You may have noticed my blog has now changed to a WordPress blog. This is a new update that I have fired in today, unexpectedly! The new design makes it much easier to find the information you need, as well as the post you need. On top of that, the blogging system when compared with my host's default blog is much nicer. I can also do many more things as well as having the MySQL power over the database.
I was a bit inspired to build one of these blogs and have been for a while. So here is my new WordPress blog. For future reference, I will begin transferring all of my old blog posts onto this blog.
My website has got support for MySQL databases and I have just learned how to implement a database. So I started to work a bit on some PHP to access my database and got it working. Because of this, the subscribe button now puts the email addresses and names into a database which I can easily export for the newsletter.
Convergence is a funny thing - a great thing at that, however.
Convergence is the concept of "bringing things together" or as put by Marc Benioff:
The world is being reshaped by the convergence of social, mobile, cloud, big data, community and other powerful forces. The combination of these technologies unlocks an incredible opportunity to connect everything together in a new way and is dramatically transforming the way we live and work.
There is something very powerful about that quote.
It is down to the fact we are changing our lives by having single devices that control and do "everything". It is a great thing, and it has been going on since the first feature phones (where MP3 players and cameras were integrated into the phone, and in turn almost wiping out their entire market).
I love convergence. What do you think?
Today I would like to announce the performance improvements that Painter Pro now has. All the effects; I Want It There, grayscale, sepia, inversion, reflection and intensity have improved to perform considerably faster. On top of that, colour comparative methods based on these iterate much quicker through the selection.
Even though I should not really say it myself, Painter Pro is astonishing. Some people who have tested it now want me to bring it to Android (not something I am planning just now though). Others have just said it is brilliant as it is. I never intend for my software to compete, but I do intend for it to have a purpose; one of which is for work on my YouTube videos as well as my website and personal use.
Painter Pro is still currently password protected, but you can obtain the password by contacting me.
Meanwhile, Cobweb Internet Browser, 2.0.2.0 is now on my website. New features include faster browsing as well as better tabbing and some bug fixes to do with start up times.
Some people love the web. I for one do not and here's why:
The web is constantly changing. People who build sites in HTML will soon realise that it's all for nothing as soon as the next standard is released. My website was built without HTML5 which limits it to XHTML Transitional. I wanted HTML5 but I had already written most of it in XHTML Transitional before realising the mistake.
New innovations are constantly being released. My website was originally designed in 2010 with a simple tabbed design. It was acceptable at the time (funny that I was listening to Calvin Harris: Acceptable In The 80s earlier), but nowadays its just not smart looking enough. So I implemented a new menu in January 2013 in the website Major Overhaul of 2013 and guess what, some Internet Explorer applications (although the same version as the next) do not display the correct way. On top of that, the tablet revolution has lead to the release of Windows 8, and now the tablet version of Internet Explorer simply cannot open the menus on my site (strange because it is fine on iOS and Android).
I'm obviously not a web developer, and never will be since I'm actually no good at this and really struggling with it. I think I will leave it once this is redone and move back to C#, VB.NET and Java based programming since this project has been messy!
As some who read this blog know, I like to have a rant about things. But the web is one of the best thing because its just got to stop changing so drastically.
Great news! The Google Search on my website has finally been updated by Google. Praise Google, its only taken 2 weeks to update it. Now it searches my new site rather than a non-existent old site.
Have you ever built a menu on a website, and changed it? What have you done if you cannot use iFrames? (I mean, who would use inline frames?) Have you gone through every single page and made the menu consistent manually? This is what I have done before now as I cannot use server-side programming with my current website.
Last night I was working on a small program to make my life much easier when updating my menu on my website. What I have is a small program with two inputs that are used as replacements for parts of the HTML text files. It goes through all the files in sequence, replacing the menu with a new one. It makes it much easier to update the menu and much easier to replace strings within text files.
Edit: This program is no longer available separately and is available as a Wonderword plugin.
Since the newly designed website has kicked off recently, people have noticed it and have requested a site very similar. My next project is designing and building a website for my first client with a semi-familiar appearance to my own website!
This is great news as it shows that people do appreciate my website!
So whilst many of you may have noticed that I have redesigned the site, some of you may not have. New things like subscribing to the site, a dedicated software section rather than a link to the section, a new menu, a front page with a purpose, site links, web policy, a new theme that is consistent throughout the site and CSS support are now making the site look good.
I am also very proud to announce the support for all major browsers now, including Firefox, which had errors previously, as well as Chrome, Safari, Opera and Internet Explorer.
