Web design and web development

If you are using ajax on any web pages, you will want to give some indication to the user that a request is being processed. Animated gifs like those found here are great for this.

I have been using phpMyAdmin for a long time now to manage MySQL databases via the web, and have really loved the functionality they provide when displaying forms. If there is a radio button or check box that needs to be checked, you don't have to aim for the box or button itself, you can just click on the text next to the button/box. And voilà, the button is checked. This makes it so much more useable, especially when filling in long forms. To do this all you need to do is put a label tag around the text next to the checkbox/radio button, and put in a 'for' attribute that tells the form what button or checkbox to check when you click on the label.

Came across a great FTP and SSH tool (WinSCP) for those of you who are web designers or web developers and spend some time transferring files and performing tasks on a remote web server.

Was listening to an old webdevradio podcast (which I've just discovered and really like) and Michael mentioned wink, a freeware tutorial and presentation creation software. This captures screenshots and mouse movements that can then be outputted to a variety of formats, including flash swf. This could be quite useful for anyone who does any kind of computer/website training. I know that I do and am definitely going to give it a try on my next training project.

Yesterday (the 15th September 2005) was the South African Johannesburg launch of Macromedia studio 8 at the Dimension Data Campus (Bryanston). Being someone who develops solely in Dreamweaver (not only for design but also for PHP coding), and who also uses Flash whenever I get a project that's suitable, I thought I'd check it out.