Easy-to-make iPhone

A company once told me someone had offered to build permanent disability calculators for their website in three months for $7,500.  One said six months and $20,000.  Recently, another suggested it would take them a year and $40,000.  My response is usually some variation on “You’ve got to take that deal.  You’re wasting your time talking to me.”

It’s no big secret that building a great product takes a lot of work.  The important thing to remember is that just because something is easy-to-use, that doesn’t mean its easy-to-make. [1]

Difficult-to-make iPhone

Let’s take the iPhone for example.  Everyone will concede its an easy phone to use.  However, it was released more than two years ago on 6/29/2007. [2]  In that time the other players – BlackBerry, LG, Nokia, and Palm have all been trying to catch up.  If this easy-to-use phone were easy-to-build everyone would have their own version.

Look, there’s no special magic to building a website like this.  Really, anyone can do it.  All you have to do is learn the calculations inside-and-out, deconstruct the math involved in the various calculations, learn some client and server side programming languages, learn a content management system, make it all work together, keep current on changes in the law, start all over again each time the law changes, and earn the respect of the workers’ compensation community.  Once done, you’ll have your very own workers’ compensation calculator website!

To return to the lesson of the iPhone, building a touch screen phone that can play music and surf the web is totally doable.  Doing it right is another matter entirely.

1. Visit the link for a PDF of a cut-and-fold iPhone.  Thanks Gizmodo!
2. Wikipedia link.

Up, dates!

Unfortunately, one of the coolest features of my calculators is that some of them will give you the answer you’re looking for before you’ve even finished typing the search term.  This works with the:

• EAMS body part code finder
• EAMS document title finder
• EAMS document type finder
• EAMS registered offices search function
• DWC forms finder
• Dollar Value Calculator (“Money Chart”)
• Life Expectancy Calculator

While these are all very cool while you’re sitting at your computer, I found out (much to my dismay) that this system didn’t work at all when using these online calculators from my cell phone! [1] Well, I’ve updated the calculators to make them more compatible with more phones.[2]

Save yourself from your own workers’ compensation claim and just leave that heavy rating manual at home.

1. It has to do with cross-browser compatibility and inconsistent support for javascript events.  I doubt anyone is interested in this.
2. Photo courtesy of Hunda

This phone will not run PDRater calculators, but yours might!

I recently discovered that installing the Opera Mini web browser on my “smartphone” has allowed me to run this website’s workers’ compensation calculators from my phone.[1]

Since launching this website I’ve given a lot of thought to support for cell phones.  There just are not many phones that can run these calculators.[2] The glaring and notable exception is the iPhone.

Amusingly, one of this website’s users has asked for an “iPhone app” version of this site.  Seriously, you’ve got one of the few phones that can use this site and that’s not good enough for you?  (Thanks Chris!)

This is huge.  It means:

• I can blog from the Board[3]
• More importantly, no more bulky money charts or rating manuals at the Board!

1. Photo courtesy of storm gal
2. It would be more correct to say there are not many phones that support javascript and AJAX well enough to interact with this website in a meaningful fashion.
3. Probably a lot more interesting for me than it is for you…

No Frames, Please

A little while ago I posted about How NOT to Build a Successful Website using Adobe Flash.  Long story short, Adobe Flash websites are extremely unfriendly to both website visitors and businesses who own the websites. [1]

The second worst way to create a website is to build it totally out of frames.  There are several workers’ compensation defense firms who have websites built out of frames – and they’re terrible.

In the early days of the internet frames were an easy way to enable navigation throughout a website.  Since then easy-to-use intelligent server-side languages[2] and client-side languages[3] have made building website navigation tools a breeze.  More importantly, these other technologies and techniques do everything frames do – only better.

Here are some of the problems with websites created using frames:

• Un-bookmark-able. Just as with Adobe Flash, users can’t bookmark specific pages within a website built using frames.  This means your website visitors can’t come back to visit that specific page and, more importantly, can’t send a meaningful link to their friends.
• Un-navigable.  Depending on how someone links to your frame based website, its very possible that they will link directly to an internal frame.  This means a website visitor getting to your website from a search engine might never see your website’s name or logo!
• Printing. Frame based websites don’t always interact properly with web browsers.  When you go to print, you might end up printing the wrong frame.  Make it easy for your clients to make a hard copy of the information they see on your website and don’t use frames.
• Search Engine Optimization.  Search engines are designed to be smart.  Even so, search engines still have trouble untangling a website made out of frames.  If people cannot reach your website by searching for exactly what you’re about, your website is a failure.

I know why there some web developers sell frame-based websites.  From a development standpoint, they’re very very easy to write.  Frames are little more than HTML, so they’re if you can create a Word document, you can create an frames-based website.  I suppose it would be relatively easy to also recyle parts of that website in a new website.  These websites are also deceptively good-looking.  When the web developer is showing you a frame based website, you’re going to see exactly what you expect.  The “danger” of a frame-based website, as indicated above, is that its so easy for it to be shown to your potential clients in the wrong way or out of context.

I think I also know why businesses invest in frame-based websites.   They require so little skill to create that a business can just have one of their file clerks or some high school kid build the website cheaply.  The website would be, for all intents and purposes, free.

A website is essentially the 21st century equivalent of a resume.  You’re using it to tell your clients about you before you ever get a chance to meet them.  These days everyone considers Google to be a verb.  If your potential clients are already looking for you through the internet, shouldn’t you try to put your best foot forward?  A cheap temporary website is fine … as long as its temporary.  As soon as you can afford to do so hire someone to put togther something better.

Website Development Tips:

• Never build a site out of frames.
• Other web technologies and techniques do everything frames do, only better.
• Think of your website as your business’s resume, since that’s what potential clients may see first.
• Think of your website like a business suit.  If it doesn’t look good on a first impression, a potential client may never even speak to you.

1. Original photo courtesy of eriwst
2. Such as PHP and MySQL.
3. Such as Javascript.

No Flash, please

There are many different ways to put together a website.  Flat HTML which does not interact with the users at all.  Javascript enabled pages which allow the user to interact with the webpage a little.  AJAX enabled pages which allow the user to interact with the web server and even other users.

The worst way imaginable for a website to be built is one entirely powered by Adobe Flash animation.  I know of at least one workers’ compensation defense firm that has an all Flash website – and I feel sorry for them.  Their clients probably never use their website.  They’re squandering one of their best marketing tools.

Here are just a few of the problems with Flash websites:

• Bandwidth. A picture of the word “website” is much much larger than the text “website.”  In a similar way, a Flash website is going to be much much larger than the same information presented in pure HTML.  The bigger your website, the longer it will take for it to load.
• Maintenance. The smallest change to the website needs to be handled by the original web developer.  If you “invest” in an all-Flash website, you’re basically hiring that web developer for life.  With traditional websites, you can hire any code monkey to adjust your website.
• Unnavigable. Flash websites do not work with the browser’s “Back” button.  If your users can’t navigate your website in a normal fashion, they will leave and never come back.
• Search Engine Optimization. Or, SEO, as it is known in the business.  If your website is basically a bunch of moving pictures, it can’t be indexed by a search engine, so it doesn’t know what your website is about, so it doesn’t know when to show it to people who are searching for exactly the kinds of things you are trying to sell.
• Repeat Business. If your website is meant to be something people look at once and never return to, I suppose its fine. The problem with a Flash website is that it will not allow users to bookmark or link to particular pages.  This means if your clients really love a particular page on your site they can’t e-mail the link to their co-workers!

I know why web developers sell Flash websites.  These websites show off how great you are at creating swooshing logos and nifty pages transitions.  And, if your client ever needs a little change, they have to come back to you or pay someone else to build them a website from scratch.[1]

I also know why businesses invest in Flash websites.  They want something stylish and unique.  In reality all truly successful website forgo snazzy animations for functional user friendly pages.  If Amazon, eBay, and Google don’t build their websites out of Flash, why should you?

This isn’t to say that Flash animation doesn’t have its place.  It think its great for product demos, presentations, and banner ads.  Its an excellent way to present information in a graphical format.  That said, you should never ever purchase a Flash website.

Website Development Tips:

• Never build a site out of Flash.
• Never use Flash to show words.
• If its good enough for Google, its good enough for you.
• Focus on what your customers want to see, not what you want to show them.
• Make it easy for your customers to tell people about you.

1. Heaven forbid you have a new hire or, you know, the law changes.

Calculators

Last week a website user notified me of a problem he was experiencing with this website’s rating calculators.  He’s been a regular user for nearly a year now.  When he tried to perform a calculation the calculators would just show waiting indicators without showing the answer.  If he closed the browser window and reopened it, it would sometimes fix the problem.  To complicate matters, his coworker was having a similar problem.

Worst of all, this problem had been plaguing them for two weeks.  If you have a problem with this website, let me know as soon as possible so that I can track down the last change to the site to see if its causing a problem.

My troubleshooting went like this:

1. Get a detailed description of the symptoms.
2. Try to replicate the problem.
3. Reiterate the problem to make sure I’ve got it right.
4. While working to diagnose and fix the problem, offer a temporary fix (putting up a temporary site for their use).
5. Look into recent changes in the website (going back two weeks).
6. Since I couldn’t replicate the problem, ask additional questions.
   • Does the problem occur at a particular time of the day?[1]
   • What web browser and version do they use?[2]
   • What operating system?  When was the last update?[3]
     • Explain how to figure out their version of Windows and how to install update.
   • Do they have any third-party “toolbars” installed?  Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc toolbars.[4]
     • Ask them to temporarily disable or uninstall the toolbar.  Give them links to where they can re-download the toolbar software.
   • Do they single-click or double-click on buttons?[5]
   • Are other co-workers having the same problem?[6]
   • Do they have this same problem on different computers?[7]
   • Is the browser showing javascript errors?[8]
   • Ask them to try out a new browser. I recommended the PortableApps.com version of FireFox.
     • If the problem disappears, its obviously in their computer or network.  If the problem persists, it could still possibly be their network or the website.
7. Above all else: KEEP THE CLIENT INFORMED.[9]

As of right now, one of this client’s co-workers has contacted me to say that he’s no longer having trouble with the website.

So, problem solved?  If not, let me know, alrighty?

1. This would indicate a data bottleneck at the server.  Time to upgrade!
2. And, tell them how to find this information.
3. Have I mentioned how much I loathe Microsoft Vista?  Seriously, I think people should delete Microsoft Vista because its crap.
4. These browser helper objects are notorious for interfering with normal browser operations.  Worse, you can’t rule them out based upon when they were installed because they’re constantly downloading and installing updates to themselves.
5. Double clicks send two requests to the server – and might be confusing the browser.
6. Two computers on a single network could be a coincidence, a sign of a problem with the website, or a sign of a problem with the client’s network.
7. If not, its a problem with that computer.  If so, could still be a problem with either the website or their computers/network.
8. Tell them how to tell if there’s an error and how to give you the error code information.
9. They may not care for the constant updates, but they will know you’re on the case.

The Internets

I’m not exactly a neutral party when it comes to “web apps” (short for “web application”) versus their downloadable-installable cousins.  This website, its articles, and blog posts are basically just packaging for my own suite of free web apps, workers’ compensation calculators.

For the purposes of this post, I’m restricting the definition of “web app” to those programming applications which run from inside an internet web browser and require an internet connection to operate.  I’m excluding those hybrid web apps that require plugins to be installed (think flash or adobe multimedia banner ads).  While web apps have inherent…

Weaknesses

1. Web browser. Some require a particular type or version of a web browser.
2. Internet Connection. They won’t work without one.  If you lose your internet connection, you’ve just become isolated from your information and the program.
3. Form. Sometimes the program will look different depending upon the type or version of web browser.
4. Function. Sometimes the program will act slightly differently depending upon the type or version of web browser.

… there are also undeniable…

Consumer Benefits

1. Portability. Web apps allow you to access your information from the internet.
2. Independence. Web apps allow you to access your information from any computer.
3. User Friendly. Nothing to download, install, or maintain.
4. Seamless. These days web apps use AJAX so that your computer doesn’t need to reload the page to show you new information.  The result are web based programs that look and act as if the program was installed on your computer.
5. Braindead Backups. Since all information is stored on the web app server, a browser crash doesn’t have to mean the end of the world.  No need to do anything.
6. Updates. You immediately benefit from web app server program updates without needing to do anything.
7. Compatibility. Most web apps can’t interfere with other programs on your computer.
8. IT Security. With nothing to install, your IT professionals don’t need to worry about what you’ve got installed on your computer.

I’ll discuss them later on, but for the ravenously curious my plugins include:

• A plugin that creates rounded corners throughout the website
• A plugin that creates the “accordion” menu effect on the Links and Calculator pages
• A plugin that adds AJAX effects throughout the website
• A plugin that creates a “gray-out” screen over certain pages when you’re not logged in or a registered user
• A plugin that redirects a user to the calculator page when they log in
• A plugin that changes the look and operation of the registration page to be more user friendly
• A plugin that makes lots of little tweaks to the site to make it look and act better (I’m constantly adding to this one)
• A plugin that allows users to sign up for automatically recurring subscriptions using a credit card or their PayPal account (I’m still working to make this more user friendly)

As I mentioned in the prior post in this series, my first few versions of this website and its workers’ compensation calculators did not use MySQL.  The initial versions of this site only saved information – which meant I only had to use PHP to open a file on the server, add an extra line of information, and then close the file.  This had several problems:

1. Once my website became more popular, it was not uncommon to have more than one user online.  That meant the server tried to open the file – but couldn’t since it was already open.  This caused the program to freak out.
2. In order to view just a little bit of information, I had to download the entire file.  This got crazy pretty quickly.
3. Each time the file got larger, it would take slightly longer to open, append with more information, and close.

MySQL is an incredible tool for storing, organizing, and retrieving a large amount of data.   Like PHP, it is also open-source.  This means it is:

• Well supported.  There are lots of online resources and books to help you learn.
• Secure.  Lots of people spend a lot of time thinking of ways to prevent security vulnerabilities.
• Customizable.  You can configure or even rewrite it, if you wish.
• Interoperability.  You can save it to just about any format – including MS Excel spreadsheets.
• Free.  Unlike Oracle or any of the MS alternatives, it is totally free.

So, why did I avoid MySQL?  I didn’t want to have to learn a whole new programming language.  I had to learn how to set up a database, tables within the database, how to search for information in a table, how to put information into a table, and how to change information which was already in a table.  There was a lot of trial and error.  I ended up doing some pretty cool things in the process of learning this language.  Some examples:

• Teaching others some of the basics of MySQL
• Writing a program for cataloging books
• Writing several programs which performed various calculations to track invoices, billings, etc
• Setting up several blogs/websites

The end result of learning this language is a more interactive website.  One of the last incarnations of this site was a version that would show different color schemes, advertisers, and messages depending upon the user.  All of this was made possible by large amounts of data stored in MySQL.

Thus ends my technical overview of my workers’ compensation permanent disability calculators!  If you have any questions, please feel free to email me or leave a comment below!

As I’ve mentioned in those prior posts, both javascript and PHP have inherent downsides. My very first attempt at online benefits calculators using javascript and ASP actually suffered from all of the downsides of javascript and PHP. Those first calculators used tons of user’s computers’ resources, bandwidth, and server power. However, learning more about AJAX enabled me to build a set of calculators which benefited from the strengths of javascript and PHP while minimizing, if not eliminating, their weaknesses.

The acronym “AJAX” refers to “asynchronous javascript and XML” – a collection of other technologies which allow a webpage to communicate with a web server without requiring an entire page download.

Example 1: A calculator without AJAX calculating “6 x 7″ would send information to be calculated to the web server. The web server would then respond by giving you an entirely new page with the answer, “42″. However, in order to download that answer you would need to download a whole new page – and all the images, text, and code associated with it. Even a normal web page could be between 30,000 and 300,000 bytes in size.[1]

Example 2: A calculator with AJAX calculating “6 x 7″ would send information to be calculated to the web server. The web server would then respond by sending back just the answer, “42″. This would be 2 bytes.

If my calculators needed to download of 300 kilobytes for every single operation, a simple calculation could take about 30 seconds on dialup and a full 1 second on broadband. Although 1 second doesn’t seem like a long time – it is in the internet age. Most of the calculations on this site take approximately .500 seconds using a broadband connection. I would guess that about 90% of that time is due to network latency/network lag – which wouldn’t be much different for a dialup connection.

For the first few months after the launch of this website, it did not use a MySQL database. I actually went to some pretty ridiculous extremes to not have to learn a new programming language. I eventually gave in, learned how to use MySQL and am a better programmer for it.

Next up, MySQL!

1. A download of “www.google.com” was approximately 30,000 bytes and a download of “www.yahoo.com” was approximately 300,000 bytes.

I had tried Microsoft’s ASP (active server pages) in experimenting with a prior version of my permanent impairment calculators, and while functional, the coding was a complete mess since I didn’t fully understand what I was doing. To make matters worse, the only manuals on ASP I could find gave examples using VBScript – which is MS’s version of javascript.[1]

Just over a year ago a friend of mine encouraged me to try PHP. (Thanks Johnny!) Its syntax, the way in which you write code, is very similar to javascript and was fairly easy to learn.

Unlike javascript, PHP is run only on the web server. There are a lot of benefits to moving all of the calculations from being performed by a user’s computer to my web server:

• Uniformity. All calculations will always be performed by the web server in the same exact way – irrespective of the user’s computer.
• Speed. Since all calculations are performed on the web server, the user’s computer doesn’t need to do any number crunching.
• Protection. All of the formulas, tables, and magical incantations used to generate the calculations are kept only on the web server.

But, PHP isn’t without its downsides:

• PHP is being used to perform a calculation, even when javascript would be faster. Javascript takes longer to crunch the answer, but you have to “wait” for PHP to send a request to the server and wait for the answer.[2]
• A pure PHP calculator would require the user to send the web server the entire page and wait for a whole new page to load. Every calculation would take a full second or more using a pure PHP calculator.[3]
• When PHP is used to perform handle all calculations, there is more of a strain on the web server itself.

Using AJAX (more on this later) to create workers’ compensation benefits calculators has allowed me to take advantage of all of the strengths of javascript and PHP and minimize the negatives of these technologies.

Next up, AJAX!

1. Can’t we all just get along?
2. I say “faster,” but we’re talking about the difference between 10 milliseconds for javascript to calculate the answer and waiting 400 milliseconds for the server to return the answer.
3. A second might not seem like a long time – but it is when you’re using a computer. I’d bet that if these calculators took 1 second for everything (such as finding an occupational code or work restriction) no one would use them.

I’m sure its a great phone. But, let’s be real, that’s not good enough any more.

Pros:

• Touch screen
• Virtual QWERTY keyboard
• A screen that rotates when you tilt the camera
• MP3 player
• Digital camera, video camera
• Removable memory chip
• 500 contact with up to 5 phone numbers each
• A web browser that will support AJAX and XMLHttpRequest
• Decent support of cascading stylesheets

Cons:

• Imperfect support of javascript
• No support of cookies/sessions

What does this mean for you? You can go to my site, but you can’t log in. If you can’t log in, you can’t use the calculators. :/

As a side note, just about every Verizon rep I’ve talked to pushes this phone’s 500 person contact list. My question, “How much memory does the phone have?” Their response: “It has 5 phone numbers per contact? Wow. That’s a lot. I didn’t know that.” Riiight – you didn’t know? Why have I heard that exact line from three separate reps? I don’t have 500 contacts. I don’t even know 500 people.

Verdict: It may be a good phone, but you won’t be able to use my calculators from it.