Dealing With iOS9 Ad Blockers on Your Ad Sponsored Blog

A good article posted on Igor Kromin's blog, a blog I visit from time to time. Thought I'd share it here.

A new release of iOS always brings in new features and its share of troubles and this time it hasn't been any different. Since the iOS 9 release date on the 16th of September, Apple made available its content blocker API to developers. This brought out a deluge of ad blocker apps on the App Store, with some topping the charts within moments of release. This may be a welcome addition to many people, but something that many miss is how this hurts those sites and blogs that rely on advertising revenue to pay for their hosting fees. 

So I got to thinking about how to deal with this. I've seen comments stating that content providers should just suck it up and find alternative ways of generating revenue. I'm sorry, but this is the kind of argument that a zealot preacher would sermonise - all talk about how it should be without solid examples or direction about the 'better ways'. I would argue that for a casual blog, ads are the only real viable source of revenue.

Unfortunately there is no easy way to deal with this situation. The only thing I could come up with was to appeal the the readers' sense of decency by supplying a message when an ad does not load.

Read more:
Dealing with iOS9 ad blockers on your ad sponsored blog

VBScript / VB Syntax Highlighting in Sublime Text

Did you ever feel like programming that quick Excel macro in Sublime Text, but you couldn't because it doesn't recognize VB syntax out of the box? (Not that I like that much to program Excel macros, but you gotta do what you gotta do!) Well, thanks to this plugin, you can now enjoy Sublime Text for any of your VB / VBA / VBScript endeavors.

GitHub | VBScript package for Sublime Text

Download it, extract it inside your Sublime Text plugin directory, remove -master from the extracted folder's name, fire up Sublime Text and you're up and running!

Just when I thought Sublime Text couldn't get any better!

Fix Sublime Text 2 Scroll Lag

Is Sublime Text your favorite text editor yet? Make sure you check it out right away, it's awesome:

Sublime Text: The text editor you'll fall in love with

Depending what OS you're using, your computer's performance and likely a few other factors, you might notice that there's a slight lag when scrolling using the mouse wheel in Sublime Text. Here's what you have to do in order to fix it.

1. Click Preferences, Settings - Default

2. Search for "scroll_speed" and set it to 0. (It's usually set to 1.5 by default. )

3. Save and close the settings file.

By disabling smooth scrolling, we get rid of the slight mouse wheel scrolling lag we experienced until now.

Web Fonts for Your Blog: Open Sans vs Lato

As I was browsing around to find out which web fonts are the most popular and ultimately, which one is currently the best, I came across this blog post. It compares in depth 2 of the most popular free fonts of the moment: Open Sans and Lato. Both are looking great, but which one is the best?

Open Sans vs Lato : A head to head Comparison

How to Create Great Content

It's not always easy to produce content that is worth someone else's time, something that is worth posting. Sometimes you get it right, some other times you don't. The key here is to be steady and make sure everything is in place to allow yourself to create great content every time. 

When browsing the Internet, people need to get their hands on the information they're looking for as fast as possible. What does that mean? It means they are laser focused, impatient and have a very short attention span. What are the most basic things you can do to maximize your chances to satisfy these people and present them the awesome, compelling content they're looking for?