Many organizations are interested in building web applications for their business but are unaware of the various steps that are needed to build a compelling web application. In this article I will attempt to put together the various pieces of the puzzle. Application development involves several distinct efforts that need to come together to build a compelling end product. A compelling end product is the combination of design, development architecture, development implementation, automated regression and functional testing and performance and load testing.

When it comes to building your own website, the goal is to make it functional as well as professional looking However, it is also important that the website building software you choose be user-friendly.

CSS tips, tricks and techniques bible installment number five. This week we will focus on margins, spacing, positioning and working with DIV elements withing your Cascading Style Sheets. I will also briefly tough on list styling as well. Still open for suggestions and direction on the next CSS overview.

Installment number four here in my CSS tips, tricks, techniques and general overview series. This week I will focus on backgrounds, margins and general layout styling. As I'm sure most of you have seen from my prior installment, were not covering anything groundbreaking here. Quite to the contrary, these guides are meant to serve as a reference for general every day principles and cascading style sheet usage. A set of fundamental style techniques, terminology, and 'how-to' examples to get a new web developer up to speed and writing effective css code.

We've all seen the really cool QuickTime Virtual Reality elements out there. They allow you to 'grab' an image and rotate it as if it were actually spinning. Normally this could only be done through various QuickTime or Flash programs, however there's a new PHP/JavaScript version with this same concept that you can get for free. All you need to do is drop the images you want to use into a folder along with this file and you're set. The end result is much like the new skim feature in iPhoto.

The code has been released to the public domain, so no need to bother with GPL or anything else. There are a few reasons why this JavaScript solution is a bit more appealing that the Flash alternatives. You don't have to have QuickTime or Flash authoring tools, Visitors don't need QuickTime or Flash plugins for this to work, and You don't have to "build" anything, just throw the images into a folder along with this file.

Pakt Publishing recently announced its nominations for the 2007 Open Source CMS Award in which users can vote for the best open source CMS in the categories of: Best PHP Open Source CMS, Best Other Open Source CMS, and Best Open Source Social Networking CMS.

My personal choice goes to CMS Made Simple for its ease of use for beginners and its scalability for developers.

Here is a look at the Top 5 Overall Best CMS Finalists:

CMS Made Simple:


Drupal CMS:


e107 CMS:


Joomla! CMS:


PHP-Fusion CMS:

Voting ends October 26, so head on over and choose your favorite 2007 Open Source CMS.

So this would be installment number three in my CSS series. Again I'll leave you with 10 more Tips on Using Cascading Style Sheets. For this installment we'll deal with text transformation, text styles, fonts, text sizing, and other text related CSS markup. If there are certain topics you would like to see focused on in future installments, be sure to let me know. Look for part 4 next week were well focus on images, backgrounds and margins.

Every Website isn't meant to have incredible artistry.  Simplicity often works better than intricate designs. Really think about your target audience and your demographics before diving into a big Photoshop project.

If you are unsure or uneasy about modifying your .htaccess file rules, there are several online rule generators and tools to assist you with getting things done. One of the common things I tend to do for clients is generate .htaccess rules for their sites. With this being such a common request, I thought I would take a moment to put together a few resources to assist the DIY webmasters.

So this is my second installment regarding collections of CSS tips, tricks techniques, and general 'how to' examples. I have put together 10 additional Tips on Using Cascading Style Sheets, and hope they will help you to expand your skillset.