I’m not much of a web designer, so I don’t always recognize when a website truly looks great. That said, after almost fifteen years of programming and developing websites, I do recognize when one looks downright awful.

When I personally develop web applications, I have only one real design goal: Keep it simple. After recently looking over what I’ve done so far with the nfpchart.com application, I realize I’ve fallen far short of that goal.

In both the application and the blog, you’ll notice I’ve begun removing many of the thick rounded borders around various elements of the pages. Most of them were unnecessary, so getting rid them is a good thing.

Although my primary focus right now is on adding new functionality to the application, I’ll also be keeping an eye out for ways to simplify the look and feel. Visitors to the site should expect frequent changes.

As always, comments, criticisms, and suggestions are welcome. Fire away!

For several hours yesterday, visitors trying to sign into the nfpchart.com application using the Sign in with Yahoo! link were receiving the following error message:

Sorry, the OpenID server couldn’t be found

After some trial and error on my part, it appeared Yahoo! stopped responding to OpenID server requests at one domain but was still responding on another. I updated the domain name in the application, and it seems to be working properly now.

One of the features I’ve been developing will allow accounts to be associated with more than one OpenID. The feature was intended for spouses who want to sign into their accounts with their own identities. However, when the feature is released, an individual account owner could link more than one OpenID from different providers, preventing a lockout if one server goes offline.

There was a bug in the charting feature that prevented a chart from being rendered if there was only one observation in a cycle and the temperature of the observation was left blank.

It’s admittedly an edge case, and perhaps I’m exaggerating to call it a showstopper. However, it wasn’t making a good first impression for visitors who created a new account, created a cycle, and then added a blank observation to see what would happen.

The bug appears to be fixed.

I’ve noticed that a number of people have already stumbled onto this site, and a few brave souls have even created accounts. Thanks for having a look around!

Development is ongoing, although progress has been slow recently, since the flu took me off the project for a couple weeks last month. I do have a list of bugs to fix and improvements to make that I’ll be tackling over the next several days. If you’ve already visited the site and found it lacking, I encourage you to check back every week or so, as new features will start to appear quickly.

In the meantime, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to leave them as a comment below.