With Adobe’s announcement today that they’re opening up the source of their Flex SDK under the Mozilla GPL, they’ve gained a little more ground in the burgeoning competition between rich Internet application runtime environments. While I’m still learning about all this new technology, I’m starting to get the feeling that the “Browser Wars” are history and the “Runtime Wars” are just getting started.

There are some heavy hitters in the tech industry spending a lot of time on these new runtime environments. Microsoft has just announced Silverlight. Mozilla is incorporating offline capabilities into the upcoming Firefox 3 release. And of course, you’ve got Adobe Apollo. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, which I’m currently learning about. But all of them will be players in the next phase of the Web, when rich Internet apps take center stage.

The browser model is on its way out, with the burden of processing headed client-side. It will probably take a couple of years to get there, but I think that’s the direction we’re headed. Check back here for news and thoughts about the revolution.

Today, I started working on integrating an installation of Gallery2 into an existing template. My client wants to add a photography portfolio to her freelance site, and she wants to be able to update and maintain it herself once I’m done. So after doing some research, I decided to go with Gallery2 (with Coppermine a close second) because of its great user interface. Turns out having an easy to use program doesn’t always mean it’s easy to install.

Gallery2 is an image gallery platform that uses PHP, Smarty Tags, and a database backend to let you organize and manipulate your images on your hosting server. Gallery2 is crammed full of features, which actually becomes its main weakness: it has feature-itis. While modifying one of the prepackaged themes, I keep finding myself cutting away whole chunks of extraneous code.

It’s pretty frustrating because at this point, I know enough PHP to realize that Gallery2 is overqualified for this job. But I don’t know enough to build my own application from scratch. So for now, I’m stuck having to cut back an action-packed application like Gallery2.

Another problem I’m having with the Gallery2 guts is that the album pages are laid out with tables. I’ve been a div man for years now, and it’s been quite a while since I’ve worked with tables as layout elements. I know pages of thumbnails can be considered tabular data and thus would warrant using tables. But I’d designed my template using divs before I chose the gallery platform. It’s nothing I can’t handle, but it’s frustrating nonetheless.

My final gripe with Gallery2 is the same I’ve had with every content management system I’ve worked with — I’m talking to you Wordpress, Joomla, Blogger, phpbb, Coppemine, etc. How about instead of giving me preloaded templates and themes that have tons of features I have to remove, you make the out-of-the-box template as bare bones as possible? Then, instead of ripping a template apart and removing the features I won’t use, which has been faster than building one from scratch in every platform I’ve used except Wordpress, I can add features to a solid foundation.

Now let me add that, as is always the case when I discuss Open Source applications, I am eternally grateful for all the hard work the developers put in so that I can have access to these awesome products. When I have problems with these platforms, I’m typically as frustrated with my own limitations as I am with the applications. So just because I whine a little, don’t think I’m not appreciative. I’ve just had a hard day, and now I feel better. Thanks for listening, Internet!

I was perusing digg this evening, and I came across this article about color choice and on screen readability. According to the study, Times Roman italic in green on a light yellow background (sound familiar?) is the optimal combination from a readability standpoint. Choosing a good color scheme for your site isn’t just necessary to facilitate reading; it’s also important to pick colors that reflect the meaning and intention of your site.

If you’re bringing a pre-existing brand to your Web site, you should chose colors consistent with your logo, signage, letter head, business cards, etc. Your purpose for creating your Web site is to extend your brand, and if you go off on a color tangent on your Web site, it will be harder to maintain your brand identity from the real world to the virtual one.

If you are creating a brand from scratch on your site, choosing color goes hand in hand with establishing a brand identity. You’ll have to consider which colors best reflect your brand, if you want your color palette to be muted or bold, how many colors to use (too few is boring, too many is confusing), and how to combine those colors to best express your message.

Selecting your color scheme is an extremely subjective task, and it’s different for every business. So, rather than a step-by-step tutorial about color picking, I’ve put together a list of online resources that can guide you through the process.

1. Complete Color Matching Guide
   This site is about as comprehensive a list of color resources as I’ve ever seen. Of particular interest are the links to articles about the meanings, symbolism, and psychology of colors. For instance, did you know that yellow can represent intelligence or that different shades of green can mean anything from peace to jealousy. It’s fascinating.
2. 10 Tools to help you select a Web 2.0 Color Palette
   As the title says, this is a blog post with a great list of online tools for creating Web 2.0 color schemes. My favorite is ColorBlender.
3. COLOURLovers
   I haven’t even scratched the surface of exploring this site yet. From their About page: “COLOURlovers is a resource that monitors and influences color trends. COLOURlovers gives the people who use color a place to check out a world of color, compare color palettes, submit news and comments, and read color related articles and interviews.” The article that brought me to this site is an excellent analysis of the color palettes of Grammy-winning album covers. COLOURLovers looks like an incredible resource for designers of all kinds.
4. ColorZilla
   ColorZilla is a Firefox plugin that lets you pull colors from any Web page you’re visiting. I certainly wouldn’t advocate lifting entire color schemes from other people’s sites, but if you come across a shade of blue that you really like, this tool makes it easy to grab it. In the past if I wanted to do that, I’d take a screen shot of the browser and use the dropper tool in Photoshop or GIMP to get the color. This plugin is much easier.
5. Hex Hub HTML Color Codes
   I’ve posted this link before, but it is my go-to resource for picking colors. As much as I love the widgets that let you slide a bar or scroll around a color wheel to pick a scheme, there’s something about being able to see every color available on one page that is easier for me. A lot of times, I’ll find a shade of the color that I like on the Hex Hub, and I’ll take it to one of those automatic color schemers to flesh out the palette. Nonetheless, I use this site all the time.

Choosing colors is such a fundamental part of creating any sort of design project that a lot of folks, I think, take for granted how important it is. I hope these resources point you in the right direction when it’s time to develop your site’s color palette.

So I’ve spent the better part of today installing and playing with Ruby on Rails on my Mac. For those who don’t know, RoR is a server-side Web application framework that facilitates the production of dynamic Web sites and Web applications. At the moment, I’m hip-deep in all this stuff and don’t have much time for blogging tonight. So instead of an in depth post, here are a few links to Ruby on Rails sites that have helped me get up and running.

1. Hivelogic - Installing rails on OS X.
2. A great “Hello World” tutorial from the RubyonRails.org documentation.
3. Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby - I haven’t finished it yet, but this is an extremely fun guide to the Ruby programming language.
4. Start to put it all together and fill in the gaps with this piece by Amy Hoy
5. Beginner’s guide to using AJAX on Rails - This is actually what I’ve been working on today with this book to guide me. But this piece on the O’Reilly Web site is a good introduction to the process.

RoR is such a popular framework these days, and the amount of information about it on the Web is pretty daunting. But hopefully I’ve done some of the grunt work for you, and these links will get you going. As I get further along in my own Rails education, I’ll post more about my experiences.

By the way, I resisted the urge to call this piece “Rob on Rails” out of some misguided attempt at professionalism. We’ll see how I feel about that in the morning.

A friend of mine who has been using Blogger for a few years gave Wordpress a try last week. He set up a free blog on Wordpress.com and after a few days of playing with it, decided he prefers Blogger because the posting interface is much more user-friendly than Wordpress.

My friend is extremely computer-savvy, but he’s not an html/css geek like I am. He doesn’t have the time or the patience to mess with the guts of his blog when all he wants to do is produce content. So in the interest of helping new Wordpress users create content that matches their vision, I’ve got five tips to make your posting experience easier.

1. Create your content locally.
I think most Wordpress users will agree that the default WYSIWYG editor is at best sub par. I have actually gone to great lengths to turn mine off completely to write my code from scratch. But that isn’t an option for most everyday bloggers. After playing around with a few plugins that claim to increase the default editor’s functionality, I’m unimpressed with that option. So I started doing some research about desktop applications that are basically blog-centric, fully functional WYSIWYG Web editors. There was a great article over at ProBlogger last year about the advantages of using a desktop blogging client with links to some of the more popular ones.

Unfortunately, I don’t have one to recommend, but in my research, I’ve come across tons of bloggers who vouch for them.

2. Make a plan for using images.
Since Wordpress doesn’t have a native feature to manipulate images, it can be frustrating to upload an image multiple times to get it the proper size. If you know what size your image should be before you start editing it, then this will stop being a problem. For example, my larger graphics within posts are most often 250px wide, and my smaller graphics are 115px wide. But those are just the two examples that One Thing New needs. At the very least, I would suggest determining a set width for horizontal and vertical pictures. Not only will that eliminate the need for uploading your images multiple times, but it will help your blog’s design by giving your images a uniform feel.

3. Learn a little CSS.
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. It’s a type of code that tells your Web browser how to display the content on your site. And one thing that Wordpress gets right is giving you the ability to edit this code very easily. I’ll give you a couple of very useful snippets of code that can help your posts do what you want them to.

Go to Presentation > Theme Editor, and your stylesheet should be the default file that pops up. Scroll to the very bottom and add this:

.image_left { float: left; }
.image_right { float: right; }

Click to update the file. What you have done is add two “classes” that can be used to position images within your post and have the post text wrap around them. To make these work properly, you’ll have to place them properly. For example, if you want the image to be at the top right of your first paragraph like the Weekend Web Developer image is in this post you would write in the Wordpress post box:

<p><img src="yourimagename.jpg" class="image_right" />Your post text here...

This is probably a little more code monkey stuff than you were prepared for. But once you’ve created those classes, they can be used in as many posts as you want.

4. Check out Wordpress plugins.
I mentioned that I wasn’t impressed with the plugins I tried to beef up the Wordpress editor, but my search wasn’t extremely thorough. And it was by no means exhaustive. There is a vast network of developers creating free plugins to enhance the functionality of Wordpress. And with a little searching, you should be able to find some that make your life easier.

The first place to start looking is the Wordpress plugin page. There are also lists of plugins at WPPlugins.org and wp-plugins.org. Once you’ve downloaded your plugins, it’s super easy to activate them. Just upload the plugin file to your wordpress/wp-content/plugins/ folder. Then go to the Plugins tab from your Wordpress dashboard, and there should be a list of plugins with the option to activate or deactivate them. Simple.

5. Pick a new theme.
One of the best things about Wordpress is its ability to be customized (something that seems to be a bit more difficult at Blogspot). If you don’t like the default behavior of your blog, the problem might be in your theme’s stylesheet. Check out Wordpress Theme Viewer for a massive amount of themes that have all kinds of default functionality. Chances are there will be a theme out there with the exact set of features you want.

I hope this article has given you some helpful tips about improving your experience with Wordpress. Familiarity and ease of use are strong factors when considering what blogging platform to use, and I understand sticking with what you know. But I encourage all you burgeoning bloggers to give Wordpress a try.