Seems I can't help myself blogging back every morning. So yes, again the "back" tag. That's about to haunt the day again. Today about the back button in your browser. Theories of usability are divided.

Some sustain that users worldwide are mature enough not to loose your site from sight once they click an external link out. In simple words for the coder and the designer of web sites: What to do with external links? Code them to open in the parent window or in a new window? The former will pass your site to history once the visitor clicks on that link, because another (external, alien, foreign, not-yours) web site will occupy the very window where you were just cherishing the clicking visitor's arrival and presence. Now you've gotta relay on the visitor's fidelity to 'remember' the importance of returning to your site. And then also on his or her perspicacity with the simple use of that top left browser back button, where the unforgetting user is supposed to punch in order to return to your site, where you actually want him to stay instead of roaming the web at random, ever farther away from your displayed work and business.

I'm back. New morning, new problem to fix. Or maybe the old one to re-fix. Yeah, just like some (few) clients used to: when you wake up early in the morning, then you ignite the computer, start your browser, load the project and haste in to write a mail to the developer, asking him to "move that back yet a little bit more"...

The "back" theme of my morning today will focus on fluid designs for web sites. It's that kind of menus, or columns, or divisions to be more general, that will shrink by themselves if there are lesser entries to fetch from the data base. And, respectively, will expand when more entries are served to fill in the allocated screen space.

There are clients who think they 'know' how it works to build that site of theirs. The more they think they 'know', the less they do. How to recognize such a client from the very beginning:

1. He will slap a PDF file at you and demand a 'perfect' reproduction of the design in the PDF over the web site. Anyone having an idea about web design and Content Management Systems, or CMS, will smile at that demand.

2. He will send you color data in CMYK.

3. He will force you to stack in there, over (almost, at best) every 'sub-page' that lorem ipsum text ad nauseum. Like no one but you are called to fill and fix the lorem ipsum, align them, bold them and craft few more paragraphs under fugia nullat pariatur...

You installed latest extensions, followed the recommendations on Joomla security checklist, locked won your config file - so you can leave your site alone - you're safe! Wrong. You must check at least one additional resource. Even most of the security-consciuscious Joomla webmasters aren't knowing the existence of this list, maintained at Joomla docs site. There are listed all components with known security problems (present and past versions!), and very important to know, the items once  appeared on the list aren't removed when the problem is fixed, because large majority of Joomla webmasters aren't upgrading their site as new versions are coming out for the addons used. So worth checking, even if the components you use are listed on GREEN - aka fixed -, you may run in trouble, because hackers are knowing the list (not as the lazy Joomla webmasters out there) - and are proactively seeking Joomla sites using the unsecure addons. So you will become easily a target even if you have the secure version...

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Vulnerable extensions list