Mark’s Blog

I have been building a proposal for a client, and to get more familiar with the iGoogle Gadget API, I built a Gadget that pulls a list of URLs from a remote XML file asynchronously and displays them.

Fun lessons I learned about writing iGoogle Gadgets:

• Using the iGoogle editor allows you to quickly edit, preview and troubleshoot apps, BUT does not allow you to use anything but the legacy APIs
• You cannot develop with the new APIs by calling them from your server, as they are cached by Google every hour (along with any called XML files)
• iGoogle has a pretty intuitive setup for using Javascript and writing cross-browser apps, once you look past the (very) rough developer’s tools

Here’s the gadget as it exists currently:

My future plans are to put the links in a tab, and change the link loading scheme.  The images are just too big and take precious vertical space. I’ll use another tab to display an RSS feed.  iGoogle has an API to chew on feeds and convert them to JSON for you.

I think loading the App data from an external XML/JSON is a far superior solution to hard-coding it into an app.  It allows it to be edited much easier by an program/unskilled user. You can view the code by reading the XML file here.

Many web developers using IIS, having seen the widespread adoption of mod_rewrite in Apache, have been wondering about what tools are available to them.  IIS 7.0 in Vista and Server 2008 has a rewrite module provided by Microsoft, by popular demand.  However, users of older versions of IIS have been stuck in the cold with regard to a lack of rewrite options.  

Why is it so important?

Many people don’t notice the heavy usage of URL rewrites in popular websites.  It is used on this websites to produce the friendly URLs used for permalinks.  It is used to erase something unfriendly like an article id “article.php?=132&source?=20″ and change it to /articles/myarticle/source/.  This has major benefits for search engine optimization.  I used a rewrite rule to change an incredibly unfriendly DNN url to “www.exampledomain.com/blog/”.  Having these keywords available in the link drastically helps optimize your inbound links.  It can be used for untold other uses as well, since the Apache implementation is fantastically powerful.  Rewrite rules are created using regular expressions.

Your Options

Your main two options for IIS are Ionics ISAPI Rewrite and Helicon Tech’s ISAPI Rewrite.  Ionic’s is an open source implementation of a rewrite engine, and has been progressing along nicely since when I first used it (started with the 0.8 beta).  It works as an ISAPI .DLL that is applied in IIS.  The rules are put into an INI file.  There are regrettably no  way to make separate sites have separate rules barring loading multiple copies of the DLL with multiple INI files.  Helicon’s IIS rewrite solution is a lot more mature, and closely follows the Apache implementation.  You use .htaccess files to manage rewrites.  Furthermore, almost all apache mod_rewrite rules work in Helicon’s solution.  The free version only supports one set of rules, but the premium version ($80 at the time of writing) supports .htaccess files in every web directory, with different rules.  Overall, I would recommend Helicon’s software, although it would definitely be worth looking at the Ionics project to monitor how well they are doing.  The free version of Helicon’s software only has modest restrictions, and is not expensive if you’ve already paid for Windows Server and some SQL server.

Update:

Bill Staples made a note that I neglected to include a link to the IIS7 URL rewrite, so here it is:
http://www.iis.net/extensions/URLRewrite 

I just got IIS7 installed on my Vista Ultimate box, so I should have some future posts about leveraging IIS7’s new capabilities for SEO and user friendly web applications!

Click the link to go download SEO Toolbar

Aaron Wall, writer of SEOBook, is one of my favorite people to read.  His blog, SEOBook Blog, is filled with great information about search engine optimization.  He’s a leader in his field, and on top of that, a very good writer who makes the subject very interesting.  Today I have a new reason to rave about Mr. Wall.  He has released a new SEO Tool for Firefox, called SEO Toolbar.

SEO Toolbar takes many features from older SEO Book tools, and incorporates them into a brand new consolidated toolbar for Firefox.  I am a daily user of SEO for Firefox, which is included.  Also included is an updated version of Rankchecker for Firefox.  However, merely including already-powerful tools is not enough.  Aaron Wall has improved the core functionality of SEO for Firefox.  I will definitely use the ability to cross-compare sites in Firefox, and relish the ability to export it to Excel CSV.  These tools will allow my day-to-day SEO campaigns to be put under even closer scrutiny.  Stuff I don’t use as much (yet!) has been included, such as RSS feed of popular SEO blogs, an SEO dictionary, competitive research tools, Google SK Tool integration, and more.

Lastly, the software is completely free!  No hassle-ware or other widgets begging me to hand my credit card to the publisher.  It’s truly a great asset to the community, much like its creator.