Posted by leepeng on April 28, 2010
There is always a voice to phase out IE totally due to its poor compliant to W3C standard. I as a developer also hope this can happen one day or IE will one day FULLY compliant with standard.
However, when I think deeper, this might not happen overnight due to historical reason.
In the late 90s, when IE4 released, it almost wipe through the entire Internet world with the “revolutionary browser” that build in to MS Windows.
At that time, both Apple and Netscape are at the borderline of bankruptcy.
Almost all PCs in the world are with IE4.
In that time, W3C had just setup and they struggled to fight with the giant which had its own “standard”
Microsoft had its development tools, back office server families which do not subject web standard (as there were no standard, MS became its own standard)
In addition, developers at that time developed websites and sometime Java Applets / ActiveX that runs on IE as that was the user base. (During that time, we write code on IE and test on Netscape)
What I must say is, Microsoft carried too much baggage while trying to move forward in the browser environment.
Too much backward compatibility issues to cater for its users based that they established during the “golden era”
They cannot afford to do a total switch to Gecko or WebKit engine. I believe this is not just purely corporate image, but they have to put a lot of consideration of their user base.
[Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines]
The world has changed now which the competitors bloomed with web standard straight at the beginning.
And we developers love web standard.
We love Firefox, Chrome, Safari. (I believe non of Foreceptian has IE as default browser)
As technologist, we chase for new standards and features like HTML5 and CSS3. They can make the world better.
However, lets see from this perspective…
Forecepts is a company that provide professional web service.
We have clients who are technology fanatics and who very familiar with web 2.0 technology. This group of people will have 0% resistant from compliant to modern browser.
We also have clients who from the corporate, who carried the same heavy baggage like MS. (or who has poor MIS department)
I believe we are at transition period. MS is receiving heavy market pressure in the browser industry and they have no choice but to change before it been phase out totally.
As web servicing company, I believe our current position is to continue to educate our clients and provide the correct consultation (for example advise them to install Firefox if they can’t upgrade their IE due need to access legacy system); and with some endurance.
I have a dream, that one day I will see our programmers been judged by quality of business logic and great usability; not by if the code is compatible across browsers. As all browsers are compliant to 1 standard 
In the late 90s, when IE4 released, it almost wipe through the entire Internet world with the “revolutionary browser” that build in to MS Windows.
At that time, both Apple and Netscape are at the borderline of bankruptcy.
Almost all PCs in the world are with IE4.
In that time, W3C had just setup and they struggled to fight with the giant which had its own “standard”
Microsoft had its development tools, back office server families which do not subject web standard (as there were no standard, MS became its own standard)
In addition, developers at that time developed websites and sometime Java Applets * ActiveX that runs on IE as that was the user base. (During that time, we write code on IE and test on Netscape)
What I must say is, Microsoft carried too much baggage while trying to move forward in the browser environment.
Too much backward compatibility issues to cater for its users based that they established during the “golden era”
They cannot afford to do a total switch to Gecko or WebKit engine. I believe this is not just purely corporate image, but they have to put a lot of consideration of their user base.
[Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_layout_engines]
The world has changed now which the competitors bloomed with web standard straight at the beginning.
And we developers love web standard.
We love Firefox, Chrome, Safari. (I believe non of Foreceptian has IE as default browser)
As technologist, we chase for new standards and features like HTML5 and CSS3. They can make the world better.
However, lets see from this perspective…
Forecepts is a company that provide professional web service.
We have clients who are technology fanatics and who very familiar with web 2.0 technology. This group of people will have 0% resistant from compliant to modern browser.
We also have clients who from the corporate, who carried the same heavy baggage like MS. (or who has poor MIS department)
I believe we are at transition period. MS is receiving heavy market pressure in the browser industry and they have no choice but to change before it been phase out totally.
As web servicing company, I believe our current position is to continue to educate our clients and provide the correct consultation (for example advise them to install Firefox if they can’t upgrade their IE due need to access legacy system); and with some endurance.
I believe, one day, I will see my children who will be judged by quality of business logic and great usability; not by if the code is compatible across browsers. As all browsers are compliant to 1 standard
Posted by jessette on March 19, 2010
Last year, our design team have been blessed with an abundance of Christmas and Season’s Greeting e-cards. We can say that 2009 has been a real blast and inspite of the recession, we were able to work on really interesting projects.
Here’s some insights on our own corporate Christmas e-card from last year:
Every Christmas tree has its own unique charm that reflects the characteristic of the people who took the time to lovingly and joyfully decorate these trees. I grew up in the Philippines where Christmas is a big thing and my childhood memories is happily peppered with colourful balls, stockings, Santa Claus, gifts, and of course, Christmas trees.
It’s the sheer enjoyment of decorating this symbolic tree that has inspired me to create this concept for Forecepts’ 2009 Christmas eCard. I have worked on the illustrations for all the elements; the trees, baubles, socks, candy cane and the gifts at the bottom of the box.
We originally planned on a “create your own Christmas Tree” concept, wherein users can customize the background, the tree and the elements that each would want to place on their eCards. A personalized greeting would also be possible and in the end, the user can send the card to their friends as jpeg files. They can also invite their friends to do the same. Unfortunately though,time constraints have not allowed us to push through with this idea.
Below are some screen shots of the design. In the end, we just opted to send out a simple flash eCard. Hopefully this year, we’ll be able to push through with the original concept and share the joy of decorating your own Christmas Tree.
Forecepts 2009 eCard
Forecepts Christmas eCard 2009
Christmas Tree Illustrations
Posted by leepeng on March 12, 2010
Our dear Kee Perng realised that some of his colleague have used too much toilet paper when came out from the toilet. Especially those like to wash their face and wipe their hand using toilet roll.
So he came out with this design (recycled from cake box) and I’m pleased to give him our first invention award.
SJ will give him the prize by treating him dinner tonight 
Posted by leepeng on August 29, 2009
Setting up an online shop is not straight forward as some might think. It is far beyond getting someone to develop a e-commerce website or installed a off-the-selve ecommerce solution.
Just share some experience we gained after developing some e-commerce solutions for our clients.
Are You The Pro?
I do not mean are you tech-pro; but are you your product-pro?
Personally I don’t believe you can sell something online if you do not have in-dept professional knowledge in the product you selling. One of our very successful client is a jigging master who selling popping and jigging equipments online. He kicked start with and online shop and eventually evolve to a real retail store. In addition, he also runs a fishing hobby forum and organising fishing trips to various hot-spots.
Where to Start?
Many people jump into conclusion that having eShop means building a e-commerce website. I always advise my friends to start small at places like forum and ebay, or promoting products at blog. Only invest in online store when they have sufficient product range and loyal customers. Do not start without a base. Do not think about the big market before you can establish a small market.
Payment
We normally advise people to start with a mixture of offline payment and PayPal at the beginning. Only consider premium payment gateway like Citibank when they have substantial online transactions.
Shipping
Shipping is an area that neglected by many during the planning of their e-commerce site. However, it play a major part as it affect the total price that the buyer going to pay. The value of the product must be justifiable enough for the shipping fee paid.
Take for example a 500g package will take about $65 to ship from Singapore to US using UPS. The fee will become ridiculously high if the item only cost $20!
Merchant can think creatively for the cheap and fast delivery of the products. Take fore example small items like neglacts can actually be shipped as registered mail instead of parser.
Marketing
It is actually a myth that an e-commerce website will be “self-market” after it goes live.
Just like normal shop front, nobody will know you if you do not market your shop.
Google will not rank you #1 in a very common search keyword after your website goes live.
There will be a lot of effort in doing visitation monitoring, search engine optimisation, search engine marketing, online marketing using various social channels or event offline marketing.
Posted by leepeng on July 3, 2009
When new clients approach us for website revamp and indicate that they want to keep the existing hosting, the first thing we normally like to check with them is the server the website is running. We develops websites in PHP5 and ASP.NET 2 so this information is quite useful for us.
However the most answer is “I don’t know”.
So we need to find a way check this information.
Firefox has a cool add-ons call HTTP Header which helps us in this area.
There is a small bug in the current version which showed Japanese.
You will notice that this add-on can help you to know the web server type (apache / IIS) and the application server (PHP 5, ASP.NET 2).
These information are actually embeded in the HTTP header and our browser does not show them. This ad-on do no magic but to show whatever existing information to us.
Anyway, if you are not Firefox user, start using Firefox now. You will be happy always
Posted by leepeng on
Have you ever encounter the situation which after getting your hosting for a while, you start to notice the email send from your server couldn’t reach your recipient; especially when the email is sent direct from the webserver using sendmail (e.g. mail function of PHP)
I myself is not hosting expert. However, after a few shocks, I somehow figure out some simple mis-configuration that easily happen to hosting engineers while setting up new server.
Two main cause: 1st is the missing of qualified domain name and second is missing of SPF setting.
These two can be observe easily by looking at the email header content in GMail. Try create a simple testmail.php which will send email to your GMail account using PHP’s mail function.
<?php
mail("leepeng@gmail.com", "Test Mail", "Test 123", "From: something@xx.com");
?>
Then open the source / original message of the email.
Here is an example of “Healthy” email
Delivered-To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.43.3 with SMTP id q3cs50083wfq;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:53 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.255.12 with SMTP id c12mr12997276wai.11.1246352633584;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:53 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <bounce@organisedmum.com.sg>
Received: from organisedmum.com.sg (organisedmum.com.sg [116.12.50.227])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 1si12092283pxi.65.2009.06.30.02.03.52;
Tue, 30 Jun 2009 02:03:52 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of bounce@organisedmum.com.sg designates 116.12.50.227 as permitted sender) client-ip=116.12.50.227;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: best guess record for domain of bounce@organisedmum.com.sg designates 116.12.50.227 as permitted sender) smtp.mail=bounce@organisedmum.com.sg
Received: (qmail 20407 invoked by uid 48); 30 Jun 2009 17:03:51 +0800
Date: 30 Jun 2009 17:03:51 +0800
Message-ID: <20090630090351.20397.qmail@organisedmum.com.sg>
To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Here is an example of “unhealthy” email
Delivered-To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.43.3 with SMTP id q3cs126200wfq;
Thu, 2 Jul 2009 00:18:36 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.224.28.130 with SMTP id m2mr10174634qac.52.1246519115111;
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:18:35 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: <nobody@vm4.kfc>
Received: from vm4.kfc (202-150-217-11.rev.ne.com.sg [202.150.217.11])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 15si3872346yxe.130.2009.07.02.00.18.34;
Thu, 02 Jul 2009 00:18:34 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 202.150.217.11 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of nobody@vm4.kfc) client-ip=202.150.217.11;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 202.150.217.11 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record for domain of nobody@vm4.kfc) smtp.mail=nobody@vm4.kfc
Received: from nobody by vm4.kfc with local (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from <nobody@vm4.kfc>)
id 1MMGZG-0005GT-VS
for leepeng79.chen@gmail.com; Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:18:51 +0800
To: leepeng79.chen@gmail.com
If you observe, you will notice that the “healthy” example has a qualified domain name which associate with the IP address. However the “unhealthy” exmple does not have a qualified domain name. The mis-configure one will either has setting localhost or just the server name in the private network (vm4.kfc for this example)
Second is the “healthy” example can pass GMail’s SPF check but the “unhealthy” one have the mark of neutral. SPF is to help make sure the server is not used for spamming. When GMail said it is neutral, it means GMail don’t know if the server is right or wrong.
My experience is that GMail has been very generous in their antispam as it will accept most of the emails. However, if you notice these 2 mis-configuration, it will be likely the mail would not able to deliver to Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL or some corporate email addresses.
So now you have something to argue with the hosting engineer 
The last thing to check is to make sure your server’s IP address is not blacklisted. One common place to check is at www.spamhaus.org
Posted by John on July 2, 2009
