Beast-Blog.com
Mike Cherim's Professional and Personal Web Log

If you need support for my version 2.0, 2.0WP, or GBCF-v3 contact form scripts, this is the place to get it. The new place. I’ve used the same blog posts for contact form support comments and questions for such a long time, their pages have gotten long. Really long! I decided to start a new one and just close those. That said, those old posts have not stopped living their useful lives. Many of your questions may already be answered there, read them first.

Support Update: Header not recognized with the WordPress plugin? Did you unzip the zip file first?

Continue reading “New Contact Form Support Post” »

Many web developers who blog at some point share a little code or scripting. We do this to give away a hard-earned/hard-learned tip or trick, or in some cases to offer a whole script or code solution. We try to make the Internet a better place. This is a great thing about the web, all this openness and sharing over the years. I’ve observed over those years, though, that some post code more effectively than others. I’ve seen code posted on the web that was hard to read, difficult to access, and sometimes nearly impossible to use. Based on these observations, and based on my own personal preferences in some instances, I have come up with the following tips for posting code online.

Continue reading “Tips for Posting Code Online” »

I’ve been at a little while now. I’ve got some calluses. I’ve been a member of iStockphoto since February of 2008, but I didn’t start contributing until April. You do the math. During these months I’ve been hard at work basically re-learning the craft. Photography has been a hobby since I was a kid — I grew up with an SLR camera given to me by my dad — but this whole stock photo thing and using a digital SLR (DSLR) have been a new and exciting adventure. This is my progress report.

Continue reading “On Becoming a Photographer” »

Gas prices are high. Driving my Jeep creates pollution. That contributes to global warming. Driving is also known to be dangerous. I avoided all these negatives this year by doing all of my holiday shopping online. It’s fast, convenient, saves time, and hopefully with the precautions I take and knowledge I posses, safe. I didn’t have to spend hours driving all over creation finding the items I wanted.

Continue reading “Unmet Friends in Unseen Places” »

As I did in 2006 and in 2007, I have created a “best of” post highlighting certain articles that I published in 2008. As I mentioned last year, some of the articles were chosen because I really liked them, others because you really liked them. If you want more of the latter let me know what you’d like to see. Sometimes I get stuck for ideas — though I usually think of something — but requests help.

Continue reading “The Best of the Beast in 2008” »

Local brick-n-mortar businesses, those who rely on walk-in, on-location commerce, will often have a web site to promote their business. It’s a good idea. The cost of having a web site is next to nothing, maintenance is easy if the site was built with updating in mind, and it can be a great service to existing and potential customers, depending on how it’s used. One such service would be helping the potential client find the business’s physical location. This can be easily facilitated by adding a location map to the site. How one should do this is the subject of this article.

Continue reading “Adding a Map to Your Web Site” »

A while back I mentioned I made a AAA web site that conformed to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.0. The site was for California disability rights attorney, Lainey Feingold, who works primarily with the blind and visually impaired community on technology and information access issues. She is nationally recognized for negotiating accessibility agreements and for pioneering the collaborative advocacy and dispute resolution method known as Structured Negotiations. That’s from her site — a site which is one of just two AAA implementations (the other being Vision Australia).

Continue reading “My WCAG 2.0 AAA Implementation” »

The past 100 years have brought about enormous change. Not the shallow electoral kind of change. I’m referring to much more potent changes, like those in communications, medicine, aerospace, manufacturing, and transportation. And more. A lot has changed in that time. And with all that change has come a not always flattering public opinion about it. Take Rock ‘n’ Roll, for instance, my parents didn’t go for it, they pretty much hated it. Not me, though.

Continue reading “Enduring Rock” »

That question is hot on the mailing list run by the Guild of Accessible Web Designers (GAWDS) right now. Specifically Accessites has been called on to explain why it is has one submission criterion demanding support for an 800×600 monitor resolution — meaning that it must be viewable without side-scrolling. Apparently more than a handful of developers at GAWDS feel that 800×600 support is a bit out-dated and no longer needed as it once was. I’ll answer this, not for Accessites, but rather for myself. I’ll explain why I feel it’s important to support that smaller resolution — or maybe I should say window size, since not everyone computes or browses with their windows maximized.

Continue reading “Should Web Developers Support 800×600?” »