Here are today’s Eight Links — links for web developers:

1. JsPDF – create PDF files completely using JavaScript
2. The Database Rant – begins with “It’s time for SQL to die.”
3. iPhone app sales – a developer explains the income his app has generated and how changing pricing didn’t change sales
4. Why writing software is like writing
5. 18 Seriously Helpful Cheat Sheets for Easier Coding
6. Google Analytics API Launched
7. Finding and Fixing Memory Leaks in Python
8. A Design for a Distributed Transaction Layer for Google App Engine

If you’ve ever tried to embed a YouTube video on your Web site, you may have noticed that the code they provide is not valid XHTML. I came across two blog posts today while doing some research that offer some alternative code that allows you to post YouTube videos on your site with valid code. Check them out if you are thinking of posting videos on your site or even your blog.

• How to write valid HTML/XHTML code to include Flash
• Embedding YouTube Videos as Valid XHTML 1.0

Having recently, finally joined the world of Twitter, I began to wonder what the proper “twittiquette” was. For instance, what do the “@” and “#” symbols indicate? Should I post in txtspk or lolspk or should I post in proper English? Should I post in third person or first person?

I have found a few articles discussing these questions. For instance, Grammar Girl posted some “Quick & Dirty Tips” about posting on “Tweeting.” I also found an interesting article on BrandFlakesForBreakfast offering some “Twittiquette” tips. Finally, I also found a small Twitter glossary with some information about specific terms and symbols. (more…)

Every once in a while, I find the desire to put together a nice slideshow of photographs and package them on a DVD. In fact, for the last five or six years, I have done just that as a Christmas present for my family and friends.

I have found no better program to accomplish this than Nero Vision, which, unfortunately is not available by itself. You have to purchase the whole Nero package in order to get Nero Vision. Nero Vision is an amazing program that makes it incredibly easy and painless to put together really nice photo slideshows with narration and/or music in the background. (more…)

While many people realize and recognize that there are wonderful possibilities offered by Google Analytics, few people (including myself) understand just how much you can accomplish with the service. This evening, I want to spend a few minutes showing you how you can schedule your reports and have them automatically e-mailed to you or any other recipient you choose.

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This post is intended to be a very quick overview about what “bounce rate” means when viewing and interpreting a Google Analytics report.

The official help documentation for Google Analytics defines the bounce rate as:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Use this metric to measure visit quality – a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren’t relevant to your visitors. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. You can minimize bounce rates by tailoring landing pages to each keyword and ad that you run. Landing pages should provide the information and services that were promised in the ad copy.

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It’s recently come to my attention that FTP (file transfer protocol) can cause some serious security concerns when developing and maintaining a Web site. Apparently, when files are uploaded or downloaded via FTP, all ASCII files are transferred as plain text. Therefore, anyone trying to spy on you through your FTP connection can easily see the content of any files you upload (including all of your passwords, etc. that you might have embedded in your files). Apparently, even the username and password you use to login to your FTP server are sent as plain text, making it rather easy for someone to pick those up while spying on you, as well.

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This post is going to be a somewhat short abstract about the concept of parents and children in object-oriented programming (OOP). The first thing of which people new to OOP need to be aware is that parents and children are are not handled as logical parents and children, they are handled more like biological parents and children. It is best to think of the parent/child relationship in OOP as a concept of “inheritance” rather than a concept of containers and contained elements.

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I referenced this in a post from a few months ago, but never bothered to expound on it. You cannot use cascading style sheets (CSS) to create headers, footers or menus that will be re-used on all of your pages. Instead, you have to use server-side includes (SSI).

There are a handful of ways to use SSI, and they are available in most all of the Web development languages used today. Although I think the use of repeating headers and footers is somewhat outdated, opting more for using templates that dynamically include your content, I’m going to try to teach you a few ways to include your headers, footers and/or menus on all of your pages.

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With the new Web site I’m developing drawing nearer to its public debut, and with the entire backend being written from scratch by me, I’ve become concerned with optimizing the output as much as possible.

While searching for some resources the other night (I was mainly looking for a Firefox add-on that would display a page’s load time, the way Netscape used to do – the only one I found has not been updated to work with FF3, yet), I came across two interesting resources.

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