PHPBB2 News - Version 2.2 Soon to be Released

In a recent interview with James Atkinson, a founder of phpBB discusses what is in the works for the next version release. He states that the new version 2.2 is soon to be released. phpBB 2.2 should further improve administration functionality, while adding popular new features to make the product even stronger. With the release of version 2.2, the phpBB development team will start development of a portal based around the core features of product. This portal project will likely help phpBB gain even more popularity among the Webmaster community.

More on the Interview at the Band of Gonzos Forum - Sneak Peak at phpBB2 Version 2.2 Release Features

phpBB is a high powered, fully scalable, and highly customisable open-source bulletin board package. phpBB has a user-friendly interface, simple and straightforward administration panel, and helpful FAQ. Based on the powerful PHP server language and your choice of MySQL, MS-SQL, PostgreSQL or Access/ODBC database servers, phpBB is the ideal free community solution for all web sites.

The phpBB are a group of individuals based internationally who believe in opensource software. The project has been stable since its creation in June 2000 without changes in licencing, leadership or corporate associations. The goals remain unchanged and clear, to continue developing and supporting a stable, free, opensource forum system.

Today, phpBB is one of the most popular boards on the Internet, powering communities of thousands of sites. Unlike most available scripts, phpBB is open source, and is provided for free under the GPL. It serves as a great example of a successful open source project, functioning just as well as, if not better than, its commercial counterparts.

While phpBB boasts impressive features and great performance, one of the biggest advantages is its helpful community. The product has established a great following, which guarantees that experienced help is only a quick search away.



Gallery v1.4.3 Release Candidate 1 Available

SourceForge has just announced that Gallery v1.4.3 Release Candidate 1 is now available.

Gallery is a web based software product that lets you manage your photos on your own website. With Gallery you can easily create and maintain albums of photos via an intuitive interface. The software offers integration for popular software such as phpBB2, GeekLog, Mambo Server, and NSNuke.

Photo management includes automatic thumbnail creation, image resizing, rotation, ordering, captioning, searching and more. Albums can have read, write and caption permissions per individual authenticated user for an additional level of privacy. You can also give accounts to your friends and family and let them upload and manage their own photos on your website!

This is the second *release candidate* for Gallery v1.4.3. which fixes some issues with watermarking and also includes the Java applets was left out of the previous release.

Short summary of revisions:

• Lots of bug fixes, minor feature enhancements, and increased security
  
• Gallery works when register_globals is turned off
  
• GeekLog, phpBB2, Mambo Server, and NSNnuke integration
  
• Image watermarking
  
• Fullscreen fit-to-screen slideshow
  

For the project page at SourceForge, visit Gallery v1.4.3 Release Candidate 1 Available!


Links to websites mentioned in this article:

• phpBB Group Website


• Gallery Website


• SourceForge.NET

CSS Styling Demos

A List Apart

This month A List Apart, a veteran in the use of Cascading Style Sheets as part of standards-based web design has published some exceptional demonstrations of the power of CSS.

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Table Row Highlighting

With a bit of JavaScript / DOM sorcery, we can provide our visitors with row highlighting for long data tables in HTML, by applying rollover states to the rows. This could be implemented tediously by hand, of course, but it would be silly to do so. Instead, we will use the DOM to find the rows to highlight on mouseover.

To see the effect in action

Read the article by Christian Heilmann - The Table Ruler

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CSS and Email

Most people who’ve attempted to recreate a sophisticated design in HTML email have run into a wall when using CSS, either in the form of inexplicable mangling by email clients or a pronouncement by an email administrator stating that CSS is “against the rules.”

Despite prevailing wisdom to the contrary, you can safely deploy HTML emails styled with good old-fashioned CSS. Not all attributes will be invited to the party, but many of them work flawlessly with this method. If you’re not content to roll over and use font tags in your HTML emails, read on.

Read the article by Mark Wyner - CSS and Email, Kissing in a Tree

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CSS Sprites: Image Slicing

Say goodbye to old-school slicing and dicing when creating image maps, buttons, and navigation menus. Instead, say hello to a deceptively simple yet powerful sprite-based CSS solution. This article will demonstrate using CSS to create hover buttons, mapping links, and defining irregular shapes. It follows up with the design benefits and pitfalls.

• Single-image CSS rollovers
  
• multicolored Icon Buttons
  
• Irregular Shaped Rollovers
  

Read the article by Dave Shea - CSS Sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death

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Rounded Corners in CSS

Part II : Dynamic CSS layouts with customized borders and corners, advances to the next level, extending the technique to work with more complicated backgrounds such as gradients and patterns.

Rounded Corners in CSS Demo

Read the article by Soren Madsen - CSS Design: Creating Custom Corners & Borders Part II

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More articles on CSS can be found at A List Apart

Internet News

Turning Search Into a Science

By Kristen Philipkoski



When genetic researchers do a Web search for Dolly, the subject of their query probably doesn't have the last name Parton, nor is it likely a magazine for the fun-loving Australian girl who wants to know the latest on everything from fashion and beauty to entertainment news.



But a Google search will turn up these results and lots of other noise, unless the researcher specifies that results should not include Parton or fashion but must include cloning. Instead, a scientist could use a search engine like Scirus, which specifically taps science resources and publications.



See Turning Search Into a Science at Wired

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W3C Link Checker Released



W3C is pleased to announce the first standalone release of the W3C Link Checker. Started by Hugo Haas in 1999, the project is now managed by Ville Skyttä and the W3C Quality Assurance (QA) Activity. Documentation and source code are available. Comments are welcome on the www-validator@w3.org mailing list (archive).



See W3C Link Checker Released at the W3C Website

CSS Techniques & Resources

Making the transition from tables to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) can be a frustrating process, with cross-browser compatibility one of the major stumbling blocks. But in my opinion it is all worth it. It separates the presentation from the content, and leaves your Html cleaner and easier to read from a spider standpoint.

Changes to the presentation such as font styles, column positioning and dimensioning, border thicknesses and colors, margins, and wide variety of other element attributes are all handled through one external file. Do a View Source on the page you are reading right now, and you will see that there are no tables in this document. You can actually almost read the content with some degree of ease -- and so will the spider. The spider will see more content and less garbage cluttering it's way.

I have found three sites that will get you well on your way to understanding a little more about CSS. The first one is a little old, but the techniques used still apply. What is unique about it is that the CSS is displayed in a text box at the bottom of the page so that you can study it and compare to the actual page. The second one offers a variety of common and useful applications of CSS. And the third, is for more advanced techniques and offers CSS masterpiece showcases to demonstrate just how far you can go with this style of coding.

glish.com - CSS Layout Techniques
If you are looking for help making the transition to CSS layout (Cascading Style Sheets), then go to Eric Costello's glish.com - CSS Layout Techniques. Eric is cataloging many useful cross-browser CSS layout techniques that he can find. All the examples on this site have been reduced to only their essential code, and you will find the source displayed on each page to hopefully make it quick and easy to understand the inner workings of the CSS.

Eric started this collection because of the lack of resources he tried to find when he went looking for information on how to translate typical table based layouts to CSS layouts. You will also find links to various online CSS resources and tutorials, appropriate for both the novice and the seasoned CSS veteran.

The Imposter's Fun with CSS
A well organized list of some of the more common everyday uses for CSS, such as roll-over menus and trees, box positioning, and dynamic stylesheet switching. This gallery of CSS demos can be found at Fun with CSS : Experimental.

There is one bad CSS demo in this collection and that would be the Rounded Edges page. While it is true that CSS will remove the presentation from the page, there are some limitations to it. This demo states that it is a relatively painless way of creating image-free rounded edges with just CSS. It is far from painless, actually it is downright ridiculous when you look at it. You will see what I mean when you see the coding for it. Let's just say that this is a good CSS example of a bad CSS example.

Mezzoblue's CSS Zen Garden Resources
For the intermediate coder, there is Mezzoblue's CSS Zen Garden -Resource Guide. By no means exhaustive, this list has been put together to reconcile helpful CSS tips web-wide in one spot. Expect it to expand over time.

The CSS Resource Guide is just the tip of this iceberg. You will have to visit the their Zen Garden - The Beauty of CSS Design site, it will rock your world. An awe inspiring showcase of what CSS is capable of. Look over on the right side of this page for a list of other CSS showcase sites of which are equally amazing.

Where to go from here
It would be advisable to procure a CSS editor of some type to facilitate the creation of your stylesheets with. I use BradSoft's Top Style Lite which is integrated into my Html authoring software. It does not have as many features as their Pro Version, but it gets the job done and makes a lot of hand typing process easier by auto-filling it in for you. Top Style Lite download page. Top Style Pro is also available for purchase on this same page.

Finally, after you have fooled around and experimented with CSS for a while and you need some advice -- visit the Band of Gonzo's Web Design Support Forum where there are several people around who will be able to answer any of your questions.

SEO's Relationship With Website Architecture

Building a website starts with the basics -- structure. I found an excellent article that should be on everyone's reading list. It is very well written and thought out to explain how to structure your site for ease of navigation not only for your visitors, but for the spider too.

Source: Search Engine Guide - Search engine optimization for today's search engine robots requires that sites be well-designed and easy-to-navigate. To a great degree, organic search engine optimization is simply an extension of best practices in web page design.

This approach ties well into the notion of long-term search engine marketing success. Rather than trying to "psych out" the ever-changing search engine algorithms, build pages that have good text and good links. No matter what the search engines are looking for this month or next, they will always reward good content and simple navigation.

Full article at SEO's Relationship With Website Architecture

If you would like to discuss this article -- visit the Band of Gonzos Forum. Any and all questions will be answered.

Dot-Mail Domain Proposed as Spam Solution

The next weapon in the war against junk e-mail could be built into the core of the Internet's inner workings if a group of anti-spam vigilantes gets its way.



The weapon in question is called "dot-mail," a proposed new Internet domain like dot-com or dot-org. If approved by the Internet's addressing authority, direct mailers and other companies could use it to send their e-mails straight to users' in-boxes without fear that they will be quarantined or discarded by software filters that confuse those e-mails with spam.



See the full story a WashingtonPost.com

MP3Virus.Gen - Mac OS X Trojan Horse warning

Never say ... never!

According to MacCentral, Macintosh security specialists, Intego on Thursday issued a security warning to its customers for the first Trojan horse to affect Mac OS X. Intego has dubbed the Trojan MP3Concept (MP3Virus.Gen). The Trojan horse exploits a weakness in Mac OS X where applications can appear to be other types of files, according to the company.

I do not wish a virus upon anyone ... but this is one worth laughing about. With all the Mac owners touting how secure their systems are from attack, this Trojan sneaks in on an MP3 music file.

Complete story can be found in the Virus Alert area at the Band of Gonzos website.

See MP3Virus.Gen - Mac OS X Trojan Horse warning