Archive for the ‘Web’ Category

« Older Entries

iPhone development the easy way

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

iphone I’ve been doing some iPhone and iPod Touch development and if like me you’re used to web development in languages like Ruby, Java, and Python, the learning curve to build a native iPhone app in Objective C is quite steep. Since my applications are online (in that you need to be connected for them to be useful) I was pysched to find a much easier way using two great open-source tools:

iUI consists of Javascript/CSS/images that allow you to build a mobile version of your app that looks and feels just like a native iPhone app

PhoneGap lets you create an iPhone application (that can be submitted to the app store) that displays a framed mobile version of your site

To build your iPhone app: (more…)

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Software Engineering, Web | No Comments »

Transcending CSS

Wednesday, August 15th, 2007

Working at GreatSchools we do a lot of CSS work and we have a number of CSS books on our library shelf. However, last month we picked up a copy of Transcending CSS and it’s far and away the most enlightening book on CSS I’ve read. We’re already changing the way we do our CSS for the better as a result.

Having worked with a lot of front-end (more…)

Posted in Design, Web | 1 Comment »

Open source caching proxy servers

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007

Datacenter Diagram
Hello lazy web, I’m looking for some advice on caching proxy servers and thought you might have some good pointers!

We currently front our site with 3 caching proxy servers to offload static content from the web servers and we haven’t found the right solution yet. We’ve tried a number of solutions including Oops and Apache with mod_cache (which we’re currently running) but they are either missing a critical feature, have buggy caching behavior, or crash under heavy load. The main features I’m looking for are:
(more…)

Posted in Systems Administration, Web | 7 Comments »

GreatSchools wins Webby People’s Voice Award

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

Webby People's Voice Award Winner I’m thrilled that GreatSchools has won the Webby People’s Voice Award for best Family/Parenting site. We’ve been in the nominations before but I think continued growth and brand awareness through a largely redesigned site helped push us over the top this year.
(more…)

Posted in Design, Web | No Comments »

Search engine cloaking, it’s the intent that matters

Monday, April 16th, 2007

Back at the end of 2005 I wrote a short post titled Cloaking, no need to be ashamed and now in 2007 even more big sites are practicing some form of search engine crawler targeted cloaking. Yet still most SEO’s will give you a blanket answer and tell you to avoid cloaking so you don’t get delisted. I take a more pragmatic view and experience has taught me that certain forms of cloaking can be good!
(more…)

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web | No Comments »

Bay Area Indie Rock Bandega Style

Tuesday, March 13th, 2007

My good friends in the east bay have just debuted their new Ruby on Rails based site Bandega :: never miss a show again! If you’re a San Francisco Bay Area resident that loves indie rock and wants to keep track of your favorite bands swing by Bandega and check them out!

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Web | No Comments »

Keeping Rails running at Dreamhost Part 2

Wednesday, January 24th, 2007

Update 2/2/07: Per Thomas’ comment I’ve released the code below as the dreamhost rails plugin.
Update 1/25/07: People have reported difficulties copy and pasting the dispatch.fcgi source code from this blog post so here is a dispatch.fcgi to download. Make sure you make it executable!

My first attempt to keep my Ruby on Rails sites running at Dreamhost involved modifying dispatch.fcgi to implement the frao_handler approach as described on the wiki. This left me with a 3% 500 error rate. Ughh!
(more…)

Posted in Linux, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration, Web | 10 Comments »

Keeping Ruby on Rails running at Dreamhost

Tuesday, January 9th, 2007

Update 1/12/07: This solution has reduced my 500 error rate down to less than 0.2% but it’s still not perfect. I continue to plug away at this…

Update 1/24/07: I’ve finally solved my Dreamhost 500 error problems with a different solution described in Keeping Rails running at Dreamhost part 2

This weekend I moved two of my newer Ruby on Rails based sites (http://windandtides.com and http://gearandboats.com) over to Dreamhost. You simply can’t beat their prices for hosting a small site (if you prepay for 2 years and use coupon code GABRITO to save $50 the total is $140.80) and I’ve found their customer service to be pretty responsive too.
(more…)

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration, Web | 4 Comments »

Hello Newshutch, goodbye Bloglines

Monday, December 4th, 2006

I’ve been a Bloglines user for a long time. However, after hearing about Newshutch on the Web 2.0 show podcast Episode 26 I’ve made the switch and couldn’t be happier. It sports just the right amount of Ajax, good keyboard shortcuts, and it’s built with Ruby on Rails. In short it’s by far the best web based RSS reader out there, check it out!

Posted in AJAX, Blogging, Ruby on Rails, Web | No Comments »

Ajax enabling crusty legacy webapps with Prototype

Sunday, November 26th, 2006

With all of the hype around Ajax it’s easy to think you might need an MVC framework with baked in Ajax support like Rails ActionPack or JBoss Seam to make Ajax easy. However, libraries like Prototype (which is what Rails uses) make it so easy that it’s a snap to Ajax enable even the crustiest legacy web application!

Let’s take a look at what it takes to put a simple unordered list on a page with a refresh button to refresh the list without doing and page reload and then we’ll spruce it up a bit:
(more…)

Posted in AJAX, CSS, Javascript, Software Engineering, Web | 1 Comment »

« Older Entries