10 Ways You Can Help The Internet

Al Gore has been going across the country forever it seems telling people about ways to stop global warming. About how just one person can make a difference. Today I bring you 10 Way You Can Help The Internet:

10. Don’t use or test on IE

No version should ever be used or tested against. However, we both know that this would probably only work on your personal site, however, at the very, very least do not ever test on anything LESS than IE7. If this is required, make them pay for at least 2 more hours of work.

9. Don’t use WWW in your domain

I’m not going to go into details because no-www.org has lots of information about why, but the WWW in domains is outdated and shouldn’t be used any longer. You should have it just not work as if you were to type in xxx.kneedeepincode.com or blah.twitter.com

8. Replace IE on at least one friend’s computer

Simply go to either firefox.com, apple.com/safari, opera.com, google.com/chrome or any other modern browser, download, install and remove IE!

7. Release/Contribute an open source project

You can help out with any of your favorite open source projects such as WordPress, Mozilla, or even Chromium. If you have written something for an in house app, personal project, or something like that release it to the public like I did for Project Deploy*

6. Beta test a web app, and send in feedback and bugs

More people than I can count private beta test software and never send in any feedback. This could mean one of two things. One: They love it with no complaints or suggestions. Two: They hate it and will never come back. Two very different outcomes and most likely it’s not going to be either or. You’ll probably have some dislikes, annoyances, or feature ideas. Send in those ideas so they can implement them. Recently I did this with Google Voice and within days they implemented my concept which is pretty cool to see.

5. Use JavaScript over Flash whenever possible

There are times that you need to use Flash where using JS would be extremely time consuming or actually impossible to do. However, sites like the Rockstar Energy site are the perfect example of when not to use Flash. Yes, it is ALL Flash. jQuery can speed up the dev process a lot. There is no need for Flash about 90% of the time and it slows down loading times, hurts your SEO, and is harder for the client to update later on (unless you want to build a custom CMS each time).

4. Write a tutorial that hasn’t been written yet

Next time you are looking for a tutorial and can’t find one, figure out how to do it yourself and document it well. Then release a tutorial on your blog, nettuts.com or some specialty site for a specific field. Also, make it FREE!

3. Use the <video> and <audio> tags with Flash

Now that most modern browsers are supporting the <video> and <audio> HTML5 tags, use them with Flash. This way you can start to take advantage of the new technologies whilst degrading nicely to older *cough* IE *cough* browsers. You can do this by simply with:

<video controls>
<source src="zombie.ogg" type="video/ogg"/>
<source src="zombie.mp4" type="video/mp4"/>
<embed src="http://blip.tv/play/AYGLzBmU8hw"
  type="application/x-shockwave-flash"
  width="500" height="396"
  allowscriptaccess="always"
  allowfullscreen="true"/>
</video>

The code was taken from here: http://hacks.mozilla.org/2009/06/html5-video-fallbacks-markup/

You could also add an object tag in there for IE or a download link as well.

2. Research, research, research!

This is one of the most annoying things to me by far. When I read something on the Internet, it sounds crazy, and I do a quick Google search and find out it is. The Google Maps Atlantis discovery is a perfect example. If you are going to say something is a fact, have proof to back it up. Point to multiple sources and don’t intermingle your opinions with facts. Whatever you do, don’t distort the facts to your liking either. This is just as bad if not worse.

1. Help a total stranger

I saved this for number 1 because it’s the most important in my opinion. I’ve helped more people than I can count with jQuery, PHP, HTML, CSS, etc and I started doing it because of the people who’ve helped me. There were times where I had been working on a bug for sometimes days and I would post on a forum, Yahoo! Answers, or Stack Overflow and someone would respond within minutes with a simple fix that I would have never found. I then in turn can pass that on to someone else with the same problem.

A great way to find people to help is to search Twitter for something you specialize in, for example, jQuery and look for questions to answer. If you don’t have a Twitter account, then you can always go to Yahoo! answers and check out the programming and design sections. It only takes a second and you can save someone hours if not days of aggravation.

Posted in (X)HTML, CSS, PHP, Programming, jQuery