This looks like something I need to read more about, Pubcookie looks like a way of implementing single sign on for web apps…
Pubcookie consists of a standalone login server and modules for common web server platforms like Apache and Microsoft IIS. Together, these components can turn existing authentication services (like Kerberos, LDAP, or NIS) into a solution for single sign-on authentication to websites throughout an institution.
This explains How Pubcookie Works.
A useful tool for the colour taste imaired like myself. [ws] Color Scheme Generator 2.
Can whoever thought a two column “magazine style” layout was a good idea for this site was a good idea please stand up? The two column layout makes the text considerably hard to read. I need to scroll vertically much more often which is an annoyance, but then I have to go back to the top of the page to read the rest of the article!
I figured that there’d be a “printer friendly” version of the page which would make lit easier to read… It took me a while to find because the option was burried at the bottom of the left hand navigation bar (not at the top of the article like most sites do), in a colour which doesn’t contrast well against its background (dark grey text on a mid grey background, yuck!). Now that I’ve found it, I’ll use that to read the article, because at least the printable version dispenses with the columns!
Two column documents? Don’t do it, it just doesn’t work for the web. Its worse than the rediculously advertisement laden, low content pages that some sites use, but don’t get me started on those.
The Big Website “Don’t!” List is an excellent list of “don’ts” foir web site design.
Tim Bray has now posted an index for his “On Search” series of articles on buolding search engines. Excellent reading…
This series of essays on the construction, deployment and use of search technology (by which I mean primarily “full-text” search) was written between June and December of 2003..
Joel firnly beleives that every developer should know about Unicode.
So I have an announcement to make: if you are a programmer working in 2003 and you don’t know the basics of characters, character sets, encodings, and Unicode, and I catch you, I’m going to punish you by making you peel onions for 6 months in a submarine. I swear I will.
Useful stuff.
Microsoft’s Globalization Step-by-Step guide.
The purpose of this guide is to help Developers and others understand what it takes to globalize an application.
Good stuff on choosting colours for your sites.
Sven-S. Porst talks about software localisation and the difficulties involved in tranlating software from one language to another.
Translating things is easy. Translating things is hard. Once you know the other language sufficiently, getting the message across somehow isn’t too hard. However, getting it across with the text feeling right and belonging naturally to the other language, seems very hard to me.
A large whiteboard covered one wall, scrawled with dozens of detailed tasks assigned to individual specialists. Project managers stood by, checking off each brief according to a precise timeline.
The entire banking system was off limits to outsiders for the next six hours; insiders kept in mind a back-up plan to go into reverse in case of failure.
It looked like the scene of a military operation. In fact, it was the bank’s first systems upgrade for the year.
The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on a bank systems upgrade. A bit long on drama, and short on details, but its interesting to see the sort of planning they put into these sorts of things. Of course most of this should be pretty obvious to anyone who’s been around the industry for a while.
