Occasionally, people ask me to create XHTML/CSS template based on provided .PSDs. Most of the time, such projects are pretty straight-forward — I tell the hourly rate and the estimated hours. The prospective client then accepts the offer or not.

It could be zillion reasons why clients reject offers and I’m used to some neutral (read: polite) arguments, like “It exceeds our budget” or something like that. However, today I received an interesting response:

“You are a little-bit too expensive, XXX is an hourly rate for a programmer.”

Funny, huh? Or sad?

Why on Earth would anyone compare client-side coding with programming. What is it that people (or just this particular client) think some cog of the same engine should be valued more than others?

Is it because the work of accessibility consultant, CSS coder, SEO engineer or usability expert is not something you can point your finger at? Or is it ‘cause people tend to care for web standards in a way of questionably increased initial exposure on endless, but completely irrelevant CSS showcase lists?…

User Experience Lord, Mark Hurst wrote Bit Literacy, possibly the second most valuable book anyone who wants to catch-up with this computer thing should read and learn. Right after the Computers for Dummies.

In his book, Mark Hurst gives you easy to follow how-to for the most common everyday scenarios as well as the best practice tips for maintaining the digital discipline on a daily basis.

In a nutshell, a bit-literate user is more productive. By letting the bits go, information overload can be avoided.

Probably, the most significant chapter is Other Essentials, where the author reveals the inevitable truth — bit literacy is going to be the digital age standard. Sooner than anyone expects.

I only wish this book was shipped as a part of an operating system installation guide when I bought the first computer.

With Intel-based Macs, web developers now can test their pages in multiple operating systems and browsers with a single machine.

Virtualization software

Parallels is complete and stable, but a piece of software you will have to pay for. The price of 80 USD per license isn’t unacceptably high for an average web developer, but if you’re cutting your expenses, this might turn you down. In any case, you can download trial and evaluate if it’s worth the price. Anyway… from the version 3.0, the application supports 3D graphics and various USB devices, but it also has a set of supplementary tools, such as Transporter, which helps you migrate your existing Windows PC to a Parallels Virtual Machine. Parallels support bunch of OSes.

At the time of this writing, VMware Fusion is in its’ beta 4 version and is free to download. So far, it works pretty stable on my MacBook Pro, even in situations when both Vista + IE7 and XP + IE6 virtual machines are up. If you opt to use Fusion, there’s over 450 preconfigured virtual machines that can be found at Virtual Appliance Marketplace.

Virtual PC can’t be run on Intel-based Mac, but if you’re on PowerPC, it will cost you 129 USD for standalone or 219 USD for VPC7 + Windows XP Home. VirtualPC for Windows is free. The advantage of VirtualPC are preconfigured time-bombed ISO images available from Microsoft. There are WindowsXP + IE6 and Windows XP + IE7 installations currently available and those will run till August 17, 2007.

Boot Camp is really not a virtualization application. What it does is lets you boot to either Mac OS or Windows installation and it is obvious that it’s impossible to test web pages in such an environment. Boot Camp will be shipped with Mac OS X Leopard, but until then, if you want to, you can download Boot Camp from Apple.com.

Operating Systems

We’re currently testing pages in the following virtual setups (note that besides virtualization app of your choice, you’ll probably have to purchase a license for each of your separate OS installations):

• Windows XP SP2 + IE6, Firefox 1.5.x and Opera 8.5
• Windows Vista + IE7, Firefox 2.x and Opera 9.x
• Suse 10 + Konqueror and Firefox

Browsers

Older browsers can be found at evolt.org, the latest at download.com. Opera keeps browser archive and so does Netscape. If needed, download Firefox 1.5.

What more to say? Have a happy cross-browser testing!

Got it directly from Malarkey’s referrer logs — Transcending CSS iPod shuffle. BTW, have you Spotted the diffrence?

Not long ago I became a proud owner of a MacBook, which created a need for a home network setup. Since the comfortable dimensions of the computer allow for working on a different places inside the apartement, I went for the wireless LAN.

Zeldman’s recent trouble with his DSL line encouraged me not to pull all my hair off. Luckily, my dilemma was somewhat of a different nature. Since we live in a rented flat plus the local branch of T-com won’t sell you a DSL line separated from a phone line (and the phone line owner, which I’m not in this case), the default modem/router they’d provide along with a two year contract was not an option.

For the last few weeks I spent some time learning how to match PCs and Mac on the same network—you know: manually et all. In fact I always wanted to learn more about this area, but never had a need for it… We have almost five years old XP Pro installation on my main PC and only God knows what ports and sockets I blocked back then when it was the only machine in the house. With PC being such a fortress, traditional Windows Network Setup Wizard wasn’t very helpful, so I had to buy some extra hardware to handle all the traffic. When I purchased it, the super quiet MacBook Pro was meant to be the only machine still awake and working in those late evenings when the family is in bed.

Router, DHCP and network setup

The real trouble was the original modem provided by the ISP, which was connected to the PC with USB cable. Needless to say, that particular model is absolutely useless with Mac OS, but the local telecom supports Windows OS only. Thanks for nothing… Finally, I bought D-link DSL-G684T DSL Wireless Router (Download manual & latest firmware in Croatian). I’d go for LinkSys, but unfortunately they don’t have wireless routers with DSL modem built-in.

Anyway, if you want’t to do it right, you have to do it yourself. Automatic DHCP didn’t last long, ‘cause with every restart of any of the network devices all the IP’s messed up. At the end all the relations had to be set manually, so now the router is 192.168.1.1, PC is 192.168.1.2, Mac 192.168.1.3 and so on…

In the router interface, which is by the way rich with options, but ugly as hell—I set a range of static IPs, with MAC/IP pairs, so now there is no IP hijacking when some of the machines is pulled out. All the non-assigned IPs are disabled, which is additional security layer (at least that’s what they told me).

On to DSL setup…

The thing which caused me the most headache were VPI and VCI numbers, which were predefined for the German market. Fortunately (or sadly), I was not the first one with such a trouble, so I found a valuable forum post, where I found correct VPI and VCI values along with solutions for other possible causes that are on your way when establishing ADSL connection.

A few additional home networking security tips

WEP security protocol is easy to crack—you probably wouldn’t want to support all the neighborhood kids hanging on your line. WPA/WPA2 Personal is much more secure, but some older devices won’t work with it. Read very brief Configure Wireless Security for small Network.

Another security layer is limiting your antenna transmit power to as low as possible. For my needs I lowered it all the way down to 6% (the lowest value router allows) and it still gives me great performance anywhere in the condo. Naturally, if you keep your signal down, less network scanners would notice your presence.