Accessibility isn’t always the easiest thing to explain to a client, but I recently found this useful clip from an old episode of the BBC program ‘Click’. Although this broadcast is over a year and a half old, I found it quite informative and easy to understand.
Despite making some loose promise to myself to kick-off the year with some server guides, I’ve only just got around to it. You can find the first here.
My first, in what I hope will be a series of many, is for a small server build for the home/small office. This covers the basics of a web server, which include Apache, PHP, MySQL, FTP and phpMyAdmin. In future guides I hope to provide more useful apps to install on it including wordpress, wikis, iTunes streaming, web radio recording, torrent client, photo sharing. But time will tell.
Why have I written this guide when there are so many other good ones out there? Well, most of those weren’t much help to me and didn’t usually tell me how to do what I wanted to. I had problem after problem which really made me learn how to configure a server. That’s good right? Yep, but some people don’t want to learn, they just want it to work - and I hope that my guide will provide some kind of half-way between these two, some learning, but something that works well too.
So although it seems like only a couple of months ago that Microsoft released IE7, it seems that IE8 has been slated to hit the tubes sometime around April ‘08. Now normally that wouldn’t get me going, but the rumors are, that it could be pretty good at fulfilling web standards. Now that really excites me! No more writing confusing CSS hacks, write for one browser, works for all, etc…
Don’t get me wrong, this is great news, but it’ll still take a couple of years before the websites we design don’t need to be compatible with IE6/7, but hey - at least it’s something to look forward to!
The one thing in the linked article that does concern me comes from here:
We must deliver improved standards support and backwards compatibility so that IE8 (1) continues to work with the billions of pages on the web today that already work in IE6 and IE7 and (2) makes the development of the next billion pages, in an interoperable way, much easier. We’ll blog more, and learn more, about this during the IE8 beta cycle.
So basically, they admit that they broke the web. But this raises a bigger question: ‘Can they really build a new browser that supports both websites hacked for IE6/7 and web standards…?’
Many web designers have long shunned the application of CSS within email, and I’m part of that crowd.
Like websites, email is one of those technologies for which the output must be predictable for the designer whatever software the user chooses to read it on. However, unlike web pages this is harder to implement. The differences in the way that the different browsers on the market implement CSS is definitely decreasing, even if Microsoft are still struggling to get their act together. On the other hand, the different email browsers have historically had a very limited success rate at implimenting HTML/CSS, and I’ve heard no evidence to say that this is improving.
Jeffrey Zeldman (another critic of HTML email) recently wrote about the Email Standards Project, an effort to try and get programmers of email software all pointed in the right direction. Now I’ve only had a brief look at the project’s website, but a couple of things concern me already. Firstly, the home page has a running list of how the more popular email clients perfom, and I question the accuracy of this list. Now as I’ve already said I don’t use HTML when composing an email, so I thought I’d give it a go. I use Apple Mail, and after using Leopard for about a month now, I thought I’d try out the Apple designed stationary. So if anything should work this should, Apple Mail is listed by the ESP as having an excellent performance, and I’m using Apple stationary that comes with that email client, and here are the results.
Hmmmm….
Secondly, until one or two big name email clients sign up to the ESP, this could all be a lot of hot air.
I really want this project to work, but don’t really have a place to start! Can I really trust the ESP when they give a grade of Excellent to software that can’t even perform with it’s own designs?!
Oh dear, I’ve written yet another negative post. I really don’t want this blog to be full of rants written by a grumpy developer, so I’ll try and find something more positive for next time!
Due to the ‘unique way that the BBC is funded’ us Brits have long enjoyed a broadcasting institution that has easily rivaled any other in the world. We have benefited from a well funded R&D lab bringing all sorts of technical innovations, fantastic original programming and some truly amazing presenters such as David Attenbourgh and Michael Parkinson. Whilst the grumpy old man in me struggles to come to terms with the gradual demise of these departments, there is one thing really bugs me.
My lack of trust for old Auntie. I’m not talking about the horrific phone-in scandals on Blue Peter, but the News department. How hard is it to present the days local and international events in a truthful and un-biased way?
This has been happening for some time now, and I’ve largely been able to dismiss it on the grounds that the Beeb is going down the pan, and there’s nothing I can do about it anyway. However, over the last couple of days there have been two news stories that really demonstrate the amateurish and misleading way that our license fees are being spent. Neither of which would have cost any extra money to put right! I’m talking about pure bad journalism that should never have been broadcast.
Firstly, when quoting figures in a story, it’s not good enough to simply quote an integer without explaining which units these are in. I’m referring to an article broadcast yesterday (although it could have been the day before) when a news reader was trying to demonstrate the slowdown in house sales. So when referring to London he/she said that there was an increase of 4 and in some other areas a decrease of 38. Now I’m a bright chap, I can get me head around the basics of quantum computing and the solution to Fermat’s last theorem but an increase of 4 means nothing to me without telling me what units they are referring to - are these percentages, individual property sales, or something else. And to think that all the editor had to do was include the units for these figures!
Secondly, yesterday there was a manipulation of footage used in a story about quintuplets born to a Russian woman. Although the footage distributed by an Oxford hospital contained no audio, the babies had respirators over their mouths, and other news services like ITV and Sky broadcast the clips without modification, the BBC felt that the footage would somehow be enhanced by falsely adding the sounds of babies crying. Now I know that links between todays society and the Big Brother of Orwells 1984 are being identified more and more, and that some of these links are quite unfair, but as I remember Winston Smith’s job at the ministry of truth was to manipulate news and history, thereby falsifying it.
Is this really a route that the BBC wants to continue down?
A few weeks ago Radiohead released their seventh studio album as a ‘pay what you want’ digital download. Since their completion of their six album deal with EMI, us Radiohead fans have had to wait longer than any other album release for this one, but it worth the wait. Despite not being able to secure a label through which to release the CD, the band decided to release the digital download version on their own. A music sales revolution, possibly, but do I embrace it? No.
Actually thats a lie, I pre-ordered my copy for £0.00, and enjoyed a great album without offering any of my hard earned cash to the band. I was waiting for the CD release before I was prepared to get my wallet out and you can forget the overpriced vinyl/CD box set at £40. The thing is that despite having a significant hearing loss, I have recently started to discover the difference in quality between MP3s and CDs, and I don’t like it. My entire music collection fits on my iPod, most of which is at 192 kps, and I’m having to re-rip my favorite albums to 320 kbs (the treshold at which I can’t tell the difference between the lossless CD and the compressed MP3, try listening to the opening of Money by Pink Floyd and you’ll know what I mean), so that I can continue to enjoy them. Lucky for me I have CDs of nearly all my music, so the only problem is the huge amount of time it takes to do rip them, but considering the trend in the music industry I suspect the CD won’t live forever, and then I’ll have a problem. The only thing that could save this would be improved technical specs of computers, the internet and iPods so that the sole digital distribution is at a lossless or nearly lossless format. Of course I will miss the artwork and ownership of the material object being bought, but were a consumer society and as such are damaging the planet and need to stop, so that can’t be all bad.
It’s with joy that I read here, the ‘In Rainbows’ CD release has been confirmed, and you can bet I’ll one of the first in queue to replace the low quality MP3s that the band gave me with a CD I can really enjoy.
What is Web 2.0
For those of you who are not familiar with the term ‘Web 2.0′, or aren’t too sure what it means, don’t worry your are not alone. Since the term first became popular amongst technologists and developers, there has been little agreement on the exact details that make up ‘Web 2.0′. I personally prefer the very broad definition laid out on by Wikipedia:
Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users.
So essentially we’re looking at websites like flickr, digg, wikipedia and facebook. All great sites, most of which I use on a daily basis. When I use these websites I am constantly in communication with many other users with similar interests, which is great, but can become a little overwhelming sometimes.
The problems with Web 2.0
Currently these websites are very popular, and are often bought out from their owners by huge companies for large sums, but I think that things have to change soon - the bubble has to burst.
The problem is that the more sites that you join, the more information you become bombarded with, and the more time you need to deal with it. Not only that, but sites you already belong to are evolving to add more ’stuff’ than they had before.
Take Facebook, a great social-networking site with the aim of staying in touch with friends, and that aim is what drew me to the site. But I could already do that, using email, skype, online games, and the pub. So what really convinced me to need to use Facebook? Well, nearly all of my friends were already using it, and by joining I was able to get in touch with friends I hadn’t spoken to before. So it is a sort of Web 2.0 version of friendsreunited.com. However, as I’ve slowly increased the number friends listed on my account, so the shear amount of online spam has increased (let’s call this ‘Spam 2.0′), and although my friends have generated it, it has actually become a barrier between me and them. The amount of online time I have to interact with them in any meaningful way is now limited and the thought of logging in to check up on my friends has become a burden.
Facebook isn’t alone, MySpace, has also become quite bloated and appears to require quite a bit of dedication to keep going.
My predictions
So interaction is good, but so long as it does what it says on the tin, and not much more. I think that these ‘bloating’ trends need to happen and hope that users will vote with their feet. Hopefully, developers will start to streamline their websites and focus on what they are rather than what else they can become.
Of course, users probably won’t vote with their feet, and are generally happy with the way these websites are evolving, but I urge all developers involved with these websites to continually consider the amount of information users have to consume!