You can have visible links to /_edit URLs, but Google would get a 403 Forbidden response (as we paint the login), so my guess is that it wouldn't be indexed.
[quote]What about something invisible inside generated pages? Very very small. I guess this won't be appreciated by customers.[/quote]
Well, we don't have any and there is no way for Google to find it even if we did. Google only indexes visible pages. If there are no links to/from a page, there is no way for Google to see it.
I am not 100% sure how Google does it. Do they scan all public IP's and port 80 to see if www is running? Than if it is running they start using links to go to next pages on site they found. In this case it has to be a link on public site somewhere to /_edit page which is not the case. _edit page can be indexed as it is HTML page and inurl:_edit should work but problem in this case that Google will not see _edit page as nothing on public site is pointing to it.
On security site I even would think of making it /_edit_23876345678 to make hackers life harder as everyone knows where login page to admin interface is if site is controlled by Matrix. Everyone who need it and authorised can bookmark it.
[quote]Well, we don't have any and there is no way for Google to find it even if we did. Google only indexes visible pages. If there are no links to/from a page, there is no way for Google to see it.[/quote]
Was thinking of having something like element style="display: none;" (not page) with value set to something very unique on home page only.
I am sure Matrix knows which page is root but this will not affect all current installs.
[quote]Was thinking of having something like element style="display: none;" (not page) with value set to something very unique on home page only.
I am sure Matrix knows which page is root but this will not affect all current installs.[/quote]
Personally, I would very annoyed (as a consumer) if any software I used did this, so I'm certainly not going to support it in Matrix.
Misfortunately cursed - LinkedIn
[center][/center]
[color=“#483D8B”][center]Fig 1 You want add person to your network[/center]
[center][/center]
[color=“#483D8B”][center]Fig 2 You do not know this person[/center][/color]
Yes - page says 'Only invite people you know well' but it does not say "you can't" as we all humans and assume that otherwise it will be no radio button with "I don't know person" option. You type whatever you wanted to type and it could be a lot of effort.
[center][/center]
[color=“#483D8B”][center]Fig 3 After you clicked 'Send Invitation' everything is lost[/center][/color]
Why not let me stay on this page and let me change my radio option or at least copy-save my message to pass it another way?
I wanted to send pictures to support but found there is no way I can attach files to my message. So instead of telling what is wrong I had to ask where I can send a feedback with attachments. I received automatic response email which contains email address I can use to send pictured feedback. How many people will be determined enough to do this?
After reading an article about perfect customer support on Joel on Software site I decided to test how it works. I was looking at their project management web application to learn something new and obviously had some questions/feedback. This is their sendmail page. 2M restriction on attachments is fair enough, if you have many you can always put them all into single file. I did not get any 'automatically generated email just to say that we received your email and will respond soon'. I had my answers within 24 hours written by intelligent human (it is hard to comment on timeframes as they are in NY). But overall I can say that they not only say about it but also do it as they say. I also understand that their customer base does not grow 1 mln customers a month as LinkedIn's but as a customer I don't care.
My conclusions:
- human testing is irreplaceable
- don't put an option in 'can not be used' context - remove option instead
- never assume customer will use default message which has no value when lost
- give customers interface to suggest without counting typed characters and with ability to attach documents (even with 1:100 ratio of useful:useless you will improve product into right direction).
P.S. Many people know now how to make screenshots and it is much more easier/quicker to communicate instead of saying "I pressed that link on that page and than page changed and I saw an option which was disabled and …"
PayPal - At World's End
As usual, I was buying something I don't need at EBay today.
While was paying at PayPal I clicked 'Pay' button and saw this.
[center][/center]
[color=“#483D8B”][center]Fig 1 Did payment go through or not?[/center]
Should I wait for email confirmation and if it won't arrive assume that payment did not go through?
After I clicked 'Back' button in a browser I saw exactly the same page which was ready to accept my payment again.
Could PayPal do a bit more than this?
Send payment with AJAX request and read response about payment status. Get internal error (this does happen) and send another AJAX request to see a transaction status in a background without letting me even know about it. Finally - just say transaction was completed instead of leaving me guessing and taking responsibility for hitting 'Pay' button second time in a hope that I will not be debited twice?
More Matrix will never hurt
Just hit Typo3 hosting provider - http://www.siteground.com/typo3-hosting.htm
Didn't you think about something like - www.********.com/matrix-hosting.htm ?
[center][/center]
[color=“#483D8B”][center]Fig 1 Who will be the Author?[/center]
No -- at least not for Matrix. While we do provide hosting for our clients, we are not interested in supporting the $5.95/month style of shared hosting providers.
I guess Typo3 does not support all these customers but SiteGround.
SiteGround can have some sort of agreement with Typo3 business to train SiteGround support staff and provide second line support which would be more than 5 
Another option will be to negotiate with hosting provider to offer it only on more expensive dedicated hosting services to eliminate customer dissatisfaction on shared hosting caused by other reasons which can lead to association with the product itself.
Even if it won't be very profitable business wouldn't it widen customer base and make product more popular?
We're not interested in being popular, we're interested in being profitable. :P
To start the day
Yesterday I hit an interesting series of articles where Yahoo engineers analyze performance.
I remember (Greg reminded me) that you used a special architecture on high performance sites with lot’s of images with use of series of articles unloading main web site for the rest.
After I read this article I started thinking that CMS can simply be configured to generate links in a special way using first domain name for first two images on a page and another domain name for next two images etc. (even though both domain names are pointing to the same server).
It is probably an advanced setup up but very easy to achieve with CMS which can be preconfigured to serve images from different hosts and use this algorithm to improve performance.
Child's questions
[center][/center]
[color=“#483D8B”][center]Fig 1 Internet Banking System[/center]
- Does anybody know why internet banking system (ANZ above) requires amount in a format .00?
- How hard is it to say "… and in a format 10000.00. …" by actually inserting my amount?
P.S.
If I would be doing it I will write amount in words right side to input as soon as 'Amount' input will loose focus using PEAR's Numbers_Words package.
This way it is easier to spot an error when amount has many zeroes.
We used to write financial application in our system and we simply added '.00' before going forward by JS but it was not designed for a bank.
Banks may be paranoid about adding anything automatically into amount area (understandable).
'The amount you have entered is invalid' - again and again I can not agree with wording. Is amount invalid or format? Who cares - try again, please.
[quote]1. Does anybody know why internet banking system (ANZ above) requires amount in a format .00?
2. How hard is it to say "… and in a format 10000.00. …" by actually inserting my amount?[/quote]
Westpac used to do the same thing to me, but I noticed (a while ago now) that they have stopped asking for .00 on the end of values. The little things make all the difference
Test your web design in different browsers
My guys pointed me to this site. I know that you do it in house.
Will be interesting to know what you think about it.
Is it good enough or any serious endeavor should rely on own infrastructure to do such testing?
What your environment can do this one can’t (if can be published of course)?
If I understand it right you test admin interface and content it produces.
[quote]Is it good enough or any serious endeavor should rely on own infrastructure to do such testing?
What your environment can do this one can't (if can be published of course)?[/quote]
We use an internal version of Browsershots (same code, our server). This runs on a big VMware Server that has 2 Windows XP virtual machines, a Vista Machine and a Linux box (Ubuntu). We also have our MacOS X Server running a Browsershots factory. This allows us to test on IE6, IE7, Firefox 1.5, 2.0, Opera and Safari on XP/Vista, as well as Firefox on Linux/MacOS X and Safari on MacOS X.
[quote]If I understand it right you test admin interface and content it produces.[/quote]
No, we use it to test designs that we develop for the front-end of client websites.
Thank you, Avi.
Greg
When you will have a minute, can you uncover testing you do and tools used?
Like:
- PHP sniffer - coding standards
- …
Thank you.
Ah, the glory of Snoopy, PHP_CodeSniffer and The Construct™. 
What about things everybody makes presentations about - Selenium with PHPUnit?
MySource Matrix uses The Construct, an appropriately named unit testing framework that we based on SimpleTest. Before PHP5 came out we also used Snoopy, a coding standards checker that we wrote.
For MySource4, we use PHPUnit for unit testing, combined with Selenium for testing the interfaces. We now use PHP_CodeSniffer, a new coding standards checker that we wrote and also a PEAR package: http://pear.php.net/package/PHP_CodeSniffer
The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of … Bookmarking Service
Yahoo Bookmarks look good to me but why separate page with separate login?
Why there is no access to service from inside Yahoo Mail?
Why to make a new service rather that making API to Yahoo's del.icio.us consolidating and integrating peoples bookmarks from both sites?
[center][/center]
[color=“#483D8B”][center]Fig 1 Yahoo Bookmarks[/center]
What if I want to send a folder of bookmarks called 'Utility computing' containing five bookmarks?
What if I received a folder of bookmarks called 'Utility computing' containing five bookmarks? Can I automatically inject it (folder) into my bookmarks structure?
We just need to get into the Zone to come up with a format of file to pass bookmarks or folder organised bookmarks by email.
Yahoo wants me to think this way:
- If I need to send/share bookmarks I will need to go to Yahoo Bookmarks, copy paste them to Yahoo Mail Compose window one by one.
- If I received bookmarks I will need to copy paste them to Yahoo bookmarks one by one.
Can I insert my bookmark into my email easily?
Can I grab URL from email and add it to my bookmarks?
Can I see if some of my bookmarks pointing to ‘Not found’ after a while?
Can I save an important page content my bookmark is pointing to with bookmark?
TAF - diving into AIR - Part I
We used Adobe Air beta 2.
Beta 3 is available from 12 Dec 2007 from ADOBE and we will use it in future tests.
Figure 1 shows test one - we started application without network connectivity.
Page with form can not be shown.
TAF will try to connect during 'timeout' interval and action afterwards.
[center][/center]
[center][color=“#483D8B”]Fig 1 Timing out statically[/center]
We did not manage to load animated gif and make it work - it is shown as a static picture (dots are moving 
).
Figure 2 shows system reaction on 'timeout' expiration.
Again extJS library supposed to be used but AIR found error in it.
We will post problem on AIR forum and try new beta.
[center][/center]
[center][color=“#483D8B”]Fig 2 Not yet friends with extJS[/color][/center]
Message above says '… was reported' which means TAF will send an email or record error locally (if unable to find transport) and schedule message delivery to server.
Figure 3 shows application Menu and our findings there.
[center][/center]
[center][color=“#483D8B”]Fig 3 Native Menu[/color][/center]
To be continued …