though I am far from a JavaScript newbie (I even have the certificate to prove it!), finding tutorials is not an easy thing. Multiple web searches find either examples which are so trivial it is embarrassing that someone has posted them, or examples which seem to show the creator does not really have a good idea what AJAX can be used for but wants to make a tutorial about it! (These tend to involve meaningless sorting of lists and the like).

Does anyone know of a good AJAX tutorial?

Popularity: 18% [?]

Popularity: 18% [?]