the sephone blog

Happy July! Today we’re happy to announce datAvenger 4.3, the latest version of our full-featured content management system datAvenger. In this latest release we’ve focused our efforts on text page editing (known as Standard Content to dA users). We wanted to incorporate some of the feedback we’d received from our clients and make editing as straight-forward as possible.

Although there are are dozens of enhancements and fixes throughout the entire datAvenger application, I just wanted to run through some of the biggest changes.

Auto-drafts

Has this situation ever happened to you? You’ve got a lot to do on a Standard Content page. You sit down, finish all your work, and hit the Save button. All of a sudden, you’re redirected back to the login page… and your changes didn’t save! datAvenger’s login security features occasionally made large edits difficult to do.

Starting in datAvenger 4.3, a copy of your Standard Content changes are saved automatically every two minutes. Though you still need to press the Save button to confirm your changes to a page, datAvenger saves auto-drafts within the version listing of every Standard Content page. To access these drafts, click on the icon of the file cabinet in a Standard Content page’s article list.

While you’re in the version list, you now can click on the Preview icon next to any version to bring up a full preview of that version’s content.

If you have a lot to do on a page, we still highly recommend that you use the Save and Continue Editing button in Standard Content to save your work every few minutes. In any case, datAvenger’s Standard Content auto-drafts are your backup!

Spell checking

That’s right - Standard Content page editors now have a spell check built right in. When you’re done with a page, click on the new ABC checkmark in the toolbar to make sure everything is spelled correctly. Don’t forget to save your changes!

A new, but familiar, toolbar

You may notice that the toolbar in the Standard Content editor looks a bit different. Don’t worry… all of your buttons are still there. We’ve reorganized the toolbar so that most formatting functions are on the top row and more advanced functions are on the bottom.

From the top

We’ve tightened up the editor in a lot of ways for this version. That makes it a lot easier for us to work with the editor code for the future, but it’s also great for you. If you ever had a sticky popup window that wouldn’t close or a style that took a few tries to apply, you’ll notice that these quirks have disappeared in this version.

We upgrade datAvenger installations regularly (for free) to keep sites up-to-date the latest features and bug fixes, and we’ll start updating existing dA sites very soon. We’ve been testing this latest version for months and are excited to get it out the door.

These latest editor updates will make it even easier for us to give you the best editor possible in the future. As always, if you have any questions or issues, give us a call at (207) 262-5040 or e-mail support@datavenger.com!

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I participate in a UserGroup for Maine Tech Businesses, I wont share at the moment who, as this isnt necessarily a favorable plug… Any how- A comment was posted regarding how a fairly well known Maine company has been working with a Seattle-based web company and blah, blah blah (Details are NOT important). A dialog ensued questioning why Maine companies feel compelled to seek technical assistance from firms outside the state.

Boy oh boy- did the interchange begin- mainly with defenders of the position.

“Maine based companies, feel that they are owed the project because they are in the state. They need to be measured on their performance and compete on merits…“

Well, Duh! Of course we should compete on our merits- but it goes on…

Another “Maine Developer” states “Maine doesn’t have talent equal to the big city, it’s a simple fact” and wait here’s more…” Given all this, a generally poor economy, minimal ethnic diversity and a vicious cycle of limited job opportunities causing the flight of talent, how could Maine be anything other than a marginal, provincial tech market? Face it. We’re &^#$’d

I can go on and share some of the other negative comments and rationale as to why Mainers, and don’t get me started on what the feelings are for Northern Maine… but is this true?!

Are the better solutions only to be found in Boston, Seattle, Santa Clara and NYC?

I do not accept this- For one- I am from away and I have worked with some of the best and talented developers in NY, Dallas, StLouis and Atlanta and there were some cunnin ones in Des Moines and Omaha too!

I can honestly state that those people are good- but no better than the ones I have met in Maine, and especially the ones I have the pleasure to work with everyday here. We have some smaht ones here in Bangor that I would put up against anyone from CA or WA.

What kind of usergroup is this that doesnt feel it necessary to keep resources in the State and to promote Maine companies?

What I can state is that business owners and even organizations like the local municipalities, even the State of Maine itself- shares the mis-nomer that You gotta go outside the State to get the goods.

THIS IS WRONG, IT IS NOT ECONOMICALLY RESPONSIBLE, AND IT IS NOT GOING TO DO NUTTIN FOR ECONOMIC GROWTH, Especially if that is the message that is being send to businesses in the State and our children.

Wake Up Maine. But please- if I am all wet on this let me know.

I can take it.

NOTE: IF there are no companies that CAN provide a particular service- sure there is no choice to make- but let there be some sort of competitive advantage for being in the State. And we get a fair share of work from away- that is true- but since this is a relatively small State- any work lost to an away firm means some one here may lose their job. THAT IS THE POINT.

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What is a web browser
A web browser is a piece of software that you look at websites with. More than likely it’s what you are using to view this article right now. I wrote this article in a web browser. Many people think a web browser is how they “get on the internet” or how they “look at the internet”.

What is Firefox
Firefox is a web browser that is a product of a company called Mozilla. Its history dates all of the way back to the earliest days of the internet with the Mosaic web browser which became the Netscape web browser. Firefox is the chief rival to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and brought more secure and standards compliant browser to the general public that included new features such as tabbed browsing, a spell checker, incremental find, live bookmarking, a download manager, addons, and a search system that uses Google. Firefox at this time, has about a 17% market share. Firefox is available for nearly all versions of Windows, Macs and Linux machines.

What is Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer, often called just IE, is Microsoft’s Web browser. At this time it is the most widely used browser and comes pre-installed on all windows machines since 1995. The latest stable release is IE7. IE has been criticized in the past for the lack of full CSS standards support, lack of full PNG support. IE7 is better. IE8, their latest browser in beta right now, does comply with standards support unseen in any Microsoft browser before it. IE is available for all Windows releases.

What is Safari
Safari is Apple’s web browser, it was released in 2003 and has been included with every Mac since version 10.2. Safari has some of the best CSS support of any web browser available. Safari has a bookmark technology, and features a management scheme that functions like the iTunes jukebox software, integrates Apple’s QuickTime multimedia tabbed-browsing interface. A web search box is a standard component of the Safari interface, as are software services that automatically fill out web forms, manage passwords via Keychain and spell check entries into web page text fields. The browser also includes an integrated pop-up ad blocker. Safari is available on Mac OS X, and several Windows releases.

Which one do I use?
Well, that is a great question. It depends on what you like to do on the Internet. Here at Sephone, we are partial to Firefox because of the great development addons to help us do our job. Try all of them if you want and pick your favorite.

No matter what browser you pick, it’s important to make sure that your browser software and OS are updated with the latest patches on a regular basis.

Happy browsing.

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Whenever you talk about technology, you’re likely to get an earful of abbreviations and acronyms. We know it’s confusing - we deal with it every day! Here’s a little “geek glossary” to help you navigate some of the more common things you might hear us mention.

• dA / dA lite: dA and dA lite refer to Sephone’s content management systems, datAvenger and datAvenger lite. The content management system is the administrative area where you can edit your site.
• HTML: HTML is really the language of the Web. Just like Word documents are used for word processing and PowerPoint is used for presentations, HTML is used to display Web pages within a browser. When the browser reads the HTML, it adds the right colors, links, text sizes, and more to create a readable Web page (like this one!). (It stands for “hypertext markup language”, which is a really complicated way of saying that HTML pages can use text formatting and can link to other pages.)
• PHP: Most of the sites we create use another programming language known as PHP. PHP allows us to build sites that change based on what the site owner tells the site to do: display an image gallery, post press releases, or allow you to check out on an e-commerce site. All of these happen before the page even reaches your Web browser.
• SEO: Short for “search engine optimization”, SEO is an ever-changing study of how to make your sites look their best in search engines like Google and Yahoo. This is done through a combination of stuff that we control (easy-to-read page addresses, clean programming, and more) and a bunch of things that are up to the site owner to control (page titles, meta data, and most importantly, the actual content of the site).
• WYSIWYG: Many of our products use a tool known as a WYSIWYG, or “what you see is what you get” editor. A WYSIWYG editor looks like a stripped-down version of a word processing program like Word; it will give you the ability to boldface, italicize, or resize text, as well as a number of other functions. Some WYSIWYGs even let you insert links or images into your text. The WYSIWYG in datAvenger, for example, has over 25 different actions built right in.

Is there anything else that you think should be a part of this list? Leave a comment and let us know.

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Microsoft has placed a bid to buy Yahoo for 44 billion, Microsoft’s largest acquisition so far. Read more at Fox News. Here are a few Sephone opinions on the announcement.

Alan:

It’s going to be really good or really bad. It could be good because yahoo/MS together can compete with Google, and both will get better. It could be bad because their cool things like del.icio.us and flickr could get bad because Microsoft has a rep for being bland, bloated and generic; Delicious and Flickr are lightweight and personal. It’s good that somebody is going to try to keep Google from running away with the show.

Joe:

It better not happen.

Kelly:

If the quality of Microsoft services will affect Yahoo and their services, then we are really in trouble.

Scott:

Good for Microsoft, bad for Yahoo.

Justin:

If the deal ends up going through, it will be up to Microsoft to decide how much freedom to give Yahoo’s properties like del.icio.us and Flickr to allow them to innovate and grow. Yahoo has a major place in the Web’s history, and it’s still the top site in terms of traffic. What would the combination of Live Search and Yahoo mean for Google and the Web in general?

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If you have a website, I am sure that you have heard of “SEO” (search engine optimization). One of the very best search engine enhancements that you can have is have a site that just follows the guidelines correctly. Google has a whole set of guidelines here. Here is a very simple summary of the most important things that google recommends you do.

• Make pages for users, not for search engines.
• Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings.
• Make sure that your TITLE tags and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.
• Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Every page should be reachable from at least one static text link.
• Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content.
• Have other relevant sites link to yours.
• Make sure your site is crawlable without javascript, cookie or image support.

So there are some simple things that can help your site to be seen by search engines.

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