Category: ProductReview

Why Can’t Twitter Be More Like Facebook or Linked In?

It can. Are you looking for a way for Twitter to locate mutual friends or people who know people you know? I love this feature on Facebook and often find BlogHers or long-lost classmates based on the application’s suggestions as to people I may know because they know people I know. People who know people. Or some such.

Now there is a Firefox add-on that will help you locate mutual friends you may share with the people you follow on Twitter. (Yeah, sorry, it only works in Firefox right now.) It’s not exactly like what happens on Facebook, but it can be helpful.

Several tools for finding mutual friends on Twitter are described in the Web Worker Daily article by Doriano “Paisano” Carta at How to Find Mutual Friends on Twitter. The tool from the article that appealed to me is the Ul.timate.info add-on for Firefox.

It wasn’t just me who found it interesting. Heather squeeed about it on Twitter, so I thought I should give it a try.

Before I get too far into the description of what ul.timate.info does in Twitter, you need to know that it also adds features to Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, foursquare, and bit.ly.

Here’s what happened when I installed the add-on. It was a bit confusing at first. Normally, when you install a Firefox add-on, you set up your preferences for the new tool using the Preferences button in the add-ons window. But the Preferences button for Ul.timate.info was grayed out.

grayed out button

The instructions on the web site said to right-click (or ctrl-click on Mac) on a Twitter name or image to see a menu that would allow you to find mutual friends. I tried this about 50 times. It didn’t show me the menu! (The definition of stupidity; when it doesn’t work keep doing it the same way.)

Finally I noticed an ul.timate.info menu option way up at the top of my screen in the Firefox menu. Why didn’t the download instructions say this? Especially since it departs from the norm for add-ons? Application developers don’t spring for good technical writers to explain their new apps—one of my pet complaints.

the menu in the top menu bar

I selected Settings, then entered my Twitter name and password. Now the magic worked. A right-click (or ctrl-click) showed me all these lovely new menu options, including the longed-for View Mutual Friends.

the new menu options

I tried out a few people to see how many mutual friends we have. I have zero mutual friends with singer @dianebirch. That’s okay. I just follow her in case she ever leaves New York and goes on tour somewhere close to me. I don’t care who her followers are. But I have 34 friends in common with @jenlemen. I care about who her followers are. We share some interests. I may check her followers (I can do that with the ul.timate.info menu) to see if she found someone I’d really like to follow but don’t. Yet.

my mutual friends with jenlemen

I wish ul.timate.info would be more like LinkedIn or Facebook’s friend recommendations. I wish I could click on someone’s name and get a few suggestions as to who might be a good fit for me to follow. Even though it isn’t quite effort free to find mutual friends, I can still get some helpful tips and information from this tool. Plus, it stays out of the way when I don’t want to use it, always a good thing.

If you try it, let me know what you think of it.

Cross posted at BlogHer.

Review: Fancy Form Design

A review by Web Teacher of

(rating: 5 stars)

Fancy Form Design by Jina Bolton, Tim Connell and Derek Featherstone is from Sitepoint Book (2009). This is really an excellent little book. It gives you tips on planning and designing a form that is both attractive and usable. It provides information on structuring the form using standards-based HTML. Both usability and accessibility features are built into the form structure as a matter of practice in this book. You’d hardly expect less with authors of the caliber of the three who worked on the book.

Since this book is just about one thing, forms, you learn some things you might not learn in a book that treated forms as a small part of a larger whole. For example, there is an interesting discussion about when to use legends with fieldsets, and when you’d be better off not using legends. You learn about the types of error messages that are most useful in form design. The fine points of labels are discussed.

In the chapter on styling the form with CSS, there are some excellent tips for form design. Everything from ideas for styling with icons, sprites, and styling widgets is included in the CSS chapter.

The final chapter takes you through some JavaScript enhancements that will improve your form without making it inaccessible.

The book reads fast, the code examples are right there and are clearly explained.

Summary: A must-have book for the form designer.

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A trial of the Zemanta Firefox add-on

I gave the Zemanta add-on for Firefox a trial run in WordPress. Download it from Mozilla.

Here’s the background. Zemanta promises to make blogging easier for you by finding you relevant images, links or tags as you type a blog post or an email. (It works in Firefox and Gmail.)

That sounds appealing, especially for writing posts that need lots of external links or would benefit from some appropriate photos. I downloaded the add-on and opened up the WordPress admin window of Web Teacher. A Zemanta pane appears on the right of the window where you enter a blog post. It shows images, articles, tags, and links. And it has a search box.

Hillary Rodham Clinton campaigning, 2007
Image via Wikipedia

Before I started typing this post, I searched in the Zemanta pane added to my WordPress Dashboard for Hillary Clinton and found this image. I just dragged it into this window. No pain.  However, it is from a campaign speech in 2007. Not exactly hot news.

Then I typed the paragraphs above, containing the words Zemanta, WordPress, and Gmail. As I typed, “relevant” images related to those words popped up on the Zemanta pane on my WordPress Dashboard. What I got were logos from those three sites. Based on those keywords, I also got suggested links, blog posts (mostly really old posts), and suggested tags (mostly the same keywords mentioned).

I tried searching for some keywords in Zemanta that seem relevant to the things I write about. I searched on HTML 5. The results were pathetic. Unrelated images, unrelated article links, silly tags. Then I searched on Web Standards. Same useless results, but one image of a guy in a blue beanie, which made me grin. (Ahh, that’s what web standards are—head covering.)

On the Zemanta site, there is an interactive demo. I took it for a spin using the text from my most recent article on BlogHer: Old People are So . . . . The results there were marginally better, probably because the article mentions several famous names and contains a number of blog links. Here’s how it looked in the Interactive Demo window.

zemantaEnhanced
The Zemanta Interactive Demo

I say marginally better because the images were connected to names mentioned in the text. The Articles suggested were completely unrelated. The tags suggested were a rehash of the names mentioned in the article. Had I used Zemanta when I was originally typing this post, the images would have been helpful, and as easy to grab as the photo of Hillary above. The rest of it was no help.

For some bloggers, Zemanta might be really valuable. But it’s not useful on Web Teacher. My advice— check it out to see if it returns anything helpful for the type of content you post. If it doesn’t, you can do what I intend to do: disable the add-on.

Later this week, I’ll be publishing a different article about Zemanta and the JS-Kit-Echo on BlogHer. It will appear Saturday, August 15.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Codeburner Add-on for Firefox

You now have access to all the Sitepoint References for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript available in Firefox as an add-on. You can download the  Codeburner add-on free from Sitepoint.

The references provide syntax information, browser compatibility charts and sample code for HTML and CSS.

The new add-on was just released. For a limited time, you can get a free book as a bonus when you download it. The book is Build Your Own Firefox Add-on.

If you are a Firebug user, you may realize that these same reference materials were available as a part of Firebug. The new add-on eliminates the Firebug step and gives you quick access to the reference materials at the bottom of the Firefox page.

the codeburner icon under the pointing fingerIt’s a simple toggle open and shut to see the reference panels. When you install it, a Codeburner icon will appear on your status bar. Just click the icon to open up the references. You see it here on my status bar with the pointing finger indicating which icon it is.

When you initially open it, you may have to futz with the drag handles a bit to get all three windows to show up and sized the way you want.the codeburner windows

In the left window you can search for an HTML element, HTML attribute, or CSS property. As soon as you start typing in the search box, you see results on the right. I typed “padd” before I stopped typing, and got a number of results involving the word padding. In the center window, you see information about browser compatibility, standards-compliance, and a brief summary of usage. If you don’t find out what you needed to know, there’s a link to the SitePoint References online. The window on the right gives you a generic example of the element, attribute or property you searched for in use. The window on the right will display information for which ever of the numerous items in the center window you select.

select an item from the DOM menu

You can learn about the elements and properties based on the page you are on. Select the DOM option in the left window, navigate through the DOM tree to find whatever you are interested in, and select it. I selected a <p> element in the image above.

If the code example in the right window is not enough information for you, you can click the “More information online” link to see a live demo. (The same function is available as an option in the contextual menu you see when you right-click on at item in the search results window in the center.)

Don’t want half your browser space taken up by the Codeburner pane? You can detach it into a separate window with a click on a small up arrow near the X that would close it completely.

The reference material available with the Codeburner add-on is already available from Sitepoint, in books, and was part of the Firebug add-on. The new add-on is a convenience. It can give you quick information without a lot of effort. If you are at that stage in your learning curve where you still spend a lot of time looking things up, you’ll love this one.

Summary of eHow Articles for January

A list of the thrilling and educational how to articles I wrote at eHow this month. And tulips! More . . .

Yellow Tulips

One of the gifts I received for Christmas was a jar with three tulip bulbs in water. They were sprouting by January and bloomed in a few days. This is the first day they opened, eventually all three bloomed. In addition to watching the flowers grow this January, I wrote these articles at eHow.

CSS Super Scrub

CSS Super Scrub says it will

significantly reduce the size and complexity of your CSS by programmatically stripping unneeded content, stripping redundant calls, and intelligently grouping the remaining element names.

I gave it a try with the style sheet for this site. With just the option Indent CSS selected, it saved 4.7% on the Web Teacher style sheet.

I tried it on my home page at vdebolt.com. There CSS Super Scrub, with only the option Indent CSS selected, came back with a file that is 2.8% larger.

Same choices: I tried it on my Phoebe Snow site. This time it was 6.7% smaller. I tried it on a site a made years ago for artist Helen Gwinn. This site was created so long ago, I thought the CSS would really need help. But no, CSS Super Scrub added 1.8% to the file size.

I tried it on another site I built several years ago for jazz vocalist Mady Kaye. This time CSS Super Scrub hit the jackpot, coming back with a file size 22.3% smaller. Even so, looking at the Mady Kaye CSS now, all these years after creating it, I can see a number of places where it could be cleaned up even more than what the scrubber suggested.

I went to a site I designed more recently, New Mexico Mountain Club. Here, the scrubber saved me 8.5% in file size.

My conclusion about this tool is that it depends on your original CSS. A reduction in file size is not always a sure thing. Before you copy and use their version of your CSS, see if it’s better or worse. And, take a look at old CSS with new eyes. You’ll probably see things you realize you should have done differently, even without the Scrubber offering you suggestions.