Tutorial51 » Web Development & Design

15 Awesome 3D Text Effect Tutorials

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:24:05 +0000

I like to think that this is a list of some of the more high quality 3D text effect tutorials out there, Some of these aren’t for the faint hearted as they use programs such as Xara and 3DS Max, then they are imported in to Photoshop to get the desired results.

While some are quite labour intensive there are some that can be quite easily achieved just by using Photoshop…see my selection below.

Colourful Exploding 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4D

Glossy 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop, Xara 3D6

Retro Sci-fi 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4D

Realistic 3D Water Text effect

Programs used: Photoshop CS5

Polished 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop

Steam Punk 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop, Illustrator, Cinema 4D

Simple 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop

3D Shattered Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop, Cinema 4D

Typographic 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop CS+, Cinema 4D

Modern 3D Typography Poster

Programs used: Photoshop, Illustrator, 3DS Max

3D Light Streak text Effect

Programs used: Illustrator

Retro 3D Arcade Text Effect

Programs used: Illustrator

3D Layered Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop

Colourful 3D Text Composition

Programs used: Photoshop, Xara 3D6

Warped 3D Text Effect

Programs used: Photoshop CS5

Comments…

Have you seen any great 3D Type tutorials out there? , which ones do you like the look of the most? let us know in the comments…

15 Awesome 3D Text Effect Tutorials

Avoiding Design Burnout

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:23:18 +0000

In the innovative world of design, designers are pushing the limit and inspiring the design trends of the future. However, it takes many rounds of trial and error for designers to get even close to breaking new grounds in design.

As a result, designers often expend their creativity to the point where their brains are in serious need of some R&R.

The following are some ways to avoiding design burnout and keeping your creative sanity!

If you need more tips and inspiration on avoiding burnout and keeping your creative juices flowing, here are other articles you should read:

Take Care of Your Health

A topic which should rank top on your list of concerns is mental or physical exhaustion. They can be a clear sign that you need to take better care of your health.

A typical designer’s life may consist of long hours in front of the computer, little sleep, and sugary drinks that eventually lead to crashing. And as cliché as it sounds, eating a balanced diet will revitalize your creative capabilities.

Exercise

Exercise gives us the chance to get away from the computer and wake up our body’s energy. Exercise can be a better alternative to early morning caffeinated drinks by jump-starting your energy and getting the blood circulating.

Long hours sitting in front of the computer prohibit proper circulation throughout your body, which stifle the functionality of vital organs.

Notice your butt getting a little numb? Stand up and take a brief walk around the block, house, or office. Allow this moment to give you some time to clear your mind, and your body will repay you with a little mental clarity.

The other awesome benefit of exercise is the endorphins. Exercising helps to release endorphins, which greatly alleviate stress. They even bring a smile back to your face by uplifting your mood for a better attitude towards your work.

Don’t Design

Step away from the graphics tablet! If you’re a designer that eats, drinks, and sleeps design, you may want to dictate a day each week where you simply don’t design. I know, it sounds a little hard at first, but the payoff is incredibly rewarding.

Turn off your creative brain temporarily each week. Respond to emails in the morning, then shut off the computer to enjoy the day to yourself or with loved ones. Everyone deserves and requires at least a day off for mental clarity, and though the pressure of maintain clientele may hold favoritism, no client is worth your sanity.

Get a New Hobby

One way to keep your mind off design is to take up a hobby completely unrelated to it. The summer weather is especially inviting to the wide array of activities you can explore.

You can even kill two birds with one stone by picking a hobby that allows you to get out and exercise. One thing that I’ve always loved to do is to take a book and go to a beautiful park or place near the water and read for a couple of hours.

Experience Something New

Take a note from the recent MTV show where a group of guys made a list of things they want to do before they die. Make a top 100 bucket list of all the things you would like to accomplish within a given amount of time and make an effort this year to start on some of those endeavors.

My list consists of experiences that greatly appeal to my background and culture. For instance, I’m making a personal effort to begin learning the Spanish language this year and currently making great progress.

Find a Mentor

Are you feeling a little hopeless as to where you should turn for great support and advice? Well, approach a respected designer with the concept of potential mentorship.

Mentorships don’t require a lot of time out of your schedule, and they open a world of possibilities for design inspiration.

Set up a friendly agreement with your mentor to have access to their advice on new projects and resources for the tips and techniques they call upon to avoid burnout. You may even collaborate on future projects and learn from the pros with first-hand experience. And with the convenience of modern day social networking, great advice is just a tweet away.

Buena Suerte! (Good Luck)

Learning techniques to avoid design burnout is important to your life as a designer. Enjoy the abundance of mental clarity you’ll absorb by taking time out for yourself and interests.

Though this field is incredibly rewarding, it’s also quite tiring at times, so show yourself the appreciation for all your hard work by taking care of yourself.

What are your own tips, tricks, and favorite resources for combating design burnout? What causes design burnout?

About the Author

Melody Nieves is a friendly, flirty, and eccentric digital artist and marketing enthusiast. Read her titillatingly intellectual posts on the influence of sex in marketing and design at SexiDesign. You can also find her rockin’ it out at her more personal blog, AWalkInMyShoes. Check her out on Twitter as well.

Avoiding Design Burnout

Increase Your User Activity with Points, Badges and Status

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:22:50 +0000

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about strategies for engaging your visitors. In it, I expanded on four different techniques to keep visitors to your website engaged and active. One of the strategies was using virtual rewards and status — also known as game mechanics (or funware) — to increase website engagement.

Websites and applications like FourSquare, StackOverflow and Farmville all use game mechanics to attract and retain users. Even not-so-obvious websites like eBay and Yelp! have aspects of game mechanics baked in to the functionality.

Game mechanics is a piece of the website engagement puzzle, providing an incentive to become an active participant when there is no direct, tangible benefit for doing so.

Why Should You Care About Game Mechanics?

Sounds like a gimmick, right? Kind of like the cheap toys they put in cereal boxes or the t-shirts that credit card companies give out to convince you to sign up for a new card.

While it may seem that way at first glance, game mechanics have clear business benefits behind them and oftentimes generate a significant return on investment.

Grow Traffic and Active Users

People talk about things that are different and interesting. Game mechanics create something worth discussing and engaging with.

FourSquare could have just chosen to be a location-based app to find your friends, instead the service introduced a competitive system of badges and status. Probably part of the reason they have been adding up to 10,000 users a day.

Increase Website Activity and Stickiness

Whenever there are points, rewards or status involved, people are going to pay attention. Sometimes it may seem silly, but providing simple incentives can go a long way towards creating an active environment.

Like any game, it can also be addicting, providing users with an incentive to come back.

Cheaper Than a Traditional Loyalty Program

Adding game mechanics to your website is often less expensive to implement and run than developing a full-fledged loyalty program. The system is automatic: it runs itself and minimizes administration costs.

On top of all that, why give out cash or prizes when most users are happy with virtual rewards?

Improve User Satisfaction

Let’s be honest, some websites are just plain boring. Games, competition and rewards provide an added edge which keep people interested.

It’s also good, positive marketing. Most people relate better to companies who aren’t all "business". Fun and games expose your human side and even create trust.

All of these things, traffic growth, increased activity, reduced expenses and improved satisfaction lead to one thing: more revenue.

How Can You Introduce Game Mechanics on Your Website?

So hopefully I’ve convinced you that there can be some real, tangible value behind game mechanics.

The next step is figuring out how you can introduce it on your website. Unfortunately, given the wide range of websites out there, I probably won’t be able to speak to your specific situation, but by providing some examples and techniques, I hope it will at least inspire some new ideas.

I also believe that the principles and techniques behind all of the examples can be applied in a variety of ways and be effective on any website.

Examples of Websites that Use Game Mechanics

Here are some examples of sites that have some sort of game mechanics for user engagement and community-building.

Concept Feedback

The Problem: Getting web designers and developers to actively provide valuable feedback on other websites.

The Solution: Offer points and rank for reviewing, voting and engaging with the site.

Concept Feedback is a website review community I developed for web designers and developers. Members can sign up for free and share feedback on other websites, as well as get feedback on their own.

In order to create an incentive for members to offer free advice, we started awarding points for various actions. Points can be earned actively by submitting or commenting on a review, voting or completing a profile. Points can also be earned passively by having others vote up your reviews or add your concept to their favorites.

Certain actions are worth more points than others. For example, having someone vote up your review is worth more points than voting up a review on your own.

Each activity has a set point value, and we let our users see a running history of their total and how many points each activity contributed to their total score.

Once we had a solid point system running, we started ranking each member on a 10-level scale, ranging from "Newbie" to "Elite".

Rank is determined by an algorithm based on a member’s point total and a few other factors.

By tagging each member with a rank, users posting a website can better judge which reviews are the most valuable.

We’ve found that rank creates an environment of friendly competition that leads to more site activity and reviews.

Rank also gives us a tool to filter our best members, not just those who are most active, but the highest quality members, providing a new way for us to monetize our community.

The user page on Concept Feedback displaying top-ranked users.

Stack Overflow

The Problem: Getting programmers to quickly answer programming-related questions posted by other users.

The Solution: Award virtual badges for desired behaviors.

Stack Overflow (which I admit, was a big influence behind Concept Feedback), a question and answer website for programmers, has implemented an excellent game mechanics system.

Like Concept Feedback, Stack Overflow awards points (called "reputation") to members for participating.

How their system works, including which activities earn how many points, is broken down nicely in their FAQ. Stack Overflow has put a number of rules in place to ensure people are not abusing the system, which is run by the users and based entirely on trust (similar to Wikipedia).

The reputation system allows Stack Overflow to be self-sustaining and self-moderated.

In addition to the reputation system, Stack Overflow awards badges. Badges are awarded for specific actions such as the "Fanatic" badge for visiting the site each day for 100 consecutive days.

Each badge is categorized as gold, silver or bronze, with gold badges being the most difficult to earn.

Explanation of how to attain a certain badge on Stack Overflow, including number of badges awarded.

Many Stack Overflow users have thousands of reputation points and hundreds of badges, and with well over 1 million unique visitors each month, they must be doing something right.

Top users on Stack Overflow.

Dropbox

The Problem: Getting users to try the software and share it with friends.

The Solution: Offer additional storage space for finishing certain tasks.

Dropbox — software for syncing your files online and across multiple computers — uses game mechanics to encourage users to try their product and share it with friends.

By completing a checklist of tasks (like uploading a file or completing the product tour), users are given additional storage space for free.

The checklist is easy to understand, fun to use, and for those of you who are type-A (like me), impossible not to complete.

A checklist of tasks on Dropbox that awards you more space upon completion.

For web applications, this model is a great way to encourage product use and word of mouth without being overbearing.

By offering an incentive, a fair value exchange (you finish these tasks, we give you free storage) is created, which makes people more likely to participate.

Yelp!

The Problem: Getting consumers to provide in-depth, interesting reviews on local businesses.

The Solution: Creating a status symbol to encourage participation and brand evangelism.

Yelp, for those of you not familiar, is a business review community with millions of users and reviews. Each member has a profile, which includes the number of reviews posted, how many "friends" you have, how many times you’ve been the first to review a business and whether your reviews are funny, useful or cool, among other things.

Every activity is tracked with the intention of creating a more integrated and personal community.

The essence of Yelp! is in its community and in providing easy ways to engage with others on the site is what keeps people engaged and active.

Without some kind of interaction, most reviewers would lose interest.

Example of a user profile on Yelp!.

To take it a step further, Yelp! capitalized on its most dedicated users by allowing them to apply for the Yelp! Elite Squad. This is not much more than an extra profile icon, but it creates a passionate group of brand evangelists who not only provide excellent reviews (for free!), but tell others about your service and how great it is.

Yelp! has successfully been able to leverage status to act as an engine for generating more content and encouraging word of mouth.

Additional Websites and Applications Using Game Mechanics

Hopefully you’ve been inspired by one of these examples to try using game mechanics on your own website. If you still haven’t found something that applies to your specific situation, check out some of the websites below. Each site incorporates some aspect of game mechanics.

More Resources on Game Mechanics

Is there a website you love that uses game mechanics well (there are plenty more), or perhaps something you’ve been doing on your own website to encourage participation? Please share it in the comments below!

About the Author

Andrew Follett is the founder and CEO of Concept Feedback, a website feedback community for designers, developers and marketers. Follow Andrew and Concept Feedback on Twitter.

Increase Your User Activity with Points, Badges and Status

Bill Maher Chose Right

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:22:24 +0000

One of the reasons I look forward to Fridays in general is that they herald the upcoming weekend, and also because Bill Maher is on HBO at 10 PM. I recorded his last show and finally got time to sit down to watch it a few days ago. His second guest of the night was Chef & Restaurateur Alice Waters.

While I have been around many, many chefs during my lifetime, there are some who catch my attention with their boisterous personalities, kitchen tricks and other look-at-me attitudes. Chefs have big egos, whether they show them or not. As soon as Alice Waters sat down I was taken with her soft voice. Her subtle air of command captured both my and Bill’s attention. I could tell by his body language and excited voice that he was very pleased she was sitting across the table from him.

I love her demeanor, her self-possessed assurance that every word she spoke would sink in and be heard. She also has such a delightfully feminine way of speaking with her hands, embellishing and emphasizing her poetic, yet determined stand against the poor nutrition of our children. Even though she appeared gracefully relaxed, she wears her dignity as would a noblewoman of old, and we her audience, were hooked as fish in a fisherman’s net.

There are certain people I like on the spot, and many of whom I would enjoy sitting down to eat a meal and enjoy conversation with, over candles burning low in their holders. Alice and Bill are two of these people and I could tell they felt the same way that night. Bill was lit up like a sparkler. Because of his interest I didn’t take my eyes off the television screen. I learned a lot about this woman. She is determined to help bring about this revolution against poor nutrition and obesity in our school children.

This icon has won so many awards over the last two decades. She has been a pioneer in supporting her community and farmers by purchasing locally grown organic foods, supporting the farmers, eating properly and in doing so, reducing her carbon footprint. She journeyed to France when she was nineteen and learned about the simplicity of natural foods. Slow Food is a phrase she coined and when Bill leaned in to inquire about it, she replied it is the opposite of fast food.

Both Alice and Bill grew up in New Jersey. They touched on this fact by mentioning all of the farms that once were there. Bill quipped in the motto: “New Jersey The Garden State”, but where are all of the farms now they wondered aloud.

Bill Maher usually holds the majority of the audience’s attention while interviewing his guests, but Alice outshone him without ever trying to do so. She is on a mission and the truth of her goal is something every American should hear. She wants to feed every school child a slow food breakfast, lunch and afternoon snack everyday. Plus she wants it to be free, no charge. She pointed out that the children need to experience the goodness of fresh food, and for parents to stop feeding them food with little or no nutritive value. To this end she has written a book just for school children and its title is “The Edible Schoolyard“. For the adults she has written “The Green Kitchen”, where she teaches that all of us can get back to the basics of good sound nutrition.

There is something really very special about this lady and the message she is sending is quite clear. Do something positive to eat real food, support your local farmers and buy direct, or in your grocer’s organic food section. Bill asked “Do you remember when you would bite into a peach and it was plump and fruity and full of flavor? Take tomatoes … they don’t taste like they did when we were growing up. Well nowadays, whenever I try a pretty peach I have to throw it away after tasting one bite.” I’m really with him on this point! I sat there nodding my head up and down in agreement.

I could tell the interview was getting ready to come to an end and besides all of Alice Waters’ awards up to this point, there is one which by now, she may have already been presented. It is the French Legion Of Honor Award. It is one of the highest awards anyone can ever receive. Her vision of our school children’s future in their attitudes toward food is a grand one, but very realistic and achievable. She is lovely and someone I really want to meet. Alice Waters is entirely fashionable and trendy, and romantically … The Lady Robin Hood of today.

Explore related content on BlogCatalog

Alice Waters

Explore related content on BlogCatalog

Related articles by Zemanta

Celebrity cooks are leading the charge for healthier food (pbpulse.com)
Alice Waters – Edible Schoolyard Takedown in the ‘Atlantic Monthly’: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong (definitiveink.typepad.com)
Weekday Vegetarian: Book Review of In The Green Kitchen by Alice Waters (treehugger.com)

Bill Maher Chose Right

Frustration Friday: Vent And Be Free!

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:21:54 +0000

Everyday stresses can build up and hang around in the back of our minds so that even when we have free time to relax and unwind, we find ourselves stressed out about all the little things that are bugging us. So today I would like to invite everyone to let go of all their frustrations and, as part of the cleansing process, tell us about the stuff that’s been driving you crazy. By simply leaving it all behind us, we can enter a calmer state and enjoy a worry-free weekend! Here’s my rant:

My frustration this week was provided courtesy of the City of San Antonio. I got a $25.00 ticket because my car was blocking the sidewalk. A $25.00 ticket is definitely not the end of the world, but there are a few reasons why it ticks me off:

The code enforcement officer came around a few weeks ago and banged (not knocked, but banged) on my door continuously until I got out of bed and answered…just before 7 a.m. This was just so he could give us a warning. I mean, can’t you just leave a note on the car?
Since our obnoxious warning, we have been really good about squeezing our two cars next to each other in our 1 car driveway so as not to block the sidewalk even though it makes getting ourselves and our toddler in and out of the car a pain in the ass.
When we received the ticket for “blocking” the sidewalk, the bumper of our car was blocking a 6-8 inch section of the sidewalk, there was still plenty of room to walk without having to step out into the street.
There are numerous mailboxes on our street that completely block the entire sidewalk forcing the people walking, or little kids riding their bikes, down the street to walk or ride out into the street.

Here are a few picks of the mailboxes that block the sidewalk in my neighborhood:

So my question to the good ‘ol City of San Antonio is why I’m being ticketed $25.00 for blocking a sidewalk with my car that is already impassable in many spots throughout the neighborhood? I kind of already know the answer–they want my money. That kind of sucks though because I am not a rich man and $25.00 would have bought diapers for my kid, or the co-pay for his next round of immunizations. Oh well, now the City of San Antonio has my $25.00 and I’m sure they’ll put it to good use doing…actually, what do they do? They don’t seem to ever remove the graffiti that appears weekly on all of our street signs, fences and utility boxes. They rarely respond to the calls I and my neighbors make about loose dogs that roam the neighborhood from time to time. Oh, but they do send Dick to my house at 7 a.m. to rudely wake me and my family up with incessant banging on our front door.

Here’s a tip for all you code enforcement officers out there. If you do need to come to my house again in the future, or anyone’s house really, you can knock politely and deal with me politely too. I’m sure you encounter some a-holes in the course of your day, but I bet you’re more likely to get treated badly when you go around banging on people’s doors like the world is about to end and then talk to them condescendingly about their bumper sticking out over the sidewalk, their hedges being planted to close to a utility box, or some other highly noncritical matter. Based on my first encounter with you, I will surely be an a-hole to you the next time you show up at my door! The City of San Antonio has earned a big FAIL in my book when it comes to their priorities and their community relations skills.

So, that’s my frustration for the week! I feel so much better for having let that out, and now I can just pay my ticket and enter the weekend free of this stress. Now it’s your turn. Unleash your frustrations upon the comment section so you too can move into your weekend unburdened and free to have fun! You’ll feel better afterwards; believe me. I do!

Explore related content on BlogCatalog

Code Enforcement

Basic CSS : What is CSS Reset?

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:21:35 +0000

What is CSS Reset, find out the answer in the slide.

Link : CSS Reset

Basic CSS : What is CSS Reset?

5 Secrets to Selecting Highly-Effective SEO Keywords

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:21:27 +0000

How many keywords should you assign to each page on your website–and how should you pick them? An Inc. 500 CEO offers his advice on SEO.

I found this good article “5 Secrets to Selecting Highly-Effective SEO Keywords” on inc.com, you should read.

5 Secrets to Selecting Highly-Effective SEO Keywords

Quick Tip: Did Internet Explorer get the Box Model Right?

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:21:17 +0000

The CSS standard states that borders and padding should be applied on top of the specified width of an element. As such, if I have a 200px div, and apply 40px worth of borders and padding, total, the width will then be 240px. This makes perfect sense; however, Internet Explorer actually did things differently. They adopted a model where the maximum width is what you specified. The borders and padding are then factored into that width, reducing the content area. As a result, the width of the element never exceeds the stated width of 200px.

As we mostly work with extremely sensitive floated layouts, where even the addition of a 1px border can break the design, I wonder: did Internet Explorer get it right?

Subscribe to our YouTube page to watch all of the video tutorials!
Prefer to watch this video on Screenr?

Box Sizing

“The box-sizing CSS property is used to alter the default CSS box model used to calculate widths and heights of elements. It is possible to use this property to emulate the behavior of browsers that do not correctly support the CSS box model specification.”

This means that, if you should decide that you want to mimic Internet Explorer’s original interpretation of the box model, you can. The default value for box-sizing is “content-box.” This simply means that the width and height of an element do not include the borders and padding (or margins).

By changing this value to “border-box,” the width and height values then include the borders and padding.

#box {
 width: 200px;
 height: 200px;
 background: red;

 padding: 10px;
 border: 10px solid black;

 -moz-box-sizing: border-box;
 -webkit-box-sizing: border-box;
 box-sizing: border-box;
}

Because we’ve declared box-sizing with a value of “border-box,” the final width of the #box element, styled above, will be 200px.

Especially for floated layouts, this can save you a lot of headaches! But with that said, I’m still undecided. What are your thoughts on Internet Explorer’s interpretation of the box model?

Quick Tip: Did Internet Explorer get the Box Model Right?

How to Authenticate Users With Facebook Connect

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:20:53 +0000

Lately, there’s been quite a fuzz about lazy registration. It turns out that the less the user has to think, the higher the conversion rates are! What a thought! If everybody seems to have a Facebook profile, why not add a one-click user registration? I’ll show you how to do that today.

Step 1. The Setup

MySQL Table

Let’s begin by creating a database table.

CREATE TABLE `users` (
    `id` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
    `oauth_provider` varchar(10),
    `oauth_uid` text,
    `username` text,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM  DEFAULT CHARSET=latin1;

Quite simple: we will be setting up a table for user information with id, username, first and last name, the URL to the user’s picture, and registered date. Also, we’re adding both an oauth_provider and oauth_uid fields, to distinguish between different third party open authentication protocols and their identifiers. For example, let’s say that, next week, you decide that it’s a good idea to also let Twitter users in. Easy; you just set another value to the oauthprovider, and avoid duplicating oauthuid values.

The Facebook App

Let’s begin by creating a new application. Give it a name and agree to the terms and conditions. Next, grab both the API Key and Secret in the basic tab as shown below.

On the canvas tab, set both the Canvas URL and Post-Authorize Redirect URL to your localhost and path that the script will process — something like http://localhost.com/login_facebook.php?. Note the question mark at the end and the domain; both are required by Facebook. Simply set your hosts file to a valid domain name.

On the connect tab, set the Connect URL to the same value and set localhost.com (or the one you are using) as the Base Domain.

Now save, download the client library, and unzip facebook.php in the srcdir to a new directory created in the root.

Step 2. The Callback

The authentication flow has three steps:

The local script generates a URL asking the user for permission
Facebook returns to the Canvas URL specified with a GET parameter
The GET parameter authenticates the session

Let’s make a quick test before registering and login.

# We require the library
require("facebook.php");

# Creating the facebook object
$facebook = new Facebook(array(
    'appId'  => 'YOUR_APP_ID',
    'secret' => 'YOUR_APP_SECRET',
    'cookie' => true
));

# Let's see if we have an active session
$session = $facebook->getSession();

if(!empty($session)) {
    # Active session, let's try getting the user id (getUser()) and user info (api->('/me'))
    try{
        $uid = $facebook->getUser();
        $user = $facebook->api('/me');
    } catch (Exception $e){}

    if(!empty($user)){
        # User info ok? Let's print it (Here we will be adding the login and registering routines)
        print_r($user);
    } else {
        # For testing purposes, if there was an error, let's kill the script
        die("There was an error.");
    }
} else {
    # There's no active session, let's generate one
    $login_url = $facebook->getLoginUrl();
    header("Location: ".$login_url);
}

Now, go to http://localhost.com/login_facebook.php, and let’s see what happens. If you are redirected to Facebook and requested for permission, we are on the right track.

However, there might be two issues. The first one: if you’re redirected to Facebook, but it shows an error, there might be a missing value in the configuration. Go back to your application settings and check both the Connect and Canvas tabs and make sure the fields are ok as described above.

There might be another issue, where you see an error, like “Uncaught CurlException: 60: SSL certificate problem, verify that the CA cert is OK.” This happens because of the CURL settings. You’ll have to open facebook.php, find the makeRequest() method, and, inside the function, find this line:

$opts = self::$CURL_OPTS;

Immediately following it, add:

$opts[CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER] = false;

I hate hacking libraries, but I haven’t found another way. Well, let’s continue with user registration. I’ve also added a try/catch statement, because, if there’s an old session keys in the GET params in the URL, the script will die with a horrible error.

Step 3. Registration and Authentication

We’ll next be working with MySQL. Please note that I will not implement a data sanitizer, since I want to keep the code as short and on task as possible. Please keep this in mind: always sanitize your data.

First, let’s connect to the database.

mysql_connect('localhost', 'YOUR_USERNAME', 'YOUR_PASSWORD');
mysql_select_db('YOUR_DATABASE');

Now, let’s work on the $session conditional, in case we have a session.

# We have an active session; let's check if we've already registered the user
$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE oauth_provider = 'facebook' AND oauth_uid = ". $user['id']);
$result = mysql_fetch_array($query);

# If not, let's add it to the database
if(empty($result)){
    $query = mysql_query("INSERT INTO users (oauth_provider, oauth_uid, username) VALUES ('facebook', {$user['id']}, '{$user['name']}')");
    $query = msyql_query("SELECT * FROM users WHERE id = " . mysql_insert_id());
    $result = mysql_fetch_array($query);
}

Note that I’m querying the database, looking for facebook as a oauth_provider; it’s generally a good idea, if you want to accept other OAuth providers (as twitter, Google Accounts, Open ID, etc.) and a oauth_uid, since it’s the identifier the provider gives to its user accounts.

The oauth_provider field could potentially lead to bad performance if we leave it as a text field type. As such, the best option is setting it to an ENUM type.

We have now a $result var with the values queried from the database. Let’s next add some sessions. Add this line at the beginning of your script.

session_start();

After the empty($result) conditional, append the following:

if(!empty($user)){
    # ...

    if(empty($result)){
        # ...
    }

    # let's set session values
    $_SESSION['id'] = $result['id'];
    $_SESSION['oauth_uid'] = $result['oauth_uid'];
    $_SESSION['oauth_provider'] = $result['oauth_provider'];
    $_SESSION['username'] = $result['username'];
}

As it makes little sense to authenticate a user who is already logged in, just below the session_start() line, add:

if(!empty($_SESSION)){
    header("Location: home.php");
}

And in the scripts which require authentication, just add:

session_start();
if(!empty($_SESSION)){
    header("Location: login_facebook.php");
}

And if you want to display the username, access it as an array.

echo 'Welcome ' . $_SESSION['username'];
# or..
echo 'Welcome ' . !empty($_SESSION) ? $_SESSION['username'] : 'guest';

Step 4. Additional Methods

Facebook has a ton of connect features, but here are four that I’ve found to be the most useful.

Legacy Methods

I might be missing something, but the FQL seems more flexible and easy than the Graph API. Fortunately, Facebook still lets developers use it, altough with the new library, it has changed a bit.

If you want the user id, first name, last name, squared thumbnail for the user picture, the biggest user picture available, and his or her gender, you can use the users.getInfo method.

    $uid = $facebook->getUser();
    $api_call = array(
        'method' => 'users.getinfo',
        'uids' => $uid,
        'fields' => 'uid, first_name, last_name, pic_square, pic_big, sex'
    );
    $users_getinfo = $facebook->api($api_call);

You can check the full list of fields available for Users.getInfo.

It is possible to achieve the same result, using FQL.

    $uid = $facebook->getUser();
    $fql_query  =   array(
        'method' => 'fql.query',
        'query' => 'SELECT uid, first_name, last_name, pic_square, pic_big, sex FROM user WHERE uid = ' . $uid
    );
    $fql_info = $facebook->api($fql_query);

Here’s the list of tables which can be accessed with FQL, as well as the fields available for the table users.

Extended Permissions

Facebook provides applications with some interaction with the user’s data – just as long as it’s authorized. With the old API, the authorization for additional permissions was exclusively available for the Javascript SDK (altough I’m not quite sure). With the new API, we can easily redirect the user to an authorization dialog in Facebook, and return to our site after the access is either granted or denied.

In the following example, we will be redirecting a user to authorize posts status updates, photos, videos and notes, the user’s real email address, birthday and access to photos and videos.

$uid = $facebook->getUser();

# req_perms is a comma separated list of the permissions needed
$url = $facebook->getLoginUrl(array(
    'req_perms' => 'email,user_birthday,status_update,publish_stream,user_photos,user_videos'
));
header("Location: {$url} ");

Here’s a full list of permissions. Note that you can specify both the url to direct to if the user accepts and the url to be redirected to if the user denies. The key for these array elements are next and cancel_url, respectively. Here’s a quick example:

$url = $facebook->getLoginUrl(array(
    'req_perms' => 'email',
    'next' => 'http://localhost.com/thanks.php',
    'cancel_url' => 'http://localhost.com/sorry.php'
));

If not specified, the default is the requesting script’s location.

Checking for Extended Permissions

Since the user can easily revoke permissions, the application should always check if a given permission is granted before using it, specially if it’s about publishing something. We will have to use the legacy API, as it seems it’s not fully implemented with the new one yet.

    $uid = $facebook->getUser();

    # users.hasAppPermission
    $api_call = array(
        'method' => 'users.hasAppPermission',
        'uid' => $uid,
        'ext_perm' => 'publish_stream'
    );
    $users_hasapppermission = $facebook->api($api_call);
    print_r($users_hasapppermission);

The ext_perm will only support the old list of available permissions.

Publishing to the Wall

Let’s post something to the wall after verifying the user has the publish_stream permission.

    # let's check if the user has granted access to posting in the wall
    $api_call = array(
        'method' => 'users.hasAppPermission',
        'uid' => $uid,
        'ext_perm' => 'publish_stream'
    );
    $can_post = $facebook->api($api_call);
    if($can_post){
        # post it!
        $facebook->api('/'.$uid.'/feed', 'post', array('message' => 'Saying hello from my Facebook app!'));
        echo 'Posted!';
    } else {
        die('Permissions required!');
    }

Essentially, we are making an API call to //feed, using the POST method (second argument) and an array as a third argument for the data to be sent. In this case, this third argument supports message, link, picture, caption, name and description. Here’s the code:

$facebook->api('/'.$uid.'/feed', 'post', array(
    'message' => 'The message',
    'name' => 'The name',
    'description' => 'The description',
    'caption' => 'The caption',
    'picture' => 'http://i.imgur.com/yx3q2.png',
    'link' => 'http://net.tutsplus.com/'
));

Here’s how it is posted.

Some Additional Information you Should Know:

The user can easily revoke permissions with two clicks in his or her wall. You should heavily test what might happen if a user revoked one or more permissions that are vital for the proper functioning of your website, or even if the application is fully removed. This is important.

In Application Settings you can remove the application entirely by clicking the x at the right side.
You can remove permissions individually in the Granted Additional Permissions section.

5. Conclusion

While Facebook’s authentication capabilities are indeed useful, since so many people are on Facebook these days, using it as the only method of authentication in a site is not recommended. What about those who don’t have Facebook accounts? Are they not allowed to access your application? Thanks for reading!

How to Authenticate Users With Facebook Connect

How fast does FIFA.com score a goal?

Sat, 12 Jun 2010 11:20:32 +0000

It’s the World Cup again. Being a Brit, I am on tender hooks with the first England game coming up tomorrow with the USA. A family feud for me. We start to see great microsites such as the Twitter @worldcup site, and as we think about what the fastest goal will be… what about the fastest website?

Dynatrace had some fun and did a performance test on FIFA.com:

Time to First Impression/Drawing: 3.74s

Analysis: so it takes almost 4s until the user sees a visual indication of the page load – that is definitely too long and should be improved

Recommendation: < 1s is great. <2.5s is acceptable

Time to onLoad: 8.25s

Analysis: it takes the browser 8.25 to download the initial document plus all referenced objects before it triggers the onLoad event that allows JavaScript to modify the page after it has been loaded – again – much too slow as nobody likes to wait 8s until the content is loaded

Recommendation: < 2s is great. <4s is acceptable

Time to Fully Loaded: 8.6s

the page loads additional resources triggered by JavaScript onLoad handlers. I consider the page as fully loaded when all these additional requests are downloaded. I guess I don’t need to mention that 8.6s is not fast

Recommendations: < 2s is great. <5s is acceptable

Number of HTTP Requests: 201

Analysis: 201 – that’s a lot of elements for a single page. We have seen many images that are the main contributor to this load. My first thought on this -> let’s seen how we can reduce this number by e.g.: merging files (more details later)

Recommendations: < 20 is great. < 100 is acceptable (This one is a hard recommendation as it really depends on the type of website – but – it is a good start to measure this KPI)

Number and Impact of HTTP Redirects: 1/1.44s

Analysis: This is a very expensive and it seems unnecessary redirect from http://www.fifa.com/worldcup to http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/

Recommendations: 0. Avoid Redirects whenever possible

Number and Impact of HTTP 400’s: 1/0.71s

Analysis: There seems to be a javascript file that results in a HTTP 403 Forbidden Response and takes a total of 0.71s.

Recommendations: 0. Avoid any 400’s and 500’s

Size of JavaScript/CSS/Images: ~370kb/220kb/890kb

Analysis: Size of individual mime types is always a good indicator and helps to compare to other sites and other builds. 370kb of JavaScript and 220kb of CSS can probably reduced to a smaller size by using certain minimization techniques or by getting rid of unused code or styles

Recommendations: It is hard to give a definite threshold value. Keep in mind that these files need to be downloaded and parsed by the browser. The more content there is the more work on the browser. The goal must be to remove all information that is not needed for the current page. I often see developers packing everything in a huge global .js file. That might be a good practice but too often only a fraction of this code is actually used by the end-user. It is better to load what needs to be loaded in the beginning and delay load additional content when really needed

Max/Average Wait Time: 4.31s/1.9s

Analysis: this means that resources have to wait up to 4.3s to be downloaded and that they have to wait 1.9s on average. This is way to much and can be reduced by either reducing the number of resources or by spreading them on multiple domains (Domain Sharding) in order to allow the browser to use more physical connections.

Recommendations: < 20ms is good. < 50ms is acceptable (as you can see – we are FAR OFF these numbers in this example)

Single Resource Domains: 1

Analysis: from the timeline we can also see that there is one domain that only serves a single resource. In this particular case it seems to be serving an ad. We can assume that this might not be changeable but this KPI is a good indicator on whether it is worth paying the cost of a DNS Lookup and Connect if we only download a single resource from a domain

Recommendations: 0. Try to avoid single resource domains. It is not always possible – but do it if you can

The KPI’s tell me that the page is way too slow – especially the Full Page Load Time of 8.6s needs to be optimized. With the KPI’s we can already think about certain areas to focus on, e.g.: reducing the network roundtrips or minimizing content size. But there is much more. Let’s have a closer look into 4 different areas.

Then they get to analysis on the network, caching, JavaScript execution, and is all adds up to an F :/

Browser Caching: F – 175 images have a short expires header, 4 have a header in the past

Network: F – 201 Requests in total, 1 Redirect, 1 HTTP 400, duplicated image requests on different domains

Server-Side: C – 10 App-Server Requests with a total of 3.6s -> analyze server-side processing

JavaScript: D – Use CSS Lookups by ID instead of Class Name

How fast does FIFA.com score a goal?

Tutorial51 » Web Development & Design

15 Awesome 3D Text Effect Tutorials

Colourful Exploding 3D Text Effect

Glossy 3D Text Effect

Retro Sci-fi 3D Text Effect

Realistic 3D Water Text effect

Polished 3D Text Effect

Steam Punk 3D Text Effect

Simple 3D Text Effect

3D Shattered Text Effect

Typographic 3D Text Effect

Modern 3D Typography Poster

3D Light Streak text Effect

Retro 3D Arcade Text Effect

3D Layered Text Effect

Colourful 3D Text Composition

Warped 3D Text Effect

Comments…

Avoiding Design Burnout

Take Care of Your Health

Exercise

Don’t Design

Get a New Hobby

Experience Something New

Find a Mentor

Buena Suerte! (Good Luck)

Related Content

About the Author

Increase Your User Activity with Points, Badges and Status

Why Should You Care About Game Mechanics?

Grow Traffic and Active Users

Increase Website Activity and Stickiness

Cheaper Than a Traditional Loyalty Program

Improve User Satisfaction

How Can You Introduce Game Mechanics on Your Website?

Examples of Websites that Use Game Mechanics

Concept Feedback

Stack Overflow

Dropbox

Yelp!

Additional Websites and Applications Using Game Mechanics

More Resources on Game Mechanics

Related Content

About the Author

Bill Maher Chose Right

Frustration Friday: Vent And Be Free!

Explore related content on BlogCatalog

Related articles by Zemanta

Basic CSS : What is CSS Reset?

5 Secrets to Selecting Highly-Effective SEO Keywords

Quick Tip: Did Internet Explorer get the Box Model Right?

Box Sizing

How to Authenticate Users With Facebook Connect

Step 1. The Setup

MySQL Table

The Facebook App

Step 2. The Callback

Step 3. Registration and Authentication

Step 4. Additional Methods

Legacy Methods

Extended Permissions

Checking for Extended Permissions

Publishing to the Wall

Some Additional Information you Should Know:

5. Conclusion

How fast does FIFA.com score a goal?