I wrote a post in the past about the basics of XML structure and how to build a DTD to define your document type. DTDs describe well how elements are arranged in a document but say very little about the content in the document. Also any element in a document has to have a corresponding declaration in the DTD. These problems and limitations could be solved using schemas. Schemas support rules (and ability to define content) which should be followed in order for a document to be valid. For example lets say that you need to describe a city element. The schema code should look like this:

<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
   <xs:element name=”city” type=”xs:string”/>
</xs:schema>

The xs:element element acts like the !ELEMENT declaration in DTDs. Its name declares a name and its type attribute defines the data type. The xs:string describes the data type of the element “city”. Schemas provide many more features. For example lets say that you want to describe a date element. Date should have some restrictions, for example month should be filled with certain numbers (from 1 to 12) and so on. Enhancing these restrictions in a schema is very easy:

<xs:simpleType name="month"
  <xs:restriction base=”xs:integer”>
     <xs:minInclusive value=”1″/>
     <xs:maxInclusive value=”12″/>
  </xs:restriction>
</xs:simpleType>

To sum up, schemas are more powerfull than DTDs and allow more flexible data quality control. DTDs though are commonly used and more easy to structure.

There too many browsers there available for download (for free). Many of them are commonly used, like Firefox and Internet Explorer, and some others are dedicated to smaller user groups, like Shiira and Flock. Vote below for the browser you use! Poll will end on 29 November 2007.

Poll Results:
Firefox 71% (78 votes)
Safari 17% (22 votes)
Internet Explorer 10% (13 votes)
Opera 5% (6 votes)
Flock 3% (4 votes)
Camino 2% (2 votes)
Shiira 2% (2 votes)
Konqueror 1% (1 vote)

On this guide you will learn how to create a Web Photo gallery (Flash or pure HTML) in 5 minutes using Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop. No Flash knowledge is needed!

1. Create a folder on your computer and name it as you like (here you will store your final files that need to be uploaded to your web site).
2. Open Adobe Bridge and navigate to the folder that contains the pics you are going to use. Using control (for PCs) or command (for Macs) select the images you want.

   

3. Click on tools -> Create Metadata Template. Fill in the fields you want and click save.
4. After the Metadata info is saved, click on tools -> Photoshop -> Web Photo Gallery.
5. When Photoshop loads, an option window opens. Choose in the first field any style you like (in the demo I used Flash-Gallery 2), but there are many. Previews are shown on the right.
6. On the “use” field in source images select “Selected Images From Bridge”. Select “include all subfolders” if your photos are placed in many folders.
7. Fill the”destination” field with the folder you created in step 1.
8. In options tab, modify banner, colors and image sizes as you like.

   

9. In the security option tab you can write something that will appear over your pics, to inform visitors that they are copyrighted and to ensure that they will not be usable in case of copy.
10. After filling the option tabs click OK to create your Photo Gallery. If you want a soundtrack to play on the background, choose a .mp3 file, rename it as “useraudio”.mp3 and place it in the folder you created in step 1.
11. Upload the folder (yes the one you created in step 1 ) to your server, navigate there and enjoy!
12. If you want to check your gallery locally, open the index.html file.

Note that if you use audio soundtrack, it is preferable that the audio file will be small to ensure fast loading times. Click here to see the demo galley in action.

There are thousands of companies around the world that sell hosting services. Most of them charge per month, but price should not be your only criteria when choosing a host for your pages. You should keep in mind the followings and then find the service that provides the quality you look for at the most affordable cost.

1. Technical support is one the most important issues when choosing a web host. Do they offer support by phone, email? And if so, how long will it take to get back to you?
2. How much disk space is offered to you? Remember that pages uses a very little amount of space, but multimedia files (pictures, videos, sound clips) use much larger quantities.
3. Do they offer domain registration and how much will it cost.
4. Do their servers support CGI-scripts, PHP, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Front Page extensions, SSH connection and Telnet?
5. How fast is their connection to the Internet and do they have multiple connections in case of a problem or damage?
6. If you would like to run Java/Java EE applications on your site or build a site with JSP, your host must support Java apps and run a Jakarta/Tomcat, Jboss, Glassfish or other Java server.
7. Do they offer a stastistics service to let you have a look on your site traffic and hit?
8. How much bandwitch do they offer per month? For example 2GB bandwitch for a site full of videos and images is too low.
9. Do they offer one-click installation for commonly used free web apps (like Drupal and WordPress)?
10. What site management application is used (for example Plesk or Cpanel)?

As you probably know, we live in the web 2.0 time. Social websites are everywhere and users are now part of the Internet world and not just readers that read information. Now they express themselves (through blogs), they are part of social sites like digg, slashdot and so on. Broadband connections gave the ability for video calls, VOIP, IPTV and fast video streaming. What about the next version of web called Web 3.0?

Up to now we do not know much for Web 3.0, but it will for sure feature better and smarter search engines. Now search engines search using the keywords we provide. In web 3.0 they will have smart feature and they will be able to “understand” what the user looks for (according to his habits and his previous searches). In addition to this, users will be able to search using files and not only keywords. For example: today, if a user looks for Paris Hilton’s photos, he opens the search engine, types “Paris Hilton” and gets in the results every image that contains the words Paris Hilton in its file name or in the page where the image is stored. In web 3.0 users will be able to upload files and search using them (some sites like like.com and Pandora are already following that trend). Automatic tagging will be another feature in the future. Social sites will be able to understand information like human do (or almost like) and add tags automatically. All these has to do with semantic web abilities but web does not stop there: technologies like 3d web will change the way we surf in the Internet. Users will be able to virtually travel to places they haven’t visited before (something like Google Earth but not from above and with the ability to move inside the cities like in real-time). Mobile phones will become also smarter, they will be probably able to inform your friends if something happens and you cannot meet them, or send an email to your co-worker to remind him of your meeting.

Web 3.0 is not so far as we think. Large companies like Yahoo and HP have spent lot of money on researches and accepted the Semantic Web stanrdards, while others like Google and Microsoft work on the 3D web area. Nobody can tell for sure how the Web will look like in a few years but the evolution has already become with web 2.0. Maybe web will become a second world much more than second life is today.

Favicon is the shortcut icon that is shown next to the url of a website or next to site’s name in browser tabs. You can see our favicon in the screenshot above. To create a great favicon you should consider these:

1. Select the image you want to use for your favicon and trim part of it so you have a square part of the image (for example if your image is 450x400px trim 50px so it is 400x400px).
2. Resize the square image you want to use as favicon to 16x16px.
3. Save the shortcut as .gif file as it is the most browser friendly format for favicons.
4. Name your shortcut favicon.gif and upload it to your root folder as some browser recognise the file named favicon as shortcut icon by default.
5. For best results and for having a favicon compatible with all browsers that support shortcut icons place the following code anywhere between your <head> and </head> tags:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="URL" />
Replace URL with the path where you stored your favicon.