Share what you know, Learn what you don’t. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
Go see:
_ d.Construct 2007: User Experience Design Conference
d.Construct is an affordable, one-day conference aimed at those designing and building the latest generation of web-based applications.
Previous years have seen speakers from organizations including Amazon, Google and the BBC, discuss the challenges and opportunities created by the web. This year will see 600 web professionals gather in Brighton to consider the topic of ‘user experience design’. Leading speakers from companies including Yahoo! and Adaptive Path will share their expert knowledge on how to create the best online experiences possible.
Seeya there 
I thought it’d be a good time to send an update on developments regards the conference so here goes:
Firstly, we’ve passed the “is there enough interest test?“. We’ve received more than 150 initial signups since posting the questionnaire and are still getting signups every day. Our goal now is to start fleshing out the details of the conference so that we can start increasing the numbers and creating more buzz.
Secondly, we’ve got some great speakers already committed to what we’re trying to do, and they are in no particular order:
Andy Budd (http://andybudd.com/), Andy Clarke (http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/), Demian Turner (http://seagull.phpkitchen.com/), Malcolm Hall (http://www.openboxsoftware.com/), Ryan Shelton (http://www.mutado.com).
All of the above profiles save Ryan’s are listed already, so here it is:
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Originally from Zimbabwe, Ryan Shelton moved to London in the late 1990’s to pursue his passion for design. Having worked within the design industry for over a decade, he has ridden the waves of the .com era and seen it morph into the more grown up industry that it is today. During the .com crash Ryan co-founded BD4D, a design collective that sought to encourage and unite the global design community at a time when most of the world had lost faith in the internet. BD4D holds live events around the world where designers and techies, primarily in the interactive and online media fields, get together to share ideas and to push the boundaries of the medium.
Ryan is a partner at Mutado, a design studio based in London and Milan, where he gets to work with some of the most talented people he knows.
~~~
We’ve already had some great suggestions for speakers, so if you have suggestions too, then please feel free to send them on.
Thirdly, we’re about to start confirming dates with keynote speakers, so should have some more information for you as soon as possible.
Additionally, we’re working on expanding the website further so that we take it beyond the initial questionnaire - more on that soon too. In the meantime, you can check out some of the feedback trends from the questionnairre at: http://technologyforafrica.org//feedback.php
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Our only request of you is that you help us to spread the word as much as possible in the coming weeks and months, so that we really can make this a reality. Please tell as many people as you can, blog it, add the site to http://del.icio.us, http://digg.com (and others like Reddit and Newsvine), and tag it for http://technorati.com/. We’ll also be sending news of buttons and such that you can put on your site shortly.
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Stay tuned, we’re looking forward to seeing you later in 2007!
_ Software Wars
A graphic map depicting the epic struggle of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) against the Empire of Microsoft…
My housemate Dunners just took delivery of his new phone tonight, so we all sat around my PC checking out the specs online. Typical web geek that I am, I was more interested in the UI how the site had changed since I was last there, more than anything else… And although I really like it, and it looks nice and fresh on the surface, underneath it’s nice and bloated
It’s got gradients, simplicity and white space, but it’s lacking clean URL’s, semantic markup free of tables (where appropriate of course), uses Flash on the front page, and has loads and loads of inline styling and js bloat… Shoot forward to a language landing page, and things get no better… Opening up the product detail page and again it gets no better… Suprisingly enough, however, the product detail page passes W3C validation and so does the language landing page…
Now, don’t get me wrong here - it works and it looks really good, but when I look at the source I start getting quesy and feel a little like I’m being led astray by someone who really should know better - how can something so beautiful look so ugly underneath? My private hunch is that the project manager at Big Corp (Sony Ericsson?) was given a validation report saying that things are hunky dory and passing validation, so unwittingly it was signed it off and here we are. My position is that I’d rather stand in front of a firing squad or be hung by my rather large big toe, than release code like that on a large public website…
What do you think?
Just a friendly reminder for this Friday:
The next BBQ is this Friday on the 23rd June, same time and place as the last one:
http://www.oneafrikan.com/archives/2006/05/23/geekbbq-tomfoolery-in-london/
Upcoming.org -> http://upcoming.org/event/80247/
Address is: (now withheld to protect privacy
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=sw19&om=1 (also to protect privacy)
Open invite - everyone welcome. Please forward to anyone you know interested in Web 2.0, geekery, blogging, being a suit, being normal, or just plain good old fashioned steak!
If you want me to organise you meat, then please let me know too.
Look forward to seeing you there
I haven’t yet had the time to look through the evidence and posts yet, but since I’ve been to France, two things have happened that make me think that MSFT is about to start a very long battle to keep it’s dominance of the desktop office software market…
Google release Google mail for domains, and then they release Google Spreadsheets… They already have Word like functionality working in GMail so that has to be coming soon, they have Notebook (not seen that either yet), they’re offering an RSS reader, their Calendar is compelling… what else is already offered?
Anyways, much more on this soon, but you have to wonder in the meantime - does MSFT have this one covered? With their long desktop app release cycles, they’re really, really behind and can they play catch up / compete / differentiate enough?
Well, after what was a great night on Friday, it seems that there is demand for more GeekBBQ’s here in little ‘ol Sunny London, and since there have been requests for a “where do I sign up page”, I’m posting something here until a better idea comes along, or I get the time to set up a domain or something…
So without further ado, the next date is the 23rd of June, same place, same time, same stuff to bring…
You can see the Flickr set from the BBQ on Friday;
You can read the series of posts leading up to the first one…
and for shits and giggles I’ve added another Upcoming.org post as well…
Please comment to this post to RSVP / steak your claim to, er, some good steak… (note the pun
A few of us have been chatting about the long train trips / cab fares home from events that always seem to be in Central or East London, so we’ve decided that we’re going to try do something a little closer to home, for all the obvious reasons…
So, if you’re into the mixed bag that is becoming Web 2.0 in the UK, then you’re welcome to join us whether you’re from the South West or not… just remember that there are still Wombles in Wimbledon Common so bring your brollies…
Would be really cool if we could get some bloggers, writers, designers, coders, accessible type people, business people, wordpress people, Ubuntu people, GTD people, backend system beasties and maybe even one or two lovely ladies along…. you never can tell
The details:
Friday the 19th May, 7pm onwards
Location is: My house for a BBQ (address forthcoming).
View the Upcoming.org post as well (http://upcoming.org/event/73637/).
My place is one minute from the station, and about 40 seconds from a butcher and a Threshers.
I’m thinking that I’ll go get good steaks from the butcher near us if you ask me to, and prepare them properly myself. All you’ll have to do it bring drinks and a snack or two.
If you’re thinking of coming, please post a comment here so that we have a rough idea of numbers - it may help us to get a special deal or something.
Thanks in advance
Jason wrote something about web standards in South Africa recently and it made me think about web standards in the UK, and who is actually passing the litmus test when it is passed as law and people are supposed to be working towards standards and accessibility.
As an aside, I found Jasons post interesting, but not surprising at all - if you’re interested in my comment you can read it here.
So back to the web standards thing, I’m curious to see how some big sites on the web in the UK score, so here are my results - to do this I used the Validate HTML Tool (DID NOT check for anything else) found in the Firefox Web Developer Extension, and in all instances I was just checking the home page of each site.
Here they are as of today, 2006-04-20:
Now here’s the rub:
I completely expected most of the sites to show errors (call me cynical), and was pleasantly surprised to see that the Merton Borough website was the onyly one to pass validation - congrats to the developers and designers that delivered that work! - and am not sure what to think of the Westminster site not validating (the validation service was not down since I can validate other sites).
I’m really disappointed in all the papers, as well as the BBC, as they’re information portals, and probably have the most to lose while having the most to live up to. You would EXPECT the G8 site to pass validation but it didn’t, whilst both political parties although not passing validation did have the least errors, which is commendable. I’m a perfectionist so not going the last few metres to ensure compliance seems like a waste. The Conservatives site had one problem with an attribute=”value” and another with an image not closed properly, so they’re really easy fixes, while the Labour Party site had one illegal character in a link, which is probably just an oversight on someones part, but should be checked, flagged and fixed!
As for the rest, shame on you in this day and age, where standards compliant developers, consultants and agencies are everywhere.
On a technical note, from what I could tell, most of the errors that were coming up are not that hard to fix. And if, like most good web developers should, you have a version control system in place, you simply make the changes to your markup, functions, classes, then deploy. You should be checking your output at every stage, and the fact that major sites are getting so many errors speaks volumes for their _LACK_ of quality control and testing processes.
I’ve seen so many developers and software engineers focus on developing rock solid backend code, that they completely forget about their actual users and what gets ouputted to them.
As for the project managers and business people that may read this, if your people are writing code that creates this kind of ouput for high traffic sites like this (excluding the passes of course!), you’re either underpaying or overpaying your people (depending on your employment philosophy), not competent enough yourself to spot this, don’t have good version control systems in place to make changes quickly when you spot them, or just plain ignoring the benefits of standards compliant markup. Do something about it!
Anyways, this was an intersting exercise and rant over - time to do some real work
Disclaimer: If you validate this site, you will notice that there are 17 errors (at time of checking), all of which are fixable. I am working to fix all of them as part of my new theme.
Do you have any thoughts / comments / ideas?
_ Tab Mix Plus :: Mozilla Addons :: Add Features to Mozilla Software
Just installed it and it’s super nice
Hat tip to Norman
A while back while doing some reading, I came accross an article written by Mike Stenhouse over at Content with Style, which got me thinking about this CSS malarkey.
Yes, there are only so many layouts that people want.
Yes, you should re-use code as much as possible. You should also write maintainable code. Modular code is also a good idea - we like modules.
Yes, it’s a good idea to use conventions as they make life easier.
Yes, client want to see stuff as it is developed, and they want to see progress as quickly as possible.
No, I don’t like more donkey work than I have to - I’d rather be solving problems I haven’t already.
and yes, anything that makes life easier is worth keeping around.
At the time, I also had 3 more projects that required similiar layouts and thus similiar markup - we’re not talking web applications here, but web sites that were either plugging into a CMS backend or were just static. So I started thinking some more…
What if I could abstract Mike’s modular approach using php? Would that make it easier to get a project done, or quicker, or both?
Could I put the config stuff into one php config file? I only want to make changes in one place…
I already use a config file to manage the usual site stuff that I don’t want to have to manually edit sitewide, would adding the css stuff above to that file make sense?
If I keep it all in a nice Subversion repository, then drop into a new project before starting or as and when I need it, would I make my life easier? Would delivering projects be faster?
Every time I learn’t something new, or somebody somewhere posted a solution to a problem, I could add it to the repo…. right.
And that made me happy, ‘cos my gut feel was that it would make things easier, and would definitely make my life easier.
Then I read some more, and came accross the “No more css hacks” article over at Stylegala and I started thinking how much css hacks pissed me off. Although a necesary evil (Sorry Tantek - your solutions are beautiful compromises to the ugliness of browsers that don’t play nice together), I just don’t like ‘em - the result is code that looks like it’s been through the martian shredder in “War of the Worlds” … ’nuff said. But the reailty of the situation won’t change anytime soon, so we’re still stuck with a problem where I want the code I write to look beautiful (however much my talent is limited) so that I am happy and so that I can manage it better.
[Listening to David Heinemeier Hansson at the Web Apps Summit last week really struck a chord with me - I like to write beautiful stuff. It makes me happy and when I'm happy I'm more productive.]
Then I read some more, and came accross the Defining CSS Constants with PHP article written by Tyler Hall, and the pennies started to drop from the slot machine…
What if I combine the modularity of the CSS framework, with the “CSS hack killing” that you get from knowing what the user agent is before you spit out the CSS, with some constants that I define with PHP but spit out in the CSS… and then add in some standard stuff that just makes life easier for me. The result would be something that I could use for static or dynamic client sites, making donkey work easier and delivery sooner; as well as something that I could use as a starting point for a truly modular, flexible, better blog (in Wordpress we trust) theme; and if I wanted to extend it some more, I could use it for a certain web app too. And hey, if someone likes it, and they add to it to make it better, then all the better for everyone.
So here I am - I’ve put a few hours into it so far, but not done as much of the above abstraction as I would have liked, but I’m still pleased with the results - I’ve probably saved myself at least a few hours to a day on any new client work, and any more time I put into it will add to that time saving.
For now I’m going to get the above stuff nice and smooth like, but this is what I’ve got earmarked to add later:
add print stylesheet
add mobile / pda stylesheet
add more layouts if it makes sense
abstract doctype definition
abstract main menu items into an array
abstract local menu into an array
add google analytics
There are differing points of view - some would agree with the approach, whilst others would say it’s not worth doing, so I’m curious as to what you think?
_ Download details: Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar Beta
The Microsoft Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar provides a variety of tools for quickly creating, understanding, and troubleshooting Web pages. This version is a preview release and behavior may change in the final release.
I’ve been resisting for a long time now, but finally caved in and got the IE Web Dev toolbar, and can honestly say that I think it’s cool. It’s not gonna make me stop using firefox, but it will henceforth be a tool in my toolbox… Recommended!
I’ve been doing some css stuff and have found that IE on Mac doesn’t play as nice as all the other browser kids…
So here are some links that may help you if you’re on a similiar journey:
_ CSS Bugs in IE5.x Mac
_ Styling even more form controls
_ Dealing with IE5/Mac
_ IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter - very useful.
Happy css’ing
Update:
Been doing more hacking today, so some more bedtime reading for your enjoyment:
_ Integrated Web Design: Strategies for Long-Term CSS Hack Management - thanks Molly!
_ Filtering CSS
_ Tricking Browsers and Hiding Styles
_ Tantek’s Mid Pass Filter
_ Tantek’s High Pass Filter
So far, the Mac band pass filter has made life easier, but Safari buttons aren’t playing nicely… ;-(
Update:
_ Star html Selector Bug - looks like it will also make life easier… just need to implement it now…
Welcome to the personal blog of Gareth Knight. On web 2.0, technology, living in London, business, software, the web, Africa and sustainability. This is the evolution of one Afrikan.
