10 years of Good Web Design

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4616700.stm

Apparantly, users make a decision about whether a website contains good quality content within 0.2 seconds of seeing the page. Is this true? REALLY? Perhaps that's the case, but the [implicit] extrapolation that users are dumb enough not to be able to change their mind about a page after 5 seconds is what gaulls me about this; although I suspect it's half-arsed reporting on behalf of the media again.

I have been to many sites which are so clearly amateur looking that I would recoil and head for the back button, but I have also been to sites where the presentation is bad, but I have some trust of the content on that site. If the study was specifically targetting e-commerce sites, then I can say I have been to shops where the presentation is pretty bad, but I still shop there because I know that they're good shops. Had I been one of these zombies who were unable to change their mind I'd be spending more and waiting longer on a pretty site.

Of course, presentation is important to the branding of a company and putting forward an aura of quality, but I still believe the content quality is what forms the user's opinion of the site.

A month ago the BBC also ran this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4061093.stm

I basically agree with everything Dr.Nielsen says, although I personally think his views of Amazon's site are wrong. In my opinion, its popularity goes to show exactly why the presentation of a site doesn't really matter that much; because Amazon's site looks horrible. I often spend 5 or 10 seconds searching for some link on Amazon's site that really should be better placed; the colours are garish, but it's the layout that is the downfall for me. What a mess. Just go and look at a product description page for a minute. It's just so ragged and messy, almost nothing is delineated from each other and above all, it's not very accessible. My basic HTML validator shows 28 errors, and 319 warnings on some random product page. However, despite all that, I still use them for lots of things, because they offer good value, a good range and good service; and to me it proves my point that although design is important it's not everything. Remember, content is king. Of course, if you have both you're onto a winner.

MySQL Mail Merge with Microsoft Word

Connected to the last entry, using MySQL from Microsoft Word can be fairly easily achieved without all the faffing of exporting data from MySQL and importing it into Access. It's something that one of my clients required having used a web-page to gather information into a MySQL database, and then requiring the output of a number of letters based on this data. It requires the installation of the MySQL ODBC driver which Word is then able to access through the mail merge wizard.

So, here's what to do:

1. Get the latest MySQL ODBC driver from the MySQL site: http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/odbc - the MSI installation is probably the easiest.


2. Install the ODBC Driver.


3. Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools -> Data Sources (ODBC)


4. Make sure the "User DSN" tab is selected and click the "Add..." button


5. Select from the list "MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver" and click Finish.


6. A box will appear. In the Login Tab, give the Data source a name and description (these are up to you).


7. Enter the information for your MySQL server the boxes.


8. Click OK, and you're done setting up the database connection.

To use this in Word's mail merge, you need to do the following:

1. Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge Wizard


2. Select Document Type, click Next


3. Select Starting Document, click Next


4. Select "User an existing list" and click "Browse..."


5. Select "+Connect to New Data Source.odc"


6. Select "ODBC DSN"


7. Select the data source by the name you gave it above


8. It will show you a list of the tables in that database. Select the table you want to get data from and give this a description if you feel like it, although you can just leave it if you want.


9. Click Finish.


10. A box will pop up.


11. This bit is important, otherwise it won't work:
    Number 3 says: "Enter the initial catalog to use"
    Click the drop down box, and then click off the drop down box.
    The box should be empty!


12. The "Test Connection" button should now work.


13. Click ok, and you're taken back to the mail merge wizard showing a list of the people in the database.

You can now use this as you would any mail merge.

Tags:

• mysql
  
• mail merge
  
• microsoft word
  

MySQL Problem

I was working to get port an old website from one machine to another, both using PHP and MySQL, when PHP kept throwing up this problem:

mysql_connect(): Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client

I did a bit of scouring the web and realised that the password hashing algorithm in the newer MySQL has changed. So when I’d set the password for the website to use the database, it had set it using the new password hashing algorithm, which PHP doesn’t use. The way to get around this is to set the password like so:

SET PASSWORD for [user]@[machine] = OLD_PASSWORD(’[password]’);