antanova

Moving from Blogger to hosted Wordpress

2008-11-16T14:29:00.001Z

I’m moving my blog from Blogger to my own site, using Wordpress. During the move, both my Blogger blog and this one will look pretty average, because I’ll be using basic themes for both. When I’ve settled in to this new Wordpressiness, I’ll theme it up and I’m planning to use Wordpress to drive my whole site.

One problem I have had already was in importing my Blogger posts and comments to this site. Wordpress comes with an “import” function that supposedly imports from a lot of different blogging engines and CMSes, but I found that it didn’t work for me.

What I tried to do was import directly from my Blogger account, but Wordpress kept getting stuck showing one post and one comment imported, although those posts never actually made it to Wordpress. So, after reading a couple of posts on the Wordpress support forums, I signed up for a Wordpress.com account. Then, using the import tool on that account, I successfully imported everything from Blogger. With me so far?

Next, I used the “export” tool from that Wordpress account, exporting a Wordpress XML file with everything in it. It was this I tried to import to my this site. I say “tried”, because that didn’t work either. There was a problem with the permissions on my server forbidding Wordpress from creating the folder where the XML file would be stored.

A bit of Googling later, and I saw that this is a known WP bug. The temporary fix was to CHMOD the uploads folder to 777 - meaning that anyone has read, write and execute permissions in that folder. Right, so that done, at last I successfully imported all my posts and comments, not forgetting to reset the permissions on the upload folder.

And here we are.

Code bits: PHP date year box script

2008-11-13T15:44:00.004Z

Creating a warranty registration form for the proud owners of a new LCD panel should have been a very straightforward job. Well, actually it was, but that sort of interrupts the flow of this post a bit, so I’ll skim over that inconvenient fact.

For the ‘date of purchase’ field, I simply added the day and months items as <select> form controls. Then I got to the ‘year’ box, and realised that soon we’ll be leaving 2008 behind like a piece of temporal rubbish, and embracing the glistening newborn that will be 2009. I know the client wouldn’t really appreciate having to come back to me a month after his site goes live just so I can add a new year to the form, so I decided on the only sensible course of action a quality web designer like me could take, and made a super-simple php script to write the year into the form.

Here’s the php function:

function writePurchaseYear()
{
    $currentDate = getDate();
    $currentYear = $currentDate['year'];
    $startYear = 2008;
    $output = "<option value=\"2008\">2008</option>\n";

    if($currentYear - $startYear > 0)
    {
        for($i = $currentYear; $i >= $startYear; $i--)
        {
            $output = $output . "<output value=\"$i\">$i</option>\n";
        }
    }
    echo $output;
}

So, put that somewhere on the page that’s going to use it, and then, where you need the actual form control to be on the page, you need to put:

<select name="purchaseyear" id="purchaseyear">
    <option selected>----</option>
    <?php writePurchaseYear();?>             
</select>

So there you have it. HTH, and all that.

Off-topic: A perfect pen for left-handers

2008-10-31T09:34:00.000Z

While hardly anything to do with web development, I thought I’d post this for the despairing left-handers out there. I’d almost given up on finding a writing tool that I liked the feel of and that didn’t cover the bottom edge (little finger side) of my left hand with grey. The Internet came to the rescue, as ever. I found a few recommendations for pens that dry quickly, including the highly rated Pilot G2 gel pen.

I’d tried gel pens before, but had never been that pleased with them. Whether it was the sometimes scratchy feel of the nib on the paper compared to a biro, or the way that the ink often simply stopped coming for a few letters, I don’t know.

Encouragingly, even though there were few mentions of it online, the Uni-Ball Jetstream seemed to be the answer for a left-hander. So I gave it a try. It’s great! Now I can take notes at meetings without coming out looking like I’ve changed the toner on all their printers. The texture’s good, too. The only catch is the price. They’re a lot more expensive than your bog-standard Bic, but worth it.

IE6 bullet aligned to bottom of list-item (LI)

2008-09-18T13:43:00.001+01:00

I just thought I’d jot this down for posterity as I’ve seen it before but not often enough for me to remember the solution. Posting this should help that, though.

When using LI in IE6, if the LI has hasLayout activated, then the corresponding bullet will be aligned to the bottom of the item instead of the top. Why the devs writing IE6 thought that this would be useful I don’t know. Or perhaps, it’s a bug? The shock of it all.

The solution is to target the LI and to disable hasLayout. The method I used today was this:

li {zoom:0;}

This directly countermands the zoom:1; I had added to other elements to get the page to hang together in IE6.

Google Chrome

2008-09-04T19:46:00.001+01:00

As you will of course be aware, Google has released its new browser, Chrome. I’ve tried it out briefly, and everything seems hunky-dory. I think I’ll use it to access Google’s own apps. As for day-to-day browsing, I think I’ll stick with Firefox. After all, can I really trust Google not to harvest data relating to my web browsing? I don’t think so. Also, there’s no No Script available for it, without which it’s a bit difficult to block Google Analytics.

On the plus side, another browser is a good thing. It gives people another choice other than the dreadful Internet Explorers. Yes, and I mean IE7, too. Chrome uses the Webkit rendering engine, so there shouldn’t be any real surprises in rendering.

Let’s hope this comes out of beta soon, along with IE8 and we can start using some CSS3. How I long for that day.

ScreenEdit Sessions

2008-07-11T12:18:00.002+01:00

Well, that was a nice break. I’m sorry that I’ve been so long in between posts again, but hey - I’ve seen the stats and let’s face it it’s not going to make a massive difference to the server loads at Blogger, is it?

You’ll be ecstatically happy to hear that since I last posted I’ve been on holiday to Portugal to see my best friend getting spliced to his most excellent girlfriend. It was grand to see them do that, and even better that I got to be the best man without having to give a speech! I did get one ready last-minute, but there was no call for it, so in my pocket it stays. Shame, it was bloody brilliant.

Last night I went to the ScreenEdit’s Sessions event. It was a good event: I caught up a bit with somem people I haven’t seen in a while, drank some free beer, and saw a couple of good talks.

The first was by two Mark and Tim from AllofUs. They went through some example of the work that that agency does and told us about the time they spent in Seattle working at Microsoft’s HQ as part of MS’s Artist in Residence programme. The second talk was by Brendan Dawes of mN. I’ve seen him speak once before, at Adobe Live last year, as you may have read on this blog. He was brilliant again: he’s just got that certain charisma that you need to get the crowd on-side with you.

Brendan talked mainly about some of his personal projects and showed some of his early work for club 18–30. It was shit. Thankfully he’s improved somewhat, and talked us through some of the experiments he went through to get to his Cinema Redux prints. These are where he processes a film and converts it into artwork. A couple of them are exhibited in MoMA in New York. I was very impressed with that, but also slightly scratching my head. I always do that when I see project of this nature. It’s not something that is totally inaccessible: for example, you don’t need to be a fine artist or sculptor. The whole thing hinges on the idea, that’s the key, not the execution. The reason I’m scratching my head is because I haven’t had that idea and wonder what might be if I ever had that inspiration. Would I actually follow it through and do something about it, or would I just file it? Anyway, Brendan inspired as he did last time I saw him talk, so I think I should go and see him talk once a month, just to keep that energy going.

A successful night, then, it seems for ScreenEdit. If they have more events like this, I will definitely go. I suggest you do, to.

Ace service

2008-05-06T14:43:00.001+01:00

I of course spend a lot of my time on a computer of one description or another, banging away at the keys, clicking and moving the mouse, and generally giving my wrists and fingers hell. This has proven to be an issue recently. I’ve started having pains across the back of my hands and in my wrists. Nothing major, but it’s a sign of potential problems to come.

I started thinking about why this was occurring. I have worked on computers for many years, and nothing of this type has happened before. I haven’t changed position even: I work at the same desk that I have for a long time. That could be part of the problem.

I did notice though that the left button on my mouse had started to resist more than before. I had to press harder to click. Even the slightest change in the force needed to click the left mouse button is enough to notice, because clicking the left button is something I do thousands of times a day.

I got in touch with Logitech, the makers of my mouse. They were absolutely amazing. It turns out that my mouse has a five year warranty on it, and so they would send out a replacement mouse for me. My old mouse was an MX500, and their suggested replacement was a G5 laser mouse. So, after a little exchange where I sent them a photo of my old mouse, they posted me out a new one.

Now THAT’s customer service for you. Next post: A new keyboard.

A new website

2008-05-01T19:56:00.001+01:00

I notice I’ve left a pretty big gap since my last post. I don’t know the reason why. I’ve been ticking over, and have been working on a few projects and have learnt some bits and bobs. I’ll have to reserve those for later posts.

I’ve had a bit of trouble with my son. He’s a baby, and has been a little ill with an ear infection. Although that hasn’t really been a burden time-wise, it’s certainly been a mental one. Thankfully now, though he’s much happier and getting better.

I launched a new version of my website last week. It’s an interim step, which is obvious if you look at it. Previously, all I had up there was a holding page with a contact form. Now it’s a bit better in that at least I have some blurb about what it is I offer, and some examples of work up there. It needs looking at graphically though; the logo is almost non-existent among many other problems. What will probably happen, though, is that I will get a load of project work in and leave it the way it is until next year when I’ll build a totally new one.

This has been very much a non-event of a post, hasn’t it? It’s what happens when I start writing a post with no clear idea of direction or structure.

Until next time, you stay classy.

solution #2

2008-02-20T09:55:00.000Z

It seems that there is more than one way to skin a cat. Ages ago I wrote about a mad IE duplicating text bug that would repeat bits of content lower down on the page. It had me scratching my head for a little while wondering how IE could be home to yet another bug, especially one this weird. My old friend Google came to the rescue in the end, showing me a cure.

Now though there appears to be a new and even simpler cure. The problem occurs when you have two floats, and comments between them. The solution I used previously was to remove the comments, but now it appears that another fix is simply to add display:inline to the css rule for the floats. I pretty much do that automatically now, to avoid IE doubling the margin around floats, so it fits right in, and means I can forget about removing comments from my code.

Code bits: reset / default stylesheet

2008-02-13T16:17:00.002Z

Browser inconsistencies are something that drives a sane web developer mad. For example, last week, I was trying to shoehorn a fairly simple-looking design into some html/css code, ready to be dynamicised (yes, I did just write dynamicised. Sorry.) Unfortunately, what happened, as always, was that Safari used a different line-height to everyone else, IE used a different heading size, and Firefox was absolutely perfect, because that’s what I was doing most of my testing with.

I come across this problem all the time, as you can probably imaging, and my solution is to have a base css file that I then modify and extend for every project. Doing that largely eliminates inconsistencies, or at least makes inconsistencies consistent project after project.

Eric Meyer’s ‘CSS reset’ stylesheet has been knocking around for some time, and is a useful resource to use or just to look at and understand why he’s done what he’s done. Anyway, he’s now given it a permanent home on his site, so there’s somewhere to check back for updates.

http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/css/reset/

Here it is in full…

/* v1.0 | 20080212 */

html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe,
h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre,
a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code,
del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp,
small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var,
b, u, i, center,
dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li,
fieldset, form, label, legend,
table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  border: 0;
  outline: 0;
  font-size: 100%;
  vertical-align: baseline;
  background: transparent;
}
body {
  line-height: 1;
}
ol, ul {
  list-style: none;
}
blockquote, q {
  quotes: none;
}
blockquote:before, blockquote:after,
q:before, q:after {
  content: '';
  content: none;
}

/* remember to define focus styles! */
:focus {
  outline: 0;
}

/* remember to highlight inserts somehow! */
ins {
  text-decoration: none;
}
del {
  text-decoration: line-through;
}

/* tables still need 'cellspacing="0"' in the markup */
table {
  border-collapse: collapse;
  border-spacing: 0;
}

I ordered the sauce

2008-02-05T14:50:00.001Z

Having just deployed the latest release of design agency Outburst’s website, I was again thinking about the order of source in html, and how I would put the content first in that site. I could use absolute positioning, but I don’t think that would work in cases where the font size had been increased by the user, or where the user’s display has a resolution greater than the default 96 dpi.

In a spare moment, I did a quick search and found an old but pretty informative presentation and article on exactly that, where they’d done a little bit of user testing. It’s so hard to find that kind of hard information I thought I’d pop a link up here.

http://www.usability.com.au/resources/ozewai2005/

People problems

2008-02-01T13:39:00.000Z

Most of the time, the people I deal with are decent individuals who just want to work and get their jobs done. Some of them are more than that: inspiring, charismatic, that extra bit of pleasure to work with. Sure, sometimes the wants of the client and the web developer don’t exactly match up, but usually these hurdles are fairly low and easily stepped over.

Now though, I come to the exception. The kind of person who’s like oil to your water. Like banana to your cod and chips. I’ve very occasionally encountered this type, and have found that although decent, honest and all the rest of it, for some reason they grate, irritate, depress, and suck you into a sullen grey world.

The big question though, is when I come upon someone who has this effect on me, how do I deal with him? I can’t answer that right now. I’m torn, between being a professional, and just working around the personal difference, and being a human, and not wanting to fill my life with stress and confusion. Thankfully, having dealt with one such person in the past, I’m able to draw a conclusion. It’s just not worth the anguish. Regretfully, of course, because who knows, I could miss out on a wonderful experience, a good contact and future work. But the risk — the risk! — when every fibre is telling me misery lies round the corner, the risk is too great to take.

IE7 width and min-width bug

2008-01-29T17:29:00.000Z

After a day of plenty of swearing, I seem to have found something out that I think I should have known about before. I’m posting in the hope it will help out some other hapless web developer and prevent some nasty monitor-forehead interfacing.

For some reason, I know not why, after making a small change to an html page, IE7 stopped picking up some percentage widths (for floated elements). After a lot of swearing, I found out that sometimes, to even pick up a width, IE7 needs both a min-width and width. As I was using percentages that was not a hassle - so for example the rule

float:left; width: 25.5%;

was having no effect: the width of the element was shrinking down to the width of its content, while on IE6, Opera, Safari and Firefox everything was fine. Adding a min-width thus

float:left; width:25.5%; min-width:25.5%;

Sorted everything out. So now everything’s hunky dory. I’m sure most of you will have known about this and I’m quite surprised I haven’t come across it before. That’s part of the joy of the job, I suppose: after the frustration comes the satisfaction of learning something new and solving a problem.

A night at the Opera

2008-01-27T20:58:00.000Z

Firefox has become over the years an indispensable tool for me as a web developer. Firstly, its standards support for css is very good, even if the current stable release doesn’t pass the Acid2 test. The extensions that are available for it are both numerous and useful, none more so than the web developers’ toolbar.

Trouble is, with all those extensions loaded onto it, it becomes one heavy browser. That means that when I’m off duty and just surfing around, I notice things like the pause between clicking the “new tab” icon and being able to type anything in the address bat of the new tab that just opened.

Enter Opera, a fast, light browser that until now had been on my machine just for testing. It’s so quick, sometimes I’ve finished reading a page before I’ve even clicked the link to visit it. And the back button is the fastest I’ve ever seen. Javascript-wise, it’s very quick too, just a tad behind Safari in my experience. Most sites work fine with it, but sometimes I find I have to fire up Safari instead, although that’s surprisingly rare considering its market share and my expectations.

May the force be with you

2008-01-24T17:29:00.000Z

CSS and the Force are not very alike. One of them is a dark art, taking a lifetime to master and needing super-human powers of concentration and persistence, and the other one is the Force.

Sometimes it’s frustrating to be developing a large stylesheet, only to find that part way through for some unknown reason your styles are not being picked up by a particular element. Usually, this is because it is inheriting its style from somewhere else, and it can be a quite a job to go back through the style rules and unpick what is happening.

I’ve just come across a nice little article that explains selector specificity very well, and it’s easy to remember. If you can’t, there’s even a poster you can print out to help you.

... and?

2008-01-22T23:04:00.000Z

Right, so left you there a bit didn't I? So, how to get from markdown to html? Well, I don't know how to run Perl, so using the perl on the markdown website. So I cast about for another version, and found a PHP implementation. This works fine: you just need to add a line at the bottom of the file - something like fwrite(STDOUT, Markdown(fread(STDIN, 1048576))). Then it's good to go from the command line.

I kept looking though, and found Pandoc. Now you're talking. This can output your markdown text as html, LaTeX, DocBook, and can do some conversions between those formats, too. It extends markdown with its own custom markdown too, but I think I'll leave that: the whole reason I went down this route was to avoid the all the extra work of tagging, and stick just to the creativity. So that's how I'll write for a little while until I can tell whether it's a method that works for me.

Easier writing

2008-01-20T19:44:00.000Z

I've always found that tagging blog entries with html a tedious task. I think it's something that should really be taken care of by the editor I use, but I just don't trust it to mark things up exactly how I want them to be marked up. Somehow, thinking about markup and thinking about content are two entirely separate things that interfere with each other far too much.

It's a problem I wasn't going to bother solving; rather I would have just left that particular dog in its basket snoozing, carrying on being slightly put off by the whole blogging process. Thankfully, while looking out for a writers' text editor for my wife to use, the answer came to me. From now on, I'll use Q10 (a full-screen, absolutely minimal text editor) along with Markdown (a 'humane' text markup scheme.)

Let's see how it goes...

Show some respect

2007-12-02T19:30:00.000Z

One of the attitudes I run into on my rounds of agencies and what not is the idea that the end client is somehow a pus-drinking parasite, or a worthless waste of skin. It's not the top brass that has this attitude, but is more likely to be the technical people. Forgive me if you're a 'technical person' - perhaps a programmer of some persuasion, or a system administrator or anything really - I don't mean you all. I've just come across this attitude from time to time, and I think it's objectionable.

I find it disagreeable on many levels. Firstly, to have that much contempt for another person who's only crime is to (brace yourselves if you're the sensitive type) ask you to do something shows a kind of mean-spiritedness that points to deep insecurity. Nextly, the whole point of having something you do as a profession is that you can do something that others cannot, whether it be attaching new brakes to a car, or writing SQL to pull some records out of a database. The reason you're in the job is to get paid for knowledge you have that the client doesn't. That the client is ignorant in your field of expertise is obvious. If he or she weren't, you'd be unnecessary. So have a bit of respect. They pay your wages, and you don't know everything there is to know.

Busy busy busy

2007-12-01T19:36:00.000Z

Well, that's my excuse anyway.

The truth is, I've been absolutely chocca for a while, and the energy and inclination weren't there. Now, though, it's back.

Export video from Flash

2007-10-01T21:52:00.000+01:00

I was creating a little visual animation for a client the other day. I was using Flash, because that's what I've got, and that's what I'm familiar with. No Maya for me: I'll leave that to the pros.

He wanted to create a little animation to present a brand concept to a client of his, and was presenting on a Macbook, so thankfully I had the exact dimensions of the screen it would be presented on. I started out with a quarter-sized version: half the width and half the height of his screen. His screen is 1280x800, so I did a test animation 640x400. The trouble was, it was looking a bit pixellated when blown up to full screen. No problem.

I did the rest of the visual at the full 1280x 800. Then came the moment to export to a quicktime file, so I could email it off to him. Right, so I clicked export movie to quicktime... and that was where the problem started.

The exported movie was rubbish! Even on a Core 2 duo machine, it was stuttering and stalling. It wasn't the playback - but the encoding that was the problem. It was time consuming to work around the issue. I exported the movie as an image sequence. Then using ffmpeg, transcoded that image sequence into a .mov file. It worked fine. This left me feeling let down by Flash's exporter engine. Why couldn't it simply render each frame out in its own sweet time rather than just bowling along assuming that things could be encoded real-time? I don't know. All in all, it would have saved me a lot of hassle.

Oh, well. Lesson learnt. When creating high-def animations with motion blurs and transparency in Flash, export to frames. I wonder if that knowledge will be useful to me again? Perhaps it's useful to you.

Thanks!

2007-09-13T19:32:00.000+01:00

Mix UK 07 was decent. I spent most of my time in Track 4. Unsurprisingly, I suppose, because I was helping out the Screenedit team here and there, and that was their track.

I would have been in that track anyway regardless. They had some good speakers on. The ones I caught were (thinking hard):

Tricky and Dr. Neil Roodyn
Hoss Gifford
Jason Arber and Richard May
Hugh MacLeod
Conchango
AllofUs
Seb Lee-Delisle

I think that was all of them. As a surprise, at the end of the last session (the "sneak peeks") session previewing some of the forthcoming Microsoft bits and bobs, we were all given a copy of Vista Ultimate and Expression Web Studio! Wicked. Thanks, Microsoft!

Mix 07

2007-09-10T15:50:00.000+01:00

Mmmmm... just as I though I'd miss out on all the events happening this year a last-minute opportunity came up to visit Mix 07 in the UK. I'm pretty pleased about that, I can tell you. If you're going down there on Tuesday 11th, then come over and see me: I'll be the one taking photos for the designer / developer competition. Why not enter? There are some great prizes.

See you there!

Improving communication

2007-07-31T19:10:00.000+01:00

Hunting through the inbox got boring, so I started filing emails into folders depending on whom they were from. Now, that's all well and good, but then when trying to follow a thread of conversation, including my responses, I had to look in the 'Sent' folder. Right, so... file the sent items in folders too. So, now it's much easier to find both emails I've received, and my responses. But wait - sometimes clients ring me up and we agree work on the phone. Now what? Make notes, of course.

As you can see, although it doesn't present the biggest problem in the world, it's a little effort each time you need to catch up on what was said by whom and when, and you've got to remember if you've made a separate not about phone calls.

A solution? Well, I've been using Backpack from 37Signals for a little while, and they offer another product that seems to be very well-received. It's called Highrise. It's a simple CRM tool that works verey simply: just BCC a special dropbox email address when you send an email out, and forward email received and it automatically attaches it to the relevant contact. So, for example if I send an email out to John Johnson with a quote, that email is attached to John Johnson in my Highrise account. If he doesn't exist in that account, Highrise automatically creates him. Then, he replies to me, so I forward that email to Highrise. That email is attached to him too, allowing me to follow my conversation with him. I can add timed notes, and group contacts by company. Tagging functionality is included too, so it's a very versatile system. I'm going to give it a go for a little while, and see how it works for me. I'll report back later.

Off-topic: Organ donation

2007-07-17T13:13:00.000+01:00

I was reading the BBC news website recently, and the Everyone ‘should donate organs’ story caught my eye. It seems that while plenty of people would like to donate their organs, far fewer are actually registered to do so.

So I thought “Why not register,” and post on my blog in the hope that someone else may take notice? So here it is. Register to become a donor here

WCAG Cheatsheet

2007-07-02T20:41:00.000+01:00

While making accessible websites is accepted practice by any web devloper worth his or her salt, sometimes we need help identifying exactly how to. The W3C's WCAG are here to help us, and our clients.

Trouble is, they're quite in-depth and long-winded. Thankfully now, though I found something on my travels that will help me tick as many of the accessibility boxes as possible. Remembering of course that making websites accessible is much more than just crossing off items from a list.

Here is is: the WCAG cheatsheet

Code bits: US states select box

2007-06-29T16:36:00.000+01:00

...and some more useful stuff. A select box, this time with the states of the USA listed along with their two letter codes as the values.

That site's a honeypot of resources too; I recommend reading it.

Code bits: Country select box

2007-06-29T15:34:00.000+01:00

Here's something that has been burning a hole in my library for a while and I never thought to put it up here. Thankfully, now I have realised that it could be useful to my colleagues around the world (although in this version the UK is selected). It was fully revised in March 2007 from ISO 3166-1 Alpha-2 country codes. Each country's corresponding "value" property is the two-letter country code from the ISO. Use it in your code freely, but please link here if you want to share the code with others. Enjoy...

<select>

<option value="AF">AFGHANISTAN</option>

<option value="AX">ÅLAND ISLANDS</option>

<option value="AL">ALBANIA</option>

<option value="DZ">ALGERIA</option>

<option value="AS">AMERICAN SAMOA</option>

<option value="AD">ANDORRA</option>

<option value="AO">ANGOLA</option>

<option value="AI">ANGUILLA</option>

<option value="AQ">ANTARCTICA</option>

<option value="AG">ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA</option>

<option value="AR">ARGENTINA</option>

<option value="AM">ARMENIA</option>

<option value="AW">ARUBA</option>

<option value="AU">AUSTRALIA</option>

<option value="AT">AUSTRIA</option>

<option value="AZ">AZERBAIJAN</option>

<option value="BS">BAHAMAS</option>

<option value="BH">BAHRAIN</option>

<option value="BD">BANGLADESH</option>

<option value="BB">BARBADOS</option>

<option value="BY">BELARUS</option>

<option value="BE">BELGIUM</option>

<option value="BZ">BELIZE</option>

<option value="BJ">BENIN</option>

<option value="BM">BERMUDA</option>

<option value="BT">BHUTAN</option>

<option value="BO">BOLIVIA</option>

<option value="BA">BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA</option>

<option value="BW">BOTSWANA</option>

<option value="BV">BOUVET ISLAND</option>

<option value="BR">BRAZIL</option>

<option value="IO">BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY</option>

<option value="BN">BRUNEI DARUSSALAM</option>

<option value="BG">BULGARIA</option>

<option value="BF">BURKINA FASO</option>

<option value="BI">BURUNDI</option>

<option value="KH">CAMBODIA</option>

<option value="CM">CAMEROON</option>

<option value="CA">CANADA</option>

<option value="CV">CAPE VERDE</option>

<option value="KY">CAYMAN ISLANDS</option>

<option value="CF">CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC</option>

<option value="TD">CHAD</option>

<option value="CL">CHILE</option>

<option value="CN">CHINA</option>

<option value="CX">CHRISTMAS ISLAND</option>

<option value="CC">COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS</option>

<option value="CO">COLOMBIA</option>

<option value="KM">COMOROS</option>

<option value="CG">CONGO</option>

<option value="CD">CONGO, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE</option>

<option value="CK">COOK ISLANDS</option>

<option value="CR">COSTA RICA</option>

<option value="CI">COTE D'IVOIRE</option>

<option value="HR">CROATIA</option>

<option value="CU">CUBA</option>

<option value="CY">CYPRUS</option>

<option value="CZ">CZECH REPUBLIC</option>

<option value="DK">DENMARK</option>

<option value="DJ">DJIBOUTI</option>

<option value="DM">DOMINICA</option>

<option value="DO">DOMINICAN REPUBLIC</option>

<option value="EC">ECUADOR</option>

<option value="EG">EGYPT</option>

<option value="SV">EL SALVADOR</option>

<option value="GQ">EQUATORIAL GUINEA</option>

<option value="ER">ERITREA</option>

<option value="EE">ESTONIA</option>

<option value="ET">ETHIOPIA</option>

<option value="FK">FALKLAND ISLANDS (MALVINAS)</option>

<option value="FO">FAROE ISLANDS</option>

<option value="FJ">FIJI</option>

<option value="FI">FINLAND</option>

<option value="FR">FRANCE</option>

<option value="GF">FRENCH GUIANA</option>

<option value="PF">FRENCH POLYNESIA</option>

<option value="TF">FRENCH SOUTHERN TERRITORIES</option>

<option value="GA">GABON</option>

<option value="GM">GAMBIA</option>

<option value="GE">GEORGIA</option>

<option value="DE">GERMANY</option>

<option value="GH">GHANA</option>

<option value="GI">GIBRALTAR</option>

<option value="GR">GREECE</option>

<option value="GL">GREENLAND</option>

<option value="GD">GRENADA</option>

<option value="GP">GUADELOUPE</option>

<option value="GU">GUAM</option>

<option value="GT">GUATEMALA</option>

<option value="GG">GUERNSEY</option>

<option value="GN">GUINEA</option>

<option value="GW">GUINEA-BISSAU</option>

<option value="GY">GUYANA</option>

<option value="HT">HAITI</option>

<option value="HM">HEARD ISLAND AND MCDONALD ISLANDS</option>

<option value="VA">HOLY SEE (VATICAN CITY STATE)</option>

<option value="HN">HONDURAS</option>

<option value="HK">HONG KONG</option>

<option value="HU">HUNGARY</option>

<option value="IS">ICELAND</option>

<option value="IN">INDIA</option>

<option value="ID">INDONESIA</option>

<option value="IR">IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF</option>

<option value="IQ">IRAQ</option>

<option value="IE">IRELAND</option>

<option value="IM">ISLE OF MAN</option>

<option value="IL">ISRAEL</option>

<option value="IT">ITALY</option>

<option value="JM">JAMAICA</option>

<option value="JP">JAPAN</option>

<option value="JE">JERSEY</option>

<option value="JO">JORDAN</option>

<option value="KZ">KAZAKHSTAN</option>

<option value="KE">KENYA</option>

<option value="KI">KIRIBATI</option>

<option value="KP">KOREA, DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF</option>

<option value="KR">KOREA, REPUBLIC OF</option>

<option value="KW">KUWAIT</option>

<option value="KG">KYRGYZSTAN</option>

<option value="LA">LAO PEOPLE'S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC</option>

<option value="LV">LATVIA</option>

<option value="LB">LEBANON</option>

<option value="LS">LESOTHO</option>

<option value="LR">LIBERIA</option>

<option value="LY">LIBYAN ARAB JAMAHIRIYA</option>

<option value="LI">LIECHTENSTEIN</option>

<option value="LT">LITHUANIA</option>

<option value="LU">LUXEMBOURG</option>

<option value="MO">MACAO</option>

<option value="MK">MACEDONIA, THE FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF</option>

<option value="MG">MADAGASCAR</option>

<option value="MW">MALAWI</option>

<option value="MY">MALAYSIA</option>

<option value="MV">MALDIVES</option>

<option value="ML">MALI</option>

<option value="MT">MALTA</option>

<option value="MH">MARSHALL ISLANDS</option>

<option value="MQ">MARTINIQUE</option>

<option value="MR">MAURITANIA</option>

<option value="MU">MAURITIUS</option>

<option value="YT">MAYOTTE</option>

<option value="MX">MEXICO</option>

<option value="FM">MICRONESIA, FEDERATED STATES OF</option>

<option value="MD">MOLDOVA, REPUBLIC OF</option>

<option value="MC">MONACO</option>

<option value="MN">MONGOLIA</option>

<option value="ME">MONTENEGRO</option>

<option value="MS">MONTSERRAT</option>

<option value="MA">MOROCCO</option>

<option value="MZ">MOZAMBIQUE</option>

<option value="MM">MYANMAR</option>

<option value="NA">NAMIBIA</option>

<option value="NR">NAURU</option>

<option value="NP">NEPAL</option>

<option value="NL">NETHERLANDS</option>

<option value="AN">NETHERLANDS ANTILLES</option>

<option value="NC">NEW CALEDONIA</option>

<option value="NZ">NEW ZEALAND</option>

<option value="NI">NICARAGUA</option>

<option value="NE">NIGER</option>

<option value="NG">NIGERIA</option>

<option value="NU">NIUE</option>

<option value="NF">NORFOLK ISLAND</option>

<option value="MP">NORTHERN MARIANA ISLANDS</option>

<option value="NO">NORWAY</option>

<option value="OM">OMAN</option>

<option value="PK">PAKISTAN</option>

<option value="PW">PALAU</option>

<option value="PS">PALESTINIAN TERRITORY, OCCUPIED</option>

<option value="PA">PANAMA</option>

<option value="PG">PAPUA NEW GUINEA</option>

<option value="PY">PARAGUAY</option>

<option value="PE">PERU</option>

<option value="PH">PHILIPPINES</option>

<option value="PN">PITCAIRN</option>

<option value="PL">POLAND</option>

<option value="PT">PORTUGAL</option>

<option value="PR">PUERTO RICO</option>

<option value="QA">QATAR</option>

<option value="RE">REUNION</option>

<option value="RO">ROMANIA</option>

<option value="RU">RUSSIAN FEDERATION</option>

<option value="RW">RWANDA</option>

<option value="SH">SAINT HELENA</option>

<option value="KN">SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS</option>

<option value="LC">SAINT LUCIA</option>

<option value="PM">SAINT PIERRE AND MIQUELON</option>

<option value="VC">SAINT VINCENT AND THE GRENADINES</option>

<option value="WS">SAMOA</option>

<option value="SM">SAN MARINO</option>

<option value="ST">SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE</option>

<option value="SA">SAUDI ARABIA</option>

<option value="SN">SENEGAL</option>

<option value="RS">SERBIA</option>

<option value="SC">SEYCHELLES</option>

<option value="SL">SIERRA LEONE</option>

<option value="SG">SINGAPORE</option>

<option value="SK">SLOVAKIA</option>

<option value="SI">SLOVENIA</option>

<option value="SB">SOLOMON ISLANDS</option>

<option value="SO">SOMALIA</option>

<option value="ZA">SOUTH AFRICA</option>

<option value="GS">SOUTH GEORGIA AND THE SOUTH SANDWICH ISLANDS</option>

<option value="ES">SPAIN</option>

<option value="LK">SRI LANKA</option>

<option value="SD">SUDAN</option>

<option value="SR">SURINAME</option>

<option value="SJ">SVALBARD AND JAN MAYEN</option>

<option value="SZ">SWAZILAND</option>

<option value="SE">SWEDEN</option>

<option value="CH">SWITZERLAND</option>

<option value="SY">SYRIAN ARAB REPUBLIC</option>

<option value="TW">TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA</option>

<option value="TJ">TAJIKISTAN</option>

<option value="TZ">TANZANIA, UNITED REPUBLIC OF</option>

<option value="TH">THAILAND</option>

<option value="TL">TIMOR-LESTE</option>

<option value="TG">TOGO</option>

<option value="TK">TOKELAU</option>

<option value="TO">TONGA</option>

<option value="TT">TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO</option>

<option value="TN">TUNISIA</option>

<option value="TR">TURKEY</option>

<option value="TM">TURKMENISTAN</option>

<option value="TC">TURKS AND CAICOS ISLANDS</option>

<option value="TV">TUVALU</option>

<option value="UG">UGANDA</option>

<option value="UA">UKRAINE</option>

<option value="AE">UNITED ARAB EMIRATES</option>

<option value="GB" selected>UNITED KINGDOM</option>

<option value="US">UNITED STATES</option>

<option value="UM">UNITED STATES MINOR OUTLYING ISLANDS</option>

<option value="UY">URUGUAY</option>

<option value="UZ">UZBEKISTAN</option>

<option value="VU">VANUATU</option>

<option value="VE">VENEZUELA</option>

<option value="VN">VIET NAM</option>

<option value="VG">VIRGIN ISLANDS, BRITISH</option>

<option value="VI">VIRGIN ISLANDS, U.S.</option>

<option value="WF">WALLIS AND FUTUNA</option>

<option value="EH">WESTERN SAHARA</option>

<option value="YE">YEMEN</option>

<option value="ZM">ZAMBIA</option>

<option value="ZW">ZIMBABWE</option>

</select>

Many hands make... bad work?

2007-06-22T16:25:00.000+01:00

Sometimes a quickie is just what's needed. No talk, just something quick-and-dirty. It was thus, like some street hooker getting into a kerb-crawler's car, that a job came in to do some amends to a very small property site, and I said "yes."

The working files were duly sent over, along with a short list of amends to do. "Easy enough," I thought. Nothing, however, prepared me for the horror of opening up the html files and finding what looked like the untidy mess of innumerable freelancers that had been there before me.

The site was misconceived from the start, encasing the whole site in flash, and using pop-up html windows to show the "zoomed" state of photos. Oh, and there were also a couple more pop-ups for good measure with actual content within, laid out using tables, of course. It was these pop-ups that I had to amend. They had used a mish-mash of inline attributes (bgcolor), a linked stylesheet that was not there any more, another linked stylesheet, and styles contained within <style> tags (two sets of.)

That wasn't even the worst of it. some table cells had background colours applied to them, which I had to change. Now, when I went to do that, i found the following unbelievable combination: each <td> tag had bgcolor. Then, when I'd deleted that, there was another colour coming from somehwere. It was bgcolor within the <tr> tag. Then, there was style coming from a styled <td> who's style was declared in one of the <style> sections in the head of the document. Lastly (are we there already?) there was style applied from a linked stylesheet to a td belonging to a table with a class of "indtable". Wow. Stunning job there, from all the freelancers that had been there before me. So, with all that junk cleared out, I applied the new colours through the linked stylesheet.

I don't really know what the moral of the story is. I suppose, the freelancers who had been there before me should have known better. The client actually has web developers in house, so they are not blameless here, either. I'm going to tell the client what I found, but I'm afraid it will fall on deaf ears: my contact is non-technical, and I'm sure that means the message won't be passed on effectively, if at all. The web development community as a whole must do more to educate our clients, or horrible stuff like this will just go on and on.

Book Review: Life's a Pitch

2007-06-19T19:53:00.000+01:00

Browsing round my local Borders waiting for a title to jump out at me wasn't the most constructive way to find a friend's birthday present, but it was all I could come up with at the time. I'd strolled around the fiction, sped through the kids' section, looked quickly at the computer corner (for myself, looking for the new ActionScript book by Colin Moock) and was around the strange juncture of religion, self-help and business books. And there is was, sitting on a table with a few other books that for some reason Borders had deigned to lay out on a table, rather than on the shelves.

Now normally I don't go for business books, but something about the look of it encouraged me to pick it up. Perhaps it was the subtitle: "How to be businesslike with your emotional life and emotional with your business life" Flicking through it tempted me enough to buy it.

It's about pitching, unsurprisingly, but more unexpectedly it's broadly about self presentation, persuasion, and being passionate about whatever you do. Divided into two parts, one by each author, the first part is presented as lots of short chapters each addressing a different aspect of "the pitch". It's written pithily in short paragraphs with a round-up of the points made at the end of each chapter. The language is simple and direct: exactly what I'm after.

The second part is much more literate and philosophical. It talks about historical figures and how they used their own brand of persuation and the art of the pitch to convince their contemporaries. It's packed full of references, and where the first part is concise and direct, this part is erudite and impressive in the breadth of its references.

I was really surprised with this book that I liked it as much as I did. On the face of it it's just about getting your own way, but I found that I could really get something much more from it: about finding what makes me passionate about what I do, and about pushing myself forward with that passion.

Life's a Pitch by Stephen Bayley & Roger Mavity

Ta-dah!

2007-06-19T16:25:00.001+01:00

Old dog new tricks, leopard changing spots, yadda yadda yadda. Here we are with a new Blogger skin. Bigger text, and a more fluid layout. So let me know what you think of it.

Technorati: Blog, design

Further into the bush

2007-06-12T15:56:00.000+01:00

... more on the Safari-on-Windows business. As a developer, it's great to be able to debug scripts - which not entirely coincidentally is what this post is about. You can enable the debug menu in Safari on Windows by simply editing a text file. So go on, do it.

Technorati Web development browsers safari

Apples and Oranges

2007-06-12T09:50:00.000+01:00

I thought it was a fantastical dream. I thought it was a myth. I thought it was the dragon, the fairy, the unicorn. Buy it's not.

Yes, Safari is now available on Windows.

Brilliant. I'm not some kind of Apple junkie, so I'm not praising it because I've always wanted to use it as my browser, but by God it makes my life easier. No more scrabbling round to a Mac to look at a development version of whatever site I'm building at the time. No need to fire up VM Ware with KDE just so I can get a Web Kit rendition of a site to check for bugs. No. Now, it's just a click away, on my main development machine. Absolutely marvellous.

Thank you Apple!

Technorati: Web development browsers safari

The Passion of the Crosse

2007-06-08T16:30:00.000+01:00

I'm reading a great book at the moment. It's called "Life's a Pitch" and it's - as you would expect - largely about pitching. What I love about this book though is that it's not all about pitching. It's about life too. About being passionate, taking risks, being charismatic, and building confidence.

It's presented really nicely - I'll stop now. I'll wait until it's finished and then I'll review it. Do we have a deal?

Technorati: Books business off-topic

Adobe Live day 2

2007-06-07T09:14:00.001+01:00

So, I went back for more. Today had a different feel for me, though. For a start I didn't have to queue up outside because I'd arrived slightly earlier. In good time to catch the first speaker of the day that I wanted to see: Hillman Curtis.

I saw him speak at Flash on the Beach, six months ago. Parts of the talk were the same: thankfully only the best bits. He was talking about portraits he did of dancers for a gallery in New York. It's good to hear someone with his profile talk about his work and his motivation and his background. He's a good speaker, engaging and warm.

Next up was Neville Brody. There was more than a full house to listen to his talk. The event had to be streamed into the next conference room because too many people wanted to see him. Luckily for me, I managed to bad a front-row seat for the live show ;o)

It's great listening to Neville speak. He's an inspirational figure for me: I got through university practically on the strength of "The Graphic Language" books alone. Again, rather than talk about technique or process, he talked a bit about his background, and about the designer's role as representative of the public when facing the client. And about being brave. I could listen to him for ages - even though he's not what I'd call a natural speaker, his manner and the content of what he's got to say carry a lot of weight and also just seems worth listening to.

The last speaker I saw was Brendan Dawes of mN. Another interesting figure. He's a charismatic presenter, and in common with the other speakers I saw today his passion shines through the talk. His talk was billed as a 'web showcase', although really it was about where to get the inspiration to make a good experience great. The answer according to Brendan is certainly not sitting in front of a computer. He was very convincing, and I'm glad I hung around for his talk: I was tossing up whether to go home or whether to go to his talk, when I thought I'd take a look in his book "Analog In, Digital Out" to see if it would help me decide. After flicking through, I though "I'm staying for that."

N.B. Book links are Amazon Associates links.

Technorati: Adobe Live 07

Adobe Live 2007 day 1

2007-06-05T18:08:00.000+01:00

I've just got back from this large live advert for Adobe CS3. The keynote was OK, the guys from Adobe showcasing the tighter integration of the CS3 suite now that the former Macromedia and Adobe apps are now under one roof. It looks like the work flow is much improved over the combination of CS2 and Studio 8.

I won't re-hash all that content here, as it's available lots of places elsewhere on the web. I will say though that I think there are some nice nifty touches in there that will help smooth away some of the awkward parts of the typical web build work flow. For example, the ability of Dreamweaver to remember the source PSD and optimisation settings of each image. In the properties box, click on the little Ps icon and you're taken right back to the PSD file which you can edit, then paste straight into Dw using the same optimisation settings you previously used. You can directly import the PSD into Dw, too. When you try, a Fireworks optimisations box pops up and lets you set your ideal settings for the web image format of your choice. It's great.

There are loads of little improvements like this across the whole suite of applications. The real test will be in the field, as ever. On the whole, positive.

There were a few familiar faces around the place today. Jon Harris and John Allwright from Microsoft (who didn't have a public presence there) and John Davies from Flash on the Beach too. Between sessions I even got to go and browse some Japanese art at a nearby gallery on Camden Town Passage. I'm looking forward to going again tomorrow. Maybe I'll buy something. If I do, it'll have to be Japanese art, because there didn't seem to be anywhere to buy CS3 in there.

Technorati: Adobe Live 07 Adobe events tools cs3

Sins: Don't break the back-button

2007-05-21T17:56:00.000+01:00

I was looking at the website of a local design agency the other day. I've worked with them in the past creating a few small sites. Their previous website was quite a nice, quirky html site that I thought served them well. Now, they've moved to a 100% flash site for some reason. It's a mystery to me, because they have some full-time web developers working there. I can only assume that the marketeers there saw that they could have lots of motion and thought that would be a good idea.

It reminded me of an old chestnut that needs re-hashing: don't break the back button.

You may wonder why, if you include something similar within a Flash movie, you should not break the browser's back button.

It's a question of trust. Users vary significantly in their confidence when it comes to using a web browser. Part of the "deal" they have going is the consistent "language" they use to communicate with it. If you do something ninety-nine times and each time get a consistent result, then changing that on the hundredth attempt is like jumping out from behind a bush shouting "boo!" The expectation the user has — rightly — is that hitting the back button will take them to the state the screen was previously in. They don't care whether that's embedded in an object and not a separate URL. I'm with them on this: it's incredibly annoying to progress through several screens of a flash site, hit the browser "back" button and then be booted out back to a completely different site.

So don't do it. If you must have a completely Flash-based site, then do it sensibly. There are several utilities out there for this. You could use SWFObject combined with SWF Address, but there are others.

Technorati: Usability

Styling forms is like milking a cat

2007-05-17T17:28:00.000+01:00

Eric Meyer has a good post on his blog, about the hoplessness of stylesheets and forms. Have a read if you're inclined.

Technorati: css web-development

Commuting in the Metaverse

2007-05-17T09:26:00.000+01:00

The Metaverse is already forming, we all know that. Whether it germinates from the seed of a an MMORPG (like World of Wartcraft) or Second life, we don't know. But in some sort of crazy-but-could-be-brilliant move, IBM and Sun are creating virtual spaces for their employees to collaborate in.

Sun's uses a custom system running on their intranet. IBM's is more interesting: they have a private island in Second Life, inaccessible to non-IBM employees. Why more interesting? Because although restricted access, it still exists is a "public" space, almost mirroring the real world.

At first I though "what's the point," but now I've come round to the idea that it could be really useful to use the virtual boardroom model. You could chance upon other people, talk to people aside from the main meeting informally, and do many of the things you can do when you're at the real boardroom. The trouble with the Metaverse though, is that the food's rubbish.

Technorati: Metaverse

Silverlight in the limelight

2007-05-10T10:21:00.000+01:00

Screen Edit has a great post about the buzz around Silverlight at Mix 07. From what I understand that buzz carries on within Microsoft itself; many people who worked at Macromedia before the merger with Adobe (such as Jon Harris) have now ended up there and so consequently that has had an effect on the vibe there.

I'm going to dig a little deeper into this Silverlight thing. It could be interesting.

Technorati: Silverlight

Return to Oz

2007-05-09T12:35:00.000+01:00

Here it comes again. Flash on the Beach 2007. Last year, it was a great event, as you will have read here or elsewhere on the web. They're going to have to do a lot to live up to that, but I think they can do it. What with the addition of fireworks. No, not the Adobe software type, but the real ones. You see, this year one of the event days is Guy Fawke's night. Cool!

Technorati: FOTB, fotb07

And the cows go

2007-05-08T17:27:00.000+01:00

"Lovely," is what I thought when I saw Moo.com. Ok, so it's just the website of a printing firm - and one that offers only two very restricted product lines. All that is fact, but it seems so much more than that. Have they cracked the secret of creating a great brand? It would seem so.

There offering consists of two products: mini cards (only 70mm x 28mm) and note cards (100mm x 100mm). I'm afraid all you history buffs will have to look up the corresponding inch count all by yourselves.

What's the secret? Well, perhaps part of the secret is in the simplicity of the offering. They offer only the two lines at the moment. They plan to do more, I think, but I doubt they will stray too far from a small simple selection. Another part of the appeal is that unlike many printers, one simply buys the cards in packs of 100. No set-up costs, no extras other than the postage. That means that although the per-card price is not cheap, the price of a run is low at £9.99 ($19.99 US). Which makes it something people can play around with. The simplicity is carried on in the design of the card: one side is for text. You can choose from a very small selection of about ten colours, and put up to five lines of copy on there, with an icon if you choose.

The real magic though, and the bit I have been saving until last is the picture side of the card. On that side, you can put a photograph. But that's not all: you can log into your Flickr account through the Moo site and select up to one hundred different photos to go on your cards! That's right, you can have each of your one hundred cards display a different photo. Amazing.

I was dead keen, and coincidentally needed some business cards, so I got together some images I had taken during the previous year on holiday and out and about (Taipei, Mallorca, London zoo and Watford). Cropping them down to fit the cards is something you can do on the Moo site, but in this case I decided to do it myself, adding a white bar at the top where I put my logo. I uploaded them to Flickr and did the magic on Moo.

When they dropped through the letterbox, I was well pleased! They are small but perfectly formed, and have a nice matt laminated finish on them.

Technorati: Business

Adobe live 2007

2007-05-04T10:45:00.000+01:00

I've just been invited by Adobe to Adobe Live 2007. I've signed up for both days and the developer day, too. Should be interesting, if only to see what others have done so far with CS3. Also I'll be hanging around the book stands, keeping an eye out for Essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock. I've got ActionScript for Flash MX: The Definitive Guide and Essential ActionScript 2.0 and both are great books. Unfortunately, I think the event is just that bit too early, and the book won't be available.

Something else I'm looking forward to is handing out my new business cards. They are the lovely mini cards from Moo.com. Beautiful! If you see me there, be sure to ask for one!

Technorati: flash Adobe Live 07 Adobe events

N.B. The book lnks above are affiliate links

stand up

2007-04-30T09:41:00.000+01:00

Encouraged by reading about it on Eric Meyer's blog, I took the ALA web survey. You could, too. Remember, the more people take it, the more useful the results are.

Technorati: web development

The spice of life

2007-03-23T09:58:00.000Z

Introducing a new version of IE was a very good thing in my view. It's hardly a panacea for IE's many frustrations, and should have been released about 6 months after IE6 was, but at least it's progress. The only problem with introducing something new is that it doesn't necessarily mean that the old version is immediately wiped out. It's just another browser in the web client mélange to test my sites with.

I have been keeping an extra-close beady eye on the browser usage statistics recently, specifically because of the roll-out of IE7. Now browser statistics are notoriously slippery. So down at Browser news, several sets of data are used for a variety of sites. And even then the results are seasoned heavily with salt and pepper.

So here's my round up, taken from Browser News. Gecko-based browsers have roughly 13%. IE has roughly 80%, with a growing 20% of that IE7. Nearly all the rest is IE6. KHTML-based browsers such as Safari and Konqueror (a browser used by KDE on some Linux systems) at roughly 3%.

On screen resolution has 800x600 at 15%, and nearly everyone else on 1024x768. What do we do with these results?

My answer is to rate the importance of having a site work “as intended” on various browsers. No browser should be excluded from finding the content of the site: that is to say that there should be no element of the substance of a site that excludes people because for example they have JavaScript turned off, or they are using IE5. While these people should be able to access the full content of the site, there is no need for you to spend a disproportionate amount of effort making your site perform or look identical to the modern browsers. You've heard it all before – allow access to content, but then enhance functionality and the look of the site as the features become available in newer or better browsers. A full experience should be available to people using IE6, IE7, Gecko-based browsers and KHTML based browsers, too.

Technorati: Web development

Licensed to.... ?

2007-02-02T10:45:00.000Z

Hmmm... I want to install Microsoft Expression Web on my laptop, as well as my desktop. Now, Adobe lets you do this with tools such as Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop - you can find this out in their EULAs. So, I started looking for the EULA of Expression Web. On the box it says "to read the license terms, go to www.microsoft.com/useterms" so I did. But Expression Web is not there. SO I looked on the Expression website. Not there, either. Looked in the FAQ - guess what?

Right, so then I started Googling around. And still no joy. So... any chance you can put the terms on your website please Microsoft? Ta.

Technorati: Web tools

MS Expression Web

2007-01-19T18:18:00.000Z

Microsoft has very kindly given me a copy of Expression Web, which I'll be using for some projects in the near future to evaluate it. So far, I've made a couple of click-throughs using their coincidently familiar sounding DWT (Dynamic Web Template) files. Hmmm.. wonder where they got that idea from. Anyway, initial impressions are good. The design rendering I'm especially pleased with – I imagine they've just plugged it straight into IE6, or if you have it, IE7. It seems to write pretty clean CSS too. Anyway, I'll report back when I've done something more substantial with it.

Technorati: HTML, Web tools

Happy New Year!

2007-01-01T00:00:00.000Z

Happy New Year! Here's to 2007!

Technorati: Happy New Year

Taking the plunge with ActionScript 3 and Flex

2006-12-22T18:13:00.000Z

We're all winding down for Christmas now, of course. A week of pies, roasts and more cheese than you can wave a fat-filled sausage-like finger at. But there is an ache in my heart. Ever since going to FOTB, I have seen the power of AS3 and the Flash 9 player, and I want a piece of the action.

So what I've done is downloaded the Flex framework SDK from Adobe. It's free, and you get everything you need to build Flash 9 swfs except the skill. Wish me luck. I may be some time.

Technorati: fotb06, FOTB, as3, flash

Speakers@fotb06

2006-12-14T14:52:00.000Z

OK, this post is going to be completely boring to most (ignores heckle about usual quality of blog posts). It's really a reminder for myself.

The speakers I saw at Flash on the Beach were:

Mike Downey	Keynote
Craig Swann	..and now for something completely different.. / Notes
Branden Hall	Explorations with ActionScript 3 / Notes
Nicolas Cannasse	Revolution 2 / Notes
Erik Natzke	Keep interest(ed) / Link
Snow Dowd & Robert Reinhardt	Writing your way to the top / Notes
Jon Harris	Check out my expression
Edwin van Rijkom	Screenweaver HX
Hillman Curtis	Hillman on video
Geoff Stearns	Flash in a web2.0 world / Notes
Niqui Merret	Accessible Flash: Oxymoron?
Hoss Gifford	Creative evolution: behind the scenes
Peter Elst	JavaScript Flash - scripting your tools of the trade
Neville Brody	Asking Why?

Technorati: fotb06, FOTB

Flashed on the beach

2006-12-10T17:52:00.000Z

You'll no doubt have already read the hundreds of blog posts across the blogosphere about Flash on the Beach. Well, it's all true. As far as I'm concerned, it was a great conference. Made great by both the quality of the speakers and the quality of the other people there.

What I was looking to get out of it I got. I went looking for inspiration and the enthusiasm to go and create some funky flash movies to push myself and to get a bit more familiar with flash. I haven't done much flash work in the last few months, so it's great that I've got my flash mojo back.

More blogging about the conference to come...

Technorati: fotb06, FOTB

Tools: C# to SWF

2006-10-16T14:20:00.000+01:00

I saw this a while ago but have only just got around to linking to it. Those of you who enjoy sharpened C will now be able to script Flash as much as you like. Just create the assets within Flash, assign them class names and/or identifiers, and script away in C# to your heart's, or brain's content. This tool will compile your scriptacles into a Flash movie.

Now I don't use C#, but I know there are many out there who do, and some of you may find the ability to code Flash without learning a new language handy. Here's the link.

Technorati: flash, csharp, dotnet

I told you so!

2006-10-05T14:34:00.000+01:00

Far be it from me to simply copy another website's content, but, err... here is yet another piece of wonderment from A List Apart. In a recent article, they list some lessons for those afraid of CSS and standards. A couple caught my eye: I thought they would be good ones for clients to read.

Here are my selections:

"It's not going to look exactly the same everywhere..."
"Longer lead times are inevitable"
"Working around rendering bugs is like playing Whack-a-Mole"

I think that once clients appreciate particularly the above statements, there will be a new and lasting peace in the website building world.

Technorati: css, standards

Blooming marvellous

2006-09-21T09:50:00.000+01:00

At last, the BSI has seen sense, and will hopefully help clear the muddy waters of website accessibility. I mentioned in my earlier post “Accessibility... for a price” that there were guidelines for website commissioners called “PAS78”, but that the only way to obtain them was to buy them. Now, like some rare bloom that flowers once a decade, sense has blossomed and the guidelines are available to download for free.

So I'm going to sip the sweet nectar. Stick around and I'll let you know how it tastes.

Your weekend's reading

2006-09-15T10:51:00.000+01:00

I've just had a look on A List Apart, and there is an ace selection of their earlier work relating to accessibility and all that jazz. In my professional life, it was this site and actually some of the articles on this list that first set me out on the standards crusade in 2001. Back then, my pleas were generally falling on deaf ears: "Please don't use Flash for navigation" became "Oh, that's Flash, don't get Jason to do it, he hates Flash". Et cetera.

Well, if you need a little primer on the why of standards and accessibility, you could do a lot worse than reading some of the articles mentioned in The ALA Primer: A Guide for New Readers.

As a secondary little piece of entertainment, if you don't need to read the background articles, then have a look at A Standardista's Alphabet. Might amuse if you're in-the-know. If you're not, then read the articles mentioned in the previous link.

Eee-aww

2006-09-01T20:00:00.000+01:00

What a week, what a week. Well, actually, it's been a pretty easy week for me, me reliving my junior html builder days. In a strictly professional way only, you understand. No late nights for me: perish the thought. An explanation: my client is using an antique server and doesn't want me to melt it by asking it do to... well, anything, really.

So straight static html it is. The only trouble with that, as I'm sure you all know is that common elements such as the navigation have to be repeated over-and-over. Thankfully, I use Dreamweaver MX 2004 for situations like this. Keeping the navigation as a library item means that Dreamweaver automatically updates all pages that use that item whenever that item is edited. Which is nice.

Ordinarily, I'd use a simple server-side include to hold the navigation (if it's pretty simple), but having been precluded from using that method, I used Dreamweaver.

Another thing I was reminded of this week, was my slight optimism when estimating the time taken to build such a site. Whilst as challenging as... eating, the site still takes plenty of donkey-work to manually populate every one of the 50-plus pages, and I am said donkey.

At least I now know where to buy a cheap server. Portobello Road.

We're off to see the Wizards

2006-08-27T11:57:00.000+01:00

Like a donkey walking up and down the same stretch of beach on some cold North Western seaside town, sometimes building website after website can leave inspiration a little used up. Plodding past the faded plastic and neon signs over the chewing-gum encrusted arcades day after day can leave Mr Donkey asking, like some trite actor, “what's my motivation?”

How, then, to inject some adrenaline into the creative arteries; to smother the encroaching malaise?

Go to Flash on the Beach, that's how! I've just booked my ticket, and I can't wait to get there. From my perspective, I'll be going to sessions on ScreenweaverHX, and haXe – the others I'll have to decide closer to the time (early December). It should be good to see industry leaders and to have conversations with other people in the industry. Networking, and gossiping about the state of the art, not to mention having a drink or two and enjoying Brighton's great nightlife will be the order of the (3) days. I look forward to seeing you there.

Client Education

2006-08-26T09:46:00.000+01:00

It's not rare that when trying to convert a client's nice Photoshop picture of a website into a real website, the needs of the end user would be better served by altering the design. The trouble is, the design has already been completed, and clients generally seem uninterested with excuses as to why their pretty picture has not been duplicated verbatim. By this time, of course, it's too late. The design has been done, and there is no chance that the client will revisit it for a reason he doesn't really understand.

So I was encouraged to read in .net magazine an article about Saatchi and Saatchi's re-design of the Royal Navy's website. There's a handy paragraph in there by Chris Walker that every client should read.

It's important to design with accessibility in mind from the start: attempting to reverse-engineer accessibility requirements into an existing design can prove time-consuming and painful. After all, accessibility isn't just a nice thing to have, it's a legal requirement of the Disability Discrimination Act. It also makes your site much better overall, not just for people who may have physical difficulties in using the web. Natural search is improved by a standards-compliant site and, more often than not, accessible sites are much easier to navigate.

So clients, get those spectacles out.

Polishing the table

2006-08-25T10:33:00.000+01:00

What with the oh-so-slow move away from using html tables to format layout, the table tags have been abandoned by the side of the road like so much rubbish. But wait! That's not right. You heard, that's definitely a Bad Thing (tm). Why? Well, they're useful for..... guess what. Laying out tables.

I have had to present some tabular data over the past couple of days. One set was a very simple table comparing 2 pricing levels of four products. The other was a long list of sporting entries. Both sets of data needed to be presented correctly and semantically with the table layout tags.

For those of you who've forgotten, here are the main tags.

<table> - the main man. This has lots of attributes. I used “summary” to write a very short... you guessed it, summary of what the table was presenting to the user. You and indeed I may need to add a “class” attribute, but we al know that one already, right?

<colgroup> - Use this to contain groups of columns to group a set of columns together in your table. This tag should be used just after the <table> tag.

<col> - Allows you to specify settings on a particular column. Use it with <colgroup> to create groups of columns in your table.

<caption> - A tag that unsurprisingly adds a caption to your table. I rarely use this tag, but then I haven't had to caption a table often.

<thead> - the table header. I used this to distinguish a group of <th> tags at the top of the table. This helps when printing out tables. After using the <thead> you must also use <tbody>.

<th> - the heading cell. I used this for only column headings for the sporting table, but for both column and row headings for the price-comparison. The important thing here is that you specify what the heading belongs to using the “scope” attribute. So, for example where I used the <th> tag as a heading for a column I used the tag <th scope=”col”> and where I used it as a heading for a row I used <th scope=”row”>

<tfoot> - is something I didn't use, but if your table has a footer, the <tfoot> tag should be used between the <thead> and <tbody> tags, rather than at the bottom of your table mark-up. This may seem a little counter-intuitive, but the point is that putting it there essentially at the top of your mark-up enables the browser to render it correctly for each printed page (<thead> and <tfoot> will be rendered on each printed page, with body cells between). In future, the <thead> and <tfoot> sections will be present on the screen, and the <tbody> section between them will be scrollable. Nice and user-friendly, that idea. I like it. The contents of <tfoot> will render at the bottom of your tables on screen.

<tbody> - Presents the main body of the table. If you need to group parts of the table body separately, but still within the same table you can use more than one <tbody> tag.

<tr> - row tag. If you don't know what this does, turn your computer off and do something else.

<td> - this is where it all happens. Table data.

There you go. Just a little refresher. After not using tables for so long, then having to present some tabular data, I had to scratch my head for a couple of minutes before it all came back, so I hope you've found this little session useful. If not, why have you read this far? Haven't you got something better to do? Get polishing.

The geekiest form of excitement

2006-08-23T10:01:00.000+01:00

On one rare but very appreciated tea-break, whilst sipping the hot elixir, I was idly searching for an OSS SWF-file generator. I don't know why, because I have Flash already; I suppose I was curious to see if those cheeky open-source monkeys had got 'round to it. Anyway, I happened upon MTASC, which is almost exactly that: it's an open-source ActionScript compiler. According to its blurb it's very good, which I'm pleased to hear. I may give it a try in future. But that is not the main reason for this post. Oh no. From that site, there is a link to something much more interesting.

It's called haXe. It's a language. But the interesting thing about it is that it's cross-platform. Not in the Java sense: it compiles to Flash, JavaScript, Neko (server-side language currently available for Apache) and desktop executables. Syntactically, it's “between Java and ECMA”, so it shouldn't require a massive re-train.

I'm excited by this. It's a new, fresh-for-2006 language that at least on the face of it could be hugely useful. Imagine building a web app where you can use the same language for the server-side processing, the front-end (AJAX or whatever), and any Flash elements. Then imagine you could easily port it to the desktop using the same language.

So, the enthusiasm is there. Now I've just got to find the time.

Bugger.

Product recommendation - "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide 5th Edition"

2006-08-22T19:49:00.000+01:00

After having been an avid peruser of the 4th edition of this excellent JavaScript book, I'm sure the 5th edition will be even better.

My 4th edition is looking a little tatty, so maybe it's time for me to upgrade. This new one has AJAX examples etc included too which was something the old edition lacked.

If you fancy a copy, click on JavaScript the Definitive Guide and I'll get a few pence. Hurrah!

Off-topic: AIDS vaccine one step closer

2006-08-21T10:06:00.000+01:00

I saw this posted on Slashdot and thought I'd have to add it to my blog.

Xinhua reports that the first stage of trials of an HIV vaccine have been successful, and now they're moving on to the next stage.

Pretty good.

Version Controllery 2

2006-08-02T10:57:00.000+01:00

After installing Subversion on my work machine here, I started clumsily creating a repository for one of my more complex projects using the command-line. Now I don't mind using the command line now and then, but with version control it's not exactly the best way to see which files are changed, which are new and which are old. Enter TortoiseSVN. This little beauty will sit in the Windows shell and act as a GUI for Subversion.

What this means is that I can clearly see which files I have modified since last committing changes to the repository, and performing most tasks in Subversion is as simple as right-clicking. Genius. As ever, more on Subversion and my attempt to make it work for me, later.

Version Controllery

2006-07-28T17:51:00.000+01:00

I read an article today about implementing version control software for website developments. I must say, I’d never considered it before. The notion of CVS was this vague thing that programmers did when writing software and that they were in fact, witches.

But this simple article was enough to make me stop the burning and start the learning: I’ve now just started using Subversion. Hopefully I won’t end up deleting all my projects thus leaving clients no choice but to assassinate me. I’d rather find it a revelation. More on this later, then.

Long time, no blog

2006-07-27T15:14:00.000+01:00

Unfortunately what with the pressures of the modern high-velocity lifestyle and my intrinsic bone-idleness, I have not posted to my blog for ages. Which is a crime really, although obviously that’s shaky legal ground I’m stamping on. But hey-ho and tally whatnot, I shall persevere and there shall be a new dawn of blogging emanating from my fingers, though I can’t guarantee the postings will be at all meaningful.

What have I done since my last posting? Well, I haven’t mastered the new Virtual Earth API (version 3), that’s for sure. In the main, I’ve been splitting my time building websites for property companies and building a site dedicated to rallying. I’ll not post a link to either here: the former because as they complete I’ll post links from my website anyway; the latter because until I create a new template, it’s just not good enough to represent me in cyberland.

That’s your lot for the present time. I promise to make more of an effort from now on. But only because you, beloved readers, demand it.

My first steps with Virtual Earth

2006-05-05T11:59:00.000+01:00

After reading about and playing with the great AJAX map offerings from Google and Microsoft, I though it was time to jump on that wagon and not be left behind in the jet-wash of the “white heat of technology” generator. “Eat my exhaust,” they’d shout, pointing at me like a cross between the village idiot and the Star Wars Kid.

So, knowing as I do that there is an excellent Virtual Earth resource called Via Virtual Earth, run by my fellow Remerger Dr. Neil, I thought I would head over there to see of they could learn me some web twenty. Specifically, the getting started part 1 article.

Thankfully, it’s written very clearly so even my smooth brain could understand it without having to re-read until my telomeres crumble into squidgy dust.

To re-iterate it somewhat, just create your web page, including an empty div with the right height and width for your map. Make the overflow hidden, and the position, if it’s not absolute, to relative.

Add links to the Virtual Earth CSS and JavaScript files (or, as they insist on calling it in Microsoft, “Jscript”) and your mother almost has a sibling called Robert. BUT here’s something they don’t mention in the article. To enable it to be Firefox compatible, which is essential in these days of seven to ten percent, you must add some conditional code. Here it is.

<![if !IE]><script xsrc="http://local.live.com/JS/AtlasCompat.js"></script><![endif]>

Uncle Rob, how we love you!

To find the longitude and latitude for me, I used www.streetmap.co.uk, then clicked on the tiny link under the map that says “Click here to convert/measure coordinates”. I found myself looking at a div full of blue. Realising I had made the classic mistake, I swapped the lat and long, and was looking at a map of my address, and a belly full of satisfaction.

A useful image browser

2006-04-06T11:07:00.000+01:00

I've just started using a nice little freeware Java image browser. It's really nice and simple and easy to use. It's called JIBS (Java Image Browser Sorter). It lets you rename images in a folder according to their EXIF meta data, de-dupe folders and rename selected images whatever you like. And lets you go through a slideshow at your own pace, and rotate the images 90 degrees simply and without changing the original image. Lovely. I thought you should know about it. Oh, by the way you need Java to run it. But you have Java installed anyway, don't you?

My colours to the mast

2006-04-05T15:24:00.000+01:00

Right-o. Let's get this straight. There are a couple of posts below that point out some of the flaws in IE. Now, I know there are lots of stories flying about on the web as to why Microsoft are evil, but I have no idea whether that is just propaganda or whether there is an element of truth. I don't have the time nor the inclination to look into it either, because at the moment, the Microsoft products that I use work satisfactorily.

Wherever possible I prefer to use free software, because it's... free.

BUT I do have a problem with IE not really being up to scratch for a modern browser. It not using many css selectors that have been around for many years and that are embraced by most other browsers is a pain when trying to build a site. And there are lots of little bugs. Its non-standard box model causes grief, even if it is better than the standard one. (I mean subtracting "padding" from "width" rather than adding it: it's more intuitive.)

So, I'll blog any bugs and workarounds I have to do for any browser; it just happens that mostly I have to use work-arounds for IE at the moment. Let's see what IE7 has to offer.

Don't be a slave to the machines

2006-04-04T10:30:00.000+01:00

I was validating some code at the W3Cs validator the other day and it occurred to me to share this pearl of wisdom with you.

I seems commonplace to me that web developers will crow over the accessibility of their sites after running it through the "Cynthia says" website. Wrong, wrong, wrong!

Those automated accessibility tools are useful - but more to show you where something it definitely gong wrong than where everything's going right. So make sure you do run your sites through it, and correct and issues that are clearly impinging on the accessibility. But once you've ironed out all the issues thrown up, don't then just assume you've got a perfectly accessible site.

The best way to test would be to get a group of people all with problems accessing the web - for example someone partially sighted, or someone unable to control a mouse, or someone colour blind. But I know it's unlikely that you keep a community of people with those kinds of problems in a filing cupboard somewhere just waiting to test your latest website. Instead, think! Use your head. Make sure that everything you can do you have done.

Even the simplest things will make a difference to someone. For example, if you use Firefox to browse, you know that you can enlarge text on screen by using "View -> text size -> increase". But not everyone can do that. If you have declared your font sizes in pixels, and someone looks at your website using IE (as the majority will), then they can't change the font size that easily. So, instead, just use this simple declaration in the "body" rules of your stylesheet. "font-size: 62.5%;" That will make the default font size 10px, from which you can scale all the other fonts in ems. Now, IE will be able to change font size using a similar menu.

That's just one little helping-hand. Basically, think about accessibility rather than devolving your responsibility to a one-minute check on an automated website. It can highlight some things that are wrong with your site, but not everything.

It's better to have a really accessible site fail the automated accessibility check than have a site that passes it, but is really inaccessible because you haven't thought about it.

Emico Rail site live

2006-03-24T18:25:00.000Z

I've just helped turn the Emico Rail site live. I didn't build it: I just helped do the amends to it to get it live.

Playing squash: file compression

2006-03-24T18:07:00.000Z

Well, I know it's not very webby, but it's something I was looking at today out of curiosity. Which format and tool do you use to make archives? I thought I'd post on this, because of the relative unpopularity of the format I have been using for a few years.

Remember that everyone has their own reasons and priorities when creating an archive. Speed, compression efficiency, and mass compatibility are probably the three main factors involved. Personally, I am really just looking at how much a compressor can squash my files down.

Zip is probably the best-known format. Give a zip to anyone and they'll be able to open it. But it's not very efficient. For many years I used the Rar format. It's a format that can compress very small indeed, and quickly, too. It's very popular. The only drawback with Rar is that you have to buy it, and you are reliant on Rarlab being around to get at your files.

A couple of years ago, I heard about 7zip. It's an open-source format, so you should always be able to retrieve your archived files, even if the author gets abducted by aliens. That also means it's free, which is nice. But is it any good? Well, the GUI is not as nice and friendly as WinRAR, and it compresses slower, but on the plus side, it supports a big range of archive types and has the best compression ration of all. So, that's reason enough for me to use it.

So give it a go.

This season's colours

2006-03-22T18:36:00.000Z

I've just updated the Antanova site, with its gorgeous new green colour scheme for spring time. There's still work to do on it, but all in good time.

One old chestnut that had me going while I was doing the update was the colour differences between pngs and other formats when using IE. The main head banner and the background of the navigation are two different images. I saved one in png format this time, because I've used a graduation behind the logo. For the one behind the navigation, I simply saved over the old gif image.

I looked at it with Firefox, and it looked fine. Popping it into IE was a different matter. The png was a nice saturated green, but the gif image had become relatively darker. That's no good when the images have to match up perfectly. It was then I remembered that I had had this problem years ago when working on some other site. But then it had been with a png and a jpeg. So, I saved the navigation background again, this time in png format.

Problem solved. So no big issue, then? Well, no, but the thing that sticks with me about this problem was that years and years after me having a problem with png (I think it was in 2001), I'm still having it. IE still doesn't support pngs properly (think alpha channel) without hacking away with alphaImageLoader and so on. Let's just hope IE7 is more sensible.

To make money, have an ugly site

2006-03-20T22:16:00.000Z

I found an article referenced on Slashdot looking at why an ugly website can be more money-making than a well-designed one. I found the discussion after raised better points about functionality, familiarity and content, though.

Added new feeds

2006-03-20T10:54:00.000Z

I've added Blogger's atom feed to my blog now, along with an RSS feed from Feedburner. So subscribe and you too can enjoy the anticipation of waiting for me to post.

When time allows, I think I'll get feedburner to merge all the feeds so I only need to offer one.

IE duplicating text bug

2006-03-19T10:26:00.000Z

Catchy title, huh? Well, I was putting the finishing touches to the Tricky Business website When I noticed something very strange.

When I viewed the site in IE, a bit of text was repeated underneath where it first appeared. I looked in the markup, and there was nothing there! It didn't show up in Firefox either. So I started digging, and eventually found this article about the "IE duplicate characters bug".

I had built the site with Dreamweaver templates, so I though my first port of call was to remove the template markup (lots of html comments). I opened up the site in Dreamweaver, and did an "Export without markup". Thankfully, it worked.

My only problem now is that I have to edit the site with Dreamweaver markup in, then export it every time I want to publish it. Bummer. Trouble is, when anyone else wants to edit the site, they have to do this, too. If that's someone who doesn't deal with site development regularly, then this is a counter-intuitive and unnecessary obstacle to have to overcome. At least this post may help with awareness of the problem. If I can stop one person head-butting his monitor in frustration then I've done my bit. Thanks again, IE for making things harder than they should be.

Accessibility... for a price

2006-03-16T18:13:00.000Z

First the good news: the RNIB in conjunction with the BSI have released new guidelines (called PAS 78) to help website commissioners and developers make their sites accessible. Which is a Very Good Thing.

So, I know what you're thinking. "Where can I get it?" "What's the URL?". You can't! You just can't! They're making accessibility guidelines "inaccessible". You have to buy them for £30 from BSI. And that's BS, if you ask me.

Come on guys, do everyone a favour and release them on your site. For nothing. Everyone needs to see those guidelines. Remember, the web's not just built by professionals. So help guide all the amateurs and make the web a more accessible place for everyone.

Got to get organised

2006-03-16T13:27:00.000Z

What with all the hussle and bustle that today’s web developer has to put up with, is it any wonder that from time to time things get… overlooked? I found myself in this kind of situation. After starting Antanova up, I found I had hundreds of things on my mind at once, and unstructured paper notes with no way to search them. For me, something had to give.

So I started asking around my colleagues and friends to see if any of them used any kind of notes or journaling software, to help keep them organised. No joy. So, I started Googling.

It led me to a few choices. Mindraider, Treepad, The Journal, Advanced diary, and Wikipad. Mindraider looks good, but a bit on the complex side for me. Treepad and The Journal look right on the money, but that was the problem: money. Things are tight. Not just that: Wikipad uses straight text files rather than a proprietary file format. So, just having been made open-source (and free) I decided to give it a whirl.

It’s a bit of a weird concept at first (I've never come across outliners before), so I had to read up on their site what’s what. But, as it turns out, it’s great! You get a tree view on the left hand side, and a text window on the right. Just type anything [between square brackets], and it creates a link. Double-click on the link, and it creates a new page, as a child of the first in the tree view. Just add any attributes to the page using more square brackets. For example, [date:20060316] will create a view based on dates and allow you to find that page by date as well as by parent in the tree view. It doesn’t just have to be date, either. Any arbitrary name is supported. So you could use [rating:5 stars] to enable you to find it by rating. If you use both date and rating, you’d be able to find it under either.

So far, so good. I’m able to keep to-dos and project notes in a structured and sensible way with it. I just have to remember to write up my notes after meetings, which is a good exercise in itself. I’ll see how I go with it, and post again in a while.

New Zealand Lamb

2006-03-14T17:14:00.000Z

Latest work to go live (this happened around 27/02/2006) www.theultimatelambsandwich.com

Unfortunately, because it was only supposed to be a one-page site, yet turned into this mammoth, I did a quick-and-dirty hacked-up-tables job, rather than a "proper" site.

That won't happen again!

Again... it starts

2006-03-14T14:20:00.000Z

Well, at long last I've taken the plunge and done it: I've started a blog. I was finally convinced that it would be a useful tool both to journal work and to help build a profile online: essential for my new business.

It's nothing special to look at at the moment, but I'll customise it in due course. So, here's to my next post.