107. Running to keep up

Posted in Classic shows on January 15, 2008 by Paul Boag

On show 107: What should you be learning about in 2008, Jason Beaird on web design basics and how to deal with portfolio pages.

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News and events | Where to focus in 08 | Jason Beaird on design basics | Listener emails

News and events

Setting expectations

Our first news story today is an article on working with your clients. Specifically it focuses on the subject of setting your clients expectations and clearly communicating with them.

We all work for somebody. We all have clients in some form. Whether our clients are other companies or simply our boss we all know the feeling when they seem to expect something which we believed we never promised.

This article looks at two ways of managing this kind of scenario. First be diligent up front. As the article says…

Setting expectations isn’t difficult, or mysterious, but it does take time and you have to be diligent about it.

Second it suggests being consistent. That doesn’t mean you are inflexible. It means that you need to be consistent in your communications throughout a project. If goal posts move, it is important that you explain the ramifications.

The principles of this article are universally applicable. So whoever you are take a few minutes to check it out.

Great websites do, not say

The next post I found falls into the category of “it’s funny because it’s true”. It’s a post by one of my favourite bloggers Gerry McGovern who seems to rant against websites that spend more time talking about user experience rather than offering it. He begins his rant by focusing on welcome copy…

I don’t want to pass meaningless pleasantries with your website. I don’t want to shake its hand. Or talk about the weather. I’m at your website for a reason. I’m in a hurry. I’m impatient. So kill the welcome, please.

He goes on to criticise sites that waste valuable copy explaining how easy their sites are…

If it’s really easy, why are you telling me it’s really easy and quick? For starters, you’ve wasted my time by making me read your meaningless sentence.

If you ever write copy for websites then you should read this post. If you don’t then check it out anyway if only for the pure entertainment value.

CSS: The All-Expandable Box

My final suggestion for your reading pleasure is a post on the Web Designers Wall entitled The All-Expandable Box. This solves a problem which I encounter all the time.

As you will know if you listen to this show regularly I am a great fan of using ems for typography. I like the idea users can resize their text to suit their own requirements.

The downside of this approach is that it can quickly break designs especially when text is contained within a box. The box will naturally expand vertically but not horizontally. The result is that you loose control of line length. Enabling the whole interface to expand including the box itself is very useful. This article shows you how.

Its a nice clean technique that should act as a building block for much more complex things. So if you are considering doing more ems based design then this should be a nice starting point.

Feature: Where to focus in 08

As web designers we are all busy people. We are in such a fast moving sector that it can be hard to know what is worthy of our attention. Should we be focusing on Silverlight or brushing up on Javascript? Learning Rails or grappling with mobile devices? This week I want to share my thoughts of where you should be focusing your energies in 2008.

Expert interview: Jason Beaird on design basics

Paul Boag: Joining me today is Jason beard author of an incredibly useful and wonderful book that I’ve really come to love. That’s – How would you describe it? Is it a basic introduction to designing?

Jason Beaird: It’s a basic introduction to graphic design principles. The book was really first intended for web developers in fact the initial working title was web design for developers and it kind of expanded into just a introduction to graphic design principles for anybody not just for developers, not people already creating websites. But anybody interested in design really.

Paul Boag: Mmm what’s so great about it is that you’ve kind of really taken time to go over the basic principle of creating a beautiful website. Which I guess is the title of the book, “The Principles of beautiful of web design” that’s the title isn’t it?

Jason Beaird: That’s correct.

Paul Boag: I really should have it in front of me shouldn’t I [Jason laughs] Oh but you’ve got to be fairly impressed that I knew that of the top of my head.

Jason Beaird: I’m just impressed that you have a copy yourself.

Paul Boag: Well yes I do. And it’s good because a lot of people that listen to this show are not necessarily professional designers we have a lot of people who listen to the show who are website owners but have to do a bit of design in order to maintain their site. We’ve got Developers that developing applications and having to do some design as part of that and we’ve also got people who probably are designers but not full time so are interested in how the professionals go about doing these things. So it’s a really good book for the boagworld listeners and why I’ve been so desperate to get you on the show for so long Jason, so it’s good to have you Jason.

Jason Beaird: So everybody laughs along.

Paul Boag: Well you’re a busy man; you’ve got a lot to do. So I thought what we would basically do is take the chapters from the book and maybe pick out some of the basic principles from each of those chapter and get you to talk about them little bit. So the chapters in your book are layout and composition, colour, texture, typography and imagery and that for a start made me very enthusiastic. Because it’s like really obvious, basic stuff that here are the main issues you are going to come across from a design prospective and you know we’re going to do a chapter on each which I just thought very refreshing and very logical and that’s good. So let’s kick off with layout and composition so tell us a bit about some of the stuff you cover in that chapter maybe and some of the basic principles that non-designers need to know about.

Jason Beaird: Well the entire book is really just basics, in my opinion. It’s just stuff that a lot of people think designers have as intuition and really it’s just stuff you can learn and learning these principle is like learning how to hand code. Really you can a website using a WYSIWYG but understanding the tags and selectors allows you to see inside and know what’s going on. And these are just basic. But really this is going to be the fire hose version of the book.

< p>Paul Boag: Yeah, I’m asking you to compress the entire book into about 20-30 minutes. [Both laugh]

Jason Beaird: I’ll give it a shot. We’ll start out with layout, some of the main principles of graphic design theory is balance, unity and emphasis and learning how to take all three of those and use them effectively in a layout is a pretty good place to start, from a layout prospective. By balance I mean symmetry. Is it divided right down the middle, or does it still feel balanced even though it’s divided into columns? By unity I mean do the elements of the website feel like they are one cohesive thing. You know does it feel like it’s a singular unit rather than a bunch of different bits. Then emphasis obviously is about creating a focal point on the page. And keeping that focal point and understanding where people are going to look and why they are going to look there and so there there’s different ways to create all three of those things. One thing I talked about in the first chapter about balance and creating balance is design proportion which some people call the golden mean or the golden ratio. Really it’s just a rule that if you divide a width by 1.62 just a number called Phi** you get a pleasing proportionate division. And so to make that simpler it can also be known as the rule of thirds. If you divide something by thirds it’s pretty close to the 1/ 1.62 ratio and you can come up with a pleasing kind of division for a navigation column and content area by using that kind of division. But really that’s sort of an overview.

< p>Paul Boag: Yeah, I wonder why the rule of thirds works, did you find out anything in your research about why that is pleasing?

Jason Beaird: I didn’t really find out a whole lot of solid information about it. But there is some out there, pythagorans noticed that it was a very common division in nature things like with leaves and shells had the same division and ratio and then started to develop the concept that anything designed around that is designing around nature so is therefore designing around gods design so you know. So the Romans and the Greeks built there some of their architecture on the golden ratio, the golden mean it’s a stable of graphic design since those times.

Paul Boag: Yeah and it really does work. I remember even back in Art College when I was being taught photography the same principles apply to photography composition you know or really anything you do, whether its print design or web design. So yeah the rule of thirds I think is a good one to take away.

Jason Beaird: Yep.

Paul Boag: Ok, what about colour tells us a little bit about colour because that’s a huge subject that people have written entire books on and you had one chapter so what did you chose to pick out on the subject of colour?

Jason Beaird: That’s the important thing to remember about these chapters is that there are entire books dedicated to each. I feel like was already trying to squeeze it already into the book. But with colour I think the most important thing to remember is that people’s perception of colour depend on their own personal experiences and cultural like right now, red and green means Christmas, for most Americans and most people around the globe whether they believe in that or not it’s just something that we’ve been exposed to so much that that’s the way we see it.

Paul Boag: Yeah.

Jason Beaird: But beyond those personal perceptions and traditional perceptions it’s good to know that there are ways to align colours where you really can’t make too big a mistake. [Laughs] and that are using a colour wheel and to rely on colour schemes that exist. With any rule it can be broken for whatever purpose you want but it’s good to know what the good colour choices look like before you start making your own and relying on color schemes or a colour wheel is a good way to get started.

Paul Boag: I think when you talk about these rules exist to be broken, ok that’s true but the kind of audience you are trying to reach, maybe a non-designer audience kind of playing safe is kind of always a good way to go.

Jason Beaird: That’s true.

Paul Boag: And you know using a colour wheels and stuff. Don’t you also mention in the book about finding a photograph that you like and or is that somewhere else, that might be somewhere else but it’s a nice idea anyway, taking a photograph and extracting the colours from that. I think is quite a nice way of doing it as well. Have you ever tried that?

Jason Beaird:I have tried that, I use that quite often. I don’t know if I mentioned that in the book or not. I mention a few other software based colour chooses and one that come out around the time I was writing the book that I didn’t get a chance to include was adobe kuler, at

Paul Boag: Yeah I think using a tool like that is very handy indeed. Because let’s face it we perceive colour in slightly different ways and what is it one in ten or is it one in 20 men are colour blind anyway.

Jason Beaird: I believe it’s 1 in 10 have slight colour blindness where they can’t tell, usually a red green; where they can’t tell the difference between red and green. Yeah so I mean yes, using a tool is a good idea if you are not a designer who’s really confident in colour.

Paul Boag: Now what about the subject of texture that was an interesting one I was quite interested that that was included in the chapter listings. And I, I intuitively do stuff with texture but I’ve never really thought about it that much so tell us a little bit about why you decided to include that and what advice would you give?

Jason Beaird: That for me was probably one of the hardest chapters to write because it was a lot of intuition and I like to use texture a lot in my own designs and I think that where truly the design begins. But there is not much principle wise to it. You can talk about points and lines and shape and that’s where all visual effects begin. But texture is really about creating a tactile quality and a theme for you website. Whether that is a smooth shape like apple computer with rounded corners and glossy buttons or whether that is a wicked worn look with a brick texture or something that makes it look nostalgia or old or whatever feel you want to create you can do that with texture. And I was trying to just convey that in that chapter.

Paul Boag: Yeah I mean texture kind a gives character to the site in many ways doesn’t it from the kind of grunge look you get through to the highly reflective look, or like what you say, sites like Apple. So what kind of, you talked about points and lines and perhaps you could explain some of those concepts to us.

Jason Beaird: Right you can create any kind of visual effect with just points. I showed an example; a picture of my cat, abbie, created with a dot matrix printer kind of effect on it. It’s just points. And then you can move in and use lines and shapes. It’s just important to remember that lines can create movement, horizontal line doesn’t have as much movement as say a diagonal line or vertical lines lead you up and down the page. It’s important to remember eye movement when you are creating textures. But really it’s just like what I said about creating a tactile quality and theme for the website.

Paul Boag: So as far as people may be, say a developer who has just developed an application and he needs it to look kind of half decent but doesn’t want to do anything too risky incase he screws it up and he’s not a designer. I mean what kind of advice do you give a person like that? Do you encourage them, probably best to stay away from doing too much textual stuff or is that something you should get into?

Jason Beaird: I think it’s something you should think about. Texture can easily be overdone and it can become goofy and silly rather than being professional. And I think it’s just in moderation. The thing to remember is to not leave your website backgrounds on div’s, backgrounds colors on div’s. Create some kind of texture, feel to it, whether that’s rounded corners or whether to go for the minimal stick where you don’t really use background images but rely on negative space. It’s just the fact of going beyond the standard HTML look. I mean obviously with style sheets you can’t just leave it un-styled because it’s styled content has no structure to it any more because, we’ve taken out the tables we’ve taken out the design in HTML and now we are relying on style sheets, so now you really have to build something up. That’s good I think, it makes people think about texture and all these typography, colour all these elements of design. But to think about it and just go beyond the basics. Just try to recreate something that you already like, picture wise, that doesn’t mean stealing the design but looking at another website you think captures the professional look and feel that you are going for and try to recreate that in your website.

Paul Boag: Yeah, it’s interesting that you talk about looking for inspiration. What kind of advice do you give people for a good place to look, should they just be looking at other websites or should they be looking beyond the web a bit?

Jason Beaird: I really believe that people need to look beyond the web. One of the tags for this book is that you don’t need to go to art school to design great looking websites and well I was kind scared of that headline, that professors from collage would hate me for it. [Paul laugh] It’s really true because if you have a passion for it, it will draw an inspiration from all sorts of sources whether it is architecture, or goofy things like traffic patterns or a door that you see, anything really can really inspire a look and feel to a website. Jonathan Stickler wrote an article about how he was inspired by an art deco building and that’s what gave him the design idea for his current website design.

Paul Boag:Yeah, and I thinks that particularly true when it comes to texture and colour as well as you can see textures and colors around you in everything from a plant pot through to a magazine so yeah.

Jason Beaird: One of the other big things from going through a collage art programs is that if you go to school for graphic design you’re not just going to school for graphic design you actually have to take all the traditional art classes, painting, drawing, pottery sometimes, a lot of history and really the reason for that is to create a foundation to a visual exposure to art. So you have this vocabulary and this experience pool to draw from when you are creating other designs.

Paul Boag: You mentioned earlier, negative space when you were talking about texture as another kind of approach to things. Negative space is something I think designers always throw around; it’s a term that we like to use quite a lot. But it’s not something we ever kind of explain. Just spend a couple of minutes explaining how negative space works and why it’s so important, if you would.

Jason Beaird: Negative space is important because it allows you eye to move around things if you had a page completely crammed with text you wouldn’t have any focal point to start with apart from the top of the page. Our eyes usually gravitate towards the center of the composition, so if you think about that you can have an element something around the center of the composition that can lead you to another element. Negative space is really a tool for moving the eye around.

Paul Boag: Right.

Jason Beaird: If you have, like I said before diagonal lines create movement. If you have diagonal lines that move you up towards something else. I gave a few examples in the book; it’s hard to talk about it with having any visuals.

Paul Boag: Yeah I know. It’s frustrating isn’t it? I really sometimes, I really regret doing an audio podcast, it’s a bad choice. [laughs] Ok, let’s look at the subject of typography. I’m guessing it must have been a hard chapter to write because A) typography is a massive subject and B) typography on the web is quite a tricky area. It’s kind of easy to almost easy, as a non-designer, to dismiss typography by going; well there are only about 4 fonts I’m allowed to use anyway so therefore typography on the web doesn’t exist. Why is that wrong, why is that not the truth and how did you squeeze a chapter out of this.

Jason Beaird: Well just like a lot of the chapters there are a lot of books on the subject of typography that go way beyond our experience with web or even print graphic design that go way back to the roots of communication and that’s really what typography is about. Its communication and all websites you’re trying to communicate something so if you can’t do that with pictures and ideas you have to do that with words so the way those words appear to people should become part of your design. It’s on hard with the state that it’s in with the web, having a limited palette of fonts to choose from. But at the same time it’s a good thing, I think for the novice because even though we are limited to this certain number of fonts that everybody has in their computers. Most of those fonts aside from comic sans are decent [laughs] for body text and things like that. The most important thing to remember is that there are other fonts out there and to have sensitivity towards things like spacing between lines and the vertical rhythm. Vertical rhythm isn’t something I talked about in my book because I thought it was an advanced subject but right after the book was published it sort of exploded into a big topic in web design and there’s a lot great articles out there written by other great web designers about vertical rhythm and how that affects your typography.

Paul Boag: So what is vertical rhythm for those that don’t know?

Jason Beaird: Vertical rhythm is just creating a space between your lines that kind of matches up throughout the website so that the spacing in the lines in your navigation area and the spacing in your lines in the content area kind of line up and their not just randomly spaced apart so you get weird alignments between things. It’s creating vertical rhythm, it itself is a good description; you’re creating a rhythm or pattern for your eye to follow down the page.

Paul Boag: So it’s all about basically making sure multiple typographic elements across columns have some kind of relationship to one another and that they are not just higaty pigaty all over the place.

Jason Beaird: That s the way I understand it, that’s the way I think of it is it’s really about creating a pattern and paying attention to the way the text lines up.

Paul Boag: So whatever, bearing in mind that we are limited to such a small set of fonts. What sort of basic advice would you give to someone starting on in web typography. You mentioned line spacing, what are you getting at there?

Jason Beaird: The default line spacing for HTML is very tight. And with tight text like that it’s kind of hard to read And also thinking about the width of the text you are reading . When you are reading a newspaper article or a magazine article the reason the columns are so narrow is because it’s easy, or a book even, it’s easy for your eye to scan a certain width of text and it’s easy for your eye to move to the next line if there is a little bit of space between it. And if you kind of know those basic concepts you can make it a little more pleasing to read that the default set up for typography on the web.

Paul Boag: Yeah, because especially if you’ve got a fluid site you can end up with ridiculously long line lengths if you don’t.

Jason Beaird: Right and I think that’s a lot of the beef people have with fluid layouts is that not only are you taking power from the graphic designer but you’ll also making line widths that are incredibly hard to read. But in my opinion if the user is comfortable expanding the site out to that width, and it’s readable having the line width that long, then obviously they don’t have a problem with it. But you should sort of leave that up to the user if you can. But it’s been proven that it’s easier to read text that’s been set to a certain width.

Paul Boag: Are there certain type faces that are better suited to kind of headings in preference to body’s and vice versa?

Jason Beaird: Well with body text, traditionally it use to be that body text for books and that were set to times or serif fonts because the serifs sort of lead your eye to the next character, but because of the resolution we have with the monitors and the way the text is being presented it’s actually been proven that sans serif fonts are better, fonts like Arial and Helvetica, are easier to read in smaller sizes because you don’t get the kind of resolution, the kind of detail that you get with printed type. And now that’s changing, we’re getting higher and higher resolutions in displays so maybe that will change in the future. But it’s just important to know those kinds of idea when choosing the body type for your website. But when you are choosing a heading, when you’ve got something that is very large it really just matters how the text displays and because you can use images and because you can use things like (scalable Inman Flash Replacement) sIFR to display another font besides the standard 6 or 7 fonts that are available – I call it the ok 5 9 [laughs] that are available across the Mac and web computers, Mac and PC computers sorry. You can choose other fonts that are outside those fonts to use for headers or areas where you want to give a little more design appeal. So there is a world of fonts out there, some good, some corny, that are available, some free and some very expensive that you can use for the headline on your website and it’s just important to be aware of those other fonts. I gave a few resources for free fonts I like www.1001 fonts.com is a good place to go for licensed fonts is a great font boundary, there is just a lot of fonts makers that make excellent fonts, not just for printed material like books but for web designers and people working on the web should be aware as well.

Paul Boag: Cool. So the last chapter in your book talks about imagery and I’m fascinated, and I have to confess that I haven’t read that chapter yet, so I’m kind of fascinated to know what you cover in that chapter as far as using imagery on the web. What kind of advice do you give?

Jason Beaird: Well the imagery. The graphic design doesn’t stop creating the frame around the website. It’s also about formatting the inside which is kind of difficult when you give the power to the user, give them content management. But choosing supporting content imagery is one thing that can really enhance the user experience of the web site. And finding and creating supporting imagery for awebsite content can be very difficult if you don’t know where to look or if you’re not a good illustrator or if you are not good at Photoshop. So I just try to give a basic primer on finding this type of supporting imagery and if you find an image that might work, how to tweak it to work for your needs. I just wanted to give a basic intro to using stock photo sites like iPhoto or stock photo exchange which is sxc.hu is a free stock photography site that is really great it has a lot of images. Finding images and then using them in your site is one way to really enhance the experience for your user, beyond that also I try to warn people from stealing images from Google and stop using the stock images and stock photography that we are all use to seeing in most free publication. I mean really here are a lot of stock images that have been created; the guy with the light bulb over his head, the hands holding the tree that’s growing in the soil in the persons hands. These are clique in the stock photography world you have to be aware when choosing images, to enhance the user experience.

Paul Boag: Yeah, yeah, defiantly , did you cover any of the technical aspects of compressing images or whether to go gif or jpeg and that kind of thing.

Jason Beaird: Yeah I did give a quick primer on jpegs, gifs and pings. And just a quick for everybody, if you are using a photo you obviously want to use a jpeg because usually with photos you usually have a lot of different tones and images. And gifs and pings the file space is based on the number of colours in the image. If you are using an icon type thing or a colour field where you have a limited number of colours then gif or pings are the way to go. And choosing between gifs and pings is really all about choosing between the types of transparency you want to have. Internet explorer 6 and below doesn’t support alpha transparency where you have a sort of gradient from opaque to transparent it just supports on an off. So with pings if you have transparency then you get a pink halo around them. Areas where there is transparency you can’t see it, now there are fixes for that but it’s kind of hacky still and for that reason people still hang onto the good old gif format which has transparency and unfortunately also has animation. [Both laugh]

Paul Boag: So is that one of your rules? Never ever use animated gifs?

Jason Beaird: Actually no it’s not, because I’ve used animated gifs even on my own site if you go to my site jasongraphics.com and hover over the logo it was sort of an experiment toy to play with I was designing my current layout, it was a sliding door type image where I’ve got the still part of the Jason graphics logo and then when you move over it jumps up, the position of the image jumps up so you see the animated moving, like sunrays over the logo. So that’s an animated gif and I’m not ashamed of that. But I think that animated gifs in a lot of ways degrade the professionalism of a lot of websites.

Paul Boag: It sounds a superb book, for anyone that’s not from a design background. Where can they get a hold of a copy, where can they find out more about it, how can they buy it I guess is the next question?

Jason Beaird: Well I’d love you to buy it.

Paul Boag: Obviously.

Jason Beaird: I set a little promo site for the book at www.principlesofbeautifulwebdesign.com were you can kind of hover over, I did a fun little thing where if you hover over each of the chapter names it sort of point s out in the website design itself how the things play a part of the design I made for the promo site.

Paul Boag: Oh cool.

Jason Beaird: Beyond that amazon.com has a good price for the book usually and you can go of course to site point.com to buy directly from them, and most people prefer to do is buy directly from Sitepoint. They sent you lots of emails about books that are coming out and specials. A lot of people are big fans of Sitepoint. I really like them a lot too.

Paul Boag: Yeah if you haven’t checked out Sitepoint before, then it’s worth saying that they are a lot more than a book publisher they have got a huge site with tons of great articles of all aspects of web design and a really active forum as well.

Jason Beaird: The forums are a great place to get involved and a great place to learn new things.

Paul Boag: Thank you so much for coming on the show I can’t say I normally get people on the show to pimp their book and to be honest that wasn’t what I originally ask you to do either. But the more I think about it the more I’ll looked at it, the more I think it’s a perfect book for a lot people that listen to this show if you are starting out in any form of design and don’t come from a design background then I can highly recommend this is a book to check out. Jason, we’ll get you back again in the future no doubt and make you cover some of these things in more depth. But for now thanks you very much for being on the show.

Jason Beaird: I appreciate it, it’s like being on the Dave Letterman show or the Conon O’Brien [Paul laughs] it’s like a status symbol. But I’m glad to be here and thanks for having me on the show.

Paul Boag: Thanks very much.

Listeners email:

A excellent wire-framing tool

Robin:I’m a part-time web developer, committed to web standards, one day I’d like to make it my job. I’m a regular listener of boagworld in my car (traffic jam) going to work.

Remembering your discussion with Marcus about wire-framing (Powerpoint or Visio) i just came across this product: http://www.axure.com/demo.aspx. Looks spectacular although much to expensive for me (still).

Keep up the good work.

Building an online portfolio

Sultan:On the Headscape website I notice you have “related links” and “related pages”. What is the logic of that?

Also in your portfolio section when I click on a thumbnail why don’t you guys link to the actual sites rather than to a screen shot?

First of all let me say there is a lot about the Headscape website which I don’t like. It was built a while ago and our thinking has moved on.

One example of this is related pages and links. The logic was that related pages referred to other pages on the same website. Related links where external links to third parties. However in hindsight I don’t think that is a very clear distinction and should probably be changed.

I am however more happy with what we have done in our portfolio section. We have several reasons for the decision to link to screen shots rather than live sites. These include…

Some of the sites are intranets and not available to the public
Some sites had limited shelf life and are no longer available
We wanted the user to be able to click through multiples sites in quick succession

However, the primary reason is that clients often make significant alternations to the sites we deliver. After the end of the project we simply cannot guarantee that the quality of design and code will be maintained and so prefer not to directly link to the sites.

I am not suggesting that this is the right decision however it is the course of action we have chosen for Headscape.

Worthy of your attention in 2008

Posted in Web strategy on January 10, 2008 by Paul Boag

I want to look at 5 areas that need our attention if we want to ensure our careers stay on track in 2008.

As web designers we are all busy people. We are in such a fast moving sector that it can be hard to know what is worthy of our attention. Should we be focusing on Silverlight or brushing up on Javascript? Learning Rails or grappling with mobile devices? In this post I want to share my thoughts of where you should be focusing your energies in 2008.

I hate the raft of predication posts you see at the beginning of each year. I have intentionally tried to distance this one by leaving it a couple of weeks and by focusing on what we need to do rather than what might happen.

I want to look at 5 areas that need our attention if we want to ensure our careers stay on track in 2008. Of course, these are very generic choices and won’t apply to every web designer. If you specialise then this post is probably not for you. However, if you are a bit of an all rounder like me then it maybe relevant.

Focus 1: The rise of Javascript

Year on year we are seeing more and more creative things done at the cutting edge of web design using Javascript (and AJAX). However, despite that many of us still haven’t taken the time to become comfortable writing Javascript from scratch. Developers often consider it below them and designers find it too intimidating.

Until now we have largely been able to get away with it. We have copied and pasted when we need a certain bit of functionality and most of us haven’t had to build anything too complex that required Javascript. However, I believe that time is over. If you don’t know Javascript inside out in 2008 then I think it will really start to damage your career.

Having a good grasp of Javascript and indeed AJAX will be as much a requirement as knowing HTML and CSS. If you are a freelancer then you are going to struggle to fulfil client requirements and if you are in a full time job the next one is going to be hard to find without it.

Focus 2: The decline of web 2.0.

I don’t care what anybody else says we are in a bubble. I lived through the last one and this is another without a doubt. However, the problem with calling it a bubble is that it implies it will burst. I don’t necessarily think that will happen but I do believe it will slowly deflate like a soufflé over the coming year.

What does this mean to us as web designers? Well it could either mean very little or a hell of a lot depending on your circumstances. If you work for a web 2.0. company either directly or indirectly (your clients are web 2.0. companies) then I would be afraid. I can see many of these companies going under in the coming year and so you could well be without a job or loosing a lot of work.

If like the majority of us you aren’t working for a web 2.0. firm then the effect on you maybe minimal especially if you are working as an in-house designer/developer for an established company. However, if you work for an agency or are a freelancer you may see things becoming tougher.

At the moment there aren’t enough web designers out there for all the work that is about. Remove the majority of web 2.0. companies and suddenly you see a more competitive sector.

My advice, make sure you are working for a web established company or have a superb reputation to ensure you keep the work coming in when times get tough.

Focus 3: The necessity of frameworks

As times get tougher and competition gets more intense prices will start to drop. We wont be able to demand the rates we currently charge out at. Therefore efficiency will become king. We will need to work smarter if we are going to still make money.

Although I am not a great fan of frameworks I do think they will become important in this more competitive environment. Used right, frameworks allow for speed of production and keep costs down. Whether this means using “off the shelf frameworks” or developing them in-house I do not know. However, the key will be efficiency whether we are building applications, writing HTML/CSS or implementing Javascript.

Focus 4: The mobile web

But it is not all doom and gloom. As one door closes (those unrealistic web 2.0. businesses) another will open in the form of the mobile web. Whatever you think of the iphone and its lack of key features, it has stimulated the mobile market especially when it comes to the mobile web. We are seeing a growing number of competitive devices all of which have a strong mobile web component.

The mobile web offers a massive opportunity for a web designers career. With mainstream web design becoming increasingly competitive, the mobile web offers a new frontier where there are far fewer players. Being able to offer your clients mobile web services will start to prove beneficial as the year draws on and you may even find employers starting to ask for experience in this area when recruiting.

Take the time to learn the basics of designing for the mobile web this year. It will quickly pay off.

Focus 5: Widgets and the desktop

Finally, I believe 2008 should be the year that you look beyond building websites. For a while now the bigger players have been pushing their content out beyond the confines of their sites. Take ebay for example. You can view ebay products on other sites via widgets or even on your desktop through AIR applications. I don’t think it will be long now before mainstream website managers will want to do the same and it will be down to you to deliver.

Take the time to become familiar with some of the different widget and desktop standards out there. Admittedly there are a lot so if you are looking for one to start with I would recommend AIR from Adobe. I believe that being able to build AIR applications in 2008 will prove very beneficial.

So there you have it. Obviously this is not a comprehensive list and all of this is very subjective. However these will certainly be the areas I will be focusing on for 2008.

106. Back to work blues

Posted in Classic shows on January 9, 2008 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul and Marcus discuss common mistakes when creating your sites structure and Rachel Andrews shares her experiences of getting into web design.

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News and events | Common mistakes of site structure | Rachel Andrews on building your web design career | Listener emails

Just a quick little request before we kick off today’s show. I need to get some more moo cards for the boagworld podcast (I am too tight to get proper business cards). Anyway I am having trouble with what to put on the cards. I was going to put a nice image on the cards but when I thought about it I couldn’t think of anything appropriate. In the end I decided to include tiny snippets from the reviews people have written about the show. However, being typically British with our self deprecating sense of humour. I decided to use the negative reviews rather than the positive ones. I have some great stuff such as “Paul has an ego that doesn’t need boosting” and “truly crappy jokes”. However, I need more. So, if you have 5 minutes this week drop me an email with a short, witty and hopefully not too rude review of the show. Let the venom flow :)

News and events

Internet Explorer 8

So the last time we did the news before Christmas Microsoft were under attack from Opera for its lack of standards support. Well, things have moved on since then and it is looking like Internet Explorer 8 is shaping up to be a very nice browser indeed. For start IE8 has passed the Acid 2 test published by the Web Standards Project. This is a definite commitment from Microsoft to provide comprehensive standards support and should be applauded. Jonathan Snook explains the ramifications of this as well as making some predications of his own as to what IE8 will look like. According to him we can expect straightforward column layouts, grid positioning and improved javascript support. Best of all if Jonathan is right we might see IE8 out in beta by the summer and in final release by next Christmas. Maybe then we can look at dropping support for IE6.

Using CSS to diagnose problems

Although there is still a lot of CSS not supported by browsers such as IE it is incredible what is possible with just what we have at the moment. Eric Meyer recently posted an article suggesting that you might want to consider using CSS to diagnose issues in your HTML that need resolving. In his article he uses CSS to find out where markup might be choking on missing accessibility features, targetless links, and just plain missing content. For example he uses CSS to visually highlight all images that have an empty or missing ALT attribute.

This isn’t an entirely new ideas. In fact Marco Battilana proposed a similar approach to highlight accessibility issues back in July 2006. However, Eric has taken it that much further and offered an excellent way of not only highlighting problems to yourself but also to your clients who maybe editing HTML.

Common accessibility mistakes

Talking about highlighting accessibility mistakes I came across a great article that does exactly that. Basically the article focuses on the fact that website owners can often be over enthusiastic when it comes to accessibility and start overusing HTML attributes designed to help accessibility. The result is that we can often do more harm than good. The article looks at the alt and title attributes which are often verbose or repetitious. It also looks at tabindex and accesskeys that can cause confusion and conflicts with normal browser behaviour. If you are applying any of these attributes to your code then I highly recommend you cast your eye over this article.

Basic design principles

The final story this week is an amazing series of posts by Patrick McNeil over at Design Meltdown. The reason I say they are amazing is because they are immense and I confess I am yet to read all of them. As you probably already know Design Meltdown tracks trends in web design and shows examples of sites that highlight these trends. Using the same example based approach Patrick looks at the fundamental principles of design and deconstructs them expertly. He covers Emphasis, Contrast, Balance, Alignment, Repetition and Flow in a screenshot packed series of posts that are a must read for anybody starting out in design. In the past I have always recommended Jason Beaird’s book “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” for those starting out in design. In fact we have Jason on the show soon. However, if you don’t like reading books or want to save a bit of money then Patrick’s analysis is a credible alternative. Check it out.

Feature: Common mistakes of site structure

Just before Christmas I wrote my final blog post for the year on creating the structure for your site. It is a topic that I have been thinking a lot about recently because of various projects I am working on and so it was fresh in my mind. In particular it occurred to me how much harder producing a good site hierarchy is than it first appears. In fact I see the same common mistakes occurring again and again. It is these mistakes I want to look at in today’s show. Read Common mistakes of site structure.

Expert interview: Rachel Andrews on building a web design career

Paul: OK, so joining me today is Rachel Andrew from EdgeofMySeat.com. Hello Rachel. It’s good to have you on the show at last.

Rachel: Hello, Paul. It’s good to be here.

Paul: I feel like I’ve been trying to bully you to come on the show forever and ever and ever, but it hasn’t worked out for one reason or another, but we finally got you here, so that’s good news. So uhm, Rachel, when I came to kind of putting together what I was going to do, talking to you. I suddenly realized I didn’t know you very well. I’ve heard a lot about you and I’ve heard a lot of other people say good things about you, which has gotta be a good thing, but I didn’t know anything about your background or kind of how you came to be involved in web developement. So, I thought it might be quite interesting, if It’s ok with you, just to spend a few minutes talking about how you came to be a web developer. How did you get into this illustrious career?

Rachel: Uhm, completely by accident, really. It wasn’t something I intended to do. My training is as a dancer. I was going to dance. That’s all I ever wanted to do.

Paul: All right.

Rachel (laughing): So, the part where I ended up doing this surprised everyone, (Paul laughing) especially my programmer father. (Rachel laughs)

Paul: Ahhhhh

Rachel: We didn’t even have computers in school when I was in school. I’m showing my age.

Paul: Yeah, I know the feeling.

Rachel: Yeah, so, and I remember when I was, I don’t know, either 13 or 14 there were two guys that came in and said, “All of you will need to know about computers in your future careers.” And I was like, “No I won’t. I’m going to be a dancer.” and they couldnt tell me why I would need computers and so I felt quite pleased with myself. So, yes, it wasn’t on the radar after all.

Paul: So, how did you go from dance to web developement? It seems a bit of a leap there.

Rachel: Well, I know this is a fairly technical career, and I was working back stage for a quite a while and when I decided to quit dance for various reasons, I was working in the west end and I managed to my way into a back-stage techie job.

Paul: OK.

Rachel: I did work as a choreographer and I knew a reasonable amount about sound and lighting and could my way in. So, I worked back-stage in the west end and for a year and a half on Charlston and on The Mouse Trap.

Paul: Right, I see.

Rachel: So, so that was it. So, it wound up to be a technical kind of job and then I found myself pregnant with my daughter. And you cant go heaving around stage equipment while pregnant.

Paul: No.

Rachel: So (laughing), I found myself with some time on my hands. It was really that I even started using the internet.

Paul: Oh, ok.

Rachel: I was fairly young and didnt know anybody else with a child and pregnant.

Paul: What kind of… how long ago are we talking about here?

Rachel: Well, the said child is now nearly 11.

Paul: Right.

Rachel: So, quiet a while ago. ( laughing)

Paul: OK.(laughing)

Paul: So, in the relatively early days of the Web then to some degree…

Rachel: Yes. Yeah and I mean thats really so very important in that at the time there wasn’t actually that much to learn and I was chatting to people on for the parents on the forums because as I said, I didn’t know anyone with a baby and I didn’t know anything about babies. So, (Paul: Ahhh) I was using the web just to talk to other people in the same situation. And then if you wanted to put anything online there wasn’t Flickr or all of these hings. You really had to build a web site.

Paul: Right. Yeah.

Rachel: So, you know, once my daughter was born, I started putting together various HTML. So I could put together a web site telling people about her and things like that. And that’s what everyone did.

Paul: OK.

Rachel: You chat in the discussion forums and you build web sites. Uhm I don’t know… I quite liked that. That was always good fun. So, it didnt take that long before people would start asking me if I would build them a web site.

Paul: Mmhmm

Rachel: And… and at the time there was so little to know. You know, it was a bit of HTML and you had to do some basic things with images. As time went on, I realized I was actually quite interested in, what at the time fewer people were doing which was writing things with Perl which was about the only thing that anyone used to do things like guestbooks and (Paul: Yeah) posting forums to email. It was very, very limited at the time in terms of what people were doing on the server side. I sat down with the Orilley Camel book and taught myself Perl.

Paul: Oh Right, OK. (Rachel laughing) As you do.

Rachel: As you do. Obviously

Marcus: Or not, in my case.

Rachel: Yeah, well… I was bored. (all laughing) I had a baby. You know? Nothing else to do. So, that’s really how I got into doing the back-end stuff via such a strange route and I didn’t really realize what I was learning or if there was real reason to do so. It was interesting to me.

Paul: Do you think there was any advantages or drawbacks to taking that kind of route. I mean I know that most of us that entered the web in the early days did it through some convoluted route in preference to having some kind of formal training. Do you think the people that are coming along these days are going through a proper… you know, going through some kind of computer training course or whatever? Do you think their at a disadvantage for not learning it themselves and discovering it themselves.

Rachel: Well, yeah, but I think things are so different now. I mean back then, it really was a case of: You learned HTML. You learned a little bit about how to make graphics work online. And maybe, if you’re very pushy, you learned some Perl. (Paul: Yeah) And that was it. There wasn’t a huge amount of decisions. I mean, even just to start learning to do this now, you start having to think, “Well, which language do I want to learn? What is the best thing to be learning? Where should I put my time?” (Paul: Yeah, totally). You know, I was just kind of sitting with a little 486 computer and thinking, “You know… this is quite interesting. Look, I can do this!” But we were all just discovering what we could do at the time. Whereas now, if you’re looking at this as a career and what’s going to be best right from the start, before you’ve even gotten started, you know? (Paul: Yeah) So, It’s very different. And It’s very difficult when people always say, “Well, how did you get started? Have you got any suggestions on how I can get started?” And It’s so different now.

Paul: That’s probably one of the most common emails I get. It’s, how do you get started and what languages do you start with? So, I guess you really didn’t have a lot of choice. (Rachel (laughing): No…) It was Perl or nothing, wasn’t it?

Rachel: Really, I mean, yeah, there were other things around but generally people were writing in C, Javascript, and Perl. And the web host I happened to have, had this server which you were allowed to run your scripts on. (Paul: Oh, ok) (Rachel laughing) They were still slightly nervous of it. You know, it was just one server you could run things on. It was a quite good community around that. People would help each other out on how to do things.

Paul: So what advice do you give people who do write with those kinds of questions as to what languages to start with? What do you say?

Rachel: I think the important thing is to learn something well. At the end of the day, once you’ve learned one launguage, you can usually swap to something else. It’s the concept that’s the hard thing. (Paul: Yeah.) Understanding based design or understanding just the basic constructs of any language. Once you’ve done that, you can usually swap to something else. I usually say that PHP is a pretty good choice. Just because It’s out there, everywhere. (Paul: Yeah) You’re going to be able to easily find somewhere to run it. You can set up your own development environment without having to spend any money, really. You can get that all set up. And there is lots and lots of help and there is a great community around that. And to be honest, PHP is what we tend to develop in now and most of the time.

Paul: I mean, It’s quite interesting that you talk about those early days and how you basically got into it because you became a mother. But the early days in the web, and to be honest, to some extent now, there arent exactly a huge number of female developers around. I mean, it seems to be a very male dominated thing. Did that put you off? Did that create barriers to you?

Rachel: It didnt really at the time when I was learning because I came out of a very male dominated profession anyway, (Paul: Oh, OK.) having been working back stage. So, it didnt, worry me. And also at the time, I was just interested in learning it. I think out there in the work place once I became employed doing this, I encountered all sorts of strange situations where people really couldn’t quite get their head around the fact that I was technical and not like a designer or not something else that cliquey females are doing. I was the head of a technical team and went to help someone with a computer and I was the most senior person on the team. And they said, “Oh, can you not send one of the boys down?” (Paul gasps) I then said, “I can send one of the boys down. They’re not going to fix your computer for you, but I can send them down if that’s what you want.” (all laughing) I mean, so people were a bit taken aback, I think and don’t immediately assume that I do the job that I do (Paul: Yeah.) and are much more comfortable of putting me in a designer area.

Paul: Well, that was the mistake I made, isn’t it? (Rachel laughing) The first time, I suppose. I was the typical male chauvinist pig and presumed you are a designer, which I don’t know why. I think it was the hair color, more than anything.

Rachel (laughing): To be honest, I am not particularly hung up about it. It’s not something I get terribly upset about. I find it sort of intriguing that people just assume that. I’m not… you know… I’ve work in… sort of male dominated jobs for a long, long time now and I think if I got terribly upset about these things I wouldn’t be doing it. It is interesting. But in other ways, it works for me. When I was going for job interviews, for instance, if I’m the only woman who walks in and there are lots and lots of men, they’re going to remember me. (Paul: Yeah) And in the same, you know, if I’m pitching for work it’s a talking point. You know, people are always interested as to why I’m doing what I’m doing.

Paul: Damn, and here I was thinking I was asking original questions!

(Rachel and Paul laugh)

Rachel: I think sometimes, it does work for me because do remember. They would think can’t a woman do something a bit unusual?

Paul: Do you think it’s a problem within the industry or would you just think It’s one of those things and what will be will be kind of attitude?

Rachel: It’s really hard to see where it’s a problem. I think It’s a problem if girls or young women who are looking at career choices are being put off because they don’t see female role models out there. And, there’s lots of reasons why. There are women around doing this and tend not to be so high profile. (Paul: Yeah) I mean the reason that I’m not touring around all the different events and things is because I’m a mom. (Paul: Yeah!) You know, and I think that’s the same for an awful lot of women. I talked about this on my blog once and got loads and loads of women contacting me going, “Yes, exactly!” We’re the one’s doing the majority of childcare. I know there are men in that position too, and I’m not saying there aren’t men who are having to be… going to pick up kids at 3:00 or whatever it is. But it does tend to be women and It’s often the women who make that choice or wants to spend time close to the kids when they’re very little. My daughter is getting older but even so, I still wouldn’t be happy about, say going to a different country and leaving her here to go to an event.

Paul: Yeah. I mean to be honest, even for this interview we kind of have to fit it in around you taking your child somewhere, Marcus has got to do a school run in a minute. You know, so, it’s all part of the kind of… yeah… It’s nice we’re in a position where we can kind of fit our work around our families. It’s a good thing, not a bad thing.

Rachel: Yes, it is. And I think that’s possibly one of the reasons why there aren’t so many high profile women, because it takes time to raise your profile. And without me quite looking, I’ve been able to do that through writing, which I can do at midnight or whatever. If you’re going to get out there and get around to all the conferences and things, you know, and look at what other people who are considered to be my peer group and what they’re doing. I just couldn’t physically do that. (Paul: Yeah, totally) Because, I don’t want to. I don’t want to spend a lot of time away from my daughter right now. Maybe in 6 years time, she will be very disinterested in spending any time with me.

(Rachel and Paul Laughing)

Paul: Once she’s a teen-ager, you won’t want to be with her either.

(Both continue laughing)

Rachel: Exactly, you know, so things change but there are quite a lot of people with quite young children and actually more and more so. It’s quite funny, I feel like I’ve got quite an old child for the group of people that I speak to. There are lots of new developer babies out there.

Paul: Yeah, well Marcus is old and decrepit.

Marcus: Well, just to depress you, Rachel, what happens when they get older and become teenagers, they just rely on you as a taxi service.

Rachel: Well, I get that as well. That was the case today. I was ferrying mine and two others back from the

Marcus: The only thing I would say though is, we went through a period about 6 months the beginning of this year, trying to recruit new developers. And we only interviewed one woman out of probably a dozen candidates

Paul: I think that it’s worth saying that’s because we only have 1 woman apply, rather than we segregated all the women who refused to interview.

Marcus: That’s what I meant. Yes, well put Paul. We literally had only 1 woman apply, so yeah… I don’t really know why. Maybe it just seemed like kind of a boy’s area at the moment. I suppose, from what you were saying about the fact that you’re not inclined to go out there and sort of go out on the circuit like Paul does. I suppose until that happens, and maybe younger women who aren’t thinking about motherhood yet, are the ones who are going to be out there raising the profile of women and hopefully, this sort of “boys’ club” type mentality will sort of just fizzle away.

Paul: I mean, It’s quite interesting that you say, how you talked about how you managed to raise your profiles through writing. Tell us a little about that. How did you get into writing books? Because, you seem quite prolific. I did a quick search on Amazon to see exactly how much you’ve written and it seemed to go on for quite a long while.

Rachel: Yeah, there’s quite a few. That was, again, like most things, I tend to say, “Oh yes, I’ll have a go at that!” and then worry about it later. It was a long time ago, I had written some stuff for the Macromedia Web Site about Dreamweaver.

Paul: OK

Rachel: And it was Glasshouse who contacted me and said, “Oh, would you write a couple of chapters for a book?” A couple of chapters, that would be alright, you know (laughing). (Paul: Yeah, no big deal). So yeah, I wrote a couple of chapter for a book and it kind of went from there, really. I like writing. I enjoy… I’m much more from an arts background really than technical. So, I do enjoy writing and putting things across that way. So, yeah, it just went from there. And then when someone said, “Oh, will you write a few more chapters?” Yeah, ok, that was alright. (laughs) And before I know it, I’ve got this great list of books.

Paul: Yeah. It’s a very time consuming thing to do. I mean, beyond the fact that you obviously sound like you enjoy doing it. Do you find it beneficial from a publicity angle for bringing in work?

Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. I think people tend to see you as an expert if you’ve got things in print; if you’ve written things. It does sort of depend that you do know what you’re talking about. And especially with what I do, which is much more… It’s not like I have to show a nice portfolio of pretty things. This is what I can do. What people are doing when they hire me or hire my company is they are hiring us for our expertise. And they have to constant that we actually are experts; that we know what we’re talking about. So the writing does help in that because people assume that if someone let you write a book, you must actually know what you are talking about.

Paul: I mean, I get emails from people asking how do you go about raising your profile. I’m quite interested as to whether you stumbled into this. You know, you talked about you were writing for the Macromedia web site. Did you go out purposefully, intending to write for them or did it just kind of happen? How’s that come about?

Rachel: Again, that really just happened. But because I was writing on my own blog, and I was writing… you know, I was helping people out in forums. (Paul: Right) You know, if you’re out there doing things, people do notice. I mean certainly with things like magazines and books and you know, varies sites that want articles. There are people out there that are looking for people to write all the time, because there’s actually an awful lot of people who know what they’re doing but there are fewer who can express it and express it in a way that someone new to the concept is going to understand. If you are able to do that, if that’s something you can do and you are doing that on your own site or are helping people out in forums and things then it will get noticed. And there are quite a bit of places you can be submitting I suppose, to, you know, Site Point and Vitamin… There’s quite a bit of other sites that accept good content. (Paul: Yeah.) It means that you have to write a few things that you’re not paid for to get going. You can find then, that you can start putting together a body of work and say, “Well, this is the stuff I’ve done.” It’s not in It’self something that you earn a huge amount of money from. I think people who write for a living must have to work incredibly hard.

Paul: (laughing) Or be incredibly good. One or the other.

(Rachel and Paul laughing)

Rachel: Both I think, both. As something that helps raise your profile for the other things you do. If I found it an absolute chore, I don’t think I would do it because you don’t want to be sogging away at things you can’t stand in the hope that it will get you some profile. But it is one way to do it and It’s certainly a way to do it if you are in a position where you can’t get out to lots of events or you’re not someone who wants to do public speaking. I’m not keen at all on public speaking. I much rather hide behind the computer (laughing).

Paul: A proper developer. That’s what I like to hear.

Rachel: So, you know, It’s another way of doing it, because I do sort of think of the public speaking if you’re going to be thinking of conferences as being something that would really get that profile up there. No one has really met me until fairly recently at any events because I didn’t get to anything really. And yet a lot people would have known of me and the stuff I’ve done because of the lighting.

Paul: I mean, you talk about that you use this as a mechanism to you know, to increase your profile for the other work that you do. So, perhaps we ought to talk about the other work that you do. I mean, you run a company, “Edge of My Seat” which is edgeofmyseat.com. How did that start? You obviously from going… from being an enthusiastic amateur, you must have gotten a job in web design, I’m guessing. How did you go about getting that job and from there, how did you end up running your own company?

Rachel: Well, I… When I decided I actually wanted to go back to work… I’ve been doing bIt’s and pieces while my daughter was quite little and I decided I wanted to go back to work and it was really tail-end of this whole dot com era. (Paul: Oh, OK.) And so, I ended up heading up a technical team at Property Finder. (Paul: Oh, OK. Yeah, I know.) Which was very much on the technical side and we managed the servers and things like that rather than even doing any development or very much development. There were other people who were more on the development team, although we still did bIt’s and pieces. I did that for a while and the whole sort of dot com thing was starting to fall apart really, at that point. And I moved to another dot com company who built portal sites for accountants. So I know quite a bit about stage integration (Paul: Wow. What an exciting life you have). Yeah, but that’s the time where things really weren’t looking that stable and I felt, well I can actually do this myself. And at least then I would know where I was in terms of whether I was going to get paid by people. The problem is being employed in an unstable situation is that really, you can work a whole month and get to the end of the month and find out that nobody’s paying you. (Paul: Yeah.) And so I figured that actually, I may be better off setting off on my own. And so people had asked if I would take on bIt’s of freelance work and things. And so, I actually purchased a printer’s trust because at the time I was a young single mom. I’m not so young anymore but I purchased a printer’s trust and this in 2001. And they basically gave me a small grant and loan to get the company started. So, I had about a month’s money when I started. (laughing) I didn’t have the dot coms, so I kind of had to work. (Paul: Wow!) It’s a good way to start a business, you know (Paul: Yeah.) … make or break really. If it doesn’t work, we don’t eat.

(Rachel, Paul and Marcus laughing)

Marcus: I remember that feeling very well.

Rachel: Yeah.

Paul: Yes

Rachel: But it makes you really dive into it. The nice thing was, because I was paying for a child, mind you, at the time, I actually only had to earn half of what I had earned because I could keep her home with me.

Paul: Ahh, ok.

Rachel: So, I must have cut my expenses by being able sort of work around my daughter’s schedule and things. So, that kind of worked out alright and really, it went from there.

Paul: So how did you begin to win the business in that first month of, “Oh crap! What have I done?” (Rachel and Marcus laugh) You know, where did the work come from?

Rachel: Well, at the time, what I realized was that because of how the dot com was collapsing, everyone was getting rid of their developers. But they still had all these applications. And something I’ve always been good at is picking up on other people’s stuff and working on it. So, probably, uhm, September ’01, which was like a terrible time to start a company (Rachel and Paul laugh) and really for the first two or three years was taking stuff that was already built and was falling apart, or the developers had gone or had all sorts of problems with it and just fixing it or adding bits to it. And I did lots and lots of that which, during this time of recession, really, was actually, really good work because there was plenty of it. Everything had to have been built while they had lots of developers and they had money and things. And so I sort helped things limp along a lot. And what this sort of lead to really was this idea of doing development for design agencies. (Paul: OK.) And focusing on doing really good development to support really nice design. That really is what we’ve moved on to do now. Most of our clients are designers or design agencies. And they do a really good design, and then they hand it over to us and we look after it and we make sure it will work. (laughing) That’s actually a really nice way to work because it means we get to work with some really nice stuff, anyway, well designed stuff and we have people who care about what they do. (Paul: Yeah.) And we get to do the development side of things that we enjoy. Sort of working with people rather just sort of chucking things over the fence and throwing it back.

Marcus: The point your picking about picking up what other people have done and fixing it and that kind of thing… did that not kind of cause you problems with development platforms and having to deal with lots of different types of languages and that kind of thing?

Rachel: Yeah. I had learned ASP by that point and a bit of Java. And I tend to not have too much problems swapping from one thing to the other. Certainly, I mean then, it was a lot of Perl and my class PSP. Because that was, at this sort of time, they were really the two things that you were seeing things built in. So, I used to do either and then I started doing PHP as well around the same time. So, I’ve always been quite happy swapping between languages, swapping between databases. (Marcus begins to speak: I think the reason why…) It gets a bit much if you do too many in one day, you know, because you start putting semi-colons in the wrong place and stuff. It doesn’t really bother me too much. I mean, its nice to be able to concentrate one thing. As I said, we tend to build new stuff in PHP. But, I’m generally quite happy switching around.

Marcus: I suppose, the reason why I was asking is we’ve come across a few briefs that we’ve been sent in the past where it seemed like the perfect job for us but the development platform in particular has been something that we just don’t work on. Do we want to invest on that kind of platform just so we can go after this job and quite often, we’ve thought to ourselves, “No, we don’t.” So, I guess that’s where the question is coming from.

Rachel: Yeah, I think in terms of new stuff, you kind of do have to focus unless you’ve got an awful lot of people able to create your own libraries and things in different languages. So for new stuff, we do tend to choose PHP but at the time, what I was doing was just picking up on stuff. It was less of a problem really because I was just fixing stuff that already existed.

Paul: You seem to have done very well over the last few years and Drew has come and joined you now and you seem to be branching out a bit into the area of training. That seems to be something that’s come up.

Rachel: Yup.

Paul: I’m quite interested, you know… it’s great you’re there and you’re able to offer training courses. You do have a basic CSS training course, I think (R: Mmmhmm) and you’re talking about doing an advanced one, is that right?

Rachel: Possibly going to do that. We’ve had a few people ask. (Paul: OK) So, that’s what we’re thinking of doing.

Paul: So, I mean, the question now is who trains the trainer? How do you guys stay on top of the latest things that are emerging and how do you keep up with what’s going on?

Rachel: Well, basically, because we are doing it all the time, I think. The difference between us and a training company that just does training is that actually what we’re doing is, we’re using this stuff all the time. It’s the same as when I buy a book. I’m writing a book from the point of view of someone who has to do this. You know, who practically is doing it. And it’s the same with the training. Obviously, we’re constantly reading up on new things and trying things out in browsers and trying to get around problems and just by the day to day work that we do. So, that’s really what we’re bringing to a training course. For two or three years, people have asked me if I would do training. But until Drew joined, we just didn’t have the capacity. It comes down to one of those things that have to be arranged. So, it wasn’t saying that I really felt that I couldn’t do, but Drew was making to do it as well. Its great fun. Its an enjoyable… its actually enjoyable to be face-to-face with people. Especially writing a book and then the feedback you get as the occasional email that people say, “Oh, I really enjoyed that!” or, “Why did you say this? Its rubbish!” (Rachel and Paul laughing) Actually being face-to-face with people and seeing how they work through the course is really, really interesting and great fun.

Paul: Cool!

Rachel: So, yes. It’s been good.

Paul: Excellent! Well, thank you so much, Rachel, for coming on the show. It was really good to hear how you got into things and how your career has progressed. Even if it’s somewhat chaotic along the way. Although I can associate with that (Rachel laughing) kind of bouncing from one thing… We’d set up Headscape in January, 2002. So we were only 3 months behind you, so we understand your pain there.

Rachel: Yes, well it wasn’t the best time, really.

Marcus: We were both made redundant from a dot com in December, 2001, so it was necessity that got Headscape, I think.

Paul: Yeah. Always the best way. OK, thank you very much, Rachel, uhm and I’m sure that we will get you back on the show again if you’re willing at some point (Rachel laughing) in the future. Alright, thank you.

Rachel: OK.

Listeners email:

So just before we wrap up the show I wanted to share with you an idea sent in recently by a listener (sorry I can’t find your name)! A number of you have written in since we said we were going to change the format of the show with ideas about how things could be improved. One idea that particularly appealed to me was a new short section at the end of the show where we read out some listeners emails. These emails could be a question, comment, recommendation or indeed anything else you think others maybe interested in. So whether you have a tip for improving your sites search engine rankings or just want to tell me how ignorant we are then drop us an email. Write in soon as we need content for next weeks show!

105. Christmas Cheer

Posted in Classic shows on December 19, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul suggests some gifts to buy the geek in your life. Marcus talks about wireframes and Matthew Paterson talks about the Email Standards Project.

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Clear:left winner

Congratulations to Ryan Downie who is the lucky winner of the Clear:Left training competition. Ryan will have his pick of either a place on the CSS Mastery.

If you didn’t win do not despair. There are places still available on both courses for a mere £345 + VAT. I have attended Jeremy Keith’s course on AJAX and have to say it was superb. I am sure the CSS course is just as good. Go to the clear:left website for more details.

News and events

Opera goes on the offensive against Microsoft

Without a doubt the biggest story of the week and in many ways the year is the fact that Opera is filing an antitrust suit against Microsoft. This story is huge, not because one browser manufacturer is litigating against another (something that is a common occurrence) but because of the strange ripple effect this seems to be causing in the web design community.

However, before we get into the ripples lets look at the antitrust suit itself. Operas beef seems to focus on two areas. First, they object to Internet Explorer being bundled with Windows (surprise, surprise). Second, they are complaining about Microsoft’s lack of commitments to web standards.

Call me an old cynic but this whole thing stinks of a massive PR exercise. This is especially true when it comes to the complaints about standards. As Eric Meyer points out, the timing of this claim seems odd to say the last. If the suit had been filed before the release of IE7 it would make some kind of sense. It was certainly true that standards support in IE was very poor. However, IE7 is a huge step forward and Microsoft seem to be active in its development of IE8.

To me this just looks like an exercise in pandering to the gripes of the web design community. It was as if Opera knew it wouldn’t get a lot of support for the whole “unbundle IE” argument and so threw in the standards issue to drum up some support.

However, as I have already said, the Opera antitrust suit is not the most interesting part of this story. The real clincher is the spin off discussion that has emerged sparked primarily by a very provocative post by Andy Clarke. He argues that this suit makes the position of the W3C CSS working group untenable. Andy asks how Microsoft and Opera can work together to create the next generation of CSS when they are in legal action over exactly that issue. This has led to a much wider discussion about how the W3C works and highlighted a divide between how browser manufacturers and designers see the world. Without a doubt there is huge frustration at the glacier speed at which the W3C moves. This is largely due to the challenges faced by browser manufacturers in implementing the specifications.

But the story does not end there. This frustration with slow progress seems to extend beyond even the W3C to also encompass the Web Standards Project which was setup precisely to push for better standards support. Some very prominent figures are even questioning its role.

If we as web designers want to pressure browser makers to provide better standards support then we need to invest in organisations like WaSP. They need to have the kind of funding that political lobby groups have. This will enable them to employ full time staff to constantly lobby and educate browser providers on what web designers need. In my opinion we as web designers need to put our money where our mouth is and start giving financing to organisations like WaSP so they can be more effective.

Boagworld christmas appeal

Talking about putting your money where your mouth is, I would like to thank everybody who has been kind enough to give to our Christmas Appeal. We have been raising money to support an orphanage and school in an extremely poor part of India. The idea is that you pay for anything of value you have received from Boagworld. Ask yourself how much have we taught you on the show? How much have we entertained you? Then decide how much you would pay for that and give that money.

So far we have received £465 and we are still collecting. Even if you hear this show after Christmas we are still collecting! To donate something or for more information go to christmas.boagworld.com.

The best CSS designs of 2007

Not only is Christmas almost upon us, the year is about to draw to a close. This makes it the time of year when bloggers look back at the year just gone and compile “the best of 2007″ lists. Normally I am lukewarm about such things however there is a great list over at web designer wall. They have compiled the best of CSS design in 2007. If you are in need of inspiration this is definitely worth a look. There is some truly stunning stuff here.

Talking of rating design you might also want to check out commandshift3.com which is basically hot or not for web design. When you visit the homepage you are shown two designs and you click on the design you prefer. Not only does it allow you to vote for designs it also lets you look at the best and worst based on votes received. This makes it a great site for inspiration and for learning what not to do!

Marcus’ bit: Quick and Dirty Wireframes

So a couple of week’s ago I wrote a post on the use of wireframes in web design. Marcus couldn’t come up with a decent topic to talk about himself this week so has decided to reuse my post and pass it off as his own! ;)

Paul’s corner: Geek Gifts for Christmas

For my segment of the show this week I decided it might be fun to look at Christmas presents. Specifically what you should buy for the geek in your life. In order to avoid it sounding like a wish list for myself the items I have picked are items that I own myself and can personally recommend.

Ask the expert: Introduction to the Email Standards Project

Hello world of Boag, I’m here today just to give you a really quick introduction to the Email Standards Project, a new community effort that has launched recently.

If you’re a web designer, and you’ve ever created HTML emails, you will know that getting them to look reasonably consistent across the major email clients is hair-pullingly frustrating.

At least with websites, there are only a few major browsers you have to worry about, and thanks to the Web Standards Project they are much improved from the days of the browser wars. With email you have at least 12 email clients with big shares of the audience.

Unfortunately, HTML email is still stuck back in 1998 with that Celine Dion song from ‘Titanic’ – nobody wants to be there. Over the last 10 years, web designers, and particularly web standardsy type designer, have generally taken a ‘Just Say No’ approach to HTML email. ‘Don’t send it, don’t read it, pretend it never happened’.

That approach has not been a spectacular success – millions of people still sent HTML emails, but because the designers wouldn’t touch them they were hideously ugly and just made designers hate them even more.

HTML email is here to stay. It is the default format in many clients, and sometimes it really does give a better experience for the reader than plain text. The Threadless newsletter is a great example – the send every week an email with pictures of the latest shirts. Trying to describe the shirts in text is nowhere near as useful. A picture is worth at least 1,000 words!

So here we are in 2007, and in order to get reasonable rendering, designers are having to dust off their table coding skills to get things working in Outlook, Lotus Notes, Gmail, Yahoo, Thunderbird…it goes on.

At Freshview we deal with designers every day through Campaign Monitor and MailBuild who are struggling with this problem, and we finally decided to do something about it. That is where the Email Standards Project came from.

Together with a few other people we’ve put a site up at http://www.email-standards.org (email hyphen standards dot org), and you will find a link for that in the show notes. The central idea of the Email Standards Project is that we want to work with designers and with email client developers to improve support for web standards in email clients.

It’s not one of those sites that is all talk and no practicality though – jump onto the site and you will see a bunch of tests we have done to work out exactly what does, and what does not work in all the major email clients as far as a core of normal HTML and CSS like padding, margins, floats, lists and so on.

If you’ve seen the Acid test for browsers, over at the Web Standards Project, then this is basically the same idea except for email. We’ve already had some contact with some of the big email client representatives about our results, which is really exciting. Check out the blog for updates in that area.

If you know the pain of designing HTML emails, and you want to support the project, then there is a section on the site that covers that too, and we’ve had a huge number of people offer to help, and some great feedback from people like Jeffrey Zeldman and Cameron Moll.

If you are a website owner, and you want to know why this matters to you, then check out the site for an article on why web standards are important for email, or talk to your web design firm. As is often the case, it comes down to money – better standards support means less time spent getting things to work, and more time on the actual design.

So thanks for giving me the chance to say a few words about the Email Standards Project, and I hope you all do get a chance to checkout the website, email-standards.org.

Happy Christmas!

That about wraps it up for this week’s show. We will be back with a slightly amended format as from Wednesday the 9th January. See you then.

104. Give us your money

Posted in Classic shows on December 12, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul shares 10 tips for getting designs signed off. Marcus looks at how to present to a prospective client and Michael Slater introduces us to Ruby on Rails.

Podcast: Download (25.5MB)

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News and events | Marcus: How to present to a prospective client | Paul: 10 tips for design sign off | Michael Slater talks about Ruby on Rails | Question of the week

Housekeeping

All change

I have a bit of housekeeping news before we go any further with the show. I am changing things around a bit with my podcasting line up. After a chat with Dan Oliver from .net magazine we have decided that I will no longer be doing their show. They have some great plans for it in the future but it just didn’t make sense for me to keep doing two very similar shows. Before people start emailing, no we haven’t had a falling out and I still love Dan very much… if only I wasn’t already married.

The good news is that this allows me to introduce some more guests onto this show and bring in a bit more discussion. In order to accommodate this we will be having just one feature section each week instead of my bit and Marcus bit. Some weeks I will do it and other weeks it will be Marcus.

The final aspect of all of this is that we are going to start recording the show together rather than over skype. This should deal with the audio problems we have been having as well as making for a much better dynamic.

Christmas giving

I thought it might be nice to use the mighty power of the Boagworld listeners to raise a bit of money this Christmas and wondered if you might all be so kind as to help.

We have been doing this show for well over 2 years and have never charged or done much in the way of advertising. We are therefore wondering if just this once you would dip your hands into your pockets and give a bit of cash.

I want to raise some money for a charity I have been personally supporting for a while. A friend I grew up with now runs a school and orphanage in a very rural part of India. The kids they work with have far from the best background and the school is the only hope they have of breaking out of their circumstances.

I wont emotionally blackmail you with sob stories (because I know you are hardened cynical geeks) but simply ask that you give me some cash in return for the two years of free shows I have given you.

Because I am unorganised and only thought of this a couple of days ago we are going to simply use my paypal account to collect donations. I will then pass the money on to the charity. So to give a donation just use the bottom below (be warned its not the most intuitive system ever but you are all clever chaps. I am sure you will work it out).

Give to the Boagworld Christmas Appeal

News and events

24 ways is back

My first story of the day is actually 12 days late because it is the re-launch of 24 ways. In case you haven’t come across 24 ways before I should explain that it is an advent calendar for web designers.

Each day in December leading up to Christmas they publish an article written by some of the leading lights in web design (oh yes, and me). The articles are somewhat random but also incredibly practical and hands on. Articles range from creating a never-ending background to working with online maps.

But don’t panic that you have missed the first half of advent. You can access all of the previous days. In fact you can even access the last 2 years of articles. Ample to keep you amused while we are away over Christmas.

Tips for development and design

If 24 ways isn’t enough to quench your thirst for knowledge then let’s throw two more articles into the mix both of which provide some top tips.

The first is for all you developers out there. The guys at Blue Flavor have shared their top 10 tips for a successful development project. The article includes great advice like, always create a functional spec and talk to your clients. Interestingly one of the suggestions is to use a version control system. This is also a tip in our second article which is aimed instead at designers.

Jina Bolton has written an interesting article for Think Vitamin entitled “creating sexy stylesheets“. Like the blue flavor article this one lists 10 tips. However this time they are for producing better stylesheets. Now, although I would argue that nothing makes CSS sexy this is still a very useful list. The tips for organising your CSS file and building your own framework are particularly good.

So if you are into top 10 lists then you should be happy this week whether you are a designer or a developer.

24 wayswhich post articles on web design over the Christmas period. Well, I was asked to contribute to the site so I wrote an article entitled 10 tips for design sign off. Although some of the tips have been covered on the show I thought generally it would make a good segment for the show.

The problem is that getting design sign off can be one of the most challenging parts of the web design process. It can prove time consuming, demoralizing and if you are not careful can lead to a dissatisfied client. What is more you can end up with a design that you are ashamed to include in your portfolio.

How then can you ensure that the design you produce is the one that gets built? How can you get the client to sign off on your design? (Question of the week

What tips do you have for getting designs signed off?

Quick and dirty wireframes

Posted in User experience on December 6, 2007 by Paul Boag

I am currently in the process of wireframing an internal project that we are working on at Headscape. It occurred to me that despite the fact that wireframes are a fundamental tool of web design, they are not something I have spoken about before.

What is a wireframe?

Fundamentally a wireframe is a tool for rapidly prototyping a website. They roughly approximate the layout, content and hierarchy of a web page as well as the relationship between pages. Effectively you are building a rough version of the site.

Wireframes don’t look attractive. They are not designed as such. Rather they give a sense of how things will be organised on your site. In many cases they lack colour and imagery, although there is no reason why they should. However, they do show visual hierarchy through layout, font size and shading.

Example wireframe

What benefits do they provide?

So why produce a wireframe? Well there are a number of good reasons…

They act as a reference point for the designer to work from, demonstrating the relative importance of various screen elements.
They can be used to test with. This enables you to ensure users can navigate a site and find key content on a page.
They help flush out the details of a site that are often missed. These include things like password recovery and error handling.
They help to define interactive elements such as AJAX and Javascript in a way a static Photoshop mockup cannot.
They help the client to visualise how the site will work.
They identify navigational issues which need resolving.

How to create a wireframe

Once you have recognised the benefit of producing wireframes the next question becomes how exactly do you build them? The answer is largely dictated by two factors; the time available and the complexity of the website.

If you are really strapped for time then simply sketching out some key pages is better than nothing. Even these can be used in testing and shown to the client. However, a sketch does not show interactive elements or the relationship between pages.

If you have a little more time you could produce key pages in a tool like Omnigraffle or Visio. Better still is powerpoint which allows you to link multiple pages together, so creating a basic navigable site.

However, probably the most common way to build wireframes is using HTML. Of course the downside of this approach is that it can take longer if you are overly precious about your code. Personally, when it comes to wireframes I prefer the quick and dirty approach. I create my HTML wireframes using the WYSIWYG editor in Dreamweaver, churning out the pages through a mixture of CSS and tables. I don’t care what is going on under the hood. All I care about is that I can get a sense of how the site would work.

Taking this somewhat cavalier attitude to HTML wireframes is not without its drawbacks. Because the underlying code is a mess, ultimately the wireframe has to be thrown away. A better approach would be to use nice clean semantic code which can then be reused for the final build. However, in my experience this rarely works in reality. The only time I do use this approach is when building a site on our content management system. In such situations it is as easy to rapidly produce pages in the cms as it is in Dreamweaver.

The key to wireframes is for them to be quick and disposable. Wireframes are the place for you to experiment and try out new ideas. They are the place for testing and adaptation, not for being overly precious.

If your site is a simple one then using sketches or a tool like Visio will probably be enough. However, if it is more complex with a lot of pages or interaction then consider using an HTML wireframe. In short use the right tool for the job!

Show 102: Worktime blues

Posted in Classic shows on November 27, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul looks at why you should have a training budget and how to spend it. Marcus looks at capturing requirements and Roo Reynolds introduces us to the possibilities of virtual worlds and their impact on web design.

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News and events | Marcus Requirements capture | Paul: Spending the training budget | Roo Reynolds on virtual worlds | Question of the week

News and events

10 Absolute “Nos!” for Freelancers

I know that many of the people that listen to the boagworld podcast are freelancers so I keep an eye out for stories that appeal to this group. I was therefore drawn to an article in my news reader entitled 10 Absolute “Nos!” for freelancers. It’s a great article that lists 10 questions asked by clients to which the answer should always be no.

The questions include classics such as “Can you show me a mock-up to help us choose a designer/developer?”, “Can I pay for my e-commerce site from my website sales?” and “Can I just pay the whole amount when it’s done?”. Almost without exception I agreed with every item on this list. The only exception is “Will you register and host my site?” because I think a lot of clients expect this even if it is a pain in the arse. Of course, the fact that I work for an agency rather than as a freelancer could be colouring my view on this one. However, whether you are a freelancer, an agency employee or just an enthusiastic amateur this is all good advice.

Making the most of working with designers

Adaptive Path are an agency I really admire. Not only do they produce some cutting edge work they are also some of the foremost thinkers in the world of web design. I was therefore understandably interested when one of their clients recently asked them how to make the most of working with a design agency.

The resulting blog post called “Making the Most of a Design Engagement” is a fascinating collection of tips that is definitely worth a read.

The subject of how an agency and client engage is something that I have posted on a number of times [1], [2], [3]. However, reading the perspective of another agency (especially one so well respected) is very enlightening. What I found most encouraging of all is that they obviously struggle with the same kind of client issues we all do.

Whether you are somebody who commissions web designers or whether you are a designer yourself take the time to read this short post.

How Open ID will change your site

Just before I went away on holiday (did I mention I had been away?) there was a new post on the Think Vitamin website about OpenID. I am a big fan of OpenID and have spoken about it before on the show. However, its a tricky concept to explain. At its heart it allows you to login to all the many services you use on the web from one single site so having to deal with only a single username and password.

I sincerely believe that if you are building a new website that has any form of login then you should consider including an OpenID login. The problem at the moment is that you will have to do this in addition to the normal login process. You might wonder if it is worth the effort.

The article on the Think Vitamin site does an excellent job at explaining just how significant OpenID is going to be (even though it exaggerates it in places). It explains the background, the problem and the possibilities. If you haven’t looked at OpenID yet or are sceptical about its worth then the Think Vitamin is a great place to start.

Good practice when working with Tag Clouds

Tagging is everywhere these days. From Flickr to Delicious every site seems to have tags. Even blogs like this one has tags. Tags are a useful alternative form of navigation that allows users to quickly find related content no matter where it is in the sites hierarchy. There is no doubt they are powerful and incredibly useful especially on larger sites with a lot of content.

The problem is that they are relatively new. We are still working out how to successfully integrate them into our websites and what role they play. Fortunately a recent article entitled “Tag Clouds Gallery: Examples And Good Practices” attempts to establish some best practice for tagging and makes some suggestions about their design and integration.

If you are doing some design work with tags or if you are looking to add tags to your own site then you may want to take a look at this post. My only word of caution is that it only tells half the story. It addresses tag clouds but says little about how tags on individual pages should be displayed.

Marcus’ bit: Requirements capture

While Paul has been buddying up with Mickey, Donald and Pluto, I have been working with a UK higher education institution at the very early stages of their website redesign project.

One of the things that we have been discussing in detail is the process we will go through to capture requirements and set objectives for the site. I thought I should share them here.

Existing site review

I have looked in the past at carrying out an expert review relating solely on a site’s information architecture. A site review takes on board some aspects of the existing site’s IA but is more general than that.

I tend to look at the following site features very much from a usability point of view:

Navigability – can I find things?
Consistency of navigation
Visual hierarchy – consistency of the design
Writing style
Processes – search, making a comment, ordering etc
Terminology
Content – grouping, repetition, wide/narrow mix, internal/external mix etc

The main purposes of the review are:

To highlight to all stakeholders what the site issues are
To highlight to all stakeholders positive aspects of the existing site
To suggest possible solutions to issues
To explain the processes involved in achieving goals

Stakeholder interviews

We have found that interviewing key internal staff (i.e. content owners) and sometimes key users, is the most valuable exercise in creating a requirements and objectives document.

Each interview is done on a one-to-one basis to ensure that people say what they really mean! The interviews are semi-structured which means that we will create a script of questions but will happily allow people move off-track.

The interviews aim to gather opinion on the site’s user base, weighting of content, issues and opportunities.

Work together

Though we are usually brought in as experts to consult on this type of process it is imperative that the client is involved at every step of the way. This is because one of the purposes of the exercise is information gathering. For example, creating user personas based just on stakeholders interview input may miss something that discussing/reviewing with the web team would not.

Create the document

What we are trying to do is record all findings in a manner that can be used as a basis for all the work to follow – IA, design, copywriting, build etc. In other words – create a list of requirements for the new site and give them an order of priority.

It needs to get into detail to be useful. A recent review we carried out contained over twenty specific opportunities for the site, which target audience groups each issue related to and how the site could deliver each opportunity.

This was coupled with a detailed list of requirements per audience group – 25 audience groups with over a hundred requirements. The requirements we also graded for importance into ‘must haves’, ‘should haves’ and ‘nice to haves’.

Paul’s corner: Spending your training budget

I recently received a question from Harry asking “what approach do you take to training?”. He has some budget set aside and is wondering how he should spend it. As I am always keen to spend other people’s money this seemed the perfect subject for me to talk about… read keeping your skills sharp.

Training course give away

While I am on the subject of training, the guys over at Clearleft have two training courses coming up on January the 24th and 25th in Brighton. The first is CSS mastery by Andy Budd and the second is Bulletproof AJAX by Jeremy Keith. If you would like to attend but cannot get your company to produce the £345 + VAT for the early bird fee then I might be able to help. I have one free place to give away to either course (your choice) for a lucky random winner. We will announce the winner on our Christmas special so entries need to be in by Friday 14th of December. Just send me an email with your name and contact details with “clearleft competition” in the subject line.

Ask the expert: Roo Reynolds on virtual worlds

Paul: Okay, so joining me today is Roo Reynolds who is a meta verse evangelist for IBM, Its nice to have you on the show Roo

Roo: Hi Paul,

Paul: What on earth is a meta verse evangelist?

Roo: That’s a good question, I guess a meta verse evangelist is someone who helps people understand the very exciting and confusing area of virtual worlds.

Paul: Ah, virtual worlds. Now the people listening to this show might be thinking what has that got to do with web design, why have we got someone one on here talking about virtual worlds and I am quite happy to admit that that’s not our normal fair. Its not what we normally cover on the show but I wanted to get Roo on partly because um, well to be frank we grew up together didn’t we pretty much

Roo: we did we were family friends for many, many years

Paul: yeah, which was very bizarre to then discover the he is a kind of world authority on virtual worlds. so that sounds very dramatic doesn’t it

Roo: A thought leader?

Paul: A thought Leader

Roo: I remember inheriting your old star wars toys Paul

Paul: There we go, So I set you of on a good direction in your career by getting you into Sci-fi early. I am now taking all of the credit for all that you have achieved since then.

Roo: Its all thanks to you (giggle)

Paul: yeah (hahahaha) Well um, but I though it was quite interesting. I was doing a presentation where one of the things I wanted to talk about in this discussion was upcoming and emerging technologies and how they would affect things and I wanted to talk about virtual worlds and realised that I knew absolutely nothing about them so I gave Roo a call and we had a chat on the phone. Then I got educated so I figured I ought to pass on that education to everybody that listens to this show so that’s um, a bit of the background. So lets kick of the with the first questions. So what exactly are virtual worlds and why do you think there is so much hype surrounding them at the moment there has been lots of talk about, you know, things like second life and that kind of thing. Perhaps if you could explain them a bit, and explain why there is so much enthusiasm about it at the moment

Roo: yeah I can try. So I guess I can ask you to think about it. as it a good an example anyway, probably the most popular example of a virtual world. At the moment. So these are things which are kind of digital online environments or as some people would describe the as multi-user virtual environments its that kind of online social space. So to the untrained eye they might look a lot like game but there are no game elements inside virtual worlds or rather there are but they exist within the broader world. So something like second life doesn’t really have any point there is no final point no enemies to kill there is no “x” level to achieve its just a world and if you want to inhabit that world and build a shop or you want to habit that and be an explorer and wonder around finding interesting things and talking to people then that cool as well.

Paul: Hmm, I mean the immediate thing which comes out of that is well, you know, what is the point. Why do people take part in virtual worlds and what kind of ways are people using them

Roo: Yeah, there are a lot of different answers to that, almost as many answers as there are different people really so as in the real world there is not point. people make up their own point they decide that the are going to make a lot of money or they are going to be an artist and be well known or open a sex shop or whatever it might be and people will have different personal goals which they set themselves. So really any goal is a tangible thing that people will almost determine for themselves

Paul: So I guess in many ways its like the web itself it’s a tool and how chose to use that tool is largely up to you

Roo: Yeah exactly. And within that you will get lots of different things, I mentioned some, you will also get games within that so people play chess inside virtual worlds and people do all kinds of crazy things. Yeah I guess the answer to your question is really why is there so much hype about them, its because over the last 12 months or 16 months or so the press has been covering this is quite a bit way. That turned it into a kind of hype feeding frenzy. Garner had a very famous prediction about how 80% of active internet users by 2011 I think it was will be using virtual worlds and will have an avatar. Not necessarily in second life but in a virtual world. And all of this make people realise that this might just be the next “big thing” its gone from being the kind of space where people will, I don’t mean this in any derogatory way, everyday people will would hang out in to becoming a space that a lot of big companies and small companies and advertising and marketing firms are really getting interested in. You know we have all seen “the web” in that ,very early in my career, was the web being picked up by corporation and some people almost missed the boat and had to catch up later on

Paul: So Why do you think this is going to be the next big thing? Why do you think a virtual worlds are going to be you know, you talked about how some companies had to play catch up on the internet you almost imply that this I going to be as big as the internet is. Did I miss interpret that or do you really think its going to be incredibly significant and if so why?

Roo: Well, I think it is always going to be a subset of the internet, you know, this is just another communications media and its probably will remain a subset of the web. There will always be a place for flat 2D content, But once you start getting into 3D social stuff and giving people a real time opportunity to relate to each other and see each other and this sense of presence where you can see what the other is paying attention to. For me joining a circle for the first time, a circle of people talking and I walked up to it, and you know people took a step back to invite me into that circle. That was a really compelling moment to me. It was also a real eye opener that the “real world etiquette” that we see in society all the time actually was playing out for real in this virtual space as well. In terms of why it might be the next big thing a lot of different elements are coming together at the same time here, we finally have, almost complete availability of broadband, certainly in this country and in the west. We have got fairly powerful machines now that have 3D graphics accelerators and sound cards, this is something which is now also happening in corporate environments as well as at home. There is kind of a point in time where the… someone might describe it as a tipping point where there is this lot of interest and we have seen this massive press interest, but also big companies getting involved, you know when you see Sony with their playstation home project which is going to be like a lobbying environment for the playstation 3 its been delayed a little bit, but that is really the kind of mass Market application for virtual worlds and it is things like that which really opened my eyes to where this might take is. This is not going to be a niche thing with a few geeks hanging around and some would argue that it has never been that. Really virtual worlds have been attractive to creative people and to the people who feel like they want to kind of express themselves and share things, Its not full of 16 year old boy with glasses sitting in their bedrooms and really there is a difference between games, traditional online games and Massively multiplayer online role-playing games And a space like virtual worlds that allows them to be attractive to the mass market . So yeah I wouldn’t say it is going to replace the web or even be the largest portion of the internet. But there is certainly a growing space for these virtual worlds

Paul: so what, I mean, I can understand how some people are maybe making money out of being involved in virtual worlds where, I don’t know, where they are creating things which they are selling inside that virtual world, but what about other companies, how are larger organisations using it. For example, how do IBM use it?

Roo: well, we are maybe quite weird in because we do an awful lot in virtual worlds. We do everything from recruitment too employee discussions and meetings. although of course we cannot use a virtual world for confidential discussion, we certainly have the types of meetings we would have in public spaces, like conferences, we also have virtual facets to real world conferences like forties a really big conference we run, and we had that for the first time happening in second life running in parallel to the real world event so people who could not make it to the real world event could at least attend. They could see and hear some of the presentations and they could mingle and network. So like I said we are a bit weird in that in that we do so much, that’s partly because we are such a big company. Now a lot of other people would look at it and say they have a very particular need or desire, something they want to get out of it and for some people historically it has been marketing, or advertising, it has been to reach a wider audience or to reach them in a different way. Which is more playful and allows them to be really participants rather than just eye balls

Paul: yeah, I mean one thing you said was earlier was that you referred to virtual worlds as a subset of the internet and the web. Its another that that going on online. One of the things which strikes me is that if you do something, in something like second life, say if you run a conference that conference is kind of just fenced into the second life world so its not going to get picked up by search engines, its not going to be very accessible and things like that do you think that there are going to be changes in that, do you think there will be more crossover between virtual and maybe the more traditional web

Roo: yeah absolutely this is one of the areas that really excites me at the moment, this whole area of interoperability and that needs to be not just between different virtual worlds but also between the web and virtual worlds so this idea of the virtual universe sort of thing as a virtual world or virtual worlds is something that IBM even throws this term 3D internet around quite a lot. In a kind of evolutionary next step when you look at virtual worlds today they tend to be proprietary walled gardens and actually a lot of people would compare them to AOL in the mid nineties but actully when you start thinking about how they may interconnect, and that inset just moving your avatar from world of war craft to second or habbo or whatever its actually much more interesting than that. Its things like bringing you wallet with you your friends list with you being able to blur the lines between virtual worlds and bring content in from the web and share content back out to the web, these things are beginning to be possible and in some ways one of the reason I think second life is so successful because it does have the ability to make request to web content and bring that in so you have dynamic stuff going on. But that is still very early days and I think that we will probably see a massive focus and in fact the big conference in san hosa very recently where this came out in a very big way but a lot of companies will be wanting to get together and its very, you know the will is definitely there to have a real focus in the next few month on interactivity

Paul: I mean so, I am kind of very aware this for many of the people listening to this show that are kind of a mixture of designers, developers, you know, people that are running websites that a lot of this is very theoretical and it is not something they would be directly involved in at the moment. I mean do you think there is anything that they should be doing, that they should be aware of when it comes to virtual worlds. Is this an area you think they should be keeping an eye on or doing anything actively.

Roo: Yeah, I guess most people I talk to even if they are not going to rush out tomorrow and buy some space in some virtual world and um, you know its not for everyone. But most people who I talk to at least want to stay informed once they have got that hook in their head that this is, you know, I obviously find it very interesting but people tend to come away with the a sensation that this might go somewhere and there is enough evidence already today that its fairly compelling, if you look at it on the “garnet height curve” this idea that things go though a life cycle of interest it haven’t yet peaked the top of that and it is now falling back down into this trough of disillusionment in the long run what might happen it might reach the stable plateau where it will actually become a really useful space that interesting work will happen and kind of follow the same progression as so many technologies before it. Most people come away with the feeling that they want to keep an eye on it. Now I guess if I am going to step back a little bit and look more broadly at what is going on, on the web then for web designers and for almost all of them, this is very big on their radar the whole area of social online collaboration and this whole “web 2.0″ umbrella which you started talking about a year ago if not longer and has been you know really quite large for me, that fits very neatly into this same space. What you are talking about are people sharing content and whether that is a a chat or something they have built themselves you know, you look at a world like second life and most of it is not built but the company that runs it. As with youtube and del.icio.us and as with flickr and so many other popular services and site these days, it is built by its users. So maybe it is something people need to be aware of maybe its something which will gradually fit into a growing mentally of this is how the web works. Yes it happens to be 3D at the moment on the popular ones and yes they are not all currently delivered through websites, mind there are plenty that are, and there probably will be an increasing number that are delivered though the browser. So yeah, if people find this stuff interesting then they should keep an eye on it, maybe read a bit more about it.

Paul: Where is a good place for them to go then to wrap up, as far as if they want to find out more information or want to read up about the potential of it, where would you recommend they start by looking?

Roo: well there are a lot o very good blogs out there, if they have a very academic mind then they and want to read some really good writing on the subject then the best one I can think of is http://terranova.blogs.com/ , its one that I have guest authored for, but not the one I regularly write for, the one I regularly write for is http://eightbar.co.uk/about/roo, which has got a growing profile in the space of virtual worlds, That is written by a bunch of IBMers writing about what they find interesting. I have a personal blog a personal blog at http://rooreynolds.com if anyone wants to follow that although, please don’t all come at once

Paul: (Laughs) its really not that popular out podcast that it would…

Roo: no you are paul, you wouldn’t know how popular you are, but you are.

Paul: That’s okay, Thank you very much for you time , I think it is interesting we spend so much time on it with the immediate here and now problems, but every now and again it is nice to poke out heads above the parapet and see what is going on a bit further afield; so thank you very much for time coming and being on the show

Question of the week

Do you think virtual worlds are going to be a mainstream method of online communication or are they a novelty doomed to failure? Answers in the comments.

Keeping your skills sharp

Posted in Web strategy on November 9, 2007 by Paul Boag

I recently received a question from Harry asking “what approach do you take to training?”. He has some budget set aside and is wondering how he should spend it.

I love working on the web because there is always some new exciting innovation. Of course the downside of this is that we are always running to keep up and there is always something new to learn.

I was extremely impressed with Harry because he has had the foresight to save some money for training. I think more web designers could do with following his lead. We need to recognise that learning new stuff is crucial to our role and if we don’t then we will quickly find ourselves unemployable.

So presuming you have had the foresight to set aside some cash to improve your skills what are your options? Well I believe you have two; spend the cash or convert it to time.

Spending money on training

There are certainly no shortage of ways to spend your hard earned cash on improving your skills.

One option is to go on a training course as Harry has been considering. I know the guys over at Clear:Left runs some excellent training sessions on front end scripting subjects like the DOM and AJAX. Also Drew McLellan and Rachel Andrews at edgeofmyseat.com have started a very popular CSS course.

Training courses are excellent for learning hands on skills in a short amount of time. However they can get pricey. A cheaper solution would be to simply buy a book. Books maybe cheaper but they do take time to read and digest. Nevertheless they are a good alternative if money is tight. I have recommended loads of books in the past so am not going to repeat myself here. However be careful, there is a lot of crap out there teaching bad practice.

If you want to be a bit more forward thinking and strategic with your training budget, then you might want to think about spending the money on attending conferences and meetups. Although these don’t normally teach you practical skills in the same way as a training course, they do advance your thinking about web design and maybe suggest new approaches.

There are some great conferences around. My personal favourites are SXSW, d.construct and the Future of Web Design. SXSW is pricey and somewhat overwhelming but is an experience if nothing else. d.construct and the Future of Web Design are smaller affairs but include a great line up of speakers.

If a conference is beyond your means then consider attending a meetup. Spend your budget on accommodation and go to a hack day or other meetup. You don’t get the great line up of speakers but you do get to interact with other designers who are facing the same challenges as you.

Time equals money

We all know time equals money. This is especially true if you are a freelancer. If you are not working on client work then you are burning cash. Another alternative then to spending your training allowance on courses or conferences is to spend it in the form of time. Use that money to buy yourself time free from project work. Time to experiment and learn online. Personally this is how I learn the most.

I try and set aside time each week to read sites like A List Apart, Think Vitamin or Digital Web. I then take the techniques I have learnt and experiment with them. If I discover a tutorial on AJAX I don’t just skim it but rather sit down and follow it through. If Smashing Magazine lists a load of flash galleries I actually check them out and look for projects I can integrate them with.

By actually physically buying your time back from yourself using your training budget you avoid feeling guilty for ‘messing around’ or ‘sitting about reading blogs’. Spending time experimenting is probably the most important type of training you will do. Take Google’s lead and make sure you set aside some time every week for personal projects.

Show 99: Don’t panic

Posted in Classic shows on October 23, 2007 by Paul Boag

This week on Boagworld: Paul looks at the growing importance of the favicon. Marcus talks about what to do when the work dries up and Rob Borley looks an alternative approach to storing data in your CMS.

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News and events | Marcus: What to do when the work dries up | Paul: Favicons – small but significant | Rob Borley on an alternative approach to your CMS | Question of the week

100th Show

Just wanted to say a big thank you for everybody who came along to the 100th boagworld. For more information on the evening check out my 100th Boagworld blog post. A special congratulations to the 4 winners of a years subscription to .net magazine and to Anna who won a CSS beginners course run by Drew and Rachel at edgeofmyseat.com.

Also live on the show we announce the winner of the FOWD competition.

News and events

Shift in the web wind

Molly Holzschlag likes to generate discussion on her blog and has raised an interesting subject in her recent post “shift in the web wind“. In it she says:

The latest Dot.Com boom is declining as far as I can tell. Are we on the edge of another Dot.Bomb?

Its an interesting question and one that seems to be appearing on an increasing number of sites.

Personally I have to say that I have become concerned about the state of the web at the moment. Not because I believe we have necessarily reached the point of a collapse, but because the boom we have been experiencing is unhealthy. I am in no doubt that we are now experiencing a bubble very similar to that of the dot com era. There are far too many copycat companies out there and the share price of companies such as Google are disproportionate to their revenue. What is more, once again we are seeing the majority of these companies leaning on advertising as a revenue stream. Advertising is very fickle business model because any dip in the overall economy and advertising is the first area to be cut.

So is everything doom and gloom? Are we about to all be out of work? Certainly if you work for a web 2.0. company or the majority of your clients are web 2.0 companies, then I would be twitchy. However, for the majority of us I don’t think there is much to be concerned about. Even if the bubble bursts there is going to be no shortage of web work around. The majority of web designers don’t work on web 2.0. sites. We work with offline businesses that have an online presence. These sites are not going to stop trading just because some high profile web businesses fall. The web is too well established this time around.

If it wasn’t for the fact that it will mess up people’s careers, I would welcome the crash. I think the current state of the sector is unrealistic and the larger the bubble grows the bigger the ‘pop’ when it bursts.

Best practice in email

Most organisations rely on email to communicate with their customers on mass. Whether it is order confirmation, special offers or regular newsletters, email is an essential tool in our web strategy. The problem is that our emails have to fight there way past junk mail filters and increasingly they fail to do so. This isn’t necessarily because we are sending out spam. In most cases it is because we are just ignorant of best practice when it comes to email delivery.

Fortunately this week I came across a great article that suggests some best practice when it comes to using email. This isn’t a list of ways to trick spam filters, rather it provides all kinds of great advice about running any kind of email campaign. From technical advice about CSS and HTML to common curtsy like don’t attach large files, this article really does contain some excellent advice. Finally, it also contains an invaluable list of tools for checking how likely your email is to be classed as spam. If you send out email to your customers then check out this article.

Flash based galleries for your images

So everybody thinks I hate flash. I don’t! I just think we need to think twice before using it. Like any technology we need to use the right tool for the job. However, sometimes flash works well and can really enhance the user experience. One such occasion is when we are building image galleries. Sure, you can build nice static galleries or even produce something impressing using Javascript. However, flash can do some stunning stuff with images.

Even better is the fact that there many flash based gallery systems out there that you can just drop into your site with minimal effort. Whether you are showing off your portfolio or building an image gallery for a client you might want to consider one of flash based galleries reviewed in Smashing Magazine.

20+ tools for working with AJAX

If Flash is not your thing then you are probably into your AJAX and Javascript. If that is the case then check out mashable which has a list of over 20 great tools for work with AJAX. The list consists of a mixture of AJAX loading images, frameworks, reusable scripts but probably most usefully sources of advice. They include some great stuff for those starting out building with AJAX including a noobs guide and also a wiki of common AJAX mistakes.

If you know Javascript already but haven’t done anything with AJAX then take a look. It really isn’t as intimidating as some people like to make it out to be!

Marcus’ bit: Don’t panic

Marcus looks at those times when the phone’s not ringing, your inbox is empty and you just lost out on three pitches in a row. No matter how much you tell yourself not to worry, it starts to creep up on you.

Paul’s corner: Favicons – small but significant

In my section of the show I want to look at favicons. Favicons are those 16 by 16 pixel graphics that appear in your address bar, bookmarks and various other places. They maybe tiny, but they are becoming increasingly important. I look at why Favicons are worth your attention.

Ask the expert: Rob Borley on an alternative approach to your CMS

Paul: So joining us on the show this week is Rob Borley who is, what is your job title Rob actually, I should know this but I don’t?

Rob Borley: (Laughs) Ye you should I think you gave it to me.

Paul: Oh did I?

Rob Borley: Technical Manager officially.

Paul: Uhhh… But basically Technical Manager/Lead Developer/anything vaguely techie goes in his direction.

Rob Borley: Basically it’s my fault when it breaks.

Paul: Yes, so if you want to get pissed at somebody about the boagworld forum there’s your man.

Rob Borley: (Laughs) I knew this was going to come up.

Paul: Well obviously it was going to come up.

Rob Borley: (More Laughs)

Paul: So if you haven’t gathered, Rob works for Headscape, the web design company that myself, Marcus and Chris Scott run and no he shouldn’t be blamed for the boagworld forum, he is actually trying to fix it, but his skills just aren’t up to the job.

Rob Borley: Oh, I see, I see, I see… (Laughs)

Paul: (Laughs) But why I’ve got him on the show today isn’t actually to be rude to him about the boagworld forum, but it’s actually to talk about our content management system because I get a lot of questions asking why content management system Headscape use and what one we would recommend and stuff like that so we’ve just got through a kind of major rebuild of our content management system and so I thought OK lets get Rob on the show and have a little bit of a chat about it and how it works and what it does. So I guess Rob the question to kick off with is why did Headscape decide to develop its own CMS rather than go with an off the shelf one, because there are so many off the shelf solutions around it kind of seem absurd in some ways?

Rob Borley: Umm, ye I guess when you first look at the problem, as you say, there are lots of CMS solutions around but the reason we kind of work from our own is because it gives us complete control over what we’ve got so if there’s a problem with it, we know were the problem is and can go in and fix it but more likely if there’s some new functionality we need specific to our clients we’re able to just go and build it and develop it very quickly because we know exactly how the thing works. Often these off the shelf CMS’s are trying to do everything because they’re in competition with all the other products out there and so they’re vastly complicated, they do lots of things we don’t need them to do and they’re not generally as useful for the client as what we’ve got as a result, because they’re designed by techies, techies know how they work and they’re generally far too complicated for average Joe user out there. What we’ve build is tailored specifically for our clients needs and hopefully is intuitive and easy for them to pick up because it’s designed for them.

Paul: Would you kind of, you know, are you being more brash in that your saying all web design agencies should be developing their own CMS’s or is that something specific to our requirements and the type of clients we have?

Rob Borley: I think when you look at our client base and the sort of projects that we get, a vast majority of our projects are based on our CMS technology now and so, I mean, if we were doing just one or two projects here and there then it would probably make sense for us to get to know our favourite brand of CMS and use that, but as a vast majority of our clients are using this technology it’s actually more productive for us to develop with our own, because we can just keep reusing stuff and add any new development or any area that we can add to it, we can then use it for future clients as well.

Paul: Hmm… So we had a content management system, it seemed to work, why then did you, actually no it wasn’t just you, you and Chris persuade me and Marcus to spend huge quantities of money on re-doing it from scratch?

Rob Borley: (Laughs) Well the first iteration, well I say the first iteration, I think we’re up too officially CMS 3 before we started this new one, it naturally evolved, it came from the need of one client wanting a CMS and then we thought “hey this is a good idea” and things got tagged on and other things got tagged onto that and it just became this, evolved almost organic mess of Darwinian thing which worked and held together and did it’s thing but had never been properly designed, it had never been build for a specific purpose, it was all just kind of mashed together and so as we came to the conclusion that most of our clients are going to be using this we took the opportunity to build a new one from scratch to do it properly. That’s the general theory.

Paul: So what’s different with the new one to the old one?

Rob Borley: Umm… Well there where a few extra features like there’s a more complicated, well I say complicated, more in depth permissions system for pages and parts of the site, there’s also some work flow stuff we’ve added but the main difference is actually what goes on underneath and so this time around we build the whole thing on XML data structures.

Paul: OK.

Rob Borley: Which probably doesn’t mean a great deal to a lot of people out there, but what it means to Headscape, it’s actually changed the way that we develop projects and the way that we work, and it means a lot more less techie people can get down to the nitty-gritty of designing the data and the way things work.

Paul: So, give me an example of how that kind of works in practice?

Rob Borley: OK, so an everyday clients might come to us and say “We need a CMS to create” I don’t know, “hotel vacancies” and so what we’d have to do with previous versions of our CMS is go off, create the data structure in the database, write the logic in the server side pages and the database logic and techies would have to do that because your talking about writing ASP or .NET or PHP or using SQL Server and it’s a very techie orientated job. What we’ve done now by using XML is all the actual logic for the data structure is done in what’s called an XML Scheme which is basically a text document which describes the data. So it means that an average person in the company, who not particularly techie, so a designer or a project manager, a tester or someone can actually sit down and write a document that describes the data, feed it into the system and we’ve got our new area of data, our new “hotel vacancies” structure straight away. So it can be done much, much quicker.

Paul: So if I’m understanding this right, which I probably should do (Laughs)…

Rob Borley: (Laughs)

Paul: lah lah lah, so what we’re talking about here is basically that traditionally with a database you have a serious of hmm… well lets say for example in the “hotel booking” example you gave lets say the hotel had a name, a description and a price range, in the database that would have appeared as three fields basically, it would have been a name field, a description field and a price field.

Rob Borley: Exactly.

Paul: And then your code would have had to, on the back end, would have had to create form fields for each of those that would input into the database and on the front end you’d have to pull, ya know, your code would have to pull out those three pieces of information and display them on the front end, is that correct so far?

Rob Borley: Exactly right yes.

Paul: Right, so what your describing now if I’m getting this right is that basically you wouldn’t have three separate fields in the database, you would just have XML code for those three elements.

Rob Borley: That’s right.

Paul: And then the code both front end and back end looks at the code in the database and just pulls them all out and just displays them as form fields for inputting or text for out putting?

Rob Borley: Exactly, all the logic for that is already done so as soon as the XML is fed in, the back end displays the form fields to fill out the information, the front end pops out the raw XML which we can then style and apply your fancy CSS to.

Paul: I mean that’s quite incredible because like you say then, someone like Charlie who’s one of our Project Managers, can just go in and define, ya know, say we wanted to add, I don’t know, ratings to that list and then suddenly it will just miraculously appear on the front end and back end without any additional coding from you. Is that right?

Rob Borley: Exactly.

Paul: Wow.

Rob Borley: And often, so we’ll be half way through a project and a client will come along and say, “oh, well actually I don’t want that text field there, I want this text field” or “I want this drop down” or “I want this particular text field to be on the front end” and they’ve never mention it before, ya know, it’s typical client changing things as they go along and the Project Manager can just go in there and change the scheme and it does it, it’s done.

Paul: So there are lots of people using this XML/database technique?

Rob Borley: We like to think it’s quite new.

Paul: Oh really?

Rob Borley: Yes. I’ve personally not come across it being used before, but I’m sure there are people out there who are going to correct me on that. (Laughs) But it is quite new.

Paul: It would be quite interesting to know actually, if you are listening to this and you know of somebody doing a similar thing, drop me a line on [email protected]. It’s just kind of interesting to know. So what about, umm… have you kind of made any changes that have kind of made expanding the functionality more kind of modular or anything like that? I mean beyond this XML?

Rob Borley: Ye.

Paul: Is the architecture designed in a different way?

Rob Borley: Ye, so previously it was built on ASP Classic, which is not best for modular design, it’s quite difficult then to move functionality around and re-implant it else were. This time we’ve built it in .NET, in an object orientated way, so the theory being that when somebody else comes along and say “I want this addition to the form builder” or “I want to add a rating system” or “I want to add a product management system/stock management system”, we can literally just, that goes in as a block of code, we call it in an object orientated way, we can turn it off for some clients and so hopefully you build it once and it works for everyone that wants it.

Paul: So does that mean we’re going to have a consistent version of the CMS basically applied to, no we won’t because if a client asks for a new module that’s not going to be on the previous clients ones.

Rob Borley: No, so we won’t roll it back to previous clients, but there’s the potential, as we build stuff up, the potentials great for using in future projects because core of code to use as a base for all the projects.

Paul: So there’s like a core, what do they call it? Kernel of code that will stay the same and all the other modules are built around it?

Rob Borley: Ye, and the idea is that the kernel is kept as small as possible, so that the actual “guts” of the CMS are as tiny as possible and then it’s used to call all these extra modules when it needs it.

Paul: I’ll tell you another completely random question.

Rob Borley: (Laughs)

Paul: That I got asked recently, that you may be able to answer, you mentioned that we’ve built this CMS in .NET and that we do do a lot of .NET work, umm… the question that I got asked was somebody was going on about how it’s hard to produce standards based code out of .NET or Visual Studios, do you know what they’re talking about?

Rob Borley: No.

Paul: No?

Rob Borley: (Laughs)

Paul: Well it didn’t make a lot of sense to me because we produce standards based code don’t we?

Rob Borley: Ye, all of our code is output to your specification actually Paul.

Paul: Ye.

Rob Borley: (Laughs)

Paul: Anyway it just confused the hell out of me that one so I thought I’d ask you about it.

Rob Borley: (Laughs)

Paul: So, what next then is guess is the thing you would kind of ask? Is this a model you think is going to service for a long time going forward or are we going to have to go through this process again in a couple of years?

Rob Borley: I certainly don’t see us having to redesign it again for a long, long time. I mean this seems like it’s going to work and it’s easy to add and extend, I think that’s the key, it’s also very portable, because all the data structures are all XML based, if we for whatever reason decided to ditch Microsoft and move over to PHP and mySQL, all we’d have to do it re-write the logic that calls the XML in and out.

Paul: Oh OK.

Rob Borley: The data structure stays the same to the potential for importing it to other technologies as well as extending the functionality is there, it’s going to be a lot simpler than it would have been in previous versions of things we’ve done.

Paul: That’s very interesting isn’t it? I like that a lot. OK so just to wrap up then, if people wanted to learn any more about this kind of approach, I know your saying there isn’t much around about this kind of stuff but is there any way you would recommend people start having a look?

Rob Borley: Umm… Well the key behind it is storing XML so that’s were you’ve got to start, you’ve got to start with actually storing XML in a database and using the XML data types that the various database engines use now and then pulling the data out , so if you’ve got a good grasp of XML and XSLT then you can actually use whatever server side language you like so if you into PHP, or ASP or .NET or Ruby or whatever you want to do umm… getting to grips with the way the XML works is going to be the place to start, there are lots of places to check that out, W3 Schools is probably the easiest place to start, so the base technologies are standards it’s just what we’re doing with them that slightly different.

Paul: Ah… I think you need to write a blog post on this Rob so that people can access it.

Rob Borley: Your going to let me loose on boagworld Paul that very brave.

Paul: I’ll let you loose, if you write something I’ll put it onto boagworld for you.

Rob Borley: (Laughs)

Paul: Once I’ve read it, edited it and removed all the rude comments. (Laughs)

Rob Borley: Good idea.

Paul: Because you really need something else to do. You seem to be sitting around doing nothing so lets get you doing something constructive. (Laughs)

Rob Borley: I think so, hence I’m on this show.

Paul: Exactly, alright Rob thanks very much for coming in, that’s really interesting, a lot of that I’ve kind of grasped at some level because you’ve told me I need to understand it but ye, that’s really helped.

Rob Borley: (Laughs)

Paul: Thank you very much.

Rob Borley: No problem at all.

Question of the week

Are we facing another dot com bust and if so what affect will it have on you? Answers in the comments.

Show 97: FoWA

Posted in Classic shows on October 9, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul proposes tactics for overcoming design by committee. Marcus talks about extracting a budget from clients and Dan Cederholm compares pixels, ems and percentages.

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News and events | Extracting a budget from your prospects | Avoiding design by committee | Dan Cederholm on ems vs pixels vs percentages | Question of the week

About 100th episode

We really want the 100th episode to be as interactive as possible while keeping the format of the normal show. So with this in mind here is what we have in mind for our live show…

News – This will be the top 4 news stories that have most effected web design since the shows launch in August 2005
Marcus – Most unreasonable client
Paul – The worst web design mistakes of all time
Ask the expert – Ask Paul and Marcus any question you want whether it is related to web design or not

You can either turn up on the night and contribute or send us an email or MP3 with your contribution to any of the above areas.

News and events

Gossip from FoWA

I wanted to share a little about the FoWA conference I have just attended. It was absolutely superb and I am extremely glad I attended. The speaker line up was excellent and the subject matter was inspiring. There was a good supporting expo which was great as it prevented the problems that have occurred previously of sponsors touting their wares in the speaking slots.

However, I am not bringing it up simply to gloat that I was there and you weren’t. I got to speak to some great people and leant a few things that is worth passing on. Firstly, it is very apparent that the power of podcasting as a marketing medium is really on the rise. I had a long chat with David Prager and Jay Adelson about Revision 3 the company that produces Diggnation among other shows. It sounds like things are going great for them and they are pulling in some big name advertisers. However, the advertising model is not the only approach that is working within podcasting. The other is the promotional approach where you showcase products that subscribers can then buy. This is perfectly demonstrated by Wine Library TV hosted by Gary Vaynerchuk that allows you to purchase the wines reviewed in the show. I was fortune enough to meet Gary at FoWA and it is obvious that it is passion for the subject and strength of personality that makes the show work.

Of course the real power of podcasting was demonstrated in the live taping of a diggnation episode. I estimate that approximately 1200 people turned up for the recording and it was more like a rock concert than a geek conference. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht (the hosts of the show) were pretty much mobbed after the show by insane fans. It was almost scary and drove home the power of the medium.

I could talk about some of the great speakers I got to hear including a stella performance by Daniel Burka who gave his first ever conference presentation. However, I don’t have the time to cover it all so want to share instead a couple of rumors surrounding Google. The first is that the fabled gPhone from Google is in fact going to be an operating system rather than a specific hardware device. If this is true it could well introduce yet another platform for creating cool web based mobile applications. Finally I wanted to mention the imminent announcement of Google in relationship to its APIs. It would appear Google is about to open up its many online offers from Gmail to Docs allowing third parties to build web applications based on them. This will really open up the opportunities for developers to really innovate.

The average website visitor

The next news story of the day is yet another list from Smashing Magazine (this is getting boring now). This one attempts to bring together some general stats on website users from various sources. Although the article acknowledges that really you need to look at your own stats it does explain that from time to time you want a more general picture of the average web user.

The post therefore lists 8 facts you should know about the average user. These include (but are not limited to)…

The most popular browsers (bet you can’t guess!)
Most common screen resolution
Most popular operating system
Most popular browser family worldwide
Most popular browser in Europe
Most common browser size

Getting started with Photoshop

We know that not everybody who listens to this show are web designers. Some of you are developers, clients or students. Some of you are just starting out in web design. If you fall into any of the above but want to get a better understanding of a key tool of the web designer then you maybe interested in a new article by Sitepoint. This detailed tutorial is an introduction to using Photoshop.

This is an amazingly detailed introduction that covers everything from the user interface right the way through to working with Alpha Channels. As you can imagine it is a long read but if you have the time I cannot think of a better introduction to this hugely powerful image editor.

Waking the sleepers

Last up today is a post by the guys over at 37 Signals. The post is primarily written for those running web applications but actually the principles apply to a much broader audience. It is looking at the subject of sleepers. Sleepers are those users who sign up for your service but never use it (or stop using it). This clearly applies to web applications but is also applicable to ecommerce sites or even sites that offer newsletters or other registered features.

It asks how these users can be reinvigorated and encouraged to become active again. Using an email from StumbleUpon as an example the post suggests so good ways of breathing some life back into your users.

If you are struggling with an apathetic user base this is worth a quick look.

Marcus’ bit: Extracting the budget from clients

So here’s the situation: I receive an invitation to tender in my inbox from a potentially good client. The brief is well written and, for the most part, the requirements are clear. The first thing I do is check the timescales, second is to see what the budget is. But what if the brief does not include a budget? How do you extract the budget from the client?

Paul’s corner: Avoiding design by committee

So I have now reached chapter 4 of my book writing marathon and in line with my commitment to recycling I want to share with you some of the content from my initial draft. Chapter 4 focuses on the role of the client in the design process and one of the big challenges that they face is design by committee. Of course, avoiding design by committee is something designers want to avoid too which is why I thought it would be a good subject to cover on the show.

Ask the expert: Dan Cederholm on ems vs pixels vs percentages

Paul: So one of the most common questions that I seem to get time and time again as far as CSS is concerned, revolves around working with ems and pixels and percentages and what to use when and how to work out what you should be using and all of that kind of thing. So, I thought, “Let’s get an expert in.” And so, I have Dan Cederholm joining me. (Dan Snickering) Hello, Dan.

Dan Cederholm: Hello Paul!

Paul: Don’t snicker! You are the expert for today.

Dan Cederholm: (laughing) I’ll try to be. I’ll put on my “expert hat”.

Paul: Just go with the flow, its fine.

Dan Cederholm: I will. (laughs some more)

Paul: Okay. So Dan, like I said, this is a common question that we get asked and I’m just interested in your opinion about “When’s the right time to use what combination? Should we mainly be using ems? Should we mainly be using percentages? Should we be going pixels?” What’s your take on the discussion?

Dan Cederholm: Well I think it, in a very politicianesque way, I’d say it depends. (Paul laughing) And this call is over. I could just hang up now (Dan laughs).

Paul: Okay

Dan Cederholm: No, I’m just kidding, it depends.

Paul: Depends on what then? (Paul laughs)

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, so it depends. Now are you referring to strictly font sizing or units in general for boxes and things?

Paul: I mean, there’s lots of different things isn’t there? (Dan: Yeah) There’s kind of, do we make, you know, when we design a whole web site, should the web site be fixed width? Should it be hybrid? Should it be fluid? Should it be built so its elastic? Let’s start with that as the discussion.

Dan Cederholm: Okay. Width in general… Well, I think, like I said, it does depend. It’s a tough decision to make depending on the site and depending on what’s in the site and the design and that kinda thing. It can be tricky. I love EM based design. And that’s what I use currently on SimpleBits and a few other sites that I’ve done recently. But, I’ve actually been sort of re-thinking that because its difficult to do… to drop in say an image or something that’s fixed width in that design and still account for that fixed element to be cut off or to look odd when the text is re-sized or if the text, the base font size is different. To me, the difficulty with an em-based layout is sort of the fixed image problems. So, for instance, on SimpleBits, for my blog posts I’ve been wanting to do more visual stuff like drop in an image from Flickr or a photograph or something.

Paul: Sure.

Dan Cederholm: But that becomes difficult because its em-based. If the image is a fixed pixel width, obviously its hard to just drop that in and design around it so that it looks like its meant to be there, you know?

Paul: Mmm Hmm

Dan Cederholm: And now there are tricks that people have experimented with, with em-based and setting the image width as well.

Paul: Right

Dan Cederholm: But that, of course, gets tricky when if the image is blown up it looks, you know, it will look terrible or shrunk down or won’t look as nice as it would if it was re-sized properly. To me, that’s the biggest drawback to em-based layouts. So, depending on the site, if the site is not image heavy or if you’re not going to be doing a lot of that sort of image stuff, then em-based styles can be excellent and they can provide, sort of that flexibility, almost like zooming in and out just by changing the font size.

Paul: So would your recommend that over, say, a percentage-based layout?

Dan Cederholm: Well I think that… I like the… They each have their own, sort of pros and cons. The percentage-based layout is great as well. So that’s fluid, or liquid, right?

Paul: Yeah.

Dan Cederholm: And that, that gives a little more control to the reader, because they can stretch their window out. Now, the main problem there is the “max-width” and “min-width” in Internet Explorer 6 and below. So, the common problem with that, or why people don’t use liquid layout is if you stretch the window out really, really wide, then line length becomes a problem with readability.

Paul: Mmm Hmm.

Dan Cederholm: But, that can be solved by setting a max-width to certain things. So in IE 6 and below, that’s not supported aside from some javascript hack or something. But, liquid layouts do offer that extra control for the reader. Some people… its weird, its like a religious sort of divide. Some people hate liquid layouts. Some people love them or swear by them. Its interesting how people can get. It can be a heated debate with designers. I found… it’s interesting with uhm… so, the iPhone came out over here in the US and I found liquid layouts actually look far better in the iPhone because of that small window width and that becomes even more of an advantage on a smaller screen. As opposed to fixed-width layout or even an em-based layout, the viewport isn’t necessarily computed correctly and you don’t take advantage of the full screen, whereas with a liquid layout, it does.

Paul: So when you do, say an em-based layout or a full liquid layout, what about things like margins and padding? Do you do those in the same settings or do you do those using pixels, or how do you work with those?

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, one of the … the tough parts of a liquid layout or percentage-based IS margins and padding, because often times you need to add extra elements to add padding around, say if you want a fixed gutter width between columns. Unless you’re specifying percentage, like let’s say its a simple 2-column layout. The left column is 70% and the right column is 30%, which equals 100%. You can’t say the 70% block has a margin right of 10 pixels because now its 100% plus 10 pixels, which doesn’t work.

Paul: Yeah.

Dan Cederholm: So, you could either… there’s a couple choices… You could do a percentage gutter, so you have like 70, uh sorry, 65% with a 5% right margin and then 30% on the other side. Or, the other option would be to add another element sort of like a div that’s inside of each and the add a pixel amount to that without a width at all. So, there’s extra markup involved there. One of the things I like about ems is that instead of worrying about percentages, ems are… you can add… its easier to add gutters and padding with ems because the math works. (Dan Laughs, Paul agrees) So, you’ve got a whole width for the layout of say, 70 ems, or whatever it is and then you can break that up doing the math properly with the width of the columns and the width of the gutters as well. So, percentages are tricky because you can’t go above 100% and you can’t take away from a percentage with a pixel amount.

Paul: Yeah.

Dan Cederholm: Take away, or add with a pixel amount. So if you want fixed width gutters with liquid layout, it often requires extra markup to do that.

Paul: What about when it comes to typography? Are you suggesting always go with ems in situation like that? Because you’ve then got to add just more complexities too. You’ve got keywords that you can kind of throw into the mix there as well.

Dan Cederholm: Right. Right. Yeah, I prefer… in my own work, I prefer to use the keyword as a base. So, I’ll use “small” as a base on the body.

Paul: Right.

Dan Cederholm: And then use percentages for going up or down from there. So, headings may be 120% for a heading or whatever and then paragraphs would be 90 or that kind of thing. I like that because to me its sort of, ok, this is a base line. I know its not going to be the exactly the same in all browsers but I’ve had good luck with getting pretty damn close cross-browser sizing that way. The other way to do it is with ems and there’s a great article by Richard Rutter, actually, about sizing text with ems that he wrote a few years ago. And he explains a way of using a percentage as a base to knock it down to.. oh, are you familiar with it?

Paul: Yeah.

Dan Cederholm: And then that sort of… you can relate em units to pixel amounts. So, if you’re used to sizing text with pixels but want to use ems, he explains a way of sort of knocking down that base so that the math becomes simpler and using… specifying ems but thinking what that would be in a pixel amount.

Paul: Yeah, which is the approach that I normally use. The only thing that kind of (Dan: It is? Okay.) does my head in about that is that obviously ems inherit from one another.

Dan Cederholm: Right, exactly.

Paul: And that’s where it gets really confusing.

Dan Cederholm: It really does, doesn’t it? I mean especially if you’re nesting more than one level deep. Then the math becomes mind boggling.

Dan Cederholm: And so that still happens with the keyword percentage model that I use often… the same problem… so when you’re nesting percentages, things start to get a little weird. It becomes a little difficult to do the math but I found that I’m not often nesting too far… you know, more than maybe two levels or so when I’m sizing things. And if I am, then unfortunately, I have to do the math or try a different approach but, yeah, that is a tricky part of ems or percentages. In a perfect, ideal world, I think the designer could specify pixel, right, and then the browser would resize it from there but, you know, IE actually 7 and 6 and 5 don’t let you resize the text and I’m kinda baffled why its still a problem in IE 7. So, that would be ideal because the designer can say, “Look, this is what I intended to be as a base and this is gonna look the same across browsers for the most part for most resolutions and then the user can always over-ride that.” I mean, the user should always be able to over-ride that. But, unfortunately, for baffling reasons, they chose not to let someone do that in IE. So, that goes back to, I guess, your site statistics and if IE is a low percentage, which is probably not going to be the case for most sites, you could sort of weigh that and can say, “Well, I’ll go with pixels.” And, I mean, a lot of people do go with pixels now anyway, and just not worry about it. But I tend to, you know, I bump up si… I don’t wear glasses, for instance, and I bump the text size up on a lot of sites.

Paul: Yeah, I do too.

Dan Cederholm: And so, if I’m doing that, and I have pretty good eye-sight, I imagine a lot of people would as well.

Paul: Ok so what…

Dan Cederholm: Having that control is important.

Paul: Yeah. So, one last question before I let you go (Dan: Yeah) and get back to your normal work… You were talking about browsers there. And so, Internet Explorer 7 has come along with sort of this zoom page functionality.

Dan Cederholm: Right.

Paul: How does that enter in all of this? Does it change the landscape in any way?

Dan Cederholm: I think it definitely helps. That’s what sort of baffles me even more. I’m using the word, “baffle” a lot today. (Paul laughs, Dan chuckles) Why they would add the page zoom to IE 7 but not allow you to re-size font set in pixels. So, I think it helps in a way but the problem there is that it will… your viewport stays the same. So, when you zoom the layout, you’ll start to get horizontal scroll bars and you’ll have to sort of navigate the page that way, whereas just zooming the text, the viewport stays the same and you can read the page a little easier, I find. I mean, it’d be interesting to talk to someone that has low vision and uses, you know, zoom or text bumping up on a regular basis. I think that that’s sort of the… the downside I see to it is that its, it can help but, let’s say that you’re looking at a block of text and you use the page zoom feature and you’re window is small. Let’s say you’re on a small screen device or something or at least you’re monitor is small or whatever. So, zooming in will make it easier to read but you might have to do some extra navigating of the windows to keep reading that. Whereas bumping up the text, you shouldn’t have to do that. It should stay within it’s container and the window should just… yeah, you’d be scrolling down but you won’t be scrolling horizontally.

Paul: I mean that’s a particular problem, isn’t it? With fluid designs, I’ve noticed, with a zoom function that as soon as you start zooming on a fluid web site,

Dan Cederholm: Oh, right.

Paul (continues): you immediately get horizontal scroll bars. Which to me, is ridiculous.

Dan Cederholm (laughing): Right, right. Exactly! Right, so in bumping up the text in a fluid design, should be, I think, should be a lot more… better an experience. That brings up a good point though, with em-based design. Now, when you’re bumping the text with an em-based design, the entire layout, if they layout is set in ems as well, the whole layout will expand. Sort of like zoom, but… So, that’s something to consider as well. Where the layout could go beyond the viewport, you could get horizontal scroll bars as well there. So if you have an extra wide layout in ems, that can be an issue. Just bumping it up one notch or two notches could cause that sort of scrolling problem.

Paul: Yeah. So, the long and the short of this, is there’s no right answer, is there?

Paul: There’s no perfect solution here.

Dan Cederholm: Yeah, there really isn’t.

Dan Cederholm: I mean, like a lot of things in web design, there’s not… yeah, it sort of just depends on a case-by-case. I mean, people fall into sort of things that work for them, you know, like I use the “keyword/percentage” thing and that just seems to work. Other people like the em-based approach to text sizing. But neither one is really right. I think you’re correct in saying there is no real right answer at this point. It will be interesting to see how CSS evolves and affects the way we layout pages. Just the other day, I was looking at the CSS 3 grid layout draft.

Paul: Bleh!

Dan Cederholm: Yeah. (laughs) Which is pretty amazing. And maybe we’ll be able to use it in the next fifty years.

Paul: Well on that cheery thought, (Dan (laughing): Sorry) I’ll have to grapple with CCS 3.

Paul: Thank you so much for your time, Dan. I appreciate you coming and explaining the different options that are available.

Dan Cederholm: Ahh! Its my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Question of the week

Pxels, ems, percentages… which do you use the most? Answer in the comments.

Show 96: Moll on Mobile

Posted in Classic shows on October 2, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul suggests some ways a client can pick which agencies to ask to tender. Marcus asks when is speculative design okay and Cameron Moll explaining how to get started on the mobile web.

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News and events | When is speculative design okay? | Who to ask to tender? | Cameron Moll on the mobile web

News and events

Social Participation as a business tool

Back in 2006 I spoke at refresh06. One of the presentations I gave there has since proved a popular subject and I have been asked to speak on it again a number of times in various forms. It is on the subject of social participation and how to use it as a marketing and business tool. Social networks and communities are often seen as the domain of the teenage crowd with sites like YouTube and MySpace dominated by this demographic. However, community based applications are applicable to all audiences and can be a powerful tool for businesses.

After preparing the latest incarnation for a presentation I am giving at IBM, I thought I would do a run through (as I have only limited time). Discovering the new record feature in keynote I decided to record the whole thing and upload it for all to see. Hope it is useful.

Test your website for mobile compatibility

So this week we have Cameron Moll on the show talking about some of things covered in his new book “Mobile Web Design”. In his book he mentions an interesting site that I would like to pass on to you. It is a web application that allows you to test how well your website would appear on a mobile device. You simply enter your website address, wait while it calculates your results (it even gives a random mobile web development tip while you wait) and then view a complete breakdown of any issues with your site.

The report is distilled down into a single score but you can also see performance in each of the individual areas including:

Speed
Cost in terms of data access
Quality of code

and a whole host of miscellaneous tests. However, best of all is the fact that it also provides an emulation of what your site would look like on a whole host of mobile devices.

Laying out inline images

My next story tackles one of the mixed blessing of content management systems. Although it is great that content management systems allow clients to add content themselves they almost always fine a way of screw up the look of a site in the process. One way that they manage this is adding inline images. They are often required to add specific classes to images for them to be displayed correctly. Unsurprisingly the client sometimes fails to do this and the design becomes broken.

This week the List Apart website proposes one way to slightly reduce this risk. They use javascript to detect content images on a page and then apply different classes based on the width of the image in relation to its containing tag. In other words the Javascript detects whether the image is a full column, half column, or quarter column image and lays it out appropriately.

Its not the perfect solution and there are still ample other ways clients can screw up a design but it is a nice use of javascript that enhances a design without being mission critical. I think seeing this kind of use of Javascript and we should all be looking to use it for this type of thing.

10 Usability nightmares you should be aware of

My last story this week is another top ten list from the guys at smashing magazine (they do like their lists!). This one is a list of the top 10 usability mistakes and I have to say it is an entertaining list focusing on some big name sites. The list includes:

Hidden log-in links
Pop-ups for content presentation
Dragging instead of vertical navigation
Invisible links
Visual noise
Dead end
Content blocks layering upon each other
Dynamic navigation
Drop-Down Menus
Blinking images

Each mistake is explained in detail including some offending screenshots. A worthwhile read for us all.

Marcus’ bit: When is speculative design okay?

I have decided to talk about speculative design work this week because we have recently produced a couple of designs and, although we recommend that it should be avoided, sometimes you simply can’t.

Unpaid prospective work is the bane of all of graphic based agencies and freelancers. It’s also something we have looked at before, but it’s such a significant subject I think it’s a good idea to look at it again.

The worst case

Some ‘clients’, and I use the word loosely, are simply looking for free work. It seems that they think ‘art’ or ‘drawing’ is not real work and is something that only fools pay for. They usually ask for a number of different page designs and concepts and will often ask for revisions on delivered designs.

The project often ends up being dropped by ‘the board’ and then mysteriously, a few months later, something very similar to your design appears for all to see.
These people are effectively stealing from you. Don’t do it.

When is it ok?

If you take the line that we should never do unpaid work then the answer is ‘never’.

However, life simply isn’t like that so you need to make some choices. You could argue that as long as the client is genuine i.e. it’s a real project that someone will win and subsequently get paid for, then it’s ok. It’s a fair fight and the best design will win.

But, this isn’t just about getting paid.

Educate (how many times do I use that as a heading!)

Speculative design is a beauty contest. The whole point of the exercise is to impress the client. This can possibly be seen as taking a somewhat derogatory view of a client’s ability to make the distinction between a design for them versus a design for their users. But even for those that understand the distinction, I don’t think it is possible to separate ‘what I like’ from ‘what is right for our users’. If there is a choice, then people can’t help picking the one they like best.

Added to this, there’s the big issue of designing in the dark. Even if a client has supplied a detailed brief and they’re happy to chat on the phone, the guy pitching still doesn’t really know what the requirements are. The early part of any design project involves detailed discussions about an organisations USPs, target audience, brand values, site statistics, site goals, etc etc.
User interface design is a collaborative process between the agency and the client that goes through an iterative cycle based on user feedback. This simply doesn’t happen with speculative design work.
So, in summary, always have this conversation with prospective clients. I know for a fact that on one job, we won the work by doing so. The client saw it as the most professional and well thought through approach taken by the agencies pitching for the job.

However, sometimes you have to do it or you will jeopardise your chance of winning the work – but still have the conversation and ask whether or not producing an initial concept will adversely affect your bid.

Paul’s corner: Who to ask to tender?

With literally millions of web design companies worldwide where do you begin when trying to draw up a list of potential agencies? Who do you invite to tender?

Ask the expert: Cameron Moll on the mobile web

Paul: Okay so joining me today is Cameron Moll. Good to have you on the show Cameron.

Cameron Moll: Hey, thanks Paul.

Paul: I think this is your first time on Boagworld, is it not?

Cameron Moll: Yeah it is.

Paul: Ah that’s good stuff we alway like to get new people on instead of having the same old boring people on every time. Nice to get someone from the States as well. Which is good.

Cameron Moll: Yeah absolutely and I’m kinda bummed you didn’t pick me for your hundredth episode.

Paul: Well if your in London you can come to our hundredth episode and join in the show. Do you happen to be over then by any chance?

Cameron Moll: Uh, when’s that gonna be.

Paul: Uh, October 20.

Cameron Moll: Um, unfortunately not.

Paul: Argg.Shame, what a shame. Yeah, so we’re looking forward to our hundredth that should be fun. So I mean the reason we’ve got you on the show today is because you’ve just produced a book called Mobile Web Design. This you already know I’m sure. So we thought it would be good to get you on the show just to talk about some of the things that you kind of cover in the book, and give a bit of an introduction, um, to the world of developing mobile websites. And um the question I wanted to kick off with is in your book you dicsuss kind of four different responses to kind of mobile web. In other words four different approaches people could take when they start thinking about the subject of mobile web design. And I just wondered whether you could talk us through those four different approaches that people could use.

Cameron Moll: Yeah that’s probably a good place to start. Um, most of these are straight forward right. It’s I think a pretty simple thinking to understand how one would approach the mobile web. And uh, you know I produced these about two years ago as I was trying to understand how someone like myself, you, how we would make that leap over to mobile. The more I was researching it the more it became apparent that you know there is really these four methods, and what they boil down to is, uh, is this. So one, you essentially do nothing. Two, you reduce the number of images and styling therby reducing the file size, uh, the page weight and so on. Three, handheld style sheets and then four, mobile optimized or what some refer to as content adaptation. And uh, the breakdown is essentially this, if you’re going with that first approach your saying “You know what, I’m going to do nothing.” I’m either lazy. I assume that my users have devices that can support the content I already developed and uh, you know when you think about the mobile web obviously the question that comes to mind is what technology am I going to use? How am I developing content for mobile devices? And fourthly, most devices out on the market today will support well structured mark up out of the box. And so most of the devices being sold, most of the devices that people have in hand today are going to support your html markup. So a lot of user will take that approach, I guess developers that is, take the approach to say you know what, what I have developed it good enough. I’m going to push it out there. And with things like the iPhone and some of the higher end Nokia devices that are out on the market, most of those devices can support a full desktop experience. Right, so it’s this idea that I refered to as content zooming. And so with the iPhone I can see the full website. I can pinch or zoom in. With some of the Nokia devices and Oprea mini 4, I can have that same experience. And so the thinking with that first approach is, lets just leave the content as is and allow those higher end devices to access them.

Paul: Sure (thoughtfully like he is paying attention)

Cameron Moll: Uh, the second approach. This essentially takes the existing markup and content and says lets pull out the images. Lets pull out the styling and allow users to access that raw content. And the thinking there is we’ll reduce the file size. We’ll take out all those big images, that unnecessary styling. Most of the devices out on the market today, well I shouldn’t say most, but alot of them don’t support the styling that you and I are used to using on the desktop. So, the thinking here is just to pull all that out and allow the device to see the raw content. And after all people are after the content not necessarly the background images and colours and things like that. Now the third approach is perhaps right now the most controversial, and that being handheld style sheets. I mean these have been promoted as kind of this poster child of all things web. So any device whethe it be a mobile device, a car a watch or what have you should potentiall be able to take the same markup and with a style sheet specific for that device, again it might be a printer it might be a mobile device. Being able to attach specific style sheets that render the presentation differently for that given device. So the idea being, you know if I just attach a handheld style sheet to my markup. I don’t touch the markup. I don’t touch anything else. I just add that handheld style sheet then great it’s going to display it differently and so on. Of course there are drawbacks to this approach and I guess what I’m skipping here is there is drawbacks that I cover in detail in the book to.

Paul: Yeah (thoughtfully like he is paying attention)

Cameron Moll: To each of these approaches. They all have pros and cons. The biggest one here with handheld style sheets, cutting to the chase, is the fact that not all devices support it. I would guesstimate, I don’t have any exact figures, I don’t know that they exist. But is guesstimate only about half the devices out on the market will support handheld style sheets. And even of those that do the support is somewhat shotty. In that some of those devices will correctly obey a property such as “display none” but they’ll still in the background download the associated content with that. So if you’ve got a large image for example, and you attach to that “display none” it won’t show it but it’s still gonna download in the background that image or that content. So right now, at least, using handheld style sheets is a bit of a pipe dream. It’s just we’d love to be able to have the power to access those, that capability. But right now it’s just not all that feasible.

Paul: Hmm. (thoughtfully like he is paying attention)

Cameron Moll: Finally, on the fourth point, mobile optimized content. This is where you say “You know what. I understand that the environment of being mobile, this idea of context is different that it is when I am sitting at my desktop.” It’s different because I might be using one hand for data entry. I’ve got a much smaller screen and naturally I’m out on the street. I’m out driving or something along those lines. So we say what’s different about that experience, then sitting at one’s desktop. Proponents of this fourth approach essentially say, “You know what the other approaches, especially the do nothing approach completely ignore context.” And that is what is the user doing when they’re out walking. When they’re on the tube or the subway and so on. So this last approach says, okay the context of being mobile is different than anything else. People want to do things differently when they’re out and about. So we’re gonna reformat our content to cater to that experience. We’re gonna present and entirely different experience, and altered experience perhaps to that of the desktop that addresses the specific needs of being mobile. The arguement I make in the book, I guess coming full circle with these approaches is, I often get asked the question “Well what’s the best approach then Camerson?” I don’t know. And you ask 20 different people in this industry and you’ll get 20 different answers. Right now I think the most feasible approaches moving forward are the first approach, do nothing, and the last approach, to create mobile optimized content. The arguement being is one, you need to understand first of all the context of mobile users and therefore adapt that experience to that context. But at the same time you have alot of capable devices out on the market that may be able to render a full experience that users are used to elsewhere.

Paul: I mean you talked there about context and in particular the fact that peole might be using it one handed or whatever else. What are kind of the major differences that you are seeing between kind of a user experience designed for the desktop compared to user experience designed for the mobile device? How do they alter? What should we be doing differently?

Cameron Moll: Well I think that the key phrase here is mobile right. So Barbra Ballard, I quote her in the book, I love her quote that essentially says that when we’re talking about mobile it’s referencing the user not the device. And I think if we start there saying okay mobile is about the user not necessarily the device that they are using but the user. We then start to understand. Okay what is this user trying to do? Where are they? What are the limitations that they confront? And what are the oportunities that are provided through mobile that might not be provided elsewhere? So, it’s not about how do we make this experience similar to the desktop, but how is it different? How do we make it different and how do we welcome that different experience? So this idea of context, it’s this idea, you know, you have this great content, and we hear this phrase “content is king.” Well I argue that context is king. Cause when a user is mobile that content is of little value if you ignore the context in which it is being used. That inevitably leads to the question. What are the needs? What are the problems? What are the tasks that users may encounter in an environment of mobility. Then that leads to what are the opportunities that mobile provides for that given context. For our content, for our company that the PC doesn’t.

Paul: Yeah. I mean it’s a very interesting area because it’s almost somethign you need to address on almost an individual project basis. Looking at what content you’re working with, and working out what of that content is actually relvant to a mobile device and which isn’t. I mean you use an example about that somebody’s probably not going to want to look at your portfolio page on your personal website on a mobile device. It’s just not the right context. I guess that’s what your getting at there.

Cameron Moll: Right. You bring out a very interesting point and that is, let’s say a given company. Let’s say you and I as developers are working within an organization right. And we’ve got 20 projects that we manage. Something you said earlier keys to the point of looking at those 20 applications or websites and saying okay first of all which of these 20 apps might be relevant to someone being mobile. We cut that down to say 5 or 6 or whatever the number becomes. Within those applications or sites if we’re talking about existing content here within those applications or websites it’s those 5 or 6 as being perhaps suitable to mobility. We then look within those entire applications, so within a given application for example that might have 20 different tasks that a user does with that application. We then say okay which of those tasks are relevant to someone being mobile. So it’s this process, at least with existing content, looking at what are the applications we provide and within those applications what are the features that are going to be relevant. Now what that also ignores though is the fact that we’re not saying what are new opportunities? What applications have we not developed that might cater to mobile? Or within an application that we have developed, what opportunities such as location awareness might be provided to a user that we just haven’t even thought about it.

Paul: Yeah. I mean that whole about the fact that you get into this mentality that a mobile device is a cut down version of what you provide on the desktop. Actually, there are opportunities to do stuff on a mobile device that isn’t actually possible on a desktop and the location aware stuff is a good example of that I guess.

Cameron Moll: Right exactly.

Paul: Okay. So lets say as a web designer I’m beginning to get a bit excited about the mobile web. It’s obviously the way that things are going. You provide some excellent statistics in your book about take up levels of mobile devices and I’ve cribbed those and used them on the show before. So I think that there is a lot of people that are listenin to the show and going yeah this is something that I am really quite excited about. But where do I start? What kind of technical skills to I need to develop mobile websites? Is it enough to just know standards based design? Or is there other thins I need to know as well?

Cameron Moll: You know that’s a perfect question. If you look at where we are at now today it’s totally different then say 4 or 5 ago. I remember the same hype 4 or 5 years ago where people were saying mobiles coming. Developing websites for mobile devices is the next big thing. It just kind of died out. I think largely it was due to the fact that back then you still had to develop in WML, which is not a cryptic language. It actually provided a lot of clarity and unity to the mobile web environment 4 or 5 years ago. But at the same time it required that a lot of us had to learn a new language in addition to HTML or CSS. That’s no longer the case. So this second time around when we hear this hype about the mobile web, to me at least it feels much more real. Because now we have again, as I mentioned earlier, most devices out on the market, in fact nearly all of them support HTML, XHTML, and some level of CSS. So that means that you and I, we already know HTML. We already know CSS. We can take that knowledge and start developing content for mobile devices. Whereas 4 or 5 years ago we had to learn a new language just to get over that barrier of providing content. So the good news is, for the most part, really if you know standards based design and development techniques, you are 90% there. I think the other 10% is left to understanding context. So trying to understand what those limitations are with mobile devices and mobile users. And also looking at the opportunities. so again we’re talking about smaller screens, data entry. Those being limitations but at the same time location awarenes. Users just want to do things different. They’re out on the go, which can be a great advantage depending on what kind of content you’re providing. So I think the good news here, long story short, yes. You and I can just build on the knowledge we already have if we just start to understand just a little bit about what the users are doing.

Paul: I mean you say. It’s interesting some of the words you use. You say ‘for the most part.’ Or ‘some browers understand CSS.” And I think that’s the other big fear that people have when they start investigating the mobile web, is the huge plethora of different browsers and devices and all of this kind of stuff. And it seems like how the hell am I supposed to test on that. It’s impossible to test on every conceiveable device and every conceiveable browser. Where do you start? Where do you put your initial efforts?

Cameron Moll: You know when I first started talking about mobile I think I was a bit to pessimistic in that I would stand up, say in a conference or in an article, and say okay if you’re going to test for mobile devices be prepared to test on dozens of browsers and if you think 4 or 5 desktop browsers. And getting consistency right for those is difficult. Wait till you see the mobile web. I’m a bit more optimistic now. I hope the book at least comes across that way and when I talk about it at conferences it comes across that way. And the reason being is this. There are some pretty easy ways to deal with that challenge of consistency. Of testing for mobile devices. Of just developing content period for mobile devices right. So you and I, you use probably the web developer extension for Firefox. We both probably at some point used Opera. Both of those browsers with those extensions and plugins can, at least at the very start, render and initial small screen preview. They both have options to be able to do that. So starting at the very least we can develop, again because we’re developing in XHTML rather than WML, we can within the browser at least do a very quick test to see roughly how it’s going to show up for the user. After that, once you’ve got at least the markup structurally sound you can then jump over to emulators. Now there are plenty of online emulators. .moby provides one. Opera mini provides another and there’s several others out there. But also there’s desktop software that you can download to be able to emulate mobile devices. So then taking 5 or 10 mobile devices I can now test how my content’s going to render, and it’s very close to how it will actually render on the device. But you can’t stop there. The last step has to be actual devices. And I think this was what was insurmountable for me starting out as a mobile developer. At least a beginner saying oh gosh do I have to go out an purchase 100 devices to be able to test my content. Well fortunately you can get away with 5 or 10 devices. If you can get 5 or 10 devices that vary widely. By that I mean one being a very basic phone, another one being a PDA,another one being a popular device such as the Razor. If you can get 5 devices that vary widely, 5 to 10, the chances are that that content is going to render well for most devices out there on the market. That will get you close enough. A lot of that is based not just on my personal preference but on the case study that I offer in the book. That is the Yahoo! website for the FIFA world cup last year. They took that approach. They said you know it would be difficult to test on 100 devices but we think if we can get 5 to 10 widely varying devices that chances are our content is going to display well for a global audience. Which indeed it was for that particular website. So that’s the arguement that I’ve made. I’ve hear others make that arguement as well. And it’s not difficult to get that number of devices right. So you can probably get 3 to 5 from yourself, from friends, collegues and so on, on loan for a couple hours. If you’ve got a blog you can ask for volunteers to do testing. I’ve done that before and it works pretty well. And then finally anyone can hop on eBay and do a search for unlocked mobile phones and purchase phones for an affordable price and get you know 5 to 10 devices. That’s how I did it. You know I hopped on eBay. I bought about 5 phones that were unlocked and then I just take my SIM card and swap that around the phones when I am doing testing. So it’s really not that difficult once you’re done developing your content to make sure that it renders well for mobile devices.

Paul: What do you think about the kind of growing thing that we’re seeing at the moment about designing mobile sites for specific devices? Like the iPhone. Do you think that is a bad route to go?

Cameron Moll: You know I’m not going to say it’s a bad route to go. But I do question it’s integrity. Three years ago or so, when I bought, well this was a little bit after I bought my Treo, for example which is a feature rich PDA. There were all kinds of Treo specific sites that had been developed. So you had something like, lets just say you had something like ESPN.com/mobile/pda/treo would be the web address for that content. And it was formatted just for that device. When you think about all the devices that are out on the market you then realize that that becomes a big chore to try to develope content for X number of devices. Now I think with the iPhone at least you have that same experience being repeated. For me it feels in part like you know years ago when we hit up a website and it said best viewd with Internet Explorer 4.0 or something like that. You know that is what we’re seeing now with the iPhone. Granted the iPhone provides a much different experience and a much richer experience, which is great, but at the same time I worry that we are spending a lot of effort on a device that 1. Is not a market majority and 2. The device itself, the iPhone itself might change at some point in the future. I might have a larger screen. It may render content differently. Which then will require that we go back and rewrite that content yet again. So the arguement I’ve made is if it makes business sense to develop and iPhone optimized site well more power to you. Go for it. But I advocate as a default creating content that can render on as many devices as possible. Not necessarily just one device.

Paul: Cool. Thank you so much Cameron. That is incredibly useful. Where can people find out more about your book then?

Cameron Moll: The web address is mobilewebbook.com or they can find a link from my website cameronmoll.com.

Paul: Excellent. It’s a .PDF book that you can download instantly. Now waiting around for delivery at $19. The best thing of all is it’s nice a short. Just over 100 pages. Isn’t that right? Something like that?

Cameron Moll: That’s correct. And I’ll give your listeners a heads up that we’ve got a print version coming out in October to be announced soon.

Paul: Oh that’s excellent. So you’ve got the choice either way. Alright thank you very much for coming on the show Cameron. We’ll get you on again in the future no doubt.

Cameron Moll: Hey thanks Paul.

Show 95: In honour of the the RAF

Posted in Classic shows on September 25, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul shares some techniques for selling your services through your online profile. Marcus discusses project time scales and Ben Hunt talks about marketing your web business.

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News and events | Project time scales | Social networking for sales | Ben Hunt on marketing a web business

News and events

The Rissington Podcast

For over 2 years now we have been doing this podcast and in that entire time we have reigned supreme. There have been other web design podcasts but lets be frank they have been shit ;) Obviously out of politeness I have pretended they had their place but I think it was obvious to all that only boagworld was really worth listening to.

However, like all great empires sooner or later they crumble and fall to a new rising star and I fear that maybe true with Boagworld. There is a new kid on the block called the Rissington Podcast. Not only is it hosted by two web design guru’s in the form of John Oxton and Jon Hicks but it is also professionally put together and at times really funny.

This rambling, question based show shares some great advice on web design in an entertaining and friendly manner. Definitely check it out, we promise not to cry. After all, it is even more British than us!

Net Promoter Score

On last weeks .net magazine podcast we got talking about how to measure the improvements we make to the user experience in order to prove their value to a client. Peter Merholz from Adaptive Path mentioned something called the Net Promoter Score which I have confess I had never heard of.

Fortunately I wasn’t alone in my ignorance because Andy Budd had not come across the term either. However, unlike me he took the time do some research into the Net Promoter Score and post his findings online…

To calculate your Net Promoters Score, you ask your customers “how likely they would be to recommend you to a friend”, and get them to grade their answers on a scale of zero to ten. Zero would be extremely unlikely while ten would be highly likely. Those who answer nine or ten are considered promoters, and are the most likely people to evangelise your services. Those who answer between zero and six are considered detractors and are the type of people who will spread negative views about your services.

To work out your Net Promoters Score, you simply subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. A good score would be in the range of 50-80%, while an average score would be 5-10%. A poor score would be in the negatives…

Andy then goes on to explain how this basic question can be used to assess the value of your service. I can see why Peter brought this up on the show as it would seem an excellent way of assessing improvements made to the user experience. By testing before and after a site redesign it would be easy to measure improvements in the experience.

Try it on your next project.

15 Excellent Examples of Web Typography

This is a bit of a random news story but I really wanted to mention it. I am excited to see that the movement towards better typography on the web continues to build momentum and I am constantly amazed at just what is possible with a bit of determination.

Typography can me an incredibly powerful tool in our design arsenal, as I have no doubt said many times before. However, if you still need convincing then check out these 15 superb examples of web typography which I came across this week. There really is some inspiring stuff in here and it should be enough to get even the most jaded web designer playing with type again.

Social net offers new perspective

Talking of being inspired, my last news story of today is a post by Bill Thompson on the BBC technology site. I am not sure it is directly to do with web design but it certainly went a long way to re-energising me about the work I do on the web.

The article focuses on how the social side of the web is transforming not just the way we interact online but also our world as a whole. While other journalists seem to be hammering the social net as a haven for child predators and terrorist trainers, Bill talks about how it is uniting cultures and making the news we see on TV real again.

Bill writes:

What will happen when these people (referring to online friends we have made) start dying in famines or wars, or when the climate changes caused by global warming lead to floods and droughts and natural disasters?

What happens when the photos on Facebook and Flickr show devastated crops and starving families – and these people are not just faces on the television but old friends, people whose likes and dislikes and reading habits and favourite films we know and share?

The world is different when it’s the people you know, and I do not think we will be able to resist the forces of change when our friends are dying on screen, in front of us, and we know that we could do something but have decided not to.

The article really grasps the power of the social web, a power I personally am all too well aware of. Running and developing an online community is a strange thing. Many perceive social networks as a numbers game (a way of attracting traffic). However at its heart are real people and real relationships. I will never forget a woman called Crystal whom I became friends with back in 1997 when I ran a virtual community. Crystal was dying of cancer and was housebound. For such a long time she was the heart of our community until one day she died. The grief that we felt was just as real even though none of us had ever met her face to face. She was a real friend to me, a real person.

I think that is why many online communities fail. They fail because they don’t grasp that communities are about people and relationship rather than features and technology.

Marcus’ bit: Project timescales

I have often rambled on about the importance of contracts on this podcast and, within those the contracts, the need for a detailed spec, a detailed task list and associated timescales and milestones.

I still think all of those things are important but I do think that often (me included) people go into a land of fantasy when it comes a) when they can start a project and b) how long each one of those tasks will take.

Clients are guilty of this too.

This is what usually happens:

The client, not knowing how long the project will take, picks a date for project completion because they don’t want it left open. Let’s call it ‘date x’.
Unless it’s patently impossible to achieve, agencies will agree to this deadline because they don’t want to adversely affect their bid.
A certain amount of back and forth over the delivery date happens because, for example, it takes longer than expected to agree on a contract, or maybe the scope has extended a little, etc. But the agency can’t really move the date to somewhere comfortable because they have already agreed to ‘date x’. So, all parties then agree to ‘date x plus 1 month’ or similar.
The project then slips and both parties start blaming each other for it – the agency feels that the client is overly pushy and, worse, the client thinks that the agency is unprofessional, inattentive etc.

Be honest from the start

Seriously, do it. I was just having a conversation this morning with a potential client (hi Graham) who is looking for a new site. He has an unrealistic delivery deadline of the end of October. With Headscape’s current workload, I felt that we could deliver the project, at best, by the end of January. This blew our chances completely but -

a) Graham appreciated the honesty and, who knows, may want to work with us again or recommend us to others;

b) If I had underestimated – a favourite at this time of year is to say ‘we can do it by Christmas’ – then I would have become very unpopular internally and also with the client when we failed to deliver.

Don’t forget you have other clients

It is so easy to think ‘standard CMS site redesign equals 10 weeks’ and then go and quote a date for completion 10 weeks from now! Don’t forget the following:

It usually takes at least 2 weeks to sign a contract
Do you have the resources to start straight away?
What other projects are imminent?
Staff holidays

Educate

I think the problems I am referring to relate to the fact that, even now, we are working in a relatively ‘young’ industry. This means that many clients simply don’t have an understanding of how long projects, and the tasks within those projects, can take.

This used to be a problem with pricing and still is in some cases. However, client expectations of cost seem to be a lot more in line with each other than they were, say 3 years ago.

If we can explain what we do and how long it takes right from the start with a potential client, then hopefully client expectations of project length will also balance out.

Paul’s corner: Social networking for sales

From time to time I get questions about how to build your reputation in the field of web design. How do you become well known so that you can attract more work in? Its a fair question and one that inspired an article I wrote recently called The Geeks Alternative To Golf.

Ask the expert: Ben Hunt on marketing a web business

Ben:

Ill be talking about marketing a web business. And the things that I cover will apply particularly to small web businesses, little shops, web designers. But, the principles that we will be going over will apply to the whole of web design and in fact the design of any site at all.

What I am going to be talking about I guess comes under headology, psychology. It will be stuff like: self perception, posture, attitude, and brand – which are really central things.

So, starting with brand… what is brand? Well, brand is how people perceive you. What do you offer, what can you do for them. And what differentiates you from alternatives. Differentiation is absolutely vital and you must not ever underestimate it. There is a couple of books that have been really influential in hammering this point home to me.

The first one I would like to mention is called Purple Cow. It is written by Seth Godin, the kind of godfather of marketing. And the core premise of Purple Cow is… whatever you do, you have got to stand out 241 you’ve got to be memorable. In the 22st century just fitting in with people’s general expectations, fitting in with the crowd simply doesn’t cut it anymore.

The second book that I really loved is called Zag and it is written by a guy called Martin Neumeier. And it comes at the same kind of thing, but from a different angle. It says, “When everybody zigs, zag.” You go in the other direction. What ever is going on around you, do whatever it takes to stand out, to be noticeable and to go against the flow. Zag is also full of brilliant examples that explain why and also how you can go about it.

So what I am going to be covering is broadly three steps that will help you to get into a really winning mindset. Okay, so let’s dive in.

These days so much to choose from that we are surrounded by so many brands and so many messages all of the time. What drives our decisions and our choices as clients and what drives our client’s choices. And I find that it really really helps me if I try and get into the head of my potential customers. So the first thing to note, which is really often overlooked, I cannot stress this enough is people who land on your website (generally speaking) want you to be the one.

No one really enjoys trolling search engine results. People say to you, “Oh you know, you competitors are only a click away.” And I would like to say to these doom-and-gloom merchants, “So what!”. You know, when somebody is on my website, we are half-way there. We are over the first hurdle.

And these people are going to fall into two categories. They are either going to be someone who is looking for what we do and if they are fantastic! All we need to do then is to communicate that, quickly and cleanly to them, without giving them any reason to click back to the Google search results. And if this people is in the other category of people who aren’t looking for what we offer, no problem! We have got nothing to lose. We’re unlikely to be able to turn them around at this point and they are probably looking for something else.

But what we might hope to do, is leave a positive impression so that one day when they are sitting there at there desk going, “Do you know what we really need is someone who does expert site reviews, or somebody who specializes in Web 2.0 design.” You might hope that hey remember you.

It is really important to get your head around this reality that people who are visiting your sites are your friends and they want you to be right, so all you have to do is not bugger-it all up.

Okay, so let’s take it for granted that your honored site visitor is in the first camp. They are here because they are looking for what you offer; they want you to be the agency for them. Moving on to step two… How to let them make a positive decision.

Now here my advice is, work out who they really are. Who are your real customers? I see a lot of small agencies and free lancers, who on their websites they try and betray themselves as something they’re not – either bigger or broader or more capable. We don’t need to do that. The absolute core of this whole blurb I am spatting at is don’t pretend to be a big corp megabucks agency, if you’re not. Yeah…

The whole trick is to be who you are, and portray that in a strong way that people love; that people connect with. I mean, you’ve seen all this stuff where people say, “We this and we that.”. You know, all over their website. When it is clearly one guy sitting in his bedroom. And there is nothing wrong with being one guy sitting in your bedroom doing work; there is a market for that kind of thing. And the other kind of stuff you find is people say is that, “Oh, we do work for clients ranging from 50-quid jobs (for small local businesses) up to mega-gazillion jobs for international blah-blah-blah…”. And you sit there going, you don’t do those kinds of jobs.

So who are you trying to win? Are you trying to win BMW and SONY and Disney? Do you think they… those guys are going to come along to your website and fall for this stuff? Let’s say they did.

Let’s go on a flight of fancy and say that the VP of Marketing for Disney lands on your website cause they just happens to find himself between web agencies, looking for a new one, and he goes, “Oh wow! These people seem to have a team although I can’t see them because there are no names and there is not much of a portfolio. And they say that they work with companies just like mine, a massive global conglomerate.” Let’s say you caught him on a bad day and he accidentally picks up the phone and calls you. How long is he going to be on the phone for, one minute 241 two minutes, before he realizes that you can’t possibly give him the security that he as a big-massive client needs. So we just need to accept that these aren’t the guys who will be paying your wage.

So think, “Who are the real people who want what you offer?” And then, we brand ourselves, we pitch ourselves for those people uniquely. There is no point in pretending to be what you are not. What you need to do is present what you are, in the best light possible, which brings us onto step three… How to show who you are in a way that wins customers.

So the trick is to examine all the aspects of what you are, what you do, and how you work whether you perceive it as positive or negative. And build those things into a brand, into a whole impression, that really delivers for you. So let’s get back into our customers head.

Who are they, first of all? So they are not BMW and Disney and all of these guys. They aren’t going to be paying your bills. Who is going to be paying your bills? Who needs what you have? This is a two-way match between supply and demand. You can’t just be what you are not. You can only offer what you can offer. You can’t sell to people who need something else.

Let’s start with the givens. Let’s start with what you are and what your capabilities are, what you can do. And then, picture a market for that. But the trick here is to select what to show that might make you memorable and create a connection.

Often the things that you might perceive as weakness… for example if you are stuck in that mindset of thinking, “You need to pretend to be a massive full service agency.”… the things that you think are weaknesses may in fact be real strengths if you can spin them right, if you can present them in a right way. But, fundamentally this is all about getting your head around it.

Branding isn’t about pretending to be something that you are not. Branding is about working out who you are and what you really do and then standing there and saying it with confidence in a way that really impacts people.

Okay, so let’s look at a few things. Ah, you might be thinking, “We are not based in central London.” Great! You’re nearer to your local customers. You’re nearer your local small businesses who want somebody around the corner. They don’t want a big kind of so-ho agency.

So you are thinking, “We are just one person.” Fantastic! You have no huge wage bills and that keeps the cost down. And very often, your clients can know that they can pickup the phone, and might even have your mobile number, and they can pickup the phone and speak to you. And that is worth an awful lot to a lot of clients, knowing who is going to be on the other end of the phone.

“What about if you haven’t got an office?” Who cares if you haven’t got an office? You go to your clients and meet at their premises. It also keeps the fees down. Your local clients will respect that.

“You don’t know everything about web technology.” Who does? You might be a specialist in PHP or CSS. Or you might have a particular passion for religious organizations or green issues or whatever it is, whatever really floats your boat is whatever you want to do. Let’s do that.

Nobody knows everything. So if you are a small scale agency, we talk about this a lot, everyone has a network of other professionals and amateurs in your area, or around the world, who can help. And even the big agencies do that – everybody does that.

So what we are talking about is, say what you are really about. Lots of people make a positive decision to work with my agency, after reading our ethical policy that we publish on our website. And that works great for us because the kind of clients that we love to work for are actually attracted by reading that stuff and the other clients who are in industries that we don’t do, they don’t bother to get in touch. Which saves everybody time and effort. So now you are getting your brand together. We need to build in, what your audience wants.

So if you are really suited to dealing with other local small businesses, say. Think about what signs, what signals they are looking for to be able to make a positive decision to take the next step.

There are two important things to remember here. Remember the customer in on your side. They want you to be the one. And also, here’s a new one, you don’t have to close a sale on your website.

They job of the website is to get a qualified visitor from the point of first initial contact, knowing nothing about you, to the point of taking the next step. That’s it. So focus your efforts on giving the right kind of visitor, the right kind of signals, that you probably right for them. That is all that you need to do.

Now generally, you’ll be looking to reinforce just a few points and I always think of these as like check boxes in somebody’s mind. I like to picture somebody; think of what they look like, where they’re working, sitting at their computer typing something into a search engine and clicking on some results. And thinking, “What are the check boxes, what are the three or four check boxes (there are not usually more that that), in this person’s mind that I need to tick-off?”

And if you can tick-off those check boxes without upsetting the person, or giving them any reason to go away, and not believe in you then you’ve probably done your job. Then what you do is, you say (here is a call to action)… “If you want to talk about this more, that is fantastic, pickup the phone and call me and I would love to speak with you!”

Let’s imagine, depending on the market you are talking to, what kind of check boxes might be in somebody’s head. I think very often that they are things like, “I can trust these guys.” or “They are not going to be too expensive and will fit my budget.” or “They like working with companies like mine.”

So they are looking for evidence of all of those things. And it might be like what we said before; “I can get somebody on the phone if I need help.” And clients aren’t necessarily super confident in their requirements. You know, if it is an engineering company, and they don’t really know anything about media or marketing in particular, then there is no reason to think that they are sitting there being really really cynical. What they looking for is a friend, they are looking for someone to be on their side and to help them through this process.

All we need to do is get them effectively to feel good about you 241 is really what we are saying. We have to get them from first finding you, to coming to a point where they have no reason to think you are not the right agency for them, then you give them a call to action and you say, “Let’s get together and let’s talk about we can do for you.”

The thing I would add here is to do with focus. You need to plan the steps from the home page through to that call to action. Now you know your website might only be one page. You might only need one page to do that. You don’t have to have a news section. You might not have news to give. Don’t put a news section on because it will be a dead pit.

You should put on your website only the things that you need to get that person from A through to B. And you need to be very very focused about it. So don’t put in more pages than you need. Don’t put in more images than you need. Don’t put in more blurb-bump-from-rhubarb, the more blurb-bump-from-rhubarb you put on your website the more you’re going to be watering down your message.

Get all of these steps right, you have done your job and you should see the difference in your bottom line.

Show 94: Flickr Features

Posted in Classic shows on September 18, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul uses flickr as an example of best practice, Marcus discusses the use of client references and Patrick McNeil from Design Meltdown examines emerging design trends.

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News and events | Using client references | What we can learn from flickr | Patrick McNeil talks about design trends

News and events

Developing your designs with the client

As I said on last week’s show I have started to reconsider the way we manage projects and I am considering a more Agile approach than we have used in the past. What I like about the principles of Agile development is the idea of getting the entire development team working together. Designer, developer, project manager, everybody.

From my limited understanding of Agile development it is also considered a good idea to engage with the client in this way too, by actively involving them in the development process. However I have to confess I find this concept hard to get my head around.

My problem is that Agile development is a very fluid process and I am not sure I am keen to expose the client to that level of internal workings. However, although I am still learning and have yet to draw my final conclusions I have to say I was impressed by an article on this subject that appeared this week on A List Apart.

The article talks about how you could include the client in a series of workshops so getting them more involved (and therefore more committed) to the project. What I found most reassuring about this article was that it proposed a semi-structured approach to the workshop thus addressing some of my concerns.

I am still not convinced that an Agile approach to development is always possible but I must admit I am warming to the idea and believe it is something we should all be considering.

Become a better illustrator

Its funny how you can be told something is great countless times and yet somehow you never get around to checking it out. Well up until this week that was true for me when it came to the video podcasts produced by Anton Peck.

I met Anton last year at SXSW and everybody told me what a great illustrator he was. We have been in contact on and off ever since thanks to twitter and IM but I have never really had much time to dig around his site. However, this week he launched a new version and it motivated me enough to have a look. While poking around I came across a series of video podcasts I had heard mention of before. They provide some excellent tips on how to be a better illustrator including working with colour, skin tones and custom photoshop brushes.

After talking to Anton I can say with some degree of certainty that there will be many more of this tutorials to come, so be sure to subscribe to the feed if you are a budding illustrator.

A new approach to stopping spam

There seems to be a never-ending torrent of spam these days not just in our inboxes but on any online form we create. There have been loads of solutions put forward but either they have accessibility problems or put the emphasis on the user to prove they are not a bot. Although there are also a few filtering services, they aren’t 100% effective and many have to be paid for.

Fortunately some clever spark has come up with a new approach to the problem. It relies on the fact that bots go crazy when they encounter a form and start randomly filling in every field. The technique involves creating an additional field with a particularly tempting name like “body”. The bots cannot resist completing the field while you can hide it entirely from users by moving it off screen with CSS or removing it with Javascript. The technique can be made accessible with a descriptive label for those using screen readers. This label asks them to leave the field blank. When the form is validated you can then simply delete any submissions that have content in the honeytrap field.

Photoshop secret shortcuts

We don’t seem to do many news stories for you hard core designers these days, so I thought I would end todays news segment with one for you. The Web Designers Wall has published a great list of photoshop secret shortcuts that are ludicrously useful.

I have been using Photoshop since its initial version and i wasn’t aware of half of these. For example did you know you could…

Navigate the document left or right using a key combination and a scroll wheel
That you could scale font size using arrow keys
That you can zoom with the scroll wheel
That you can drag to change numerical values
That you can use a keyboard shortcut to expand or collapse all layer groups
That you can easily hide or show multiple layers

Great stuff. Definitely worth checking out.

Marcus’ bit: Using client references

This is quite a tricky subject to discuss because I know that some of the clients that Headscape often uses as referees listen to this show!
So, first up, how to judge if a client will be a good reference. Ask yourself the following:

Did I deliver on time and on budget?
Did I deliver a quality/cool/innovative/rockin’ site or product? In other words, did you exceed expectations?
Did you get on with the client?
Is the client web savvy? I.e. would you be happy for them to talk to another potential client about your capabilities?
Would the client’s company name/brand/reputation help yours?

If the answers to all of the above are generally ‘yes’, then you really should try to get them to act as a referee for you or, failing that, get a testimonial from them.

Of course, if the answers are generally ‘no’ but the client was Coca Cola then, chances are, you should try and use them anyway!

Don’t just assume

Always ask people if they mind doing it. It quite often involves some work on their part, for example filling in a form.
I have asked clients in the past if I can just include their details in an ongoing fashion and most agree to this. However, I have made a point of checking back again with them, usually after 6 months or so, to see if it’s still ok. The last thing you want is someone getting tired of you asking for a reference because they’ll end up sounding weary of the process with the prospective client.

Also, try and read between the lines when you’re asking someone. If they agree, but you really think that they would rather not, then save them up for a particularly big tender you’re after.

Sometimes, tenders ask for a very large amount of references. In these cases, I include all the contact details but I ask that I am contacted, to ask permission, prior to any communication.

Vary the list

Not all tenders ask for references and, if that is the case, don’t include any. I simply add in a line saying that references can be supplied on request.

For those that do ask, don’t roll out the same old names for every proposal. They will end up getting hacked off with you continually including them. But, the main reason for not doing this is that you should try to include appropriate references for that particular prospective client. Obviously, similar organisations should be used but you may also want to consider whether the two people would get on well.

Paul’s corner: What we can learn from flickr

This years dconstruct really inspired me especially the talk by Tom Coates. It challenged my perception that web design is all about the website. Instead, as website owners, we need to start thinking about what content we hold rather than the method by which it is delivered.

These days the web is becoming less about websites and more about content delivery in all of its various forms. Once we wrap our heads around the fact that we should be focusing on our content rather than our website it offers some interesting new opportunities. However, instead of talking in theoretical terms lets look at a real world example; the photo sharing site flickr.

Ask the expert: Patrick McNeil from Design Meltdown talks about design trends

Paul:
So joining me today is Patrick McNeil who is probably best known for Design Meltdown although you seem to be running a whole plethora of sites at the moment Patrick.

Patrick:
Yeah, I keep busy for sure.

Paul:
That’s good. I wanted you on the show because from Design Meltdown it’s very apparent that you follow what’s going on as far design trends online. I though it would be good to get you in to discuss current design trends and that kind of thing. But before we get into that, tell us a bit about how Design Meltdown came about.

Patrick:
Well it started in school actually. I had a teacher on my design classes and we were using this book called Genius Moves by Steven Heller. In the book he catalogs design over the last hundred years by these totally random things like “big text” and “big hands”. Strange little things that you would never thing to classify design on. So it got me thinking about web stuff. I started snapshotting sites and starting building a folder structure of stuff. Then I realised “Hey, I can make a little website out of this” and that’s pretty much how it got started.

Paul:
It’s probably worth saying that’s it a lot more than the normal kind of screenshot sites that you see. It’s more of a blog organised in categories. Is that a fair way to describe it?

Patrick:
Yeah, I can of view it as a catalog of web sites. It’s almost like a library of stuff. As opposed to a showcase of beautiful sites it’s more of a showcase of sites in particular classifications where they make sense to go together.

Paul:
Yeah. You seem to give a bit of a commentary about what you are seeing in these different things which it looks like it has lead onto a regular column in .Net Magazine I noticed.

Patrick:
Yeah. I’ve been writing for .Net for about a year and a half now. Basically it’s the same thing there too. I pick some kind strange category and comment on it. It seemed to me that when I started it not only did I want to catalog the sites and show them in a new way from the other catalogs but I thought the commentary felt kinda weird writing about stuff at first. It felt so egotistical or something. Just the commentary seemed to be something that was new to that area. It was normally just “Here’s a bunch of cool sites to look at” instead of allowing me to write my thoughts on the topic.

Paul:
Definitely. You’ve been doing this for a while now. The site’s been up and running for a while. Tell us a little but about what you feel you’ve learnt through the process in regards to design and web design in particular.

Patrick:
Well certainly by moderating the sites that are coming in and then cataloguing them I’m forced to look at hundreds of sites. Inevitably you’re a little more exposed to what’s going on. A lot of times I feel I kind of have a feel of what’s popular at any given time. It’s really weird to feel that in touch. I know we all surf a lot but it seems kind of excessive because I have all these people submitting their latest and greatest sites. It puts you in touch with what’s going on. I think the biggest design lesson I’ve learned is, and we should know this because we go to school for it, that everything has meaning. Even the most trivial, insignificant-seemly things have abundant meaning to them. One of the perfect examples is when I commented on the badge at BoagWorld and that is how you first found me I think. With the badge, I would have used it flippantly and I think my comment on it initially was poking fun at it almost. Then you realise there’s actual power in that tool. Everything is a tool and potentially everything can have meaning right down to the smallest thing. There’s a pattern to fold over a corner to make it look like the page has been turned over like you would do in a real book. Things like that I might have initially thought were meaningless and after doing this for a while and you see enough sites that did the same thing, you’re like “Well there is actually some thought process that can go into that”. You can put some meaning into just about anything. It’s kind of fascinating. Makes me think more about the design elements that I would choose to use seeing that they have more meaning.

Paul:
So how has it influenced the designs that you’re producing these days?

Patrick:
I don’t a lot of design ironically. I tend to be more of a developer but I definitely do get to do a mix of things. I think it just makes me more aware of what I am doing and a little bit more aware of exactly what I’m doing and a little more conscientious when I go to implement something that I don’t just say “Well I think these shiny sites look cool lately so I’ll make a shiny site” or “I want a badge on my site”. It just makes me think things through a little better and not do things so flippantly. I try to consider what the real purpose of the site is, what the message is and that sort of thing before trying to come up with design elements that follow that need.

Paul:
You said a minute ago that you’ve been forced by doing this to become very aware of what design trends are around. What do you think is going on at the moment? What are the emerging trends you see going around at the minute?

Patrick:
Certainly there’s one that seems pretty obvious, everybody has made a shiny website by now. One where everything is all glossy. I think that that’s gone through some interesting patterns. It seems that lately, and this is probably true of almost any trend, at first it’s used just randomly and not very well and then over time it becomes more integrated into how designers work. So the results now are sites that are just absolutely beautiful. They completely use the style as opposed to just saying “I’m going to make a shiny logo”. It really is used throughout the entire design and creates a unified feel to it if that makes sense. It seems like patterns like that you see it more effectively used. The other one which I think has been going on for a little while now but it’s certainly a big trend, is the idea of more rapid communications. I’m sure you’re aware of how short attention spans are on the web. You go to a lot of sites now where they’ll have, and it’s sometimes bigger than the logo, a bold statement in ten words or less about what this company actually does. It used to be you’d go to some sites, even now if you find an older site, you’d be confused what the product is. You can’t even tell by the home page what the heck this company sells. So nowadays it seems like the utmost importance where there’s so many applications doing this, that and the other to clearly say this is some online accounting software, this is a to-do list manager, this software will help you track you Windows network, that sort of thing. It becomes the whole banner across the top quickly communicating what the heck the product is and then quite often it’s associated with an action item to sign up for an evaluation, getting a free account, something like that. That’s not so much a design pattern as it is a marketing pattern I guess. That certainly seems to be one of the more popular formulas to follow.

Paul:
There seems to be a bit of a skizzum in some ways in design where you’ve got that kind of design where it’s very functional based, very much orientated around meeting users needs and then on the other side of it you’re seeing some really beautiful, very ornate websites. There seems to be a lot of art deco stuff around. Very flowery or that kind of thing.

Patrick:
Yeah, definitely. Ornate has always been popular. That’s followed the same pattern I think as the whole shiny style in that it’s become a whole lot more refined and that you see people implementing it in a whole lot of different ways. It’s not “I’m going to throw a flourish on here and there” and that’ll be it. But now it’s become more that they have worked it into the entire design and almost makes designs that revolve around it. It makes a much more cleaner approach I guess.

Paul:
There’s some really stunningly beautiful stuff about. What about you personally? What kind of design styles appeal most to you and why?

Patrick:
On Design Meltdown I have a category called Super Clean. You’ll see sites like one I’m looking at now http://www.id-confirm.com. They have these network identification deals. If you just look at it, it’s just so clean and easy to consume. It’s simple and yet it has enough design and pizzazz to it where it feels like a really refined and high quality site. I love those and then ironically on the complete flip end, I love sites more like http://green.yahoo.com/18seconds. Sites like this are more inline with what you are referring to. I really love these visually intense sites where it becomes more about the experience of what you’re about to consume as opposed to just the content. Sites like this have to sell you on the whole idea of what they are doing before they let you get the content so to speak. I think I really like this approach even better probably because I’m not up to making designs like this to be completely honest. It feels a little beyond me and you always feel attracted to the things that you find most difficult. It’s kinda fascinating.

Paul:
Yeah, it is. Obviously sites like yours and there are other similar types out there, a lot of people go to these sites for inspiration when they are doing they own design work. I was just interested what your opinion was on that, whether you felt that was healthy or whether you’d encourage people to look further a field? And what other places you look for inspiration? There’s a couple of questions in there. [laughs]

Patrick:
[Laughing] Yeah, there’s three of four I think. I find that at my work my co-workers come to me all the time and ask “What do you have on this?”. I’ll point them to some articles and stuff to get inspired by and I think it’s incredibly healthy. I think if you’re going to design a site and you know the client… I think the key is to not to come to Design Meltdown to find out what you’re going to design but to decide the elements ahead of time and then come here to find resources that match that. Say you have a client and you know the site’s going to be blue. You have no choice, that’s the client’s colours or whatever. So it’s going to be a blue site. You could come here and start going through blue sites and see how other people have implemented the same style.

Paul:
I think that’s what is quite nice about your site. Because it’s organised in that way where you can go in and look at just blue sites or can look at sites that use a particularly clean style. You can do it that way round in preference to looking at hundreds of screenshots and thinking “I’m going to rip that one off”.

Patrick:
[Laughing] Yeah, exactly.

Paul:
A much more healthy way of thinking at it. Do you look for inspiration beyond the web? Are you one of those people that looks at architecture and print magazines, stuff like that? Or are you more interested in just the web?

Patrick:
I would say I’m mostly interested in on the web I guess. Primarily because just to keep up on Design Meltdown I have to go through 100 sites to find 10 good ones it kinda forces that. But I certainly get inspired by anything offline. I love going to an old library and looking through old books because the typography is amazing. They’re not limited by the whole computer and everything’s got to line up so easily and whatever. Getting into older things, going to museums and looking at old paintings, it’s amazing the design skills that you can see in work in those things. I think there’s certainly more than enough inspiration offline. Another thing I think people and I get tempted to do is to make a fake paint splatter on the computer instead of getting a can of paint spray, spraying some paper and scanning it. I think there’s this real tendency to think that you’ve got to do it on the computer whereas you can certainly unplug and do a lot of stuff to get a much more realistic feel.

Paul:
Yeah, I know. I think that’s great. So one last question before I let you get on with looking at several more hundred sites. I have to ask you about this thing of sites like yours where people just go along to them and basically rip off the content they are seeing. That’s always a hard line for people. I don’t think anybody necessarily goes along to this site going “I’m going to rip this off in it’s entirety” but you end up doing that. Where’s the line do you think between being inspired but somebody’s site and actually overstepping that kind of line and ripping them off so to speak.

Patrick:
Oh well, that’s kinda tough isn’t it. Most normal designs, most normal down to earth design, can have some similarities to almost any other kind of site that you’ve never seen before. I think it’s really on the designer. If they are unethical and choose to steal designs… I think it’s a mindset. I think as a young designer people might be more tempted to base more heavily on somebody’s design and as long you are honest about it or you do it in cases where it’s a student project, something where you’re learning from this experience, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that. But as a professional designer you certainly just have to know you can’t do that. I think the big key is to before you even go looking for inspiration to think about how to solve a certain clients problem. You listen to the client and find out what their needs are, what they are trying to sell, all these things. You form ideas on what that might mean in terms of the design. Then you can just use these are tools to make you think along these lines.

Paul:
Yeah I would agree with that. I think the real danger comes when you start having Photoshop open in one window and the web browser open in another. If you’re looking at one site in one window and then you’re design it in Photoshop, then you’ve gone to far. I tell you something that I did hear once that I think works very well is that if you see a website that you really like instead of doing a screen grab and keeping that just pick out individual sections of it, little bits of it, and screen capture just the buttons or the links or the navigation. That works quite well.

Patrick:
Certainly.

Paul:
Interesting. Thank you very much for coming on the show Patrick. It was good to hear from you.

Patrick:
No problem. Thanks for having me.

Paul:
Hopefully we’ll have you back in the future.

Show 92: Royal Air Force

Posted in Classic shows on September 4, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul asks how much you should blog, Marcus takes a look at the state of music online and John Oxton joins Jon Hicks in discussing the benefits and drawbacks of home working.

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News and events | Music on the web | How much to blog? | Hicks and Oxton on home working | Housekeeping

One quick thing before we dive into the news. I am lazy. Yes, I know it is a shock. I am always looking for the easiest way to do things. But as well as being lazy I like pretty shiny things. One thing I particularly like is pretty desktop pictures. However, looking for cool ones takes too long. You can therefore imagine my delight to discover a mac app called Desktoptopia that basically pumps gorgeous background to my desktop on a continual basis. What is more you can even add your own RSS feeds if you don’t like their images.

So I wrote to them saying I liked their software and they offered me a $5 discount for all you boagworld listeners until the 18th September. That means you can buy the software for only $15! All you have to do is go to desktoptopia.com/store and enter the code “boagworld”. I know this sounds like an ad but it isn’t. They aren’t giving me anything. I just liked their product.

Anyway if you know of any other cool apps that you want me to go after a discount on that drop me a line.

News and events

The Mobile Web

This last week has seen the release of Cameron Moll’s book on the Mobile Web. I have been waiting a long time to read this book and although I have yet to finish it, what I have seen justifies the wait.

You maybe tempted to think that the mobile web isn’t really something you need to concern yourself with, but I would strongly encourage you to reconsider. In Cameron’s book he explains that 59% of the entire world population will have a mobile phone by 2010. In 35 years – roughly the same amount of time as the PC and nearly one-forth the time of the landline phone – mobile phone penetration has surpassed the PC and landline phone combined. It is a massive growth area. Admittedly not all of those phones are internet enabled and even if they are that doesn’t mean people use them. However, in the UK and US mobile access to the internet is already one-fifth the size of those accessing from a PC.

The book is only $19 and can be downloaded in PDF format from mobilewebbook.com.

If that has wetted your appetite for the mobile web you should also check out an iphone article that has appeared on the List Apart website. It provides loads of great advice on developing sites that work well with the iphone and although it is iphone specific a lot of the information applies to other mobile devices too.

Incredible image scaling

Next up is a video demonstration that is causing considerable excitement online. The video shows an amazing technology that can dynamically scale an image up or down to fit the available space. We are not talking pixel scaling here, we are talking about adding or removing pixels in a seamless way by following the contours of the objects in the picture.

Its an incredibly hard thing to describe on an audio podcast and so I would encourage you to look for yourself.

What I can say however is that this is an incredibly exciting technology which the big players are taking seriously. Adobe has already hired one of the creators of this technique.

Finding a domain name generator

My next news item for today is a great little post I came across on the sitepoint.com website which lists three domain name generators. These “generators” help solve a growing problem you encounter when launching a new site or product; finding an available domain name.

You can tell just how hard it has become to find a good domain name by the way that web 2.0. companies have started dropping vowels in order to get the word that they want.

The sites listed in this blog post allow you to enter keywords and it will suggest domain names based on word combination, plurals and even thesaurus lookups. Best of all one of the sites mentioned also works nicely for those of you who are looking for language specific URLs.

Very useful indeed.

The ultimate design brief

Last up in today’s news segment of the show is an article about writing a design brief. It is not directly written with web design in mind but ever word is applicable. The article applies equally to designers as to clients and talks about the important role that a design brief fulfills. It suggests that designers need to encourage clients to put together a formal design brief outlining exactly what their requirements are. It then lists a series of suggestions of things which should be included. The list it includes is far from being comprehensive (at least not for web designers) but it is an excellent starting point.

I really cannot emphasis enough how important a formal brief is no matter how small the project. It is a strange coincidence that this post comes out in the week that I am drafting a chapter on brief writing for my book. While working on this it has reminded me of just how bad things can become if all parties are not entirely aware of each others expectations.

If you tend to be a bit slack when it comes to writing down requirements then make a point of reading this article.

Marcus’ bit: Music on the web

I remembered writing an article for the Headscape website a long time ago on this subject so I thought I’d go back, have a look, and compare it to how things have actually changed in the past five years.

At the time, before the general take up of broadband, the use of music on websites was limited to annoying, over-compressed loops that bore little relevance to the rest of the site. I hoped that the advent of broadband for all would lead to music being created for sites a lot more often and the role of web music developer/designer becoming a reality.

So, has anything changed?

Well, to be honest, not really. The sites that used to include music; ‘cool’ sites like trendy design agencies, band sites etc still do and they do it a lot better. The quality has improved along with the choice of what you can listen to. But that wasn’t what I was hoping for.
At the time, there was a bit of a buzz about audio branding – promoted by Intel’s audio ‘logo’. This lead me to think that a lot more companies would start to introduce audio branding and add it to their sites. This hasn’t happened at all apart from a few big names

like Philips and Ford.

Why not?

The main reason for the lack of take up of music on sites is, I think, that music needs to either sit on it’s own i.e. you don’t associate imagery with it at all or, it needs to synchronised with imagery. Music works great with films/ads/etc because they’re fixed – you can stop and start them but that’s about it. They can’t be viewed in a random way like the way people navigate websites. This means that music on websites will always feel like a bit of an add-on and, at worst, as a distraction.

Additionally, websites are generally seen as information portals and not as places of entertainment per se. They provide entertaining things to download, watch, etc but in themselves they are simply shells for content, most of which is written text. While I’m on ‘text’, one thing I thought we would see more of was voiceovers – but again, this hasn’t caught on.

Any positives for the composer?

Yes. What has exploded since the take up of broadband is video. We are seeing more and more video online. Video, which is a fixed entity, usually benefits to a lesser or greater from the addition of music.

Though the creation of quality video is a specialist field, I can see web design agencies being asked to produce more and more video (for example: client testimonials, staff interviews, product demos etc). Quite a lot of the time I expect that library music will be used but I expect that little by little, more new compositions will be required for video on websites.

I’ll check again in five years!

Paul’s corner: How much to blog?

I recently received a question from Dan:

For as long as I can remember the prevalent thought has been that the key to success for blogging and podcasting is to post frequently and on a regular schedule. Now, this made a lot of sense because websites had to get visitors to comeback manually to find new content. But now in the age of RSS feed is this advice still as important as it used to be if at all? Also in terms of how web managers spend their resources is it more important to do a few updates with stella quality or to manage your time so that frequent updates are the priority?

With over 66% of blogs not updated in over 2 months and anywhere between 60% and 80% abandoned within their first month this seemed a good subject to examine in more depth…

Hicks and Oxton on home working

Paul:
Okay. So joining me today are two towers if British web design genius, in the form of Jon Hicks and John Oxton. Hello guys.

Jon:
Hello.

John:
Hello. I think he is trying to tell us that weíre fat.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
I was just agreeing with him. [laughs]

Paul:
Itís always good practice, if you are doing a podcast, to butter-up your guests in advance.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
Oh, I always wanted to be greased up. Thank you.

Paul:
Enjoy. Okay so the reason we dragged these two guys onto the show today is really to talk about a change that they both made in their carriers recently. So you guys have been freelancers for a while, is that right?

John:
Yes. Iíve been 5 years. How long have you been John?

Jon:
On and off for about 5 years as well.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
With three years committed.

Paul:
So that is quite a while to work as freelancers. And I guess that you both used to work out of home offices. Is that right?

John:
Yes. Iíve worked for the first three years from a home office. And the last two years I have renting a little desk in a local print design company.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
So it kind of like the next step-up.

Paul:
What about you Mr. Oxton?

John:
I worked out of a bedroom, like every proper developer should.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
For as long as I have been doing web design I never had my own office.

Paul:
Okay. And then, relatively recently the two of you decided to get together and move into an RAF base, is that right?

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Jon:
Thatís right… over. [sound of CB radio clicking off] Yeah, I mean… do you want to tell the story John? Or should I tell the story?

John:
You tell the story.

Jon:
Iíve been renting a desk for two years. It was a nice place to rent and nice people. But it really was though… ìWe have a spare desk in the corner and you can come and use it.î John mentioned that we wanted to find an office, so we were looking for anywhere sort of halfway between where we lived. And this place came up and I think I have to admit, there was kind of a boy-appeal to the whole RAF based thing. I mean it is not big, an RAF base, about 8 or 9 years ago. But, there is still an airfield here and it is still being used. And, itís great.

Paul:
So, beyond this being some nice reminiscing about how youíve got a lovely office together and shouldnít we all be envious of you? I mean, the reason I kind of got you on is to talk a little bit about home working and working in an office, and working as a freelancer really. And setting yourself up and stuff like that. What made the decision for you to move out of a home office and into an office working together? What triggered that decision?

John:
I think for me, the key was having young children. Working at home with young children is an nearly impossible I think.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
But it is also the fact that we kind of worked together for the year before hadnít we, on a project, and we found out that we get on quite well.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
So those were the two elements for me really. Find someone you can get along with and just wanting to get out of the house because of the kids.

Paul:
So was it a desire to be in an environment where you could bounce off of somebody else and have other people you could speak to as well? Or was it just getting away from the kids?

Jon:
That that is one aspect of it. Certainly, going back to the place that I was renting the desk from, they are lovely people and they were good print designers, but I couldnít talk to them about anything web related.

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
Ummm. I mean, they did websites using Freeway.

Paul:
Right.

Jon:
So you know you couldnít talk code to them, you could talk about IE bugs – and that kind of thing. Ummm, although I could do my thing of asking people what color something is, if I needed to check… but that was about it. So yeah, that is an element to it. Having someone there you can actually talk to about these things, or you know passing around things like… discussing things like the blueprint of CSS framework or what was that one called Moonfall, or something. It was the Perl script for doingÖ

John:
Oh yeah.

Jon:
CSS variables. These sorts of things, beforehand I wouldnít know anyone to talk to about that. You know, that makes the difference.

John:
And Iíve got somebody that can identify fonts for me now…

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
…which is a huge bonus! And what about merging two big iTunes libraries.

Paul:
Ah, I didnít think about the iTunes libraries.

John:
It is all about the music really.

John:
I mean it is difficult. There are definite advantages to home working. Ummm. Not having to travel is a huge one. Especially when you think about the environmental costs. As well as the financial cost of traveling somewhere to work.

Jon:
If anyone mentions carbon footprint, I hang up.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
Yeah. We donít think it matters a bit. And everything is there. If you want to go and make a bacon sandwich at lunchtime you can. If donít have to go out and shop necessarily. And it is a nice familiar environment. And it is definitely cheaper. Thatís the thing. You are paying less over head.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
But, for me that would only work if I could afford a big house.

Jon:
Yeah.

John:
And we had the space to do that. And the space enough to be far enough away from that other activity as John says like children.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
And even if you lock yourself away in a room they still come in and talk to you.

Paul:
Do you think there are actual business benefits to being in an office rather than working out of your home?

Jon:
Well definitely. One of the things here, when they took over the RAF base, they took over what was the officers mess. They turned the rooms into separate suites. So there, what do you say John, about 20 other companies here?

John:
Yeah.

Jon:
Quite a lot.

John:
As well as some other virtual companies. Yeah, and a load of them Jon is working with other companies in the building.

Jon:
I think there is definitely an element where, ìYou can afford an office you must be doing something right.î I think he makes it look a bit more professional, for a start.

Paul:
Umm hmmm.

Jon:
You have a real live office, and you are not working out of your bedroom. It is a nonsense perception, but never the less it is true and it is a factor.

Jon:
And it is somewhere you can bring a client to. When I worked home, we would always have to meet clients at their place or at a pub… which wasnít a bad thing.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

Jon:
But sometimes a pub isnít the best place to meet. If you actually have got the nitty-gritty to discuss. So like here for example, there is a huge meeting room and a smaller meeting room. You hire it by the hour and they bring you in tea and coffee. And clients like coming here, donít they John?

John:
Yeah. Itís a nice journey.

Jon:
Again, as we all said about the other thing, clients here are greeted properly. Not like knocking on your house door and being jumped on by children.

John:
Yes. [laugh]

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
The phones get answered properly. There are lots, from a perception point of view ñ making you look more professional ñ I think.

John:
Absolutely.

Paul:
I mean we have a quite a few people listening to this show that would be enthusiastic amateurs at the moment. People that donít do web design full time, but maybe thinking about going freelance. Or, they are working for an existing company as a web designer and they are thinking about coming out of that and setting up freelance. What would you advise to people like that? Would you say start off in a home office or would you say go professional and go into one of these units straight off at the bat?

John:
Iíd be inclined to say, ummm, to start off at home if you can, but it depends what you are going out to do really. If you are going out with share holders and big plans for a product then probably go straight into offices. But if you are going out to be a freelancer who builds backends or frontends then you probably want to keep your overheads a small as possible to begin with.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
And then you can cut your position a little bit. And I think that was my attitude for a long time.

Paul:
So I mean would you have any particular advice for people who are working out of their home? As to… what things to avoid and what things to do in order to make yourself as productive as possible?

John:
I liked the Mark Bolton thing that he wrote, where he said to actually leave the house and walk around the block in the morning – to put his shoes on and actually leave the house. Because you know there have been days I have sat and worked with just my socks on. [laughs]

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
And it is all too easy to sit down and read a book. You know trying to make some mental separation between home and work is one of the key things.

Jon:
Yeah, definitely. That is something actually as well that I have to do here too. Ummm. Perhaps less than I did at home, but…

Jon:
And the longer you stay in front of a computer the less productive you can be. And a lot less stimulated your brain is. And just a simple thing of like, it doesnít have to be a long walk, just a couple of minutes. Get out and get some fresh air. Go around the block and come in again. And it has reinvigorated you. You if do it like a curve graph you see a sort of dip and over time it would get lower and lower the longer you stay in front of a computer.

John:
Yeah. That is for sure. I tend to go for short bursts, I pace a lot.

Jon:
Yeah. Yeah. We recorded ourselves recently doing that. And it proves how much I stay just rooted to a computer, while John paces and jumps up, and dances quite a lot.

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
I like dancing.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

Jon:
But…

Paul:
That would be worth seeing. You recorded that…

John:
Ah huh.

Paul:
…on YouTube?

Jon:
Video I think.

Paul:
The actual work environment that you create, either at home or in the office. You know is there a certain setup that you like? That kind of makes working easier for you?

John:
I think it is a little bit like, old men and their sheds.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

John:
You know how when youíre an old man youíve said, ìWhen they get old they wouldnít even need their space.î When they need things around them they would say, ìI am going to my shed.î And when I was working from home it was like, ìI am going to my office.î

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
The thing about the office it that, it is the place where you control how it looks. It is your posters, your books. Your not necessarily mingling with everyone elseís. I think what we have done here, weíve created an environment that… well we havenít got an interior designer or anything… but we just kind of say we are an RAF base so letís go with an RAF theme. Some really nice 1940ís posters up on the walls. Even the famous ones you see everywhere, ìCome and Carry Onî, and Government advise posters.

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
It isnít too corporate in here is it?

John:
No.

Jon:
Itís clean and white. But the important thing is that it has all of our books and itís got our music.

John:
And we are quite lucky that we have some space in the back where we can hide all of our horrible stuff like filing cabinets.

Jon:
Yeah.

Paul:
Oh. Thatís good.

John:
We can keep it quite clean, canít we?

Jon:
It is a bit like the extension of the house really.

John:
Yeah. You know I have a window sill with all of my Doctor Who toys on it. It is creating an environment that makes you feel glad to be here.

Paul:
Ummm.

John:
That is one thing that I felt I when I went on holiday for two weeks, and coming in on Tuesday I felt it was great and feeling really excited to be going back into my office.

Paul:
Hmmm.

John:
We have quite a lot of things there and we have looking like we want it to look.

Paul:
Yeah.

Jon:
I find that quite a thing in the morning for me. Especially having this be the first office, with the actual leaving the house and coming to work, my brain actually starts thinking, ìI am going to work. I am going to work.î

John:
Yeah

Jon:
And at home, it was always a bit of a hard thing to do. Sometimes I would have to go out and come back, you know go and get something from the shop and come back to get the mental thing kicking in. So…

John:
Yeah. Well that is a huge thing. A lot of people talk about that, the separation of your home life and work life.

Jon:
But the actual office itself isnít geared up for relaxation really. It is geared up for calm working moments.

Paul:
When you guys worked at home, did you make sure you had a completely separate room dedicated to work? Because that always strikes me as being very important…

Jon:
Yeah. I did.

Paul:
…not to mix the two.

John:
There was occasions when I would go downstairs if I was doing something that I wasnít really motivated. I would sometimes go downstairs and just be amongst the family.

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
To have other people around me so I wasnít so excluded. So occasionally that could work for me to get me going, but generally… yeah, shut the door, put the music on and design away.

Paul:
I mean you talked about several things here about the need to get out and walk around a bit to clear your head. The need to sometimes to go and sit with other people, just to get that external stimulation. You talked about needing a quiet environment sometimes. What other kind of techniques do you use to help you be productive and get stuff done?

Jon:
Yeah. Setting deadlines is a big one for me.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
You know. Setting myself with burst deadlines when I had to get something done by setting that with the clients with an expectation otherwise I tend to get all, ìWell Iíll research that for a bit longer.î

Paul:
Yeah right.

Jon:
Deadlines are a important and acknowledging that sometimes Iíll do my best work at 3 oíclock in the morning – and going with that for a certain extent.

Paul:
Okay.

Jon:
Yeah, but I try and not do that too much anymore. But sometimes if I am struggling on something, 3 oíclock in the morning seems to be a good time.

John:
[laughs]

Jon:
I donít know why.

John:
Well I think for me, the simple fact of moving into an office was a big motivation booster. For a start, the change in environment was great kind of it reinvigorated me. But also, just the simple fact of, ìIíve got to do work to make money to pay for this place.î

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
…is a big booster in itself. But, yeah I use various things to sort of productivity in the sense I set a to-do list in yoJimbo a Mac application. I use Billings and BaseCamp a lot. Which I find that Billings can be very motivating the way I do these timesheets for everything I am doing.

Paul:
Okay.

John:
I never used to be very disciplined about recording time spent on things. But for some reason now, I am starting to do this. It is a very easy way to do it in Billings. And I find that quite motivating actually.

Paul:
Yeah.

John:
Actually recording how long things take.

Paul:
So, I mean kind of the final question that I wanted to ask is… The two of you have moved into an office together. But you still work very independently in your businesses or do you find that you are doing more stuff together? Is this the first step in becoming Jon and John Design, or…

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
If you ask us that, we will put to you a different answer from the both of us.

Paul:
Oh dear. I have touched a nerve.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Jon:
You b****rd! [laughs]

John:
I mean at the moment we are very much independent. Ummm. But that is not to say that in the future…

Jon:
…I think that we touched on the subject and we are not willing to commit to any kind of answer yet are we?

John:
We are kind of looking at the projects in the future that we can collaborate on.

Paul:
Hmmm.

Jon:
I think there is more of a chance of us hooking up, because we are in the same office to collaborate on something ñ than we are about to becoming suddenly a big limited liability company with loads of employees.

John:
Yeah.

Jon:
That is nothing that I can see in the future… yet.

Paul:
Okay, well thank you very much guys for coming on the show and you never know, one day in the future we might get you to actually come in and talk about web design or something.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
I donít know anything about that. [laughs]

Jon:
How many episodes of Boag World have you done so far?

Paul:
You canít ask me that question because I do not know when this interview is going to go out.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

John:
I see.

Paul:
I am going to take a stab and say 92.

Jon:
Well, there you go. After 92 podcasts what could we add to your web design conversation? [laughs]

Paul:
Obviously I know absolutely everything about web design. And there is nothing more to say other than what I have already said.

Jon:
Or catch me on a day when I am in a bad mood, and then I will tell you what I think about web design.

Jon:
[laughs]

John:
[laughs]

Paul:
[laughs]

Paul:
Excellent. Well, it was really good to talk to you and no doubt we will get you back in soon.

Housekeeping

And so that pretty much wraps it up for this week’s show. However, I do want to quickly mention one or two things before we go. If you are a web designer and live in the South West of England I just wanted to mention a new mailing list I have setup. It is exclusively for those in the South West and is designed to help build a community among web designers there. There is so much going on in places like Brighton and London and I thought it might be nice to build up a community in the more “rural” parts of Britain! You can find out more about the group at groups.google.com/group/swwd.

Also a quick reminder about the live recording of our 100th episode up in London on Saturday 20th October. If you are intending to come please sign up at upcoming.yahoo.com/event/224744.

Finally, because of d.construct and a trip to Cork I have at the beginning of next week, I am not 100% sure when we can get the show out next week so it might possibly be a few days late. However, don’t worry it will appear.

Thanks very much for listening and don’t forget to vote for our panels at this years SXSW at panelpicker.sxsw.com. We need all the votes we can get!

Show 91: God Bless America

Posted in Classic shows on August 28, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul gets to grips with the fact that the whole world isn’t British, Marcus explains how to deal with the client from hell and Julie Howell shares her expertise on accessibility

Podcast: Download (32.3MB)

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News and events | Dealing with the client from hell | The international web | Julie Howell on Accessibility

News and events

There are tons of news stories which have sprung up since I last recorded a show. In fact I have spent all morning wading through my RSS feeds. Unfortunately as always I can only squeeze a few into the show so you will have to check out my delicious feed for the rest.

Gerry McGovern on Intranets

The first story I wanted to mention is a couple of posts by Gerry McGovern concerning intranets. I am constantly getting emails asking for me to talk about intranets on the show but somehow have never gotten around to it. Fortunately Gerry has and if you are somebody who works on intranet sites then you should take the time to check them out.

The first, tackles the basic problem of how to get senior management engaged with the intranet. Gerry observes that generally speaking management don’t consider the intranet an important asset to the business and so the site never gets the backing it deserves and requires. In the post he suggests the solution is in how the intranet is portrayed to management and goes on to propose a better approach.

The second article Gerry has posted on intranets is a breakdown of a report on what staff really want from their intranet. Basically, staff overwhelmingly want a better organized intranet where they can quickly find people, policies and procedures, and forms.

Gerry goes on to look at the numbers behind this conclusion and links to a summary of the results in PDF form.

SXSW Panel Picker

Probably the biggest web design news since I have been away is that SXSW have launched their annual panel picker. For those of you who do not know, SXSW is the biggest web design conference of the year and takes place in Austin Texas. The massive event has democratized their selection of panels by opening it up for you to vote on.

By going to the SXSW panel picker you can browse over 680 suggested panels and vote for the ones you like the look of most. Although this sounds great in principle, as Andy Budd points out, it can turn into a popularity contest for the speakers and not necessarily an assessment of the quality of the subjects.

That said, I need you to all vote for the three panels I am associated with whether you think they are any good or not! I don’t even care if you are attending SXSW or not, just get on the site and vote. Hell, I have crafted this podcast lovingly for you every week for over two years the least you can do is vote for me :)

Seriously though, I am hoping to be on three panels (yes I know this overkill) and am really excited as it is my first year speaking at the conference.

My panels are:

Selling your web design services (which will hopefully be me and marcus doing something very much in the style of boagworld)
Running a Successful Web Design Business (which will be a panel made up of myself, Andy Clarke, Jon Hicks and Alun Rowe)
Social networking as a brand (made up of a massive panel including Jina Bolton, Steve Smith, Mark Norman Francis, Bryan Veloso, and Steve Ganz)

Hopefully at least one of these will come off.

HTML characters lookup

My next news item that I wanted to mention is a useful little tool which has recently been launched. I love this tool because it solves a really simple problem in a very easy to use way. Basically all it does is allow you to look up the HTML code you need to include ampersands, spaces or other characters which need to be escaped.

Let me explain the problem in case you don’t know what I am talking about. In HTML certain characters are reserved for use in the code. For example if you type an & it will interpret that as code and not text. It is therefore necessary to code up these characters in a special way. This online tool will tell you exactly how to do that.

You simply type in the character you wish to use and it returns the code you have to use. The site uses AJAX so results return incredibly quickly and if you are a mac user you can even download a dashboard widget.

Very useful indeed.

Moving from Print to the web

My final new story for today is some help for you print designers out there who are struggling to make the transition to the web. It is not always an easy process not just because of learning the technical side but also the mental shift involved.

Well, if that is you I would like to make two suggestions. First up, I would like to recommend an article I came across that takes you through the process of moving from print to the web. Its extremely good and makes some excellent recommendations about where to start.

Secondly, you might want to think about getting some training on CSS and XHTML. There are a number of courses out there but if you are UK based I would like to particularly recommend a beginners CSS course being run by Rachel Andrews and Drew McLellan. These guys are both experts in their field and they have a session coming up in October. Of course this course is ideal for anybody starting out with CSS, not just print designers!

Marcus’ bit: Dealing with the client from hell

Found this rather frustrated boagworlder (Cadore) in the forum – read on&#…;

Hello everyone, I was wondering if I could get some feedback on how to proceed with a problematic client.

I have a small business client who contacted me about a website. After talking with her she decided she wanted a basic two column layout with some navigation, she would provide language, etc. All was good, but here is the main problem: I design the header or banner, whichever you call it, and she says it looks great, she loves it. Then we move onto the navigation, she likes the navigation, but now the header seems “too busy” – take a step back. One thing that cracks me up is she said in emails she wants to have a large amount of leaves throughout the design. So, I incorporate leaves and she says she is thinking of not having any leaves at all now. It’s like she wants to do the design for me? Me designer – you client. Do you understand what I am saying, every step forward she wants to go a step back. Now she has a problem with the navigation, and the background image, that she has loved and hated 4 times already. Does anyone have any advice how to deal with a client like this. I was thinking of having her sign off on every little things, but this doesn’t make for a happy working relationship. Any advice on you have proceeded with a client like this would be appreciated.

I have talked loads about getting contracts in place, making sure everything’s agreed up front etc etc. But, agreeing on the look and feel of a site is not so easy to nail down before you start working on a project.

Certainly do all of the following before you start:

Find out who will be signing off the design.
Encourage the client to make this as small a group as possible.
Talk to these people. Obviously, talk to them about project specifics (see below) but try to get to know them a bit. Get an idea whether they’re conservative in their outlook, arty, whacky&#…; whatever. I remember seeing a panel at SXSW where a Swedish creative director said that he insisted on getting drunk with his clients before starting the job&#…; there is some wisdom in that!
As them for examples of favourite sites, particularly in their sector. Ask them why they like them.
Ask them for any other marketing material that they have, particularly items they like.
Discuss their brand (even if it’s just their logo) and the importance of continuity. Make sure that you are aware of any limitations.
Discuss colours.
Discuss imagery. Ask for imagery that you can use.
Discuss layout.
Finally, when you’re discussing these items, make sure that you provide examples, choices, potential solutions etc. Your client is almost certainly not an expert web designer therefore they need ideas from you; alternatives if you like.
However, you must explain why you’re recommending a particular idea. You need to communicate that you are an expert. This is actually the crux of the problem I think. Successful designers communicate their ideas before they ‘put pen to paper’ and provide solid reasoning for their choices afterwards.

Summarise all of your discussions in an email. Insist that they agree (or not) upon all of the points in the email before you start.
Ok, so that’s all done, now you have a choice:

Limited iterations

This is when you say to the client:

‘Ok, we will put together a design concept for you. You can come back to us with any modifications/comments once that will be incorporated into the design concept, anything after that is chargeable’.

I think this works well for small client, low budget work because everyone knows where they stand and possibly expectations are lower. Also, constantly going back over a design can affect the bottom line of a small project a lot more than a big technical project.

Averaging things out

The problem with this approach is that it can piss off your clients. You can end up looking petty or, even worse, you can end up making changes for free after the agreed cut off point (“it was only a 10 minute job”)&#…;

The approach that we have ended up with at Headscape takes the view that clients won’t pay time and materials for design concept work (they need a fixed price), so we have estimated what we think the average time spent on this work and charge that to all clients. This price is per concept but effectively allows unlimited mods to that concept. If a client wants multiple concepts then they pay accordingly.

Paul’s corner: The international web

Just before I went on holiday last week I posted an entry on boagworld. On my return I was gob-smacked to see it had generated the most comments of any post I have ever added to my site.

The whole thing started with an email I received from a first time listener to the show. He was complaining about a joke I made at the expense of my american listeners. Those who listen to the show regularly will know that this is not uncommon and this listener felt the comments were inappropriate. I posted a throw away line on twitter about this and accidently started a debate on political correctness and international differences. Overnight I found myself thinking a lot about the subject and this lead to a blog post on the international web.

I started by apologizing if my humor caused any offense but the main thrust of the article was looking at the broader issues of engaging with an international audience. I found the challenges of working across multiple cultures fascinating and felt it applied to all aspects of web design (not just podcasts).

However, unfortunately the majority of comments I received focused on the apology rather than the points I was trying to raise. I really appreciated the encouragement found in the comments but would like to come back to this issue of culture and cultural differences when designing for the web. This is a challenge that we all face and I want to cover the 5 points I mentioned in my blog post again for the sake of those of you who do not read my blog.

Ask the expert: Julie Howell on Accessibility

Paul:
Today I’ve been fortunate enough to grab a few minutes of Julie Howell’s time. Julie is the director of accessibility at a digital design agency called Fortune Cookie and is also the former digital policy development manager at the Royal National Institute for the Blind. She has also been involved, I believe if this is right Julie, that you were involved as the technical author for the PAS-78 or do you call it P.A.S 78?

Julie:
It’s pronounced PAS. Also RNIB is for Royal National Institute of Blind People if you want to…

Paul:
Oh, I missed out the People didn’t I. Oh well, there you go.

Julie:
Well it’s a recent change anyway.

Paul:
Ah, it’s to keep me guessing. Anyway good to have you on the show.

Julie:
Thank you.

Paul:
And obviously, unsurprisingly we have Julie in here to talk about accessibility [laughs]. You know, it’s kinda a no-brainer really. So I thought the best place to start is, well Julie, it strikes me, and I know a lot of the people that listen to our show, that the world of web accessibility seems to be a bit of a mess at the moment. We’ve kinda got WCAG2 that seems to be taking forever to come out. We’ve got now this thing called the WCAG Samurai, what’s all that about? They seem to be in competition with WCAG2. Then whenever you go into or if you are brave enough to venture onto an accessibility forum, they all seem to be fighting over tiny details and you are terrified to say anything incase you get jumped over. Do you think that accessibility is in trouble and if so, what can it do to dig itself out of the hole? What can the accessibility community do?

Julie:
You know, I don’t think there’s as big a problem as is being suggested. I think that what you have to keep in mind is perspective and context. There is heated debate on some areas of the web about accessibility, how accessibility will change or how the guidance might change moving forward in the great big wide world of web design. But in the much bigger world of commercial companies posting content on the web, there isn’t that concern. Everything seems quite stable. It doesn’t worry me at all that the techies or the geeks, and I mean that in the nicest possible way, are having heated debate because it’s really important. That’s how things change and improve and move forward. What is important is that we as people who are part of what I call the accessibility movement, who care about accessibility and who care about the lot of disabled people, keep presenting consistent guidance to the people who really can make the difference to disabled people. That’s businesses who are putting their services onto the web. The fact that there is heated debate about the technicalities I think is positive not negative.

Paul:
It strikes me that there is a little bit of confusion among the business community about what is actually expected of them. Things like the Disability Discrimination Act. They’re not sure how it should be interpreted in reality. Do you think there’s a case or there’s a need for more legal cases to be taken up so that the boundaries of accessibility are better defined?

Julie:
I think there’s a few things in there. I think that the greatest problem that we have, rather than it being arguments about the technicality, is actually a PR issue. We have guidance. We have the Web Content Accessibility Guidance and the other two separate guidance published by the Web Accessibility Initiative. We also have the document published by the British Standards Institution, PAS-78, and I guess we’ll talk about that a little bit more. What we lack is any consistent and well resourced drive to raise awareness of those documents among the community that needs to now about them and that is businesses. That for me is the missing part of the puzzle. Of course the guidelines will keep changing because the technology is changing at such a fast rate. So that I think is healthy. But what we really do need is more effort put into helping businesses understand the guidance that we have. Businesses should not be engaged in the technical discussions because that’s not where they fit into all of this. Businesses want clear, succinct, and that’s a huge problem I have with WCAG2, succinct guidance so that they just know what to… Businesses are saying to us, and I’m saying “us” as in the voluntary sector, the government, the Disability Rights Commission (DRC), that they care about the disabled peoples access and they want to do something about it. They just don’t know what to do. They are confused about which guidance to follow and to my mind, that is due to poor PR and not having any single government department or agency in the UK responsible for pushing the guidance. We’ve got individual organisations and voluntary organisations such as RNIB and RNID doing great work on their own but there’s no government force or business force behind it. Championing the guidance that we have and saying “Actually, there’s no confusion here. The guidance has been published, it is stable and this is all you have to do to follow it. Go forth and get on with it”.

Paul:
Let’s talk about PAS-78 a little bit in context of the business community and what they need to know. Correct me if I am wrong but my understanding of that document is that it was meant to be advice for people that run websites, website owners, to really get them up and running. Is that a fair assessment of what it was about?

Julie:
Erm… I’ve never heard it described that way.

Paul:
[Laughs]

Julie:
[Laughing] I would say that it’s there to provide clarity. We were concerned by the feedback that we were receiving that people in the business community were confused about the range of accessibility guidance that was available on the web. If you go to a search engine and type in “web accessibility”, you get all sorts of stuff back and some of it seems to be conflicting. So what we wanted to do with PAS-78 was pull all of the web accessibility guidance that’s produced by WAI, and also that’s produced by the software developers such as Adobe and others like Microsoft, all together into a single document that can be read within a couple of hours if you want to sit down and read it end to end or could easily be dipped in and out of, which was the definitive guide to the process of making a website accessible. The existing technical guidelines are not for business managers so we have written a document that is in a language that business managers can engage with, can digest, and puts everything together as a process. So it talks about guidelines and it doesn’t seek to create any new guidance. It points to guidance that’s already been published by WAI and others. But it also explains this is a process. This is what you do at this stage and it’s very important to involve disabled people at this stage; at this stage you should write an accessibility policy, later an accessibility statement. These are some of the questions you might want to ask when you are appointing a web design agency. So it puts all of that together in one document. That’s what we were seeking to do really. There’s a few words I used when I was launching it. Two of those words were harmonise and consolidate. It was nothing new. It was bringing together all of the guidance so there was absolutely no doubt. If anyone in the business says “I don’t understand what to do to make my site accessible”, PAS-78 is the only answer they need.

Paul:
OK. So where would they find and get hold of that?

Julie:
Well PAS-78 is free. Now it’s freely available because of the Disability Rights Commission. If you go to the DRC, the DRC have a licensing agreement with the British Standards Institution. So if you go to the Disability Rights Commission website you can download a PAS-78. It’s available in a variety of formats including accessible PDF. After all the medium is the message. The website address for that is http://www.drc-gb.org/pas.

Paul:
Well that brings us nicely onto WCAG then doesn’t it. What are your impressions are of WCAG2, how the WCAG Samurai stuff fits into that and what your current thinking is on all of this?

Julie:
Yeah, we live in interesting times as they say. I’ve been involved with WAI to a lesser and greater degree since 1995. A long time. I’m very conversant in the processes that are there. Now I’m a policy person and a disability rights campaigner. I’m not a coder. I’m not a geek, meant in the nicest possible way, and I’ve got no interest in become one either. I used to design websites but that was back in the day and it’s all very different now. What I care about is disabled people getting access to the web. I care that businesses are enable to make that happen. So as your listeners know WCAG2 has been in development for a really long time. That in itself troubles me because that makes it seem like disabled people are a huge nuisance and very, very difficult to cater for because an organisation catering in specialising to disabled peoples needs on the web takes many, many years to come up with guidance. I don’t like the message that puts out and I think that fuels some of that kind of confusion and misunderstanding and hence that’s why we did the PAS. It was so much quicker and it puts out, I feel, the right messages. People joke about it now don’t they. How long it’s taken WCAG2 to appear and that is because it’s subject to a very rigorous process of course but taking a long time. Now it’s in its latest drafting stages and I have to say… I’m sure you’ve read it or at least looked at it. I haven’t read it because I don’t have the time to read a document of that size. However, it’s not for me. It really is a technical manual now and as a technical manual, what is important is that those of you who are developing code and need to read the technical stuff are engaged by it, will read it and use it effectively. So that’s where the checking needs to be done. I think in the past where we’re getting some of these struggles at the moment, is because WCAG1 was a document for all. So you could read it if you were a developer and you could also have a good read of it if you weren’t and get something out of it. Looking at it now, it looks like a technical manual. Then, for me, it comes back down to PR. If it’s a technical manual then they to call it such and make it clear. If you put that on the desk of any business director general / CEO and well you can imagine the reception that you’ll get, who wants to read that? That said WAI always produce very comprehensive guides to their guidelines and curricular to help the various groups to apply the guidance correctly. They will do so in this case and again for me it’s down to PR. It needs to be made very clear to each individual group, developers, business owners, advocates as well, which guidance is for which group so that we don’t get people belly aching “Oh this is too long”, “I don’t have time to read a document of 100+ pages”.

Paul:
What hadn’t occurred to me there until you just said it, the fact that this applies not just to people like Adobe and Microsoft but also applies to me potentially. If I’m developing a web application that enables users to contribute and upload content then in effect I’m being an equivalent of a Facebook or a Myspace and I need to be aware of those kinds of accessibility issues there are well. It’s quite interesting.

Julie:
It is and then it gets more interesting when you look at it in the context of the law in this country. We have the Disability Discrimination Act and that puts, and I choose these words very carefully, a legal duty on “service providers”. Now software developers are not covered by the DDA. However, the line is blurring. If a website is inaccessible, say a blind person goes to a site to do some shopping and it’s inaccessible, who’s responsibility is it? Whose legal duty is it that the site is accessible? Well it’s the owner of the business because it’s their service. But there’s an argument that the developer who coded the site has aided and abetted the discrimination. But we don’t have any case laws so this is all theoretical until we do get some case laws to back up what were saying. However software developers are not subject to the DDA. There’s a blurry of the lines, in my opinion, between a service provider and a software developer. But if I was to take an educated guess, if a disabled person experienced an instance of discrimination as defined under the Disability Discrimination Act and that happened because they tried to utilise a server via somebody’s page on a social networking site, who would be responsible? That would be very interesting. We also have the DDA, the Disability Discrimination Act. I have Multiple sclerosis. Everybody knows this. I’m very open about it and it really informs my work. Being somebody who stands to benefit, stands to live my life as I choose to and prosper because of the DDA, I can tell you from this side of the fence that the DDA is a very weak piece of legislation as it is. We don’t to date have any case law regarding websites but even if there was a case, it would take quite a number of cases to have any useful body of guidance other than what we already have and know as is published in PAS-78. Really that is your best guide. So yeah, interesting times that we live in. What I would say is that would hope that anybody who is responsible for social networking has a social conscience and cares very much about the ability of every member of society to be able to use the content, to both access it and create it. Unfortunately, disabled people don’t always figure in the planning process when people are putting together solutions and this is again where the web accessibility needs to keep on ramping up that awareness effort to get everybody to understand and to be thinking about disabled people at the earliest part of the conceptual process for new technology. It’s an issue we’ve always had that with web accessibility we’re always running to catch up because new ideas that come to market on the web really, really quickly and the trick to it, in my opinion, is getting close to the innovators, throwing in their face and keep on reminding them. Today we’re talking about accessibility of social networks, tomorrow it will be something else but I’ve got no idea what it’ll be.

Paul:
OK. So just before we wrap up let’s bring it back down to the more mundane day to day level. There will be a lot of people that are listening to this podcast and listening to our conversation thinking “Wow! This seems really overwhelming. It all seems very complicated. There seems to be talking about us having to get disabled people in to do testing, that sounds very expensive. There are legal obligations here and that sounds very scary. There are these various technical guidelines and they all seem very confusing.” Just to those people that are web sites owners that have perhaps buried their head in the sand so far about accessibility. What little step would you suggest to them? Just to get them going. Just to make the first tentative steps into the world of making their site more accessible.

Julie:
The first document to read is PAS-78 which is free of charge. It’s only about 60 pages and that’s in large print. It really is quite an easy read. We made sure of that when we wrote it. PAS-78 sets it all out in plain language. It’s very much written with the business audience in mind. I’d also offer some encouragement. Have a look at some of the case studies, you can easily find them on the web, of big companies that have applied accessibility and are profiting from it. An example being Legal & General, the one that I talk about a lot at the moment. Legal & General had a 300% increase in the take-up of one of their financial products via their website after they made the site more accessible.

Paul:
Wow!

Julie:
300% in a matter of months. You wouldn’t dare set that as a business target. It astonished me and I’ve long believed in this stuff. 300% is amazing. There’s also been a lot written about Tesco. Tesco take millions more in extra business away from their competitors because they’ve made their site more accessible. Accessibility is a good news story. There is money to be had through accessibility. If you make your website content available to the biggest possible audience that you’re tapping into a much bigger pot of money. Disabled people as a group in the UK alone are estimated to have an annual spending power in the region of £85 billion! An incredible amount of money that someone needs to exploit, to capitalise one. Disable people are very happy to be marketed to. Perhaps more so than other groups because disabled people, in particular blind people, are not exposed to advertising and therefore not exposed to a lot of choice that those of us that can see take for granted. Accessible sites are also interoperable sites. They work well on different platforms. If you make your site accessible for a PC you’re making it accessible for many other technologies including a mobile phone which people are using increasingly more now in the UK. Yes, there is a legal imperative as well. I wouldn’t be afraid of that though. There’s a long process involved in that. The DDA to safeguard disabled people’s rights to participate in society. Now indeed when a disabled people feels and finds that they have been discriminated against because of the way a web service is presented to them, of course they are going to feel angry and upset. I have long said I have never understood why I should be able to use a product or service to buy some tickets online because I can see but my blind friend can’t. To me that’s completely unacceptable and unnecessary discrimination. However it’s not a case of “Oh I’m not happy” and we’re all in court. There’s a process there of conciliation. The DRC is involved in that process or it can be, as well as a number of disability organisations because what we want is not to take anybody to the cleaners. It’s to make the web more accessible. The key to that is my mind is dialog. When I used to work at RNIB, if a blind person contacted me having found a website they couldn’t use and it was one of the bigger ones. This is what happened with Tesco. 40 blind people got onto us saying they couldn’t use Tesco and they wanted a legal case to be taken. This was tremendous because it’s alerted Tesco to this issue and it meant that we were able to start a dialogue, the result of which is hundreds if not thousands of blind people are now able to do online shopping for their groceries and delivered to their home which is wonderful. Tesco is not unhappy because it’s bringing in a lot more money through that channel where it wasn’t bringing in any previously from disabled people because it was inaccessible. What we are trying to achieve here is sustained change that will see disabled people included in society to the degree that it would seem outrageous and ridiculous not to do so. Big changes happen. I never thought I’d see smoking banned in public places. I can’t believe it. My goodness if we can do that as a society we can change the way we behave towards disabled people, stop belly aching about the issues and talk to each other about working towards solutions. I’m optimistic that in 20 years we’ll see disabled people much more included in everything that we are all doing now to keep the debate about disabled people and accessibility alive, contributing to a brighter future for disabled people. We should just keep on doing what we are all doing.

Paul:
Excellent. Thank you so much Julie for taking time to come in and talk about that. It was really interesting. I hope to get you back in again in the future before too long.

Show 90: Digg

Posted in Classic shows on August 14, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Marcus abandons Paul to go on holiday. Paul talks about competitive analysis and does an in-depth interview with Daniel Burka, the creative director at digg.com.

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News and events | Daniel Burka talks about Digg | Competitive analysis

Hello? Is anybody there? I am so lonely, nobody to talk to, nobody to rant at, nobody to take the piss of! Your listening to boagworld.com, the podcast for all those involved in designing, developing and running websites on a daily basis. My name is Paul Boag and this week, I am sad and alone as Marcus is away on Holiday (or should I say vacation?).

I have to say it is not the same without him. Of course on the upside in many ways its a lot better. Less waffle, no interruptions, no skype problems and you get to hear my undiluted genius. So thats okay then :)

Because we don’t have Marcus around this week, todays show will be a little different. For a start Marcus wont be saying much, which should make the show shorter. However, in his place we have an extended interview with Daniel Burka the creative director at the social news website Digg. We cover loads of stuff from the difference in designing for social networking sites to working with AJAX and designing for the iPhone.

I will also be doing my segment as normal. This week I will be providing a quick and dirty introduction to competitive analysis. We will be looking at what you can learn from your competitions websites and how you go about extracting the maximum amount of information.

But before we can get into all that good stuff we first need to look at what has been happening in the world of web design over the last week.

News and events

Eric Meyer tries to prevent history repeating itself

First up in the news segment of the show today is a passionate call to action by Eric Meyer. Like myself, Eric has been working in the web for a very long time and is all too familiar with the problems of the past. He is a veteran of the browser wars (how dramatic does that sound!) and remembers the many problems that period caused.

During that time many web designers simply gave up trying to support multiple browsers and instead displayed the now famous message…

“Your browser is not compatible and must be upgraded”

It is therefore particularly disturbing when we thought those days are over to see the return of a similar message. As Eric points out in his post, those types of messages are returning in the form of…

“This site is for iPhone users only.”

As Eric says: Stop it! Stop it right now. He is absolutely right. There is no reason whatsoever for shutting out users from viewing iPhone optimized pages. Sure they might not look as good on a non iphone browser but other than that they should work fine on a compliant browser. To be honest, even if they don’t, that is still no reason to block non iphone users. If I choose to look at an iphone site on my Windows mobile device or even on my desktop browser, I am not going to expect it to look perfect. However, I could have all kinds of reasons for wanting to do it from wanting to check out the functionality to using an alternative mobile browser that is just as capable of displaying the content.

In Short, Eric argues (and I whole heartedly agree) that the “best viewed in…” approach to web design is a fools errand. Whether it is the iphone or something else, make sure you avoid that road at all costs.

6 Keys to Understanding Modern CSS-based Layouts

Talking about best practice, Jonathan Snook has posted a helpful article for those of you still struggling to move across to modern CSS-based layout.

As Jonathan says in his post…

Much of CSS is pretty straightforward and, I suspect, quite easy for most people to grasp. There’s font styles, margin, padding, color and what not. But there’s a wall that people will run into… that point where a number of key elements need to come together to create a solid CSS-based layout that is consistent cross-browser.

Jonathan addresses this challenge by talking about 6 key principles that will help you get over this hump. He talks about; the box model, floating columns, sizing with ems, image replacement, floated navigation and sprites.

Its an interesting list although I am not entirely sure I would include the same items. For example there is no mention of HasLayout or IE conditional comments. However, Jonathan does say it is just his take on things and encourages people to add suggestions in the comments so they are definitely worth reading too.

How to mix fonts

So you might be listening to this feeling smug about your CSS skills but how are you with typography? Working with type is a challenging area and one that is very easy to get wrong. That is especially true when trying to combine multiple fonts together in an effective way.

Fortunately, David who listens to the show, has sent me a link to a cheat sheet on mixing typefaces. Not only does it provide specific examples of typefaces that work well together, it also gives you some basic information on typography.

I am a great fan of cheat sheets and have a number pinned to my wall including my much loved microformats cheat sheet. So, if you are looking for some advice on typography add this to your collection.

Making money through forums

My final news story for this week’s show comes off of the back of a story knocking around here in the UK. A number of large companies have pulled their advertising off of Facebook following the discovery that those ads were appearing on the profile of the BNP (a pseudo- fascist political party in the UK). These companies were unhappy that their brands being associated with the organisation.

This Facebook story is indicative of a wider problem that advertisers seem to be having with social networking sites and forums in particular. So the question then arises, can you make money from a social networking site?

For most of us this is not a question we have to deal with. Most of us don’t run social networking websites. However, many of us do run forums and we are looking to make a bit of extra cash from them.

If that is you then you might want to check out “Can forums still make money?” on sitepoint. This post suggests a load of ways you can improve your return on your forum and make some cash to cover hosting costs. The post is very realistic suggesting that the vast majority of us are not going to get rich from our forums. However, it might help pay for your cleaner (which is what I spend my Adsense revenue on!) and so it is worthy of your attention.

As a slight aside before I wrap up the news segment of today’s show, the article also links to some useful tips from Google about maximizing your return from Google Adsense, so you might want to check that out too.

Talking of social networking websites, that brings me on nicely to my interview with Daniel Burka from Digg…

Daniel Burka talks about Digg

Paul: Okay. So joining me today is Daniel Burka the lead designer/creative director/God of all things user interface at Digg.com. Is that a fair way to describe you Daniel?

Daniel: That was a very polite introduction. Thank you very much.

Paul: Well, it is always good to butter up the guests at the beginning…

Daniel: [laughs]

Paul: I find it goes down better that way. [laughs] So Daniel, I thought that it would be great to get you on the show, simply because you seemed to have worked so extensively with web projects centered very much on social participation and web applications, you know, and various other Web 2.0 buzzwords. Obviously Digg.com is a good example of that. And a lot of listeners of this show are still working on content heavy brochure-ware type sites. But, they seem to be really interested in more interactive elements to their site. And so we thought, let’s get an expert on the show that seems to specialize in this area. So, here is my first question Daniel. What do you see as being the main differences between designing and social networking sites, compared to more traditional content heavy sites that I am sure you have worked on in previous lives, so to speak?

Daniel: Oh yeah, I mean absolutely. I worked on those kinds of sites in the past. The big difference with something like Digg is that all of the content on the site, pretty much, is provided by users and so we're building conduits as frequently as we can where people can provide their input, provide content you know foster discussion, these kinds of things so I guess wherever possible we're not only designing the technically areas that they can do it but focusing the design on encouraging them to participate.

Paul: So how to you do that? How do you encourage someone to participate in using kind of design tools and design approaches?

Daniel: Right. I guess the big thing is to make it obvious that other users have provided content to the site. So, making it clear that the Digg count went up because other people you know dug the story. You know, showing which users submitted certain things or which user made a comment. You know that indicates, Oh okay. Other people, like me, have participated and that might be something I might be able to do too.

Paul: So how did you deal with the kind of early days before Digg had really taken off? Where perhaps you had less content than you do now and you kind of want to give the impression that there is loads going on, when perhaps here isn't?

Daniel: Right. I guess by the time I got involved in Digg which is about 4-5 months after it had started. So Kevin and Owen originally developed the site.

Paul: Oh okay

Daniel: And then they hired the company that I work with in Canada. They hired us to come in and basically do a design review and redesign of the site and that was the primary focus of the redesign was to look and say, Okay, what is this site about? And what the site is about providing input and so the original design which was more definitely designed from an engineer's perspective. It had all of that content, it had all of the facts and the bits and the place to Digg something, but it wasn't very clear at all what you should do or why you should do it.

Paul: Hmmm.

Daniel: And so, you-know probably the most interesting thing I have ever done on Digg was to take the Digg count, to make it really big and stick it on the left and stick a really explicit Digg It button under it. So, I mean that's clearing indicating X number of people already participated.

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: And if you want to participate hit the big button.

Paul: Yeah. The kind of putting right in front of peoples face where they can't possibly miss it, so to speak.

Daniel: Right. I mean that is the entire purpose of the website is to, you know, say you like something.

Paul: So what other kind of things did you implement in those early days when you came in and started redesigning the site?

Daniel: The original focus, I actually thought this was a kind of interesting approach to take. Steven and I were looking at the site and trying to determine that. It already, in some ways, had a fairly large scope to the website. So we were trying to determine where do we get started. Often that is redesign the look of the site or redesign the home page. We looked at it and what is the most important thing here and the story format, I think, was probably the most important thing about Digg. And so we looked at each individual story in the list. There is a whole row of them on the homepage. We got about 15 on there now. And kind of a singled one of those and dissected it and said, What is important about a story? Why did the user submit it? Why is another person going to be interested in it? How do I encourage them to participate into that story? And so, that story format counts for a few different iterations since we started.

Paul: Hmmm.

Daniel: I think that being the primary focus of ours.

Paul: I mean what about the kind of more rich elements that you started to introduce? Where there is a lot less page refreshes that perhaps there once was and you kind of changed the way the people interacted with the site by introducing AJAX and things like that. I mean was that a big shift? What kind of thinking went into that process?

Daniel: Absolutely. I mean that is critical to Digg's success. Owen and Kevin had already started playing around with AJAX and this was before anybody like Jesse James Garrett that coined the phrase, AJAX. So, we were still calling it Asynchronous Javascript and XML request. Thank God someone has shortened that. And the fact that you are requiring mass participation to make something interesting would be entirely stymied if we had forced a page reload every single time a person wanted to participate.

Paul: Ummm.

Daniel: So we are using that all over the place. The Digg It button is the one real obvious place. And then you know especially in the comment system. There are various other areas where we're basically allowing you to have a really low-threshold of participation. No long page loads. Immediate reaction that what I did I got a reaction back from that, so I get that positive feeling.

Paul: So how does that kind of process work within Digg? I mean are you actually involved in coding the AJAX elements or do you just do the user interface? How do those kinds of accountabilities split up?

Daniel: Right. I guess we've got a really good balance I think between the development and the UI design. We are really tightly integrated with the different teams. And we are getting big enough now that we can actually speak about them as teams. So generally the flow at Digg starts with it's great we have a really design focused process here that Kevin will come up with an idea and then he and I will bounce the idea back and forth usually and figure out what the pros and cons are and then kind of rough out the design aspect. And then, basically take it from the conceptual stage code it statically and then work with the developers in terms of coding the functionality into it. So I don't do a lot of PHP or very much Javascript, but I provide with them XHTML and CSS and obviously the images and work with them implementing the basic flows.

Paul: I think a lot of the impression I get is a lot of organizations is still struggling to work out whose responsibility is the AJAX elements. It's kind of client side stuff that is very user-interface oriented. So should it be a designer job or is it kind of so intrinsic in the kind of connecting to the database and pulling out the content and that kind of thing which is actually a developer's job? It's quite interesting to hear how different people do it.

Daniel: Right. We probably fall into the developer's side of things. You know, it is submitting content to the database which is not horribly different than a normal form submitting to the database.

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: So that is probably how we line it up.

Paul: Yeah. You guys seem to be doing some interesting things at the moment. One of the things that I imagine is particularly challenging is that you got a tech-savvy audience which is where Digg started. But you're constantly at the moment in this process of broadening that audience out to be more of a mainstream audience. And I'm just interested from a kind of design point of view, and user-interface point of view, what challenges that has presented you as far as shifting that audience. You know kind of in-mid process if you want. Most websites have a fairly good idea of who their target audience is upfront. But you are having to adapt that as the site evolves and I imagine that must be tricky at times.

Daniel: Oh, absolutely. I mean we started off as you said as very a tech-heavy site at about this time last year. I guess just over a year ago we broadened out very explicitly by introducing other content areas to the website. As we grow, and as a less tech-savvy audience comes in, there definitely is a real dichotomy between the perceived power-user who understands the very complex form type systems versus people who barely used a comment system on a weblog. On different areas of the site that level of experience I guess really comes to the fore. Although, I think I really take inspiration from the FireFox Project in that regard – particularly in Van Gudgers response. He is one of lead engineers on the FireFox Project. One of his best qualities being saying No! during the FireFox development and a lot of power-users perceive that they want all of these options at their finger tips. They want a hundred different options, if there are a hundred possibilities. Where as, in reality, having a simple system actually works better for both the power-user and the relative novice. I think the correlation between what happened with the Mozilla Suite, which was the previous iteration before FireFox which had a lot of different features and a lot of different buttons and customizability, versus FireFox which is really the torn-down simple browser. Which really ended up serving both audiences better.

Paul: So have you had the kind of guts to take functionality away or are you more kind of hiding it away so that it is still accessible to the power-user wants to go and get it?

Daniel: Well that is definitely the balance that we try and make. I think hiding the functionality is actually I was just reading a book a friend lent me. John Maeda’s book The Laws of Simplicity and he covers this subject. I think that it is really interesting that you can hide functionality as long as it doesn't feel intimidating and as long as you are not obscuring the functionality. I think you can actually, quite successfully, create a simple site by tucking functionally under the right areas, I guess.

Paul: That struck me. This whole idea of dealing with different types of audiences is a very challenging area. You have been at Digg for a while now, what has been the most challenging aspect from your point of view?

Daniel: Well, I think managing user feedback is definitely one of the big points of working at Digg. It is very intimidating working on a site where, every time you want something new, you have about 2 million people seeing it the next day and giving you their feedback on it. It is fantastic! It is really inspiring and exciting – and at the same time horribly intimidating. It is hard not to get frozen-up when you are about to launch something in two days and you kind of have to brace for the criticism because you know that people are going to be critical. And I mean that in the positive sense. They are going to critique what you have done. And so, being able to basically listen to a wide range of opinions and make sure that you are listening to everyone. But, you don't necessarily do what everyone says because there are obviously people with conflicting opinions and there are people who have very specific interests that may or may not be reflected by other people. I think managing those expectations that people want to know that you are listening to them and they want to see their suggestions reflected in what you are doing. Balancing those types of expectations is a really challenging part of the job.

Paul: So how do you go about that? How do go about deciding which suggestions you are going to implement and which you are not? Do you have some kind of process for that?

Daniel: I'm not sure if it is horribly formalized. I think the first and really important thing that we've learned at Digg, and I have learned on other projects being worked on, is taking a really deep breath. People will immediately ask for feedback on something, the minute you launch it

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: They will ask for change. So don't make a change for the first week, unless they point out obviously drastic problems that you didn't anticipate. Take a deep breath. Let people give their feedback. Let them get some experience with the change because people are adverse to change generally. Their first reaction is going to be, Well I was familiar with it the other way, now it is different and I don't feel comfortable with that. And so, you will get a lot of feedback in that regard. And then carefully go through and filter and look for themes of feedback from different people. Try to determine why they were giving that feedback. And then iterate from there. I think that iterative process is so important.

Paul: One of the things that I think everyone has noticed recently about Digg, is that you released this iPhone interface. Everybody is going on about the iPhone endlessly and I am hugely jealous that we don't have it over here in the UK. And so, I am obviously bitter and twisted about it.

Daniel: [laughs]

Paul: But, putting that aside there is this plethora of iPhone applications coming out and Digg is one of the people who have done it. Were you involved in that putting it together?

Daniel: Yeah, absolutely. Joe, who is one of our developers, kind of came over and he was talking about it and was thinking it would be a great idea. And we both kind of got excited and pumped the whole thing out over our weekends.

Paul: Ahhh.

Daniel: Big props to Joe Hewett, who is not the Joe who works here, but Joe Hewett has made this great framework basically to start developing for iPhone applications in Safari.

Paul: Ahhh.

Daniel: He actually released a prototype of it on Friday afternoon. I think? And we started off from there and started developing. That is what does the sliding effects in our interface.

Paul: Okay.

Daniel: And we kind of took what he had done and I think we launched on a Tuesday the next week and on Wednesday Joe had already refined it and made into a kind of framework more people could use. So it was very useful to us.

Paul: So how do you feel about that, because that is a very different interface to be developing? It is much more controlled. You know the browser you are aimed at. You know the screen size. Was it a pleasant experience?

Daniel: Oh, absolutely. It was really really fun. I mean, there were a few things that were really fun about it. One, you are absolutely in that controlled environment. I mean people aren't resizing there fonts. You have a controlled number of fonts. You know the resolution. You can accommodate for when you flip the screen and it goes to wide-mode. And plus you are working with a rendering engine that doesn't suck.

Paul: [laughs]

Daniel: So it is really fun. [laughs] I mean you can even use advanced Webkit only type rounded corners and all kinds of fun stuff like that so, that part of it is really liberating. I can just imagine if all web design was like that. You know if all browsers were actually as standards compliant as they think they are. So that was fun. But, I think the most interesting thing is that you're working with an input device that is this big-fat-honking finger. And so, everything you do you have to be thinking about that. I think it will be interesting to see who succeeds at developing applications like that. But, you really have to think about pairing things down.

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: When you are clicking with a finger there is no way you can have four or five buttons in a row and expect the person to be able to pick one out when they are sitting on a bouncing bus, with this phone in their hand. And so, buttons have to be really big. The Digg button on the source pages for instance is about two and a half times bigger than one on the normal site. And the links, we considered two different links. One to go to the source and one to go to what we call the Permalink page, the story page, of that particular item. But you know, even having just two buttons per story was much too difficult on the iPhone so we just have one you just can't miss which is a big finger button and it slides over and you get the story.

Paul: Yeah. Do you think you will be doing kind of more with Digg where you are kind of delivering the content, through other various mechanisms; such as the iPhone? I mean, could you imagine doing stuff with desktop applications like using AIR or anything else? Is that an area that you think you would get into?

Daniel: I think the really exciting thing is that we are finally getting a proper API out there. And so, I guess we launched the API maybe two or three months ago. Maybe longer than that, I forget, but I think it will be really interesting to see you know if a desktop experience of dig is really valuable somebody is going to pick up that project and go with it.

Paul: Sure.

Daniel: And they'll develop it on the API. So, I'm not sure if explicitly if a desktop application will be great, but I could see it having certain benefits and maybe toying around with the idea ñ for sure.

Paul: Is there something personally you are interested in as a web designer doing, you know, it's a different medium again isn't it? You're going from a browser based environment to a desktop environment. Is that something that interests you personally?

Daniel: Oh, absolutely. I think it is interesting that those lines are really blurring. I mean, AIRs is that first salvo, in that regard, you really are to a large degree developing a web application. You can develop it in HTML and CSS with basically the same skills it takes to make an iPhone application, or a basic website, you can build an AIR app. That is pretty exciting. I think that once that platform matures, it could open up a whole range of things.

Paul: From a personal perspective, what is the area of your job that you most enjoy?

Daniel: I really enjoy trying to make things easy for people. Sometimes is really irks me if Kevin describes my job as making things pretty.

Paul: [laughs]

Daniel: I think it is such a minor part of design. You know it is an interesting one. But I think sitting down trying to determine, when you are looking at a fairly complex system you are trying to build, and trying to figure out how to not be complex. What to takeaway, how to design something so that it feels simple by putting the really important things upfront. And throwing it by some users and watching them how they do it. I think it is really exciting to see somebody participate in something that is under the hood really complex, but which they have fun and they feel that they are participating. And they do not put a lot of thought into what they are doing, they are trying to achieve what they came to do.

Paul: What about the fact that you kind of have been working on Digg for a prolonged period of time and it is that one site you have been working on continually? I guess because I work for a web design agency where I have a series of clients back-to-back and I am doing different things the whole time. Sometimes it strikes me that we're working on a project for a prolonged time is both a blessing and a curse. I just kind of wondered, what you think? Do you really enjoy being able to spend time digging into that one area?

Daniel: That is a very interesting point, because I also come from the web design company background where I basically would do a different project every month. And until December I was still fairly heavily involved in the day-to-day affairs of my previous company, so it has been a reasonably new experience for me

Paul: Oh I didn't know that.

Daniel: To be working solely on one site, with Pounce on the side. [laughs]

Paul: Yeah. [laughs]

Daniel: Another site I have been working on. So this is really very interesting. Absolutely, there are so many things fantastic about it. It is really fun to be able to go into great detail and have the time to go back into something you designed previously, and to alter it. It is not necessarily that you made a mistake, but a month later you suddenly realize that a big improvement to that would be if I did X. And so you actually have the opportunity to go back and do those kinds of things. Where as I am sure, if you were working with a client, it has happened before that you know six months later you see something you say it is obvious to me now but it is kind of out of your control. The contract is over. You know

Paul: Yeah

Daniel: They're working with a different firm. There are all kinds of things like that. And so, working on something as big as Digg it is really fun too. Within Digg there are lots of different projects. There are different pages. There are new things we are working on. And so you kind of I guess segment them into kind of different projects you can go around in a circle and come back to later on.

Paul: Do you ever envision a day where you throw out the existing user interface and apply a new one? Or do you think it will always be a kind of evolving iterative process?

Daniel: Oh, I think an iterative process for sure.

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: I don't want to second guess what is possible in the future. We may have some brilliant idea or new technology that blows our minds. But, I think there is no reason to throw out something that is working pretty well. I think there is a kind a rush sometimes to you know, to start from scratch that real desire to start from scratch sometimes. But something like Digg, I mean it has changed fairly significantly over the last two years, but I don't know if too many people notice

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: Other than a few big pushes we made, that things had changed much. I think that is really healthy that people become familiar with systems. They learn how to interact with them. And to really shake them up, you really better have a damn good reason to do it.

Paul: Yeah. Okay so last question then before we finish up. Is there any stuff that you are working on with Digg that you are allowed to talk about [laughs] because obviously there are things you are not allowed to talk about.

Daniel: Right.

Paul: But the stuff that you are allowed to talk about, what is really exciting you and what are you really enjoying getting into at the moment?

Daniel: Oh, there is a bunch of things. I think I am allowed to talk about that Kevin mentioned the other day that we are working on the images section.

Paul: Cool.

Daniel: So we are going to do right now you can do news and videos. And we are pretty confident we are going to get into images as well. And so we are working on a couple of projects to kind of lay the framework for doing that. So, some people think it is as easy as adding a section

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: And putting a title on it. But if we want to do that, we want to do it the right way. And lay the ground work first. I am working a couple of things I cannot go into great detail unfortunately there so much secrecy here that we can't

Paul: [laughs]

Daniel: Layout too much of what we are up to. But, I am really excited that we are headed in this direction.

Paul: Yeah. The trouble is that you guys get ripped off so quickly, don't you, that you need to keep things quite.

Daniel: Well. I think it is a combination of problems. One is that we are obviously concerned with people duplicating our features and the other one is that we want to be careful setting expectations. Because if we say we are going to do something, we really want to do it.

Paul: Yeah.

Daniel: And I think people will get disappointed if we say, In two months we are going to launch such-and-such. and you know lot's of stuff happens in two months. And unfortunately if that had to get pushed back, and that two months was a totally random date that I pulled out of my head

Paul: [laughs]

Daniel: [laughs]

Paul: See know, we all believe that it is all going to happen in two months.

Daniel: Shoot! [laughs]

Paul: [laughs]

Daniel: [laughs] People will be disappointed or they will feel like we haven't lived up to their expectations I suppose.

Paul: Yeah. Okay. Well that was really great. Thank you very much for coming on the show Daniel. No doubt we will try and crowbar you again in the future to come and talk to us about Pounce as well. Because that is an exciting project.

Daniel: That would be fun.

Paul: Okay thank you very much for your time and talk to you again soon.

Daniel: Thanks so much for having me.

Paul’s corner: Quick and dirty competitive analysis

Great stuff from Daniel! It was really fun to speak to him even though I managed to offend him after we stopped recording by calling him an American (he is Canadian). Hopefully he will forgive me for the ultimate crime!

Okay, so before I wrap up today’s show lets take a quick look at the subject of competitive analysis. Its actually a segment I have just written for the book I am working on and so I thought I would share what I have covered. The idea is not to make you an expert in the field but simply to allow you to extract as much information as possible from your competitions websites in a quick and easy manner.

As always I have written this up as a blog post entitled “Quick and dirty competitive analysis” so check that out in the show notes if you want to see exactly what I covered.

No show next week

So that is about it for this week’s show. Remember that there will be no show next week as I am going away on holiday too! Yippee! However, if you need your boagworld fix don’t forget you can check out the forum and chat with other people about the poor quality of Marcus’ jokes.

Show 88: Two fat ladies

Posted in Classic shows on July 31, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul shares some thoughts on recording your creative ideas, Marcus discusses setting up a web design company and we review the Principles of Beautiful web design by Jason Beaird.

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Housekeeping

Before we get into the news there are a couple of housekeeping items I want to share with you all…

Eric Meyer Competition

In last week’s show we ran a competition to win a free ticket to Eric Meyer’s upcoming London workshop. The response to the competition has been truly phenomenal with a surprising mix of answer to our question…

“In which episode of the boagworld podcast did I first mention the subject of web standards?”

The answer was actually the very first show although we did have many suggest it was show 2. Although Show 2 was dedicated to web standards they were actually mentioned in the very first episode. Very well done to all of those of you who spotted that little trick in the question.

Anyway the winner, selected at random from the correct answers is… John Thixton.

Congratulations John, we will be in contact shortly to get you signed up.

Thanks very much to the guys over at Carson Systems who were kind enough to supply us with the free ticket. Don’t forget that even if you didn’t win you can still sign up for the workshop on the Carson systems website.

100th Boagworld

Next up, you may remember that a few weeks back we talked about the fact that we wanted to have a little celebration to mark the 100th episode of the boagworld podcast. Well, thanks to the organizational skills of Ian Forrester we now have a date and a venue. We will be recording the 100th episode of boagworld live at Ye Old Cock Tavern, London on Saturday 20th October 2007.

As well as recording the show live we are going to put a big wad of cash behind the bar so there should be free drinks for a while. We really appreciate all of the support you guys have given us over the last couple of years and want to in some way say thank you.

If you can possibly turn up it would be great to see you. Book it in to your calendar and sign up on upcoming. Please take the time to sign up on upcoming because it gives us an idea of how many people are coming.

News and events

Web redesign is a bad strategy

My first news story of the week is yet another post by Gerry McGovern. This article definitely makes up for his previous post about the best sites being ugly sites! This time around he talks about a particular passion of mine. He argues that website redesigns are nearly always a bad idea and that it fails to address the underlying issues.

This is certainly a position I have held for a long time. I believe that sites should evolve instead of going through a succession of wholesale redesigns. McGovern argues that redesigns too often happen for the wrong reasons such as changes in management, boredom, or a feeling the site has fallen into disrepair. I couldn’t agree more and would encourage people to think twice before complete overhauling their website.

YSlow for Firebug

Those lovely folks over at the Yahoo! Developer Network have been kind enough to produce a great plugin to the firebug firefox extension. I have spoken on the show before about how firebug provides loads of useful functionality to web developers including the ability to edit, debug and monitor both CSS and Javascript on live sites. However YSlow adds to that already impressive line up of functionality.

YSlow analyzes web pages and tells you why they’re slow based on the rules for high performance web sites. It analyzes any web page and generates a grade for each rule and an overall grade. If a page can be improved, YSlow lists the specific changes to be made. It also calculates the total size of the web page for both empty cache and primed cache scenarios, as well as information about cookies. Finally, it lists all the components in the page allows you to view the HTTP response headers for any component.

Find redundant CSS selectors

Talking of useful development tools for firefox, you might want to check out the Dust-me selector which has been released by the sitepoint guys this week. The dust-me extension helps you find unused CSS selectors.

You know what it is like. Maybe you are working with somebody else’s CSS file or maybe you are working on an old website and can’t remember what you have done. Whatever the case you don’t know what half of the CSS selectors do and so dare not remove any just in case they are used somewhere. Enter Dust-me.

Dust-me will monitor the pages of a website you surf around making a list of any unused styles it finds in attached stylesheets. The list is constantly updated as you move from page to page. Once you have looked around the whole site you end up with a definitive list of styles which can be safely removed. Nice!

Although this is useful I am sure there must be something out there which scans all of the HTML pages and saves you the effort of navigating around the site. If you know of such a tool post it on the show notes.

Marcus’ bit: Setting up a web design company

We got this question from Ali:

Have you done any podcasts on how to start a business? More specifically a web design company such as the one you have. Just a request if you have not done a podcast, could you have a whole one dedicated to starting a web design business. I mean how to start one, start with business plan or just start one day building websites for various people and build your own portfolio?

We have previously discussed the aspects of running a web design company, recently covering who you should look to employ and a little bit further back a fairly long piece where Paul and I reminisced about setting up Headscape. However, we haven’t really looked at the initial set up properly.

Though we’re not going to dedicate the whole podcast to it, I thought I would cover some of the things you need to think about.

Business plan?

To be totally honest, unless you are looking for funding, then I think writing a business plan is a waste of effort. I do think it is a good idea to write down what you want from the business and how you think you want the business to be viewed – in essence, a mission statement (though it has to actually mean something!).

It is also worth asking yourself where you want the business to be in 2, 3, 5 and 10 years time. Keep reviewing and don’t be afraid to change as your views and your business changes.

Coming back to funding; unless you are looking to develop a product and therefore require R&D time (and therefore backing) you shouldn’t really need any funding. If you can run your business from home the set up costs are fairly minimal.

Forecasting

Running a web design company, from a business point of view, can be a fairly nervy existence. Put simply, there is only so much work you can take on at any one time and clients will rarely wait for you to be ready, so there is always a point in the not too distant future (1, 2 maybe 3 months) where the work ends.

Therefore, not only do you need to be out there pitching for work, you also need have a good idea of what you need to make each month to break even. This takes thought and usually the input of someone with some accountancy experience. Producing an annual financial forecast has been invaluable to us as we know exactly where we stand throughout the year.

Keep a close eye on productivity as this is the bane of the fixed price service business. It’s very easy to get excited about a big new contract but they are usually the ones that end up being priced badly, take much longer to complete than originally expected and therefore ending costing you; not only on the visible bottom line but also in lost sales because you couldn’t take on new work.

Keep searching for new clients

When a business starts it tends to rely on a handful of clients to survive. This is perfectly normal but it means that young businesses are placed at risk if they lose one good client. I have always said that sales get easier and easier as time moves on based simply on numbers. In other words: the more clients you sign up, the more referrals you will get.
So, in the early days, make a particular effort to gain new clients as well as relying on existing ones.

Ok, that covers some general good practice, but what about some of the more detailed stuff.

Decide on branding

Here’s a few fundamentals:

Company name
URL – Obviously relates hugely to the previous point!
Logo/ corporate ID – you will need letterheads, business cards, invoices etc
Build your website – much as this is the biggest pain possible, it is fundamental. In the beginning it’s that old rock and hard place scenario where you can’t win new web design work because you only have a holding page, but you can’t build the site because you are working on precious paid work. I wondered recently why I tend not to work so many evenings as I used to – now I remember!

Boring stuff

You will need to register your company. In the UK this costs money, not a great deal but you will need to do it.
Limited company, partnership, sole trader? Take advice from professionals on this and other items here.
Insurance – I covered this in a recent podcast so I won’t go into detail, but you do need to look at:
- Professional indemnity
- Public/product liability
- Employers liability
- Key man
Contracts – you need to sort out your standard contract documentation before you start and make sure that it is used for all jobs.

Pitching early on

Even though it can feel like you don’t stand a chance against more well-established agencies, you do hold a few aces:

You have fresh ideas
You’re keen
Even though your company doesn’t have a much of a portfolio, there is no reason at all why you can’t demonstrate work done at previous companies as long as you’re honest about it and explain, in detail, about your role
You’re cheap! However, don’t continually undercut your own margins or you won’t be in business for long. Be prepared to walk away… be prepared to walk away!

Initial prospects

This is when friends, family and old work colleagues come to the fore. Even though I have just pointed out some of the good points relating to early businesses, gaining some business ‘easily’ through your contacts is highly recommended.

The cost of sale is usually much less so, again, you are helping out that bottom line and giving yourself more time for production work and pitching.

Consider outsourcing

Finally, try to build up a group of trustworthy contacts that you can outsource to a) when it gets really busy and b) if there’s a part of a project that is outside your skillset.

Paul’s corner: Recording creativity

I like to think of myself as an ideas person. I guess that is another way of saying that I am crap at implementing the ideas I have. One problem I used to suffer from was recording the ideas I had in a form that I could refer back to later. Overtime I have developed a couple of techniques that help me manage my ideas better. Whether you are a designer, developer or website owner, we are all required to be creative in our jobs. We are all looking for ways to become more creative. With that in mind I thought I would share some of those techniques with you.

Review: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design

This week I have received probably the most sarcastic and rude question ever to be sent to me. However, at the heart of all that cheek there was actually a very good question…

Once you have got to grips with the basic of HTML and CSS where do you go next?

Its a good question and there are a lot of potential answers to it. However one of the more sarcastic comments that surrounded the question made me think that perhaps the next step is to ensure a good grasp of basic design principles such as layout, typography, imagery and colour.

This in turn made me think of the book I am reading at the moment, “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design” by Jason Beaird.

Jason’s book really is a basic introduction to good design practices for the web. It is ideal for developers, amateurs or indeed anybody looking to improve the look and feel of their website. It is made up of 5 chapters each dedicated to one aspect of good design; layout, colour, texture, typography and imagery. It really is very good and talks a lot of real sense. I could imagine this being very useful for web site owners who want to understand the design process better and be more informed when signing off designs submitted to them by an agency.

However, what surprised me the most was how useful i found it myself (as somebody who calls himself a designer). I was intending to have a quick flick through the book so I could get the gist of what was being covered. However, I found myself being drawn in by Jason’s friendly writing style and by finding myself continually going “oh I forgotten about that” or “I really should spend more time doing that”. In short it works as a useful reminder service to designers too.

Check it out. Its a worthwhile read if you want to go over the basics.

Show 87: Trends

Posted in Classic shows on July 24, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul discusses about emerging design trends, Marcus talks about supporting existing websites and Ben Werdmuller introduces us to the open source community tool Elgg.

Podcast: Download (23.2MB)

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Eric Meyer: Competition

Before we dive into the show, I wanted to mention a two day workshop Eric Meyer is going to be running in London on the 13th and 14th August. For those of you who do not know Eric, he is one of the world’s leading experts on CSS and XHTML. He has written numerous books as well as speaking internationally on the subject. This is no ordinary CSS training course and if you can you should consider attending

Although this workshop is not cheap at £695 it will tell you everything you need to know in order to build top-quality CSS and XHTML websites. Eric is an incredibly knowledgeable guy and it is definitely worth hassling your boss for the registration fee.

Of course, not all of us have a boss we can hassle. So for those of you with less disposable income we have a free ticket to give away. All you have to do is answer the following questions:

“In which episode of the boagworld podcast did I first mention the subject of web standards?”

To enter simply email me your answer, including the word “Meyer” in the subject line.

Good luck and we will announce the winner in next week’s show (so entries need to be in by 30th).

News and events

Conflicting absolute positions

I discovered an interesting thing about absolutely positioned elements this week. I was reading an article called conflicting absolute positions on the List Apart website and it mentioned that all modern browsers now seem to support 4 cornered positioning. In other words you can set the top, bottom, left and right corners of an absolute positioned element and it will dynamically work out the height and width.

This struck me as an amazingly useful tool that allows for all kinds of possibilities. Most useful, as the article points out, is that you can start doing some interesting combinations of fixed and fluid width elements.

The downside is that unsurprisingly this is not supported in IE 5 and 6. However, the article does suggest interesting workarounds for some specific scenarios. If you have a few minutes check out this article as it is well worth the time.

Quikmaps

We have talked before on the show about various websites that make the process of adding google maps to your site less painful. However, this week I came across another one that I particularly like. It is called Quikmaps and it has a wonderfully clean and easy to use interface.

You can quickly add new points of interest and even draw lines showing routes. You can also select from a massive range of icons and add your own marker info just by clicking on a point.

Finally they make it incredibly simple to add the map to your site. You can enable or disable a range of features (including map controls and draggability) and add it to your site by copying and pasting a tiny fragment of code. However, the nicest thing from my perspective is you can do all of this without registering for the site.

The best websites are useful and ugly

I have to say I am a little disappointed with the latest post by Gerry McGovern. Gerry is a usability expert who’s posts I read on a regular basis. The vast majority are superb but his latest post is reminiscent of the kind of thing written by Jakob Nielsen. In this post he argues that the most usable sites are often the ugliest. In my opinion this is an incredibly blinkered view. Although he points out a number of recent design trends which damage usability that does not mean a website has to be ugly. I have said it before and I will say it again, website can be both attractive to look at and easy to use.

What is more, this post smacked of the attitude that usability is all important. I do not believe this to be entirely true. Usability has to be balanced with numerous other considerations including brand identity and design aesthetics.

Its a shame because in other posts Gerry talks a lot of sense. It would appear that I am left with Steve Krug to champion both usability and design working together.

Survive the digg effect with Amazon Web Services

I seem to be hearing a lot about the Amazon web services at the moment. I have just returned from the Institutional Web Managers Workshop where I was speaking. While there I met Jeff Barr from Amazon who was talking about the different web services they offer. On my return I came across a post on the Think Vitamin website covering exactly the same subject and I have to say I have been impressed.

Amazon offer a growing number of web services aimed at developers. However, the two which have impressed me the most are the simple storage system and the Elastic Compute Cloud. Basically the first is a superb way of managing the growing bandwidth and storage demands of your site while the second allows you to dynamically increase the power of your server environment to respond to peaks in demand.

There are literally endless applications of these technologies and I don’t have the time here to cover the subject in depth. However, if you are developing an online application or if you are likely to suffer from spikes in traffic (such as can be caused by sites like digg) then you will want to explore this more.

Marcus’ bit: Providing the right support

A lot of web design agencies have made themselves, and by association, the rest of us, unpopular by enforcing unnecessary and, quite often, unfair support agreements on their clients. The ‘classic’ support model is 15% of the value of the contract over 3 years. This has somehow evolved from enterprise software solution installations where onsite support is required covering daily usage by thousands of employees. Very few websites need this level of support.

At Headscape we have always taken the approach that support, like the job, is unique to that client. That is, we aim to provide the most appropriate support for that client.

However, what does that actually mean? This article covers the various options we offer our clients and the thinking behind them.

Ad hoc support

This is simply work carried out on an existing site on a job-by-job basis. Other than not having to pay for anything until it is needed, there is generally no bonus to the client with this method in that standard rates are charged and work slotted into the schedule when it can be done.

However, I think it is still important to sign a support agreement stating the terms of the agreement and particularly the process involved for booking work. Usually some sort of email booking process is simplest and avoids writing contracts for every little piece of work.

Minimum monthly allocation

On this basis we schedule in a guaranteed minimum level of work (e.g. 0.5 person-day) every month for at least six months. Because we can plan around that minimum allocation, we can offer a discount on our standard rate.

The agreement for this type of work needs to cover a variety of points:

Again, the ordering process
Term for the agreement and when it starts
Invoicing – usually this would be monthly in arrears with any work over and above the fixed amount invoiced the following month.
Reporting

With this type of agreement, any unused time is usually not carried over into subsequent months or agreements.

High priority work

This is a fairly tricky area to sort out because you have the issue of ‘bumping’ existing scheduled work if high priority work comes in. This is not a problem in slack times but can be if everyone is busy. There is no magic answer other than saying that emergencies do happen and things needing attention quickly is part of any service business’ week to week existence. Bearing that in mind, it is good practice to have an agreement in place that documents how things will be dealt with.

If a client requires the additional assurance of an ongoing support contract with defined levels of response, we offer an annual pre-purchased package of support credits that can be called upon as and when required. One credit equals one hour’s work in value.

Depending on the urgency of the required response, support credits purchase a different period of Headscape’s time. For example, low priority work is charged at 1 hour = 1 credit, whereas high priority work is charged at 1 hour = 2 credits.

To summarise, the golden rule is to agree on whatever terms suit the client best then put it all in writing.

Paul’s corner: Emerging design trends

I received this question from John in Dublin:

I am a designer working on a new clients website. He says he wants the website to feel very contemporary and web 2.0. like. However, my concern is that if I design something that feels like a web 2.0 site, it will be out of date by the time it goes live. It feels like web 2.0. design is on its way out. What do you think the next big design movement will be?

Although this is obviously an impossible question, it hasn’t stopped me from trying to answer it in my latest post on emerging design trends.

Review: Elgg

I have received a number of emails from various people over the last few months mentioning something called Elgg. None of the emails gave a lot of detail but said I should talk to a guy called Ben Werdmuller. After googling Elgg I discovered it is an open source social platform that appeared to be community based in nature. However, my lazy gene kicked in and instead of reading through an entire website I decided to get Ben on the show to tell me more.

If you are considering building a community based website, you should definitely listen to this interview.

Show 86: Boagworld Book

Posted in Classic shows on July 10, 2007 by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: Paul talks about taking a brand online, Marcus gives some advice about reviewing your information architecture and Ian Lloyd introduces us to the challenges of designing for screen readers.

Podcast: Download (44.6MB)

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Paul’s personal news

Just a bit of personal news before I get into the industry related stories. I want to let everybody know I have signed a contract to write a book. The book is going to be primarily for website owners rather than web designers, however to be honest I think it could appeal equally to both. I intend to look at what “client’s need to know about building and running a website” so hopefully it should show by example how best to communicate and work with clients.

The most exciting thing about this book from my point of view, is the fact that I want to write it as a collaborative process with you the boagworld community. I am going to release chapters for you to see in advance of publication and also blog on various aspects of what I am writing. I really want to encourage you to share your thoughts and make suggestions as we go along through comments and the forum. I have already set up a forum thread dedicated to book ideas as well as an initial blog post on the book.

Obviously writing a book is a really slow process, but hopefully it is something that we can all get excited about.

News and events

Building for the iphone

Unsurprisingly there is a lot of information appearing relating to building web applications for the iphone. There is an iphone gallery consisting of hundreds of screenshots of the iphone. This is great if you want to mirror the look and feel of the iphone as closely as possible. There is also the iphone developers guide from Apple which provides loads of great advice. Finally there is iphoney, a piece of software that replicates some of the iphone’s web browsing functionality and lets you see what your application will finally look like.

Of course whether it is worth developing for the iphone at this stage is another matter. I guess if you are trying to reach the tech-savy audience who are iphone owners then maybe. Otherwise it might be better to wait until the iphone becomes more mainstream or other phones start offering the same level of web experience.

@media podcast

I was gutted to miss @media this year. Well, I say gutted, I was actually on a really pleasant family holiday, so I cant complain. However, I did miss a great line up of speakers talking about some amazing subjects. I was particularly depressed to have missed Jesse James Garrett’s keynote on “Beyond AJAX” and “Diabolical Design: The Devil is in the Details” by Jason Santa Maria.

Fortunately the recordings of the @media sessions are beginning to filter out for me to download and listen to. However, note that I don’t call them a podcast. There is no feed that I can find which is extremely frustrating.

Setting that little moan aside, it is great to be able to listen to these speakers even though I did not attend the conference and I would strongly encourage you to download and listen to a few yourselves.

Common mistakes in web copy

Although we would prefer to avoid it, the reality is that as web designers we write far more copy than we would like to admit. As for those of us who are website owners, a substantial part of our responsibility is writing good web copy.

We have talked on the show before about writing good copy but our focus has mainly been on style rather than technical detail. This week, I came across a post about common grammatical mistakes. However what I liked about this post is that it wasn’t focusing on the silly details of grammar that don’t really apply particularly well to the conversational tone of the web. Instead it looked at errors such as when to use “me, myself or I” and the difference between “i.e. and e.g”.

If you ever have to write copy then spend a few minutes to check it out. It only covers the worse offenders so doesn’t take long to read.

A department dedicated to the web

Jeffrey Zeldman has written a post entitled “let there be web divisions“. If you are responsible for deciding who should manage your corporate website then you simply must read this. If you are a mere foot solider then it might not be as relevant but it is still a good read.

Basically Jeffrey proposes that a company website should not sit under IT or marketing (as is traditional) but should be a division in its own right. I am not going to repeat all of Zeldman’s logic, but I have to say I wholeheartedly agree with it.

Websites are simply too multi disciplined to sit comfortably under either department and too important to be caught in an endless tug-of-war.

Paul’s corner: Taking a brand online

About a week ago, I had to give a presentation to a board of directors ,explaining the process we went through to develop a new design for their website. A large proportion of that presentation focused on the issue of brand identity. This organisation had a very well developed style guide and we spent a lot of time and effort getting that guide to work online. My presentation talked about the various steps involved and it occurred to me this might make an interesting podcast section.

I have also put together a blog post on the subject of “taking a brand online” and it is this that I cover on the show.

Marcus’ bit: Information architecture review

I am currently in the process of carrying out an information architecture review for a new Headscape client. I have done a fair amount of IA work over the years but I have found myself particularly enjoying this one so I thought I’d waffle on about what I’ve been doing.

We have covered the various aspects of IA work in previous podcasts – Expert Review, Stakeholder Interviews, Card Sorting and Wire Frame testing. This section is looking at the first of these, expert review, in a bit more detail.

I think it’s worth explaining what I mean by Expert Review. When we carry out an Expert Review we are effectively analysing a client’s existing site content, site structure and naming conventions with a view to creating a new IA based on our experience of using and developing websites. This is a collaborative process with the client – it has to be; we can make logical, usability based decisions but cannot claim to be experts in the client’s particular field.

First things first

I make sure that I have a good grasp of a number of things prior to carrying out an IA review. At the kick off meeting make sure the following are covered:

Target audience – this is crucial for the development of the IA. It may be that the existing site caters for one group well but another poorly.
Site aims – is there a stepped process that the client wants their users to go through.
Design – things like horizontal over vertical navigation can affect the IA.
Homepage requirements – find out what the killer apps and content are as these will need to be linked to from the homepage.
Finally, have a general discussion about content and site structure. See what the client thinks is important and what’s not.

Map out the existing site

The first thing I do is map out the existing site’s IA. This is a fairly slow and laborious task but it is the best way to not only learn about a site’s content and structure but also to understand what they do and what they offer.

Be logical, captain

Usually, the goal of this type of exercise is to streamline content into groups and name those groups so that users will understand what’s inside them.

Site’s that have grown organically over a period of time tend to spread content all over the place. It is usually fairly easy, though time consuming, to group content together. There are various methods for doing this; I tend to print out the existing site IA (that I usually create in Excel unless it’s a particularly small site, then I might use Visio) and scribble all over the printout until I’m getting somewhere. Some people like to use cloud/cluster diagrams (either on paper or using software) or there is always the age old method of creating ‘cards’ where each page name is written onto a scrap of paper. This is a bit like doing card sorting on your own where you group the cards into piles and give names to each pile.

Naming

We come from the ‘it does exactly what it says on the tin’ school of page/section naming. Marketing departments often don’t! A good example of this is the trend to verbs as section names over nouns. I remember one client wanting to call a site section ‘Enjoy’ when the section covered ‘Leisure Activities’. No prizes for guessing what we recommended!

Labels should be as descriptive as possible. Sometimes this can be difficult when:

there isn’t much space, for example, ‘How to register for our newsletter’ won’t fit on the average button, even ‘Newsletter Registration’ would probably be too much for a top level, so I would go for just ‘Newsletter’. It’s fairly obvious that the content underneath will relate to the organisation’s newsletter and should logically include registration, whereas ‘Register’ leaves the user asking ‘register for what?’
Sometimes sites are so big that main sections can include too much differing content to be labelled descriptively. In this case, I would recommend either shortcuts on the homepage replicating the main sections that include descriptive words or create drop down navigation that displays the lower level links.

Section ordering

This should follow some sort of desired path through the site. For example, the client may want users to get a bit of background, followed by an understanding of what the organisation offers, followed by some examples of previous work with a view to finally making contact. This would translate to:

About Us | Services | Case Studies | Contact Us

Conventions

Users don’t want to have to think (that sounds familiar!); they want to look and understand straight away. Following conventions helps with this process. For example, many sites include an About Us section as the first main section. This usually includes some history, annual reports, job vacancies and contact details. Users looking for this type of information don’t want to have guess that this information might be under, for example, ‘Company Background’ which is located at the far right of a horizontal navigation.

Collaborate – to a point

When you have created your first draft it then needs to be reviewed by the client, discussed and iterated until everyone is happy. Take on board any changes that are based on your lack of understanding of what the client does but be prepared to stand your ground on issues relating to web conventions and usability – after all, they’re paying for your expertise.

Ask an expert: Ian Lloyd on screen readers

On this week’s show we have Ian Lloyd giving us an introduction to the world of screen readers. I vividly remember the first time I heard a screen reader being used. I was gob-smacked by how painful an experience it was and I am still amazed that anybody manages to use them effectively.

It struck me that many of you listening to this show might not have heard a screen reader before. Hearing what blind people have to work with really makes you take their needs seriously and so I thought I would get Ian on the show to give you a taster.

In his segment, Ian takes us through some classic problems that screen reader users experience. Unfortunately to best understand what is going on in some of the examples you need to see what he is doing. In order to get around this problem Ian has made a screencast to accompany the audio. There was too much detail to make it available online or via your video pod but you can download the screen reader .mov file here.

What follows is a transcript of Ian’s section of the show…

Hello Paul, Hello Marcus and hello to listeners of Boagworld. This is the ‘Ask the Expert’ section and today I’m going to be talking about screen readers.

Now, I don’t actually qualify [meant to say classify!] myself as an expert screen reader user simply because I don;t use one on a day-to-day basis, because I’m not forced to; I do have good vision. As such, the way that I would use a screen reader would be different from someone who has to use it on a day-to-day basis. That said, I still think it’s useful to demonstrate to people what a screen reader sounds like. And the reason for this is that as far as I am aware on your podcast although you’ve talked about accessibility a lot and mentioned screen readers I don’t believe we’ve ever had a demonstration of what they actually are like for people when pages are built incorrectly.

So, today I’m going to be showing a few problems using a screen reader. I’m also going to be doing this as a video, so this is a screencast. I understand that at the end of this you will be providing a URL for listeners so that they can access this and view what’s happening on screen. Because of course it’s all well and good to listen to this stuff but to get the full context it would be good to actually see the video as well. I will try my best to describe what’s happening on screen throughout this podcast though.

Now the first example we’re going to look at is Amazon dot com. And somewhat cheekily I’ve brought up the page for my own book on Amazon. And, er, just having a look around at what I can find on the screen and there are some issues there. So, let’s have a look at this.

[Screen reader reads out page graphic correctly 'Build your own website the right way using HTML and CSS, Link graphic']

Oh, so that’s not too bad. I’ve just found an image there and it’s announced it correctly because it’s found a suitable alt attribute but underneath there are a couple of thumbnail images which, if I want to access those, it gives me a whole different … well, hear for yourself:

[Screen reader announces: 'See larger image, Link' then moves to next link, the thumbnail image and reads an unintelligible string of characters - numbers letters and underscores - out to the listener].

Mmm, doesn’t make an awful lot of sense does it? Let’s try the next image:

[Screen reader reads out more unintelligible characters and takes almost 8 seconds to read it out]

So, what’s happening there? Well, it’s quite simple: there’s no alt attribute defined for that image and so JAWS tries to fill in the gap and, er … oh I didn’t mention earlier that JAWS is the name of the screen reader that I’m using. So it tries to fill in the gaps because it doesn’t have an alt attribute it uses the file name instead and the filename, as is often the case on Amazon, is a right load of old gobbledegook! So it doesn’t give it any useful information about that image.

Here’s another example of the same thing.

[Screen reader reads out an image gallery as 'thumbs slash zero, thumbs slash one, thumbs slash two' etc]

So this is actually a photo gallery, erm, with a bunch of thumbnail images hence it’s reading ‘thumbs’ because that’s the folder where the thumbnail [image] is actually in and it’s reading them sequentially as well. It doesn’t sound quite as painful as the Amazon example but it still doesn’t tell you any useful information about the images on the page.

[Screen reader announces more examples from the same page]

So let’s listen to a slightly improved version of that:

[Screen reader announces the same images but with appropriate alt attributes, e.g. 'The Mystery Machine, driven by Scooby' for a photo of a camper van that is painted like the Mystery Machine from the cartoon Scooby Doo]

If we were to look at that on the video I’m showing that page with the style sheet disabled and the alt attributes displaying inline next to the image. As you could hear in the second example it was far more usable – you could actually understand what the image was about (as long as you understood some of the VW terminology used in there), whereas in the first example none of the images actually had alt attributes so it was just trying to read out the location of the file.

So let’s look at another example.

[Screen reader announces content of new page 'Page has no links' and then starts reading subsequent page content before I stop it]

What I’m looking at on screen is a page that seems to have a page full of links. But if you were listening carefully to the beginning of that, the screen reader thought otherwise. I’ll just try to find that again for you.

[I scrub back in the video clip to find the part where the screen reader says no links]

According to the screen reader the page doesn’t have any links. And the reason it thinks that is, well, there *aren’t* any links. What’s actually happening … is … we have a whole bunch of text on the page that is styled using CSS and the behaviour for the link is added using JavaScript. So, we have a <span> element that has an onclick event, location.href=’somewhere.html’ and that’s [the span] wrapped around the text that says ‘This is a link – click me’. Um, but of course it’s not a link. The screen reader can’t find it because it’s not an <a href="">, it’s something else that’s been styled to look like a link and behave like a link. But it’s not. Thankfull that’s not too common but you have to just be aware that what may look great on screen for you may not be any use to someone using a screen reader. You have to use the right markup for the job.

So, you could have a page that’s full of links that say ‘click here’ but of course that’s another problem all in itself. Let’s have a listen to that:

[Screen reader reads 'Click here to view' repeatedly as I tab through the links on the page]

Yes, so … the problem there is that it doesn’t give you any information at all. And this is actually still quite common. In fact just yesterday I was looking at Facebook dot com (for my sins) and, er, I was quite shocked to find that they were using a lot of this where the link phrase was ‘click here’ as opposed to the phrase that you would really want to have, so for example instead of saying ‘click here for more information’ and having ‘click here’ as the link phrase you would have ‘for more information about our products’. That would be the link phrase. Erm, but if you just use ‘click here’ and you’ve got a whole page of links that reads ‘click here’ this is what you get:

[Screen reader once again reads 'Click here to view' repeatedly as I tab through the links on the page]

Basically, completely unusable.

Now the next example I have is of a form, and in this example, er, the form has been laid out using a table. Thankfully, these days, tables are being used less for layout and people are using CSS for page layouts. However, for forms it’s still not uncommon to see someone put a table in there. And, er …

[screen reader interrupts as page loads]

OK, so in this example what I’m looking at on screen is what appears to be, um, well … four text inputs, and then there is a radio button and it’s basically asking for some personal information, first name, surname, your age, place of birth and then a question ‘Do you have a nut alergy’, the answers being ‘no’, ‘yes’ or ‘don’t know’. So let’s see what the screen reader makes of this.

[screen reader says 'table with two columns and four rows'. I tab to the first input and it reads 'surname/family name - edit']

Already we’re hitting a problem. Because the first field that I tab to I can see on screen is *actually* [the one for the] the first name . But the screen reader believed that to be the surname.

So I’ve now tabbed to the second field which is the surname and it didn’t announce anything. So let’s tab to the next field:

[screen reader announces field as 'town/city - edit']

Again it’s getting it wrong. I’ve actually tabbed to the field that says ‘Age next birthday’

[tab to the next field, screen reader announces 'tab - edit']

And *now* I’m in the ‘town/city of birth’ field and it hasn’t told me anything.

[screen reader announces 'yes - radio button', then 'don't know', reading the radio button choices]

This is all a bit confusing here. OK, so it’s asking me the question ‘Do I have a nut allergy?’.

[I tab to the next field, screen reader announces 'Yes - radio button - unchecked']

OK, so … that thinks I’m at the yes radio button but I’m looking at it on screen and it says ‘no’. So, what’s going on here? Now this is going to be a difficult one to explain on the podcast; this is one of the sections where you really need to see the video. But what’s actually happening here is we’ve got a table to lay out the page and the text sits above the text input, so for example where we’re asking for first name, the text that says first name is in the first column and the input that relates to that is in a column underneath, sorry, I mean a table cell underneath it in the next table row. Now the reason this is causing a problem is because if you were to actually linearize that table, in other words look at it in the order of the source code you get a very different view of it. And this is what happens with the screen reader. So if I were to look at this form and read it out in a linear fashion, it goes like this:

First Name [text]
Surname [text]
Form input for First name
Form input for Surname
Age [text]
Town/City of birth [text]
Form input for Age
Form input for Town/City of birth

And so on. The problem is that the screen reader expects the text for that input to appear before that input, and because of the way this has been laid out it really really gets things confused. As I said, this is quite a difficult one to explain on the podcast but if you look at the video clip you’ll see why this is causing a problem.

[screen reader blurts a few things out as I try to manipulate it ... poorly]

Sorry about that, that didn’t add anything useful at all. Hopefully Paul can edit that out!

OK, so …. the big problem here is that you may be asking a question as we have here that says ‘Do you have a nut allergy?’ and the answers are ‘no’, ‘yes’ and ‘don’t know’. But if you do put the form elements in the wrong order you’re gonna have a problem. And the reason is obviously that with a nut allergy that could be a life or death situation. You could be filling out a form as a blind user and you select what you think is the ‘yes’ radio button but because the form has been poorly laid out and doesn’t have <label> elements that are actually helping to enforce the accessibility you may actually have been selecting the no checkbox [meant to say radio] and it really could be a life or death situation. It may *not* be as bad as that – it could end up with you booking the wrong hotel location or date. So you have to be very careful with the form layout.

OK, one final example. Now everyone’s talking about AJAX, it;s the buzzword of the moment. Unfortunately it’s also not very good for screen reader users. And the reason for this is that, er, anything that is updated on the page after page load is very very problematic to pass on to the screen readers. now the example I’m going to give here is a fairly simple one, and it’s the Google Suggest page. What Google Suggest does is let you type in your search phrase and as you type it’s calling back to the server, finding suggestions for you which it then populates in a list underneath the search input. So let’s have a listen to that.

[screen reader announces: 'google search - edit, type and text' then reads each letter of search term 'this is a test' as I type]

So I’ve just typed ‘this is a test’ and on screen underneath that is a whole bunch of suggestions that it has found. But if I try and actually access any of those using the keyboard:

[screen reader announces 'Google search - edit, Google search - edit, Google search - edit, Google search - edit' with each keypress on the down arrow]

It’s actually doing nothing. On screen I can actually see that it’s going up and down the options but the screen reader, it’s getting nothing back at all, nothing useful at all.

[more screen reader confusion]

Well thankfully with Google Suggest this is something tat you can opt out of – you don’t have to use Google Suggest, it’s not enforced on you. But it’s a very simple example and it just goes to show that a very simple technique like this can be, basically, completely unusable for someone using a screen reader.

So, that was just a few examples. Hopefully you’ve had an indication of how a poorly built website or web page can affect a user. the bottom line is, keep listening to the podcast, keep doing things right, keep using good markup and, if you can, test your own web pages or web sites using a demo version of JAWS. It really does pay dividends to find out how this works – or doesn’t work. So, thank you very much, I hope this has been useful, and I look forward to the next podcast, Paul. Thanks guys.

No show next week

Unfortunately there will be no show next week as I am away speaking at the Institutional Web Management Workshop. However we will be back the week of the 23rd July.

When developers design

Posted in Design on June 27, 2007 by Paul Boag

Although I cannot make you an expert designer, I can offer some advice of how to avoid the major pitfalls I sometimes see developers fall into.

In an ideal world designers design and developers develop. However, we don’t live in an ideal world and from time to time we have to swap roles. The problem is that there is a lot of tutorials and articles showing designers how to develop but little showing developers how to design. I therefore thought I would share some very basic tips.

First things first, I am not going to be able to teach you good design practice in a single post. That comes with time, training and to some degree, talent :)

However, although I cannot make you an expert designer, I can offer some advice of how to avoid the major pitfalls I sometimes see developers fall into.

General comments

Before I plunge head first into specific tips I would like to share some more general comments based on my observations of when developers do design. Hopefully these will help you think of design as more than arranging pixels.

Empathy

In many ways developers work in a world of absolutes. A piece of code either works or it doesn’t. Your world tends to be very literal, very straightforward. Computers are in many ways easy to understand. People on the other hand are a very different matter. We are messing beings full of contradictions and inconsistencies. This is the world of the designer.

Designers are trying to engage with people and to do that they empathize. They try and put themselves in the shoes of the user, to really understand how they think, how they approach a problem.

One of the most common mistakes I see developers make is that they fail to do this. To a lesser or greater extent they perceive the user as being similar to themselves. They make assumptions about the users motivations and abilities. They often misunderstand what the user is trying to achieve.

If I could give only one piece of advice it would be to encourage you to empathize. Really think through what the user is like. Are they in a hurry? Do they have a specific aim? What is their outlook on life? Will they have kids clamoring for their attention while they surf your site?

Really try to get inside their heads. It will definitely help.

Avoid graphical applications

The temptation is to think “I have to do some design, that means I need to open Photoshop. That is what designers use”. Of course that is entirely true, designers do use graphic applications like Photoshop or Freehand. However, I would suggest that unless you are already familiar with these kinds of applications, you are just adding more complexity to the problem.

Its hard enough to apply the principles of good design without adding learning a new application on top of it.

You know code, so work with code. Build your site using CSS and XHTML and these are the tools with which you are familiar. Sure, it wont lead to outstanding design, but that is not the aim as I discuss next…

Don’t try and be great; be invisible

Don’t try and produce a “creative” or “innovative” piece of design. Designers find this hard enough to do. The danger is that if you try and do this, you will create something that some people may love, but the majority completely hate.

Instead, play safe. Try and make your design invisible. A good solid piece of design will not impress but neither will it offend. The idea is that the users will not even notice it, they just use it.

If the user doesn’t acknowledge what you have produced it means it hasn’t caused them any problems and that is a good thing. Sure, you wont win any design awards but that isn’t very likely anyway!

Specific advice

Okay, so enough with the airy fairy advice, lets get specific. How do you make your design good enough to be invisible, non-offensive? Well, let me suggest 5 areas that you should pay particular attention to. Obviously I could write reams on each but lets keep this very simply and easy to implement.

Typography

The key to good typography is constraint and consistency.

Avoid using too many typefaces, normally 1 or 2 is enough. Also avoid having too many variations in sizes and weighting. Only use size and weighting to emphasis the hierarchy of the content. The larger and bolder the type, the more important the content.

Also try to be consistent in your application of typography. If something is a certain size and weight on one page ensure it is done the same on another. Although CSS makes this relatively easy, watch out if you are working with ems as you may have inheritance problems.

Finally, don’t just think about the type itself but also line length and line height. Don’t allow lines of text to become too long (between 40 – 60 characters is good) because they are hard to read. Also add some whitespace between lines of text as it will make the page feel more spacious, which brings us nicely onto…

Whitespace

Whitespace is the not-so-secret weapon of good design. For simplicity sake, I think the rule of thumb is to add more whitespace than you are naturally inclined to do. Whitespace improves legibility, gives a sense of simplicity and communicates a feeling of openness and style.

In order to limit scrolling, we feel the need to cram as much content in as possible so squeezing out whitespace. Resist this temptation. Be generous in your padding, margins and line height. Don’t be afraid of “empty” parts of the screen.

The grid system

You often hear people complain that a website looks boxy but in actual fact boxes are good. A good website should have a strong underlying structure of columns and rows. It helps the user identify hierarchy and communicates a sense of order in the site. Although a good designer will break out from the grid he will always have a grid structure still there underneath.

Think about how many columns the site is going to have. Ensure these are applied consistently across the whole site, but don’t be afraid to occasionally span across multiple columns. Also ensure elements are placed consistently in this grid from page to page. Do not move elements around, especially navigational elements like the menu bar and search.

A grid may seem restrictive and not very “creative” but it essential to all design.

Colour

Working with colour is particularly tricky and so I would suggest where possible you avoid making too many colour choices. Your best bet is to turn to an automated colour creator like Kuler. You can either choose from one of the existing palettes or enter a base colour (usually a corporate colour) and it will produce a palette based on that.

Notice that Kuler only includes 5 colours in its palette. This is good practice, resist the temptation to use too many colours. Apart from this site (where I was just being silly), I tend to use a very limited colour palette. One nice little trick however is to use a strong contrasting colour to highlight important content. Because it is a contrasting colour it will make content stand out from the rest of the site.

Imagery

The design work I have seen done by developers tends to shy away from the use of imagery and in someways that is not a bad thing. It is easy to get imagery wrong but I would encourage you to be a little more adventurous. Imagery is a great way to draw the users eye and so can be used to highlight key content.

Selecting imagery can be tricky but here are a few suggestions that will point you in the right direction…

Avoid animation.
Choice images with a strong foreground element.
Compress your imagery but not too much!
Use faces, people are naturally drawn to them.
Avoid clipart illustrations

I am sure there is more I could suggest but those are the ones that immediately spring to mind.

Taking it further

So there you go. Hopefully that has helped a little. Obviously, there is so much more that could be said, but that should have at least started you off. If you do want to take the next step and improve your design skill then check out Jason Beaird’s book “The Principles of Beautiful Web Design”.