Archive for January, 2008
|Web Directions North – Vancouver (Day 1)
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008
In vancouver at WDN08. Just heard Jeffery Zeldman agree with me on how to get work done. I’m sitting in room 2 right now waiting for Derek Featherstone to talk about Real World Accessibility… should be good, will report back later.
DEREK FEATHERSTONE – REAL WORLD ACCESSIBILITY
- go beyond the section 508 checklist
- usability issues magnify with disabled users
- extra punctuation cases problems [keyword(s):]
- term “news” implies that there is an archive
- make sure things have a logical linear flow
- maintain action focus on a page change (different than a page refresh)
Google maps
- voice recognition grid for map clicking
- they use onClick div for map controls
- ironFeathers replaces this with a styled button element which is more accessible
———–
- Focus on task by user rather than for a software (jaws)
- “makes stuff work” rather than “make stuff work for this browser”
- everyone still uses baseCamp
- greasemonky is a good solution for individual user needs (js/css)
Proximity
- WAI:ARIA
- role=”alert”
- WAI:ARIA support is coming soon
Sitting in a talk by Tara Hunt right now. about how Web2.0 is more about the people than the technology. Not sure how many notes I can get from this, but so far it’s a good talk.
TARA HUNT – GOVERNMENT 2.0
- TransitCamp [people wanting to improve transit websites]
- people “demanding” the web applications [ex. California wildfire google map/flickr tracking photos]
- fixMyStreet (uk)
- web mashups to create web 2.0 apps that people want
- “fair copyright for canada” Facebook group stopped legislation
- library of congress flickr account
How to encourage collaboration
- release an API – make data available
- publish everything openly (mockup designs to flickr)
- be available for comments/questions
- embrace the chaos – don’t be afraid to fail
- reward contributors
- show progress
- take small, simple steps [not shocking to the user and easier to reverse]
- reach out to people from different backgrounds
- view the public as a partner, not a recipient
- run real, open, betas [let people know its a beta and that you want feedback]
Government 2.0 = trust
JONATHAN SNOOK – AJAX FRAMEWORKS
- Frameworks in 3 layers
- DOM
- Application conventions (call to the server)
- widgets (ex. lightbox)
Popular frameworks
- Prototype -> for data heavy stuff
- jquery -> heavy DOM work
- Extjs -> application widgets
- script.aculo.us -> animation
- MooTools -> a little bit of everything
- YUI -> a lot of everything
- Dojo -> application widgets
JARED SPOOL – INTUITIVE DESIGN
- Designs don’t intuit anything, they just sit there
- intuitive is personal
- what users currently know based on past experiences
- we are constantly using language our users don’t understand
- intuitive design in evolutionary
- current knowledge is what the user knows
- target knowledge is what users need to know to complete a given task
- The “gap” is the area between current and target knowledge, this is where design happens [trying to bridge the "gap"]
- a wizard MUST be in the gap
- hide complexity by upgrading in smaller steps
- reducing target knowledge is necessary to make design seem intuitive
- www.uie.com/brainsparks
- Making things easy to discover
- “exploratory discoverability” – finding stuff as you go
- give clues – lack of clues prevents productivity
GINA TRAPINI – BETTER GMAIL
- greasemonky for JS
- stylish for CSS
- remember the milk in GMail
- diveintogreasemonky.org
- http://ginatrapini.org/workshop/firefox
Posted in Web Development, Web Standards | 4 Comments »
IE8 – Version Targeting
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
The current hot topic in the world of web development is IE8 and its version targeting, Eric Meyer’s article on A List Apart and Aaron Gustafson’s Beyond DOCTYPE. I’ve commenting all over the place about this, so I thought I’d consolidate all the comments into a blog post, and maybe elaborate a little.
This is the META tag IE wants you to use:
< meta content="IE=8" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" />
It basically tells the browsers that you want to use standards available for IE8 when rendering your page. If you don’t use it, the default rendering engine will (as of right now) be IE7. As an added feature, you can also set the tag to:
< meta content="IE=edge" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" />
for the latest version of IE standards.
There’s a lot of talk about how this tag will hurt progressive enhancement in relation to CSS and JavaScript. But elements such as Microformats should be unaffected, as it just deals with current XHTML elements.
It has to be realized that this may well be the only way for IE to advance its standards support in a reasonable time frame, or at all. Version targets let them avoid breaking existing sites, especially intranet sites, while fixing and adding their DOM, CSS, and other implementations. That has to be understood and accepted if the discussion is to be anything more than people talking past each other. Within the world of IE, they must have a way to uphold backwards compatibility with sites developed under older versions of IE.
That was a section, from Eric Meyer’s post yesterday
I think the only thing about this that irritates me is that, right now, we have to do all these special things for IE, add all these little extra pieces of code (whether it be browser detection, CSS hacks, conditional comments, etc). And now here’s yet another line of code to put in.
This is all fine, but I think the key to this not causing an uproar is publicity since the default rendering will be for IE7. If it defaulted to “edge” then it wouldn’t matter if no one new about this. If the word doesn’t get out enough (it apparently seems to be getting out just fine) then it will just cause more and more hacks to come out of the woodwork.
For example: IE stand alone versions are kinda crappy, I run an IE6 stand alone, it’s pretty unstable and you have to edit the registry to get conditional comments to work. So, let’s say a developer is running IE v10 and for some reason doesn’t add in this meta tag and it defaults to an IE7 rendering, but this person doesn’t have IE7, they’re running IE v10, so their site looks messed up pretty bad. what can they do? They can use hacks and conditional comments to make it look right, as they see it.
I have a feeling that this sort of thing will happen quite a bit unless Microsoft changes the default to “edge”, maybe builds in a soft error message or makes sure developers are well aware of this tag.
I’m unclear on why Microsoft feels like they need to re-invent to wheel when they release a browser (using Trident and now a new rendering engine). Why don’t they just use Gecko or Webkit to really create some consistency across browsers. Maybe they have a financial obligation to fight open source with every fiber of their being… I don’t know.
Since I had some time to mull over all this stuff, the version targeting seems like it actually does have a valuable place. Mainly when developing a site for a client. Since a lot of client sites (that I’ve done) are just basically for marketing and they don’t really care to integrate a lot of extra features it seems logical to lock something like that into a browser version if it’s just going to sit around anyways.
Where I think version targeting would be a bad this is for sites that actually have a web team behind them. In my experiences I’ve done my most innovative stuff when a site breaks in IE.
So I think that’s my official stance on the whole matter. I like it for websites that will essentially go untouched for extended periods of time.
Related articles:
- Version Targeting For IE8, Developer Wars
- Version 2 from Eric Meyer
- From Switches to Targets: A Standardista’s Journey
- Beyond DOCTYPE: Web Standards, Forward Compatibility, and IE8
- Microsoft’s Version Targeting Proposal
with ease,
tim
Posted in Browsers, Web Development, Web Standards | 2 Comments »
Cake PHP & Web Dierections North
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
CakePHP
It’s a widely believed FACT that I’m a PHP n00b. Hardcore programming is not where I make my millions; so when Shark Cool suggested a PHP framework called CakePHP, my ears perked up.
When I first got to the site, I looked around, read the documentation and it all sounds great but what the hell does it do? Well, it’s supposed to streamline PHP app development. Today I plan on actually reading through the whole manual and really trying to understand more about this stuff that is, apparently, all the rage. Maybe I can actually build something, I think they have a tutorial on building a forum. This should be good, I haven’t done anything actually interesting at work in months.
Vancouver
The Web Directions North conference in Vancouver is coming up soon (Jan 28). I’m looking forward to the talk on “Developing with Adobe AIR” and presentations by John Allsopp & David Shea, Gina Trapani (from LifeHacker) and Daniel Burka (from Digg & Pownce).
It should be a really good conference and I’m excited to get a chance to poke around in Vancouver, rub elbows with some of the people on my bookshelf, and get my first passport stamp.
Currently listening to: John Mayer Trio
with general ease,
tim
Posted in Web Development | 5 Comments »
