I came across a post on Web Resources Depot the other day about a JavaScript library called mapper.js that lets you add a hover effect to any regular image map. mapper.js even lets you export your image maps as SVG files if you’re into that kind of thing.

This was kind of a convenient find for me because I had just gotten done building a simple image map for a client site. The exact map, with the hover effect, looks like this:

mapper.js works by taking the coordinates defined in the image map and drawing a corresponding shape on an element you have wrapping the image (like a div, for example). It’s compatible with Mozilla Firefox 1.5+, Opera 9+, Safari and IE6+.

I stumbled into freelancing pretty much by chance. While I was in college, working on a Computer Science degree, I would get local contract jobs here and there for a variety of clients with no real relation to each other except for one thing: they had all been referred to me by someone they knew. With each successful job I was generating more and more word of mouth about what I could do and it was leading directly to more leads. I never actively advertised any of my services and yet people were managing to find me.

My very first big time project after I graduated was with an area minor league baseball team. I heard they were taking bids on a re-design of their site and its content management system so I wrote a proposal, had a meeting and won the bid. After the new site was completed and launched I began receiving quote requests out of the blue from people who had either seen the site or had been referred to me by the team’s staff. One project eventually snowballed into the majority of my current client base.

I put together this dopey little graphic to help illustrate my point that you can take one successful job and spin into a lot of future work with a little bit of luck and good word of mouth. As a freelancer, you’re more than capable of making a living bidding on job after job but once people start talking about your skills your reliance on job boards will begin to dwindle away.

I switched from PCs to Macs a little over two years ago. Aside from a little time spent in Linux, almost all of my web development work is done on my Macbook. I thought I’d take a minute today to show you the four applications I use the most when I’m working. All of these programs are highly recommended by me, but if you have any alternatives or suggestions that I should check out let me know in the comments.

Coda

I’ve written about Panic’s Coda before but I just can’t say enough good things about it. It puts everything I want under one window: file editor, FTP, previewing and terminal shells.

Without having to switch between different programs to edit, upload, etc. I find it much easier to concentrate and focus on the specific task at hand. Coda has done wonders for improving my efficiency when it comes to building sites. I use Coda every single day and that’s probably the best endorsement I can give it.

On The Job

There are a lot of options to choose from when it comes time to track your billable hours. There are even online solutions but I’m personally a bit leery of trusting someone else with my sensitive financial information. After a lot of trial and error I eventually found On The Job from Stunt Software and I’ve been using it ever since.

On The Job has a simple interface and is really easy to use. That’s exactly the kind of program you should be looking for when you have to do a tedious but necessary task like writing invoices. The best feature of On The Job, aside from the basic time tracking, is the PDF invoices it generates based on your time entry. I can have all of my monthly billing done in short order thanks to this program.

MySQL Query Browser

If you’ve read just a few posts on this site you’d know that I’m a PHP/MySQL guy so it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise that I spend a lot of time using the MySQL Query Browser.

A lot of people like to use phpMyAdmin to interact with their databases and I think these people are insane. There are also other desktop programs to let you do MySQL work but none are as cheap (meaning, free) and as well put together as the MySQL Query Browser.

Paparazzi!

Paparazzi! is the type of small utility that I don’t use very often but when I do it’s a very serious timesaver. With Paparazzi! you can take high quality full-screen screenshots and thumbnails of any website.

I use Paparazzi! a lot when I’m sending comps to clients. It’s especially useful when they want to see how progress is coming but I haven’t worked out all of the quirks for a design in Internet Explorer yet. It’s a great utility.

I want to drop a quick note of thanks to Elliot Jay Stocks for his nice tutorial on getting PNGs from application icons. It was extremely helpful.

For those in the affiliate marketing game, there is apparently a decent amount of money to be made using the affiliate program provided by eBay. The U.S. eBay affiliate program (which you can sign up for at Commission Junction if you’re interested) pays when visitors you drive to the popular auction site meet one of these conditions:

So that’s a really basic and simple overview of the eBay affiliate program. This post is really about what you can do to convert with that program though. For most people, the easiest way to drive traffic to eBay through your affiliate account is to setup an “instant store” using the Build A Niche Store software. It’s better known as BANS.

BANS has become incredibly popular because it is simple to use and has proven successful for a lot of people in the eBay affiliate program. When you install BANS you choose what eBay categories you’re interested in making a store for and the software does the rest. You can see a list of stores people have created on the BANS site to get an idea of what the program is capable of. BANS costs $97 and comes with a lot of perks for that price. It’s especially well-suited for those who don’t quite have the technical knowledge to manipulate eBay’s RSS feeds on their own.

If you’re one of those people who might want a little more control over their own eBay store there’s an alternative in phpBay Pro. phpBay Pro is an API for PHP that wraps around the eBay RSS feeds and parses the results for you. It also encrypts links and images from eBay which is useful if you’re concerned about security in regards to your store and search engines.

With phpBay Pro you can make a store built around keywords as opposed to the pre-defined categories available on eBay. phpBay Pro is also cheaper than BANS with a $39 price tag for the API alone. For an additional $20, you can also buy a WordPress plugin that lets you embed eBay auctions directly into posts on your blog.

I purchased phpBay Pro for myself over the holiday weekend to use on an idle domain name I own (it’s Nintendo Wii related, so it’s probably a good candidate for this). To give you an idea of how easy phpBay Pro is to use here’s an example of what the code looks like to pull down Wii related auctions:

<?php
require_once("ebay.php");
$keywords = "nintendo wii";

// create an instance of the ebay class
$ebay = new ebay();

// set the number of listings to display per page
$ebay->eb_frpp = "10";

// create the listings content
$ebay->listings($keywords, $category);

// display the listings
echo $ebay->html;
?>

If anyone has any experience with either BANS or phpBay Pro I’d love to hear about it in the comments of this post.

I get this question all the time from Windows people: How can I make a PDF?

There are dozens of tiny shareware programs that you can buy that will handle building PDFs for you. If you’re looking for a cheaper and simpler way then check out CutePDF Writer. This program is freeware and isn’t very difficult to install but it does require a PS2PDF converter (a link to one is included on the CutePDF site).

Once you have CutePDF installed you’ll notice a new printer has been added to your system. Now when you want to convert a document into a PDF you simple “print” it through that new CutePDF printer. You’ll be prompted to save the new PDF file somewhere and CutePDF Writer does the rest.