Category — Web Developer’s Corner

It’s the beginning of a new year and time to remind all web developers to check their copyright dates on their websites. My intention is to add simple code to my footers so I don’t ever have to manually update a copyright date. However, I must admit, I have not always been diligent about doing so. So this one is for those of you who have manually input copyright dates on the websites you have developed and are now having to manually update those dates.

To have a copyright in your footer that looks like this:

Copyright © 2007 – 2011. All Rights Reserved

If you are working with html files that are not set up to parse PHP, replace “2007″ in the following code with your copyright start date and then insert the following javascript code into your html file:

Copyright © 2007<script type="text/javascript"> var d=new Date(); yr=d.getFullYear(); if (yr!=2007) document.write("- "+yr); </script>. All Rights Reserved.

If you are working with php files, insert the following php code into your php file:

Copyright © 2007 – <?php echo date('Y'); ?>. All Rights Reserved.

It’s as simple as that. Do it now on all your current websites and get into the practice of using code on all future sites you develop. Then on New Years Day, you won’t ever have to worry about it again!

Images for Web Design

need to be in one of three formats. Here we list some notable differences in the .gif, .jpg and .png formats.

GIF (Graphical Interchange Format)

• Best used for vector graphics, line art.  Not Photos.
• GIF89a format provided enhancements for transparency, interlacing and multi-frame GIFs for animation.
• Limited to 256 Colors
• Compression format is lossless compression format – Which means no image information is lost when compressed.

JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)

• Best used for photographs
• Unsuitable for images with sharp edges, such as line art, logos and type
• Compression format is a lossy compression algorithm which means that file information is lost when compressed.  Therefore, wait until all modifications are made to save and compress your jpg files.
• Each time a jpg is saved/compressed, file information is lost.
• jpg does not support transparency.

PNG (Portable Network Graphics)

• Created to improve and replace GIF
• Compression format is lossless compression format – Which means no image information is lost when compressed.
• Better transparency than GIF files
• Does not support animation
• Supports palette-based, true color and grayscale images

Interesting History: The motivation for creating the PNG format was in early 1995, after it became known that the Lempel–Ziv–Welch (LZW) data compression algorithm used in the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) format was patented by Unisys.

On December 24, 1994, Unisys stated that they expected all major commercial on-line information services companies employing the LZW patent to license the technology from Unisys at a reasonable rate, but that they would not require fees to be paid, for non-commercial, non-profit GIF-based applications, including those for use on the on-line services.

Following this announcement, there was widespread condemnation of CompuServe and Unisys, and many software developers threatened to stop using the GIF format. The PNG format was developed in 1995 as an intended replacement.  Unisys was subjected to thousands of online attacks and abusive emails from users believing that they were going to be charged or sued for using GIFs on their websites.  Despite giving free licenses to hundreds of non-profit organizations, schools and governments, Unisys was completely unable to generate any good publicity and continued to be condemned by individuals and organizations such as the League for Programming Freedom who started the “Burn All GIFs” campaign.

The US LZW patent expired on June 20, 2003.  Consequently, while Unisys has further patents and patent applications relating to improvements to the LZW technique, the GIF format may now be used freely.