The Dro » Web Design

Kind Industries

The Dro — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 03:36:02 +0000

For the past year I’ve been working on this awesome website where models, photographers, and musicians can all help each other out to get noticed and to get work.

It’s just like myspace mashed a bit with model mayhem but more industry specific. We’d love to have you on our new site! There are free accounts and only takes a few minutes to Register! We look forward to having you on the site! If you’re already using it, We’ve just updated the site with a tons of new features! Check it out!

By The Way, Even if you’re not in the biz, you’re able to sign up as a basic member. Check it out a KindIndustries.com

Peeled Fingers from Too Much Typing

The Dro — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 21:59:47 +0000

I’ve been seriously busting ass working lately. I pulled quite a few all-nighter’s the past couple weeks and it’s beginning too look like my fingers are going to fall off from all the typing! I’m about a week over the dead-line but I’m trying everything I can to get this thing launched ASAP. I didn’t think about all of the minor things that would be included in this when I first came up with a time line, but these modules are imperative to a good, working system.

PHP & HTML Code for Displaying Country Codes

The Dro — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 03:29:45 +0000

Tonight I was in the middle of coding a project I’ve been working on for the past couple of months and I realized what a pain in the ass it can become to deal with country drop-down select inputs. One of the main issues I came up with was how I should display the country code drop-down box in the Edit Page. In order for it to properly display, you have to tell the form to select the correct country from the drop down depending on what your MySQL database has stored. So for example, if your MySQL Database field stored “US” as the country code you’d obviously want it to display “United States” in your HTML select input. However, What happens when you get country codes like “AG, BN, EE, …etc.” Most people don’t even know what most of the country code abbreviations are so I wanted to put together a post to help others who come into similar issues.

Here’s a list of all the country codes I’m using:

Two Letter Country Abbreviations

AC		Ascension Island
AD		Andorra
AE		United Arab Emirates
AF		Afghanistan
AG		Antigua and Barbuda
AI		Anguilla
AL		Albania
AM		Armenia
AN		Netherland Antilles
AO		Angola
AQ		Antarctica
AR		Argentina
AS		American Samoa
AT		Austria
AU		Australia
AW		Aruba
AZ		Azerbaidjan
BA		Bosnia-Herzegovina
BB		Barbados
BD		Bangladesh
BE		Belgium
BF		Burkina Faso
BG		Bulgaria
BH		Bahrain
BI		Burundi
BJ		Benin
BM		Bermuda
BN		Brunei Darussalam
BO		Bolivia
BR		Brazil
BS		Bahamas
BT		Buthan
BV		Bouvet Island
BW		Botswana
BY		Belarus
BZ		Belize
CA		Canada
CC		Cocos (Keeling) Isl.
CD		Congo, The Democratic Republic of the
CF		Central African Rep.
CG		Congo, Republic of
CH		Switzerland
CI		Ivory Coast
CK		Cook Islands
CL		Chile
CM		Cameroon
CN		China
CO		Colombia
CR		Costa Rica
CS		Serbia and Montenegro
CU		Cuba
CV		Cape Verde
CX		Christmas Island
CY		Cyprus
CZ		Czech Republic
DE		Germany
DJ		Djibouti
DK		Denmark
DM		Dominica
DO		Dominican Republic
DZ		Algeria
EC		Ecuador
EE		Estonia
EG		Egypt
EH		Western Sahara
ER		Eritrea
ES		Spain
ET		Ethiopia
FI		Finland
FJ		Fiji
FK		Falkland Isl.(Malvinas)
FM		Micronesia
FO		Faroe Islands
FR		France
GA		Gabon
GB		Great Britain (UK)
GD		Grenada
GE		Georgia
GF		Guyana (Fr.)
GG		Guernsey
GH		Ghana
GI		Gibraltar
GL		Greenland
GM		Gambia
GN		Guinea
GP		Guadeloupe (Fr.)
GQ		Equatorial Guinea
GR		Greece
GS		South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
GT		Guatemala
GU		Guam (US)
GW		Guinea Bissau
GY		Guyana
HK		Hong Kong
HM		Heard & McDonald Isl.
HN		Honduras
HR		Croatia
HT		Haiti
HU		Hungary
ID		Indonesia
IE		Ireland
IL		Israel
IM		Isle of Man
IN		India
IO		British Indian O. Terr.
IQ		Iraq
IR		Iran
IS		Iceland
IT		Italy
JM		Jamaica
JO		Jordan
JP		Japan
KE		Kenya
KG		Kirgistan
KH		Cambodia
KI		Kiribati
KM		Comoros
KN		St.Kitts Nevis Anguilla
KP		Korea (North)
KR		Korea (South)
KW		Kuwait
KY		Cayman Islands
KZ		Kazachstan
LA		Laos
LB		Lebanon
LC		Saint Lucia
LI		Liechtenstein
LK		Sri Lanka
LR		Liberia
LS		Lesotho
LT		Lithuania
LU		Luxembourg
LV		Latvia
LY		Libya
MA		Morocco
MC		Monaco
MD		Moldavia
MG		Madagascar
MH		Marshall Islands
MK		Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of
ML		Mali
MM		Myanmar
MN		Mongolia
MO		Macau
MP		Northern Mariana Isl.
MQ		Martinique (Fr.)
MR		Mauritania
MS		Montserrat
MT		Malta
MU		Mauritius
MV		Maldives
MW		Malawi
MX		Mexico
MY		Malaysia
MZ		Mozambique
NA		Namibia
NC		New Caledonia (Fr.)
NE		Niger
NF		Norfolk Island
NG		Nigeria
NI		Nicaragua
NL		Netherlands
NO		Norway
NP		Nepal
NR		Nauru
NU		Niue
NZ		New Zealand
OM		Oman
PA		Panama
PE		Peru
PF		Polynesia (Fr.)
PG		Papua New Guinea
PH		Philippines
PK		Pakistan
PL		Poland
PM		St. Pierre & Miquelon
PN		Pitcairn
PR		Puerto Rico (US)
PT		Portugal
PW		Palau
PY		Paraguay
QA		Qatar
RE		Reunion (Fr.)
RO		Romania
RU		Russian Federation
RW		Rwanda
SA		Saudi Arabia
SB		Solomon Islands
SC		Seychelles
SD		Sudan
SE		Sweden
SG		Singapore
SH		St. Helena
SI		Slovenia
SJ		Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands
SK		Slovak Republic
SL		Sierra Leone
SM		San Marino
SN		Senegal
SO		Somalia
SR		Suriname
ST		St. Tome and Principe
SV		El Salvador
SY		Syria
SZ		Swaziland
TC		Turks & Caicos Islands
TD		Chad
TF		French Southern Terr.
TG		Togo
TH		Thailand
TJ		Tadjikistan
TK		Tokelau
TM		Turkmenistan
TN		Tunisia
TO		Tonga
TP		East Timor
TR		Turkey
TT		Trinidad & Tobago
TV		Tuvalu
TW		Taiwan
TZ		Tanzania
UA		Ukraine
UG		Uganda
UK		United Kingdom
UM		US Minor outlying Isl.
US		United States
UY		Uruguay
UZ		Uzbekistan
VA		Vatican City State
VC		St.Vincent & Grenadines
VE		Venezuela
VG		Virgin Islands (British)
VI		Virgin Islands (US)
VN		Vietnam
VU		Vanuatu
WF		Wallis & Futuna Islands
WS		Samoa
YE		Yemen
YU		Yugoslavia
ZA		South Africa
ZM		Zambia
ZR		Zaire
ZW		Zimbabwe

AF		Afghanistan
AL		Albania
DZ		Algeria
AS		American Samoa
AD		Andorra
AO		Angola
AI		Anguilla
AQ		Antarctica
AG		Antigua and Barbuda
AR		Argentina
AM		Armenia
AW		Aruba
AC		Ascension Island
AU		Australia
AT		Austria
AZ		Azerbaidjan
BS		Bahamas
BH		Bahrain
BD		Bangladesh
BB		Barbados
BY		Belarus
BE		Belgium
BZ		Belize
BJ		Benin
BM		Bermuda
BO		Bolivia
BA		Bosnia-Herzegovina
BW		Botswana
BV		Bouvet Island
BR		Brazil
IO		British Indian O. Terr.
BN		Brunei Darussalam
BG		Bulgaria
BF		Burkina Faso
BI		Burundi
BT		Buthan
KH		Cambodia
CM		Cameroon
CA		Canada
CV		Cape Verde
KY		Cayman Islands
CF		Central African Rep.
TD		Chad
CL		Chile
CN		China
CX		Christmas Island
CC		Cocos (Keeling) Isl.
CO		Colombia
KM		Comoros
CG		Congo, Republic of
CD		Congo, The Democratic Republic of the
CK		Cook Islands
CR		Costa Rica
HR		Croatia
CU		Cuba
CY		Cyprus
CZ		Czech Republic
DK		Denmark
DJ		Djibouti
DM		Dominica
DO		Dominican Republic
TP		East Timor
EC		Ecuador
EG		Egypt
SV		El Salvador
GQ		Equatorial Guinea
ER		Eritrea
EE		Estonia
ET		Ethiopia
FK		Falkland Isl.(Malvinas)
FO		Faroe Islands
FJ		Fiji
FI		Finland
FR		France
TF		French Southern Terr.
GA		Gabon
GM		Gambia
GE		Georgia
DE		Germany
GH		Ghana
GI		Gibraltar
GB		Great Britain (UK)
GR		Greece
GL		Greenland
GD		Grenada
GP		Guadeloupe (Fr.)
GU		Guam (US)
GT		Guatemala
GG		Guernsey
GN		Guinea
GW		Guinea Bissau
GY		Guyana
GF		Guyana (Fr.)
HT		Haiti
HM		Heard & McDonald Isl.
HN		Honduras
HK		Hong Kong
HU		Hungary
IS		Iceland
IN		India
ID		Indonesia
IR		Iran
IQ		Iraq
IE		Ireland
IM		Isle of Man
IL		Israel
IT		Italy
CI		Ivory Coast
JM		Jamaica
JP		Japan
JO		Jordan
KZ		Kazachstan
KE		Kenya
KG		Kirgistan
KI		Kiribati
KP		Korea (North)
KR		Korea (South)
KW		Kuwait
LA		Laos
LV		Latvia
LB		Lebanon
LS		Lesotho
LR		Liberia
LY		Libya
LI		Liechtenstein
LT		Lithuania
LU		Luxembourg
MO		Macau
MK		Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of
MG		Madagascar
MW		Malawi
MY		Malaysia
MV		Maldives
ML		Mali
MT		Malta
MH		Marshall Islands
MQ		Martinique (Fr.)
MR		Mauritania
MU		Mauritius
MX		Mexico
FM		Micronesia
MD		Moldavia
MC		Monaco
MN		Mongolia
MS		Montserrat
MA		Morocco
MZ		Mozambique
MM		Myanmar
NA		Namibia
NR		Nauru
NP		Nepal
AN		Netherland Antilles
NL		Netherlands
NC		New Caledonia (Fr.)
NZ		New Zealand
NI		Nicaragua
NE		Niger
NG		Nigeria
NU		Niue
NF		Norfolk Island
MP		Northern Mariana Isl.
NO		Norway
OM		Oman
PK		Pakistan
PW		Palau
PA		Panama
PG		Papua New Guinea
PY		Paraguay
PE		Peru
PH		Philippines
PN		Pitcairn
PL		Poland
PF		Polynesia (Fr.)
PT		Portugal
PR		Puerto Rico (US)
QA		Qatar
RE		Reunion (Fr.)
RO		Romania
RU		Russian Federation
RW		Rwanda
LC		Saint Lucia
WS		Samoa
SM		San Marino
SA		Saudi Arabia
SN		Senegal
CS		Serbia and Montenegro
SC		Seychelles
SL		Sierra Leone
SG		Singapore
SK		Slovak Republic
SI		Slovenia
SB		Solomon Islands
SO		Somalia
ZA		South Africa
GS		South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
ES		Spain
LK		Sri Lanka
SH		St. Helena
PM		St. Pierre & Miquelon
ST		St. Tome and Principe
KN		St.Kitts Nevis Anguilla
VC		St.Vincent & Grenadines
SD		Sudan
SR		Suriname
SJ		Svalbard & Jan Mayen Islands
SZ		Swaziland
SE		Sweden
CH		Switzerland
SY		Syria
TJ		Tadjikistan
TW		Taiwan
TZ		Tanzania
TH		Thailand
TG		Togo
TK		Tokelau
TO		Tonga
TT		Trinidad & Tobago
TN		Tunisia
TR		Turkey
TM		Turkmenistan
TC		Turks & Caicos Islands
TV		Tuvalu
UM		US Minor outlying Isl.
UG		Uganda
UA		Ukraine
AE		United Arab Emirates
UK		United Kingdom
US		United States
UY		Uruguay
UZ		Uzbekistan
VU		Vanuatu
VA		Vatican City State
VE		Venezuela
VN		Vietnam
VG		Virgin Islands (British)
VI		Virgin Islands (US)
WF		Wallis & Futuna Islands
EH		Western Sahara
YE		Yemen
YU		Yugoslavia
ZR		Zaire
ZM		Zambia
ZW		Zimbabwe

HTML Country Select Input with United States Selected:

Lastly, the most time consuming part for me was writing the PHP IF statements for each country so that if a user has a specific country chosen and saved in the database country field, it selects that country so it defaults in the drop-down. There are many ways to do this, but regardless of which way you use, it needs to be done otherwise each time your site user goes to edit their profile, they’ll have to select their country from the drop down. This can get tedious and annoying for your members. Even though you can copy and paste all the IF statements, you’d still have to manually type in each country abbreviation to check them against the databases $country variable. So here’s the code I decided to use…

PHP Edit Page Country Code Select Input:

Hopefully I’ve saved some time for other programmers out there who have come across the same issues I have. Be sure to leave a comment and let me know if I was able to help you.

Half a Bodied Guy

The Dro — Fri, 24 Dec 2010 12:36:04 +0000

Got bored so I illustrated a Half a bodied guy.

Vendor Client Relationships in the Real World

The Dro — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 00:35:39 +0000

This is exactly how I feel when dealing with some of my clients. I’ve even went as far as making the analogy that if they were at a store and wanted to purchase an Item, but did not want to pay for the item upfront or even it’s full cost, would that store let them walk out with it? Of course not. Here’s a little video that will shine a little more light into this subject. Next time you decide you want to hire a designer or programmer but don’t want to make a deposit or pay what the project is worth, just think of this video…

New Twitter Background

The Dro — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:37:51 +0000

I finally got a few minutes of downtime which is pretty rare for me and decided to spice up my twitter background.

As a graphic designer & developer, it frustrates me that I don’t have a custom bad-ass web site and personal social networking designs. I spend all of my time designing for others and never have enough time to design for myself anymore. It’s unfortunate because the reality is, no matter how many hours I put in each day, I still seem to be getting no-where financially.

The thing that sucks about my field at the moment is that no one is really willing to pay what us designers and developers are worth. In turn, projects take longer to complete and are more difficult because freelancers end up having to take on more projects at a time, at lower costs than normal, in order to pay the bills & survive.
I strongly believe that if clients were willing to pay more, designers could focus more of their attention to the one specific project at hand and not worry about having to take on others just to stay afloat.

Regardless, I took a bit of time I had left over after completing a task and decided to finally design something for myself. Check out my new Twitter Background image and feel free to comment and let me know what you think.

I have uploaded it to the server in case anyone wants to use it as their background. I understand that it’s a personal background and has all my links on it, but if anyone requests a custom made one for use on their page, I will gladly create one for them as time permits.

Link to the full size image: http://the-dro.com/images/twitter_bg2.png

My Opinions on using Flash for Web Design

The Dro — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:32:34 +0000

There have been many times when a client asks me about using flash to build their web site. I usually immediately let out an internal sigh and begin to think about ways to explain to him why it’s not always the best idea. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not against using flash for design, but I believe that if you can make the web site function the same using XHTML/CSS or Javascript, why use flash? Flash shouldn’t be for building full web sites in my opinion. It should only be used to create elements on your site which cannot be programmed with normal use of XHTML/CSS or Javascript.

I see most web sites which are fully designed in flash as tacky. There are definitely a few designers who have been able to pull off full web designs by just using Flash but most of those sites are usually designed for entertainment purposes only. One example of this would be movie web site. Movie web sites are usually designed to give the feel of the movie itself and have the user feel like they’re a part of that story. However, there are many ways to get that effect without the use of a full flash design.

Here are a few things about flash that every designer & client should consider:

1. Flash Intros and Splash Pages

Some of the most annoying and tacky web designs I have seen include a Flash intro or splash page. They usually take forever to load, even on a fast connection. The worst mistake that some flash designers make are forgetting or intentionally leaving out a SKIP button so that users can bypass the long and usually useless intro. I usually visit web sites to gather information about the subject I am seeking and Flash Intros just get in the way of that. It’s bad enough that you’ve created a splash page or intro to your site but please don’t make it worst by not letting the user skip it. If it’s true that you only have a split second to grab a user’s attention in order to keep him on your site, then you’ve just lost about 50% of your potential users to load time alone. Another 40% will most likely leave when they see that they cannot bypass your annoying splash page.

2. Navigation

Let’s say the other 10% have the time and patience to sit around waiting for your intro to end and site to load. Where do they go from here? Many flash designers have chosen to make the site cool and hip by creating a navigation system that is hidden under elements on the page and usually don’t even put descriptive text over those elements. I’m sure you’ve all seen sites which you must hover over all the elements just to find out which are clickable. Then you get to the page which it has linked you to only to find out that it’s not the page you were looking for. You then have to go back and forth trying to find the information you need because some shoddy designer decided to create a useless navigation system. By this time you’ve probably lost another 8% of users.

3. Sounds and Music set to Autoplay

I don’t know about you, but when I’m on the computer browsing the web I’m usually listening to music. It’s pretty irritating to land on a site with loud music or annoying sound effects that are set to automatically play. I then scroll down to hit stop or mute on the player only to find out that there is no player on the page and there’s also a missing mute button. Who ever created these types of sites must have for some reason decided that the only way for you to experience their design is through their horrible music and sound effects. Audio on flash web sites should always include a visible way to mute the sound. Not all your users are going to want to listen to it so don’t be surprised when you lose the rest of your 2% who actually decided to sit through the other annoyances that came with visiting your site.

4. Ranking and SEO

Unless Google comes up with a way to read exactly what’s on images and flash files, there’s no way your site is going to rank well if it’s built solely on flash. There are some ways nowadays to create flash elements which can be read by the search engine but if you’re whole site is just based on a flash movie, you can kiss that part of optimization goodbye. So by now you have a site which loads slow, confuses users, annoys them with intrusive music or sound effect and doesn’t rank at all with search engines. If you think about it, what’s the point of even having the site up if it’s just going to sit there with no real purpose? You’re basically just wasting your money on hosting and who wants to waste money on days like these?

So In the end, I just want to make it known that I don’t completely hate the use of flash nor do I think it’s completely useless. I just ask that flash gurus keep it in the realm of animation, game and special effects other than web design. If there’s parts of site design that can be accomplished with XHTML/CSS or JavaScript, then by all means allow us programmers and designers to keep it that way. Do yourself and your potential customers a favor and take all of this into consideration before asking for a full flash web site design.

40 Tips for optimizing your php code

The Dro — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 23:22:23 +0000

Great article I found on http://reinholdweber.com/ about optimizing your php code.

If a method can be static, declare it static. Speed improvement is by a factor of 4.
echo is faster than print.
Use echo’s multiple parameters instead of string concatenation.

Set the maxvalue for your for-loops before and not in the loop.
Unset your variables to free memory, especially large arrays.
Avoid magic like __get, __set, __autoload
require_once() is expensive
Use full paths in includes and requires, less time spent on resolving the OS paths.
If you need to find out the time when the script started executing, $_SERVER[’REQUEST_TIME’] is preferred to time()
See if you can use strncasecmp, strpbrk and stripos instead of regex
str_replace is faster than preg_replace, but strtr is faster than str_replace by a factor of 4
If the function, such as string replacement function, accepts both arrays and single characters as arguments, and if your argument list is not too long, consider writing a few redundant replacement statements, passing one character at a time, instead of one line of code that accepts arrays as search and replace arguments.
It’s better to use switch statements than multi if, else if, statements.
Error suppression with @ is very slow.
Turn on apache’s mod_deflate
Close your database connections when you’re done with them
$row[’id’] is 7 times faster than $row[id]
Error messages are expensive
Do not use functions inside of for loop, such as for ($x=0; $x < count($array); $x) The count() function gets called each time.
Incrementing a local variable in a method is the fastest. Nearly the same as calling a local variable in a function.
Incrementing a global variable is 2 times slow than a local var.
Incrementing an object property (eg. $this->prop++) is 3 times slower than a local variable.
Incrementing an undefined local variable is 9-10 times slower than a pre-initialized one.
Just declaring a global variable without using it in a function also slows things down (by about the same amount as incrementing a local var). PHP probably does a check to see if the global exists.
Method invocation appears to be independent of the number of methods defined in the class because I added 10 more methods to the test class (before and after the test method) with no change in performance.
Methods in derived classes run faster than ones defined in the base class.
A function call with one parameter and an empty function body takes about the same time as doing 7-8 $localvar++ operations. A similar method call is of course about 15 $localvar++ operations.
Surrounding your string by ‘ instead of ” will make things interpret a little faster since php looks for variables inside “…” but not inside ‘…’. Of course you can only do this when you don’t need to have variables in the string.
When echoing strings it’s faster to separate them by comma instead of dot. Note: This only works with echo, which is a function that can take several strings as arguments.
A PHP script will be served at least 2-10 times slower than a static HTML page by Apache. Try to use more static HTML pages and fewer scripts.
Your PHP scripts are recompiled every time unless the scripts are cached. Install a PHP caching product to typically increase performance by 25-100% by removing compile times.
Cache as much as possible. Use memcached – memcached is a high-performance memory object caching system intended to speed up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load. OP code caches are useful so that your script does not have to be compiled on every request
When working with strings and you need to check that the string is either of a certain length you’d understandably would want to use the strlen() function. This function is pretty quick since it’s operation does not perform any calculation but merely return the already known length of a string available in the zval structure (internal C struct used to store variables in PHP). However because strlen() is a function it is still somewhat slow because the function call requires several operations such as lowercase & hashtable lookup followed by the execution of said function. In some instance you can improve the speed of your code by using an isset() trick.Ex.if (strlen($foo) < 5) { echo “Foo is too short”; }vs.
if (!isset($foo{5})) { echo “Foo is too short”; }

Calling isset() happens to be faster then strlen() because unlike strlen(), isset() is a language construct and not a function meaning that it’s execution does not require function lookups and lowercase. This means you have virtually no overhead on top of the actual code that determines the string’s length.
When incrementing or decrementing the value of the variable $i++ happens to be a tad slower then ++$i. This is something PHP specific and does not apply to other languages, so don’t go modifying your C or Java code thinking it’ll suddenly become faster, it won’t. ++$i happens to be faster in PHP because instead of 4 opcodes used for $i++ you only need 3. Post incrementation actually causes in the creation of a temporary var that is then incremented. While pre-incrementation increases the original value directly. This is one of the optimization that opcode optimized like Zend’s PHP optimizer. It is a still a good idea to keep in mind since not all opcode optimizers perform this optimization and there are plenty of ISPs and servers running without an opcode optimizer.
Not everything has to be OOP, often it is too much overhead, each method and object call consumes a lot of memory.
Do not implement every data structure as a class, arrays are useful, too
Don’t split methods too much, think, which code you will really re-use
You can always split the code of a method later, when needed
Make use of the countless predefined functions
If you have very time consuming functions in your code, consider writing them as C extensions
Profile your code. A profiler shows you, which parts of your code consumes how many time. The Xdebug debugger already contains a profiler. Profiling shows you the bottlenecks in overview
mod_gzip which is available as an Apache module compresses your data on the fly and can reduce the data to transfer up to 80%
Excellent Article about optimizing php by John Lim

This article has been translated in several languages, the newest one is a portuguese translation by Lucas Stephanou