6 ways to work better with your boss

6 ways to work better with your boss

A smooth working relationship with the boss can have a telling impact on your overall job satisfaction and morale.

We've all worked for the do-nothing supervisor who shoots down every attempt at independence from any of his subordinates. In such instances, you must strive to balance pleasing your boss and driving results. Here are some pointers on how to build a better working relationship with your boss.

Anticipate the boss's need
Nothing will appeal more to your supervisors than anticipating their needs. Instead of providing the boss the routine results (as others do), try delivering something above and beyond. Anticipate what will be required of your immediate supervisor. Move to meet the need before he/she knows the information is required. Anticipating the need builds credibility and reputation. This demonstrates a passion for the mission and an ability to develop a vision.

If you can do this consistently then you have opened the doors to greater responsibility. For example, if your boss asks for last week's numbers, deliver them with a chart showing the trends for the past several weeks and maybe even a forecast for the next couple of weeks.

Set up regular meeting time
Regular one-on-one interaction with the boss will help you understand his/her perspective and also discuss concerns. Don't wait for the boss to call on you. It's your responsibility to seek time and strengthen the relationship.

You do not need to be specific about the issues when you do this. Simply state that you have some concerns to discuss, and want to be sure that you will both have time to address them without interruption. Not only does this ensure that you will be given an appropriate amount of time for discussing your concerns, but it is respectful of the other person's time as well.

Communicate regularly
Communicate with your peers and especially those above you in different expertise areas. Get out of your silo. Develop a sense of what is going on in the company. Use your industry knowledge, expertise and experience to anticipate the needs of your senior management and not just your immediate supervisor. Find solutions for senior managers outside of your immediate department. Meet with them monthly for lunch. This isn't political; it is a discussion of the state of the business.

Demonstrate knowledge, expertise and make suggestions based on facts. They may not agree, but you have made it known you care about the overall company mission. The fact that you care about the business will get communicated to your boss as well.

Understand the preferred style of communication
Learn your superior's preferred style of receiving information. One of the best ways is to give them the information on the overall work status, whether it's a quick email, a detailed report, alternatives and evaluations of those alternatives, or merely a bullet point list of facts. It's important to understand whether your boss prefers emails, phone calls or meetings to receive information. This can be vital particularly when you don't clearly understand your task and need clarification. Communicate frequently but in the method that the boss prefers.

Don't waste their time
Lack of preparation is a killer when it comes to building a positive relationship with the boss. Don't waste his/her time; come prepared to meetings and also be flexible to set aside your agenda and update if they need to discuss an issue with you. Become their sounding board. Be prepared with your own ideas for a solution, and suggest them if you are not satisfied with the solutions offered.

Become visible
This goes against the conventional wisdom of letting your work speak for itself. While most employees want to work for a 'star boss', even your boss wants a 'star performer' in their team. Position yourself as a go-to person for him/her -- know that you might get assignments that are tough to execute because they have come to count on you to deliver.

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How to extract POST data in one line with php : extract($_POST);

How to extract POST data in one line with php : extract($_POST);

Here is a quick trick in php that can save you time when you retrieve data from an html form.

Lets say you normally have a form with name, surname, email and telephone number.

You would normally collect those informations in your script as such:

$name = $_POST['name'];
$surname = $_POST ['surname'];
$email = $_POST['email'];
$telephone = $_POST['telephone'];

Then you just use your variables in your php script. But things tend to be more complicated when you have more variables in your forms.

Just imagine that you have a questionnaire of about 50 questions, meaning you would have to write 50 lines of php codes just to get those variables.

The trick here is to use the build in php function extract. It would automatically extract the values and assign it to a variable with the key as its name.

I.e. value in $_POST['something'] would be passed in the variable called $something.

So for the example given above the code would be simplified in only one php line to:

  extract($_POST);

It sure save times if you have many variables, even for 2 it is effective. If you ever add another variable to your html form, you don't need to add another line of code to retrieve the value. This can also be used with $_GET also.

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Quick Trick: Linking Directly to Pages in .PDF Files

Quick Trick: Linking Directly to Pages in .PDF Files

Did you know it's possible to link directly to individual pages within .PDF files from a web page? 

Imagine you have a 10 page .PDF file on your site and you'd like to direct your readers to page 6 of the .PDF file. 

Creating a link that does just that is easy.

First, type the link to the .PDF document:

http://www.yoursite.com/my_pdf_file.pdf

Next, add the #page= data to the end of your link to specify the page number:
#page=6

The final tag in this example will link directly to page 6 of your .PDF file:
http://www.yoursite.com/my_pdf_file.pdf#page=6

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Flash: Xml File refreshing every 10 secs

Flash: Xml File refreshing every 10 secs

how exactly you used the setInterval function? 

all you need to do is: 

Code: Select all

myLoadInteval = setInterval(LoadFile, 10000);

function LoadFile()
{
   xmlData.load("http://www.crylounge.com/shoutcast.php"); 
}

The rest of your code remains the same. 

if you use your page on a browser, there can be a problem with the local cache. 
So probably your code works, but the file is read each time from the local cache ... so it doesnt change

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Building Joomla! sites from scratch, and systematically customizing them to your needs

Building Joomla! sites from scratch, and systematically customizing them to your needs

Building Joomla! sites from scratch.

A sitemap is critical to having a well organized site. You must make an effort to draft one before you start working in the administrator backend.

Joomla generates a page the instant you click its link. This means that the pages viewed can be easily changed by changing the menu links rather than the content itself.

Joomla offers two methods to organize articles. The first is to use uncategorized articles, which are suited for very small sites. For larger sites the second method of sections in categories needs to be used.

Building Joomla! sites from scratch.

A sitemap is critical to having a well organized site. You must make an effort to draft one before you start working in the administrator backend.

Joomla generates a page the instant you click its link. This means that the pages viewed can be easily changed by changing the menu links rather than the content itself.

Joomla offers two methods to organize articles. The first is to use uncategorized articles, which are suited for very small sites. For larger sites the second method of sections in categories needs to be used.


Making your pages with uncategorized content items is the simplest way to build a Joomla site, but it is difficult to manage with more than a dozen pages.


Sections and Categories
If I have many more articles than a dozen, using uncategorized articles isn't going to work. If I pick up the stack, I might have to flip through a thousand pieces of paper.

Joomla offers two levels: the highest is called sections, and below that are categories.

You can't put content items in a section; they must go in a category. This means that each section needs at least one category. Read more!

Printing the Web: Solutions and Techniques

Printing the Web: Solutions and Techniques

Users don’t read, they scan. In fact, after many years, reading online still didn’t manage to assert itself against reading offline. Therefore long articles are usually printed out and read on paper. However, not every page will be printed out correctly by default - sometimes layout doesn’t fit, sometimes font size isn’t chosen properly or leading simply isn’t big enough. It is also important to include some further references to the printed version of the page, so users can get back to you, once they’ve read the printed version of your article.
Good news: web-developers can control the way web-site looks on the paper.To make sure that no data will lost and the legibility of content remains optimal after the printing, you can, of course, use CSS.
There are many options and techniques you can use developing print layouts. Here is a quick overview of some interesting solutions you can use to generate print layouts “on the fly”.
Printing the Web: CSS-Techniques
Five Simple Steps to Typesetting on the web: Printing the webMike Boulton gives an example on how to design a nice print layout, which looks like print layout in traditional magazines.
Footnote Links: Improving Link Display for PrintAaron Gustafson presents a CSS+JavaScript-based method, which replaces all links on a page with corresponding footnotes. Elegant and extremely (!) useful solution.
10 Minutes to Printer-Friendly PagePrint-layouts can be generated with PHP. Marko Dugonjic shows, how.
From Screen to Print: Creating a Print CSS in DreamweaverThis article will examine how our layout displays one set of elements on the screen, yet when printed, prints a different layout using elements that do not display on screen.You’ll learn about media types and how to take advantage of them and using the cascade to create lightweight, compact pages for print. Since Community MX constantly tweaks its site, some things may be slightly different if you read this article a few months from its publishing date.
A Print CSS PrimerA detailted introduction and tutorial by Kenji Ross.
Print DifferentQuite an old article by Eric Mayer, in which he describes different media types you should consider designing print layouts.
ALA’s New Print StylesEric Meyer about A List Apart Print-Layout. The article is a “follow-up” of the article CSS Design: Going to Print, which was published in ALA 2002.”Say no to “printer-friendly” versions and yes to printer-specific style sheets. CSS expert Eric Meyer shows how to conceive and design print style sheets that automatically format web content for off-screen delivery. Includes tips on hiding inappropriate content, styling text for the printer, and displaying the URL of every link on the page.”
CSS Styling for Print and Other MediaIan Lloyd about the media-attribute and development of user-friendly print layouts.”There are many different media types that you can apply to CSS, some of which are more useful than others, and they let you specify the look, feel, or sound of the web page that is linked to the CSS files. In this section, we’ll look at the various media types that are available.”
Complete CSS Guide: PrintingIn CSS2, the page properties are defined by the @page rule, while several new properties help control page breaking. John Allsopp explains in detail, which guidelines you should keep in mind designing print layouts and how you use @page-rules such as page-break-before, Widows, Orphans etc. efficiently.
Printing The WebJames Kalbach describes common mistakes and discusses important aspects of print layouts regarding usability.”Consider how users interact with other formats and media, particularly paper, and address the reality that people print web pages. With a little planning and foresight creating printable pages is relatively easy and extends a positive user experience to paper.”
Dive Into Mark Print-friendly Linksworks just the way Footnote Links work, but also adds the URLs of Links in the brackets after the links.
Print-Friendly CSS and UsabilityRoger Johansson discusses, whether print layouts, which are different from the page structure, are user-friendly. Themaninblue’s post on the same topic.
Print to PreviewPete McVicar’s JavaScript creates a preview page with a warning message users can use to navigate back to the original page.
Printing Web documents and CSSJim Wilkinson explains, what print layouts should have, (e.g. the URL of the original web-page), which elements should be removed (e.g. navigation) and what how you should handle links, footers and headers. Also problems in different browsers are taken into consideration.”This document describes some of the issues concerning the use of CSS to reformat Web documents for printing (using the media type “print”). We also discuss those aspects that CSS is not able to control or even influence. We assume a good knowledge of CSS and concentrate on practical issues, given the current deficiencies in browsers in implementing print-related CSS.”
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