Ninjutsu is a discipline within the Bujinkan martial arts and is a collection of survivalist techniques. Ninja clans used these techniques in Japan to ensure their survival in a time of violent political turmoil. These techniques included methods of gathering information, non-detection, avoidance, and misdirection. Ninjutsu can also involve training in disguise, escape, concealment, archery, medicine, explosives, and poisons. The literal translation of Bujinkan is “Hall of the Divine Warrior.”

According to Bujinkan members, the eighteen disciplines were first stated in the scrolls of Togakure Ryu, and according to the Bujinkan, they became definitive for all Ninjutsu schools, providing a complete training of the warrior in various fighting arts and complementary disciplines.

Today the modern code ninja also studies many different disciplines to ensure their survival. There are many different paths that you can choose to follow; below are the disciplines that I have chosen to learn and my level of mastery of each. See the legend below for a breakdown of the different colors:

Of course there are many more skills/languages/disciplines that one can chose to learn: C, Python, Java, Ruby, Databases, Photoshop/Graphic Design, Blogging/Copywriting, Silverlight and much MUCH more.

What are your chosen disciplines and where are you at in your level of mastery?

I could tag a few people, but instead I want to tag EVERYONE that reads this! Please do us all a favor and go back to your own blog and let us know your code ninja skills. You can steal my legend as it’s just an image. Also feel free to steal my source code with the colored skills and modify it for your skill set. Then return here and let us know. Also encourage your own blog viewers to take the code ninja challenge. Thanks and have fun!

I’m talking about screen resolutions people!

Today widescreen monitors are becoming more the norm than the exception. You’d be hard-pressed to find anything other than a widescreen monitor at your local Best Buy store.

In addition, laptops are also increasing their display sizes — that new MacBook has a display that is bigger than my first TV!

You might also recall that in 2003 the New York Times reported that laptops now outsell desktop computers: “Laptops accounted for more than 54 percent of the nearly $500 million in [US] retail computer sales.” This trend continues today. And we know that laptops have always used higher screen resolutions than desktop computers.

So I think we can safely say that widescreen displays and thus higher screen-resolutions will only continue to grow in popularity.

So are we, as developers, taking this into account when we build websites?

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I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I have typed in the wrong URL and have come to a 404 - Page Not Found Error. What’s interesting is to see the kind of error pages that are out there. The 404 page is often neglected, which is a big mistake because it’s a very important part of your site and shouldn’t be ignored! In this article we will take a look at a few 404 pages so we can see what TO do and what NOT to do.

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Our Swedish friend Roger Johansson asks the question, “Are we designers or developers?“

“On the about page of this site I used to call myself a “developer/designer/occasional writer”. It’s a bit confusing, and I still find it hard to know what to answer when someone asks me what I do for a living. Am I a Web designer? A Web developer? A Web programmer? All of them? Neither? It really is a difficult question to give a simple answer to.” — Roger Johansson

Like Roger, I have struggled with this question. Then about two years ago I decided to just pick an answer and go with it; that way when the hair dresser asks me the question I don’t sit there and go “um…ah…er…developer” and they end up thinking I’m lying and I’m really a spy or something.

So my answer is: I’m a developer!

I decided to steal my answer from the home building industry. Someone who builds homes for a living will often choose to call them self by the generic term developer. They may be an architect or mason or a carpenter, but those are the more specific skills used on the job — they call themselves home developers.

They use architectural skills to ensure that the house is designed well; that it’s structurally sound. Then using masonry and carpentry skills they build the home.

This is the similar to building a website. You design the site using pencil, paper, Photoshop and your learned knowledge of what it takes to make a website “structurally sound” and then you develop the site using HTML, CSS, PHP and all the other tools that go into developing websites.

So in my mind we’re both developers — they develop homes and I develop websites.

What’s your take — designer, developer, programmer or other?

When someone asks what you do for a living, what’s your answer?

No I don’t want you to take a nap. I’d rather you took a little tour with me and explore the possibilities that the CSS z-index property has to offer. In a previous article I briefly touched on how to use z-index and thought now was the time to expand more on the subject. So wake yourself up, get your thinking caps on and follow me as we come to grips with z-index.

Try and hang with me during the technical side of things because we have a fun exercise at the end!

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I was asked a while back to try to explain, in plain English, the algorithm for associating headers cells with data cells in the HTML5 working draft. I am not a member of the HTML5 working group, and I have not been involved with creating this algorithm at all, so anything you read here is merely my interpretation of the working group’s words.

There has been some debate about this part of the HTML5 specification, since the working group proposes to remove some HTML4 attributes that are meant to improve accessibility: the abbr, summary, headers and axes attributes. One particularly interesting discussion in which I think proponents for retaining these made a convincing case can be found on Juicy Studio.

Let’s look closer at the new HTML5 table specifications.

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So you decided to do your own SEO? Good for you! You’ve embarked on quite the adventure.

This is part 2 in the “Do It Yourself SEO” series. In part 1 we tackled the issue of whether you should do your own SEO or hire it out. In doing so we looked at four questions and now in this article we will revisit those questions and take a closer look at what it will take to make your website successful.

Before we begin it’s probably fair to give my background as it pertains to search engine optimization. For starters, I am not the smartest guy in the room. I hold no certifications or formal training in SEO/SEM; everything I know has been learned in the trenches over the last eight years. So what follows are some observations that I have learned during my call of duty.

You won’t find advice in this article like: “use heading tags in your copy” or to “make sure you have keyword-rich title tags on each page” or the “significance of landing pages” — while all are good advice, this would turn into a book if I went that route. Instead we are going to look at the skill sets involved in making a website successful. My hope is that by the end of the article you will have a greater appreciation for SEO/SEM.

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