October 30th, 2007 Blaster
Sr Daily: Volume 1 Issue 10
Ok I know I missed yesterday. I was a bit busy so give me a break.
Well first thing I would like to say is we would like to wish a happy send off to Joshua J. Williams. He has been apart of our moderating teams since we started the forums back up in January of this year. He has left due to personal reasons. We wish you the best of luck JJ. We have also started started free hosting back up.
Some common questions that I often see on forums is Is it Football or Soccer. Mr. X thought he would show us a video at how beautiful Brisbane is. Apparently the game warhammer will have an online MMORPG.
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October 30th, 2007 DJB
Warning over net address limits
Vint Cerf is one of the founding fathers of the net
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Internet Service Providers urgently need to roll out the next generation of net addresses for online devices, internet pioneer Vint Cerf has said. Every device that goes online is allocated a unique IP address but the pool of numbers is finite and due to run out around 2010.
A new system, called IPv6, has been awaiting roll out for 10 years.
Unless IPv6 is switched on in the coming years, some devices might not be able to go online, Mr Cerf has warned.
Mr Cerf, who played a key role in the development of the protocols which underpin the global net, said: “There is a risk of not being able to get online.”
He added: “The rate of consumption of available remaining IPv4 numbers appears to be on track to run out in 2010/11.”
Mr Cerf is about to step down as chairman of Icann, the body which oversees the net, and is also Google’s chief internet evangelist.
Potential shortage
The current system, called IPv4 provides four billion addresses but the explosion in the number of devices which go online has led to the potential shortage.
Although IPv6 was standardised 10 years ago it has not been rolled out at speed.
While modern computers, servers, routers and other online devices are able to use IPv6, internet service providers have yet to implement the system.
“The reason they haven’t - which is quite understandable - is that customers haven’t asked for it yet,” said Mr Cerf, adding, “my job, whether with my Icann hat on or not, is to persuade them to ask for it.
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 To be clear - if we finally exhaust the IPv4 pool it doesn’t mean the internet stops working 
Vint Cerf |
“If you don’t ask for it, then when you most want it you won’t have it.”
IPv6 will create 340 trillion trillion trillion separate addresses, enough to satisfy demand for decades to come.
“To be clear - if we finally exhaust the IPv4 pool it doesn’t mean the internet stops working. But people wanting an IPv4 address won’t get one.
“If there is an internet that does not support IPv6, not getting an IPv4 address means not getting on the net.”
He added: “The appreciation of the importance of getting IPv6 into operation is very much more visible than before.
“I’m anticipating in 2008 a substantial increase of use of IPv6, introduced in parallel with IPv4.”
One complicating factor is that IPv6 and IPv4 are not compatible so ISPs will have to run the two systems in parallel - adding to costs.
In Asia, governments in China, Korea and Japan have begun to lead roll out of IPv6 and the European Union is reviewing methods to encourage adoption.
Source - BBC NEWS
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October 29th, 2007 DJB
Web Design: Know Your Audience
When you’re designing your website, you should think carefully about who you expect to be visiting.
In some cases, there are obvious ways in which you can cater for your audience. For example, The Glaucoma Foundation, aware that visitors may suffer from visual impairment, allows users to choose the text size and contrast style of their website by clicking buttons at the top of each page. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to make sure that your website complies with web standards, as this will ensure that you are not excluding any groups from using your website comfortably.
If you trade internationally, you may also want to consider offering your website in several different languages. If you trade in the US and the UK, you will charm visitors on both sides of the Atlantic by having country-specific sites that use American and British English respectively.
Think about what visitors to your website are most likely to want to do. If you have a shopping site, and especially if there are lots of options for customers when they are placing an order, it is a good idea to let them see their shopping basket’s running total as they navigate about your site, and easily refresh to see updated information.
With your audience in mind, choose features, applications or resources which are likely to make your site more attractive than those of your competitors. Consider adding a search box, links page, and printable versions of your pages where appropriate. Allowing your visitors to save pages or items for later, or email pages they like to friends, can be appropriate for some sites.
By Brian Jackson
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October 28th, 2007 Blaster
Sr Daily: Volume 1 Issue 9
I want a wootcast for the srdaily. How cool would that be….
Ok thats a little off topic… But hell what ever. First off in this sr daily today I wish to let all of you know that you must post in the account cleanup thread to keep your account active. Also sorry for both of the emails sent out. We thought there was a problem but its all settled now.
Ok so what should you read in stonerocket today. Well search the New posts. But if you don’t have the time like most don’t you can just use this little guide to see what is a good read.
Efrens is thinking about the earnings of the man behind FreeDNS Sandokan gave all of you photoshopers a little tutorial on How to blend.
And DJB wants the following
There is not link because its in the staff forums sorry guys…
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October 28th, 2007 Blaster
Again while checking out my friends site I came across another great article that you should read if you have some time.
A common question that is asked on is “why should I get my website validated”? This article will explain why in the simplest way possible.
First things first, what is a Validated Website?
To put it in simplest terms, it’s when your site is tested to make sure that it runs smoothly and fits with today’s rigorous standards for the web. It uses CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to organize your content and fixes and ties up any loose ends you may have still on your site.
But in the end we have to have the WC3 tell us what the definition is, as they are the most prominent leaders of Validation, and I quote from their site!
“Validation is a process of checking your documents against a formal Standard, such as those published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for HTML and XML-derived Web document types. It serves a similar purpose to spell checking and proofreading for grammar and syntax, but is much more precise and reliable than any of those processes because it is dealing with precisely-specified machine languages, not with nebulously-defined human natural language.”
Accessibility
Not validating your site leaves it open for problems for any web browsers it was not made for (most likely with Opera, Netscape, or other low used browsers). Internet Explorer may fix these little problems and bugs but other browsers such as Opera may display the code as is, this could potentially be a problem. So pretty much, Validation fixes your code up nice and tidy so that (with maybe the exception of IE) people with browsers can enjoy your website the way you wanted them to!
Convenience
If you want to Validate your site, you’re going to have to start using certain things like ALT tags on your images and photos. This helps individuals who have difficulty comprehending what they’re seeing on the site, mostly for those who have difficulty navigating the internet in the first place. In a nutshell, Validation is what is going to help those who do, in fact, have learning disabilities or simply a tough time with the web. Although having a Validated website might not fix all your Accessibility problems, it sure does help to fix them. Others will thank you as well. There’s nothing worse than going somewhere that can’t cater to your needs.
Search Engine Optimization
Any website that is clean from bugs and errors is also more easily found by large search engines such as Yahoo or Google. So if you clean up your site, it will be more easily found and thus that means more customers/viewers. Another point about getting your site validated is that, sometimes the search engine could be focusing on parts of your site that aren’t quite as developed as the rest which can result in you losing customers since it may just focus in on your TOS and not your home page.
Quicker Page Loading
Typical Websites had always used ungodly amounts of tables to organize the content and even the structure of the site. So the purpose of CSS takes away the tables needed to manage the content and manages it alone without even having to bother with the structure of the site, which speeds up the loading time for any site by seconds. It also takes care of any lose coding that the browser may have problems with, freeing up extra time as well.
How can I validate?
What you’re going to want to do first is check your own site to see if it needs Validation (see the steps down below).
Next, you’re going to need to decide whether or not your website really needs Validation or not. But don’t forget that now there is a legal factor you must obey in making your site accessible.
Finally, check out some SEO companies to see if they’ll help you in finishing off your validation and tying up loose ends. It’s not unheard of to just remake an entire new site, rather than redoing the one you’ve already made. This isn’t a problem though, perhaps this is just what your aging site needs.
How to validate your website using Validation Tools:
1. Go to the W3C website and look for the Validator tool.
2. Fill out the options and click submit.
3. If your site is validated, sit back and watch the traffic flow.
Source: http://www.thedevnetwork.com/forums/showthread.php?t=849
If you the owner of this article and want this removed or anything else for any reason then please email blaster [at] stonerocket.net
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