Tag Archives: learning curve

10 Reasons why I prefer Fireworks CS4 to Photoshop for Web Design

Posted in Design on by Leigh Howells

Leigh Howells (a designer at Headscape) shares why he has decided to make the transition from Photoshop to Fireworks.

I have been a Photoshop user for over sixteen years, ten of which have been in a production web design environment. I’ve got used to the way it works. I’m used to its feature set and how it does what it does. I’ve worked happily within that framework and mostly not digressed unless my requirements have been to design a logo – where a vector illustration package like Illustrator has come into its own. More recently, however, I’ve begun to feel like I’m actually using the wrong tool for the job, in some ways like using a word-processor to replicate the work of a spreadsheet.

Just after Adobe’s CS4 suite was released, I decided to have another look at Fireworks – a package I had looked at a few times in earlier versions, but repeatedly given up on – each time falling back to Photoshop. I played with it, and I was impressed by a lot of what I was seeing. I persevered with it and started producing much of my my day-to-day work in preference to Photoshop.

1. Multiple Pages (with Master Page)

A Photoshop file consists of a single image with multiple layers. A Fireworks file on the other hand allows multiple pages with multiple layers per page. When working on a multi-page mock-up for a site design, the advantages of having all your assets contained within a single file are enormous. Although having 5 different PSD files may be workable initially, once edits and changes are required, for example changing text in a consistent header or footer, things can soon get messy and time-consuming as changes have to be made across all files. It’s also very nice that each page can be a different size, perfect for the different sizing which is often required between home pages and content pages.

As well as having multiple pages within the Fireworks .png file (the native file format) the powerful Master Page allows you to define consistent template elements which appear across all other pages. This is very powerful for defining a consistent header/footer which appears on each page and only needs to be edited on the Master Page to be updated across the design. A single page can also be detached from the Master Page if there is a unique page requirement.

2. Symbols

Symbols allow you to define an element or group of elements into a single object which can then be used all over your design across all your pages. This symbol can then be edited in a single place and all changes are reflected throughout your document. Imagine a graphic for a bullet icon which is used in many places across the design. To change the colour or shape of the icon within Photoshop may require lengthy manual editing and copying and pasting across multiple files. But with a multi-page Fireworks document using symbols, the change is only required in a single place for all the icons to be changed instantly across the design. This is a very powerful feature enabling design tweaks which may have otherwise been abandoned due to the time and effort involved.

3. Styles

Styles are to Fireworks as a CSS style sheet is to a web page. An items fill, stroke, font and effects can be defined into a style. These styles appear on the styles list and can be applied to other elements in the document. The real power lies in the fact that these styles can be amended and the changed cascading across the multi-page document automatically. Imagine a style of image with a particular border and drop shadow used in many places which you decide would look better with a different border colour and no drop shadow at all. If you have defined this image with your own style a single update will change all instances without all the pain. Like with symbols this can be a huge time saver whilst encouraging design experimentation and consistency.

4. Vector Objects

Fireworks offers the same basic tools as Photoshop for Bitmap editing but also has many extra vector tools. Lots of vector shapes are welcome with many control points for creating stars, polygons and regular shapes. In addition the Autoshapes panel provides a more diverse collection ranging from stick men with moveable bones, to clocks, calendars and title blocks.

My personal favorite or at least the one I have used the most so far, however, is the humble rounded rectangle which has control points for individual corners making a single rounded corner on a rectangle a simple task compared to Photoshop.

I also like the precise pixel control over each of fireworks elements in the Properties toolbar which makes sizing of images and vector objects a breeze to set to required sizes.

5. Libraries

Both symbols, styles and vector shapes can be saved for re-use and collected into useful library resources. In addition Fireworks ships with a common library of useful objects including buttons, browser and application elements for both Mac and Windows look and feel. A number of pre-defined styles are also provided ranging from Chrome and wood styles to more useful line shading and tool-tip styles.

6. Grouping

In more recent versions of Photoshop layer groups have allowed you to virtually group objects together. Though this works well, it requires a certain level of organisation moving individual layers into folders manually. Unfortunately, I have never liked working this way. I like to work quickly as inspiration guides me without having to laboriously put everything into layers and name them. Though the layer group model is still present in Fireworks it allows you to quickly select individual elements and group them together. The necessity to name layers is lessened by the fact they can be directly clicked on as in most vector packages, unlike Photoshop’s right click and ‘guess the layer’ (which didn’t get named!) method.

7. Interactive Gradients

Fireworks’s Interactive gradients are a simple enhancement to what is already available in Photoshop, but the gradient being used has control handles allowing it to be moved and sized within the object. A very simple enhancement but it works well and allows fine control and becomes particularly useful with using rectangular shading styles.

8. Web Layers

The web layer allow you to quickly add hotspot areas and links between the pages in your Fireworks document, or external URLs. Whilst being useful for linking together simple wireframes, it can also be applied to fully designed mockup pages illustrating how a finished site may navigate.

Fireworks’ initial conception was to help designers produce quick web sites with its ability to output html, rollovers and interactivity. All those features are still there and whilst you may not want to use the code it produces for final sites, for outputting your designs as an interactive mockup site, for example, Fireworks does a great job of exporting your images and html.

9. 9-Slice Scaling

This scaling technique can be applied to bitmaps aswell as to vector objects. This allows intelligent scaling as can be seen in the bitmap below; the four lines define vertical and horizonal sections on the image which will scaling areas when the image is resized, leaving the remaining areas untouched. This can be applied to dialogues boxes, headers, scroll bars, anything which you would want to scale, but to scale non-uniformally.

10. Small learning curve

Lots of things are just the same as in Photoshop – lots of keyboard shortcuts, tools palette – windows, toolbars, panel layouts etc. It all mostly feels the same and I have got to grips with it intuitively moving from Photoshop.

In addition to these ten points, Fireworks is also cheaper than Photoshop!

Some things I don’t like so much

Though I love Fireworks so far, I have some niggles. These may be due to my lack of experience, but then if that’s the case maybe my main niggle is the fact they aren’t obviously overcome!

1. Masks

These aren’t quite as intuitive as Photoshop yet. I have always been a big fan of quick masks in Photoshop; i.e.; pressing ALT between 2 layers making the lower layer mask the layer above. Though layer masks are the same, and there is the ability to paste bitmaps within objects using ‘Paste Inside’, these don’t work quite as freely at the moment.

2. Text Anti-aliasing.

I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the anti-aliasing of text isn’t quite as good as Photoshop’s yet. Even thought there is actually more control with the ‘Custom Anti-Alias’ panel – which allows you to edit parameters, sometimes text can look decidedly ropey at smaller sizes without lots of twiddling.

3. Performance

I can’t quite put my finger on this one either, but Fireworks doesn’t feel as solid as Photoshop. Maybe this is familiarity, but I feel like I’m working from within a piece of carved granite whilst inside Photoshop’s windows. I don’t have that feeling with Fireworks yet, but maybe it will come. (I also don’t know how many of the occasional memory problems and crashes have been due to running a pre-release version on Windows 7).

4. Snobbery

This is a terrible reason for not using one piece of software over another. However, I feel it’s very valid and I’m yet to tell a client I will provide them with Fireworks .png files rather than Photoshop PSD files (although multi-layered PSDs can be output directly from Fireworks). Maybe there is a fear your reputation as a designer is at stake if you aren’t using ‘the big and mighty Photoshop’. Maybe you fear you will not be taken as seriously, like in the old days of DTP using Pagemaker instead of Quark, or sequencing music in Cakewalk rather than Cubase or Logic.

Conclusion

To be honest, I’m not 100% happy with either product for web design work. I still prefer and am more comfortable with some of Photoshop’s familiarity, but I’m enticed by all the other features that Fireworks offers to make life easier and production more streamlined.

I guess the conclusion if you own both is obvious; use them in tandem. Use Photoshop for image editing, and more advanced image correction and manipulation, and use Fireworks for layout mockup of complex web sites which may end up with hundreds of layers. Note that with Photoshop installed, Photoshop’s layer filters are directly accessible within Fireworks in addition to Fireworks own filter options (which have all the basics; drop shadows, glows etc. etc.).

I eagerly look forward to future updates to Fireworks and wonder how the two products may diverge further now that they are both under Adobe’s wings. Although I wish they would change the name from Fireworks, to something like ‘Webshop’ as I keep mixing up Fireworks and Firefox both in conversation and launching the wrong application all the time! But maybe that’s just me.

159. Special Guest

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show: The northerners are back with special guest host Sarah Parmenter.

Play

Podcast: Download (29.1MB)

On this week’s show: The northerners are back with special guest host Sarah Parmenter. We answer your questions on how to quote for projects and whether using off-the-shelf software is wrong and we have a chat with Sarah on her experiences in the industry and the difference between developing for clients and developing for yourself.

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News

Alkaline

Our first story for is a new product by the guys over at Litmus, you may have come across their Browser and Email testing apps before and they’ve just released a new Mac app called Alkaline, this is a Mac front-end to their online browser testing suite and lets you test your website designs across not only 17 different Windows browsers which they mention on the site, but also all of the Mac and Linux browsers that the online Litmus services test against.

Alkaline grabs screenshots of your site rendered in all major browsers, the number of which depends on your chosen pricing plan, It’s free to test against IE7 and FF2 and if you need to test across all browsers, it’s available under the standard Litmus pricing plan which offers both individual and team monthly subscriptions, and a handy day-pass if you only do this kind of testing every now & then. Litmus also stores a history of your screenshots so you can see the evolution of your design and also reports your HTML and CSS errors.

There’s plugins available for Textmate and Coda, and you can preview the sites right inside Coda 1.6’s preview window, however because Alkaline grabs screenshots of your pages it’s not possible to do any live updating of CSS and see the results in all browsers.

Paul at Litmus also informed me that throughout April, they’re offering full access to the Litmus service for free on Weekends, so on Saturday and Sunday you can test across all the browsers (using Alkaline or the Litmus site) and all the email clients, even if you only have a free account.

16 design tools for prototyping and wireframing

It’s no secret that prototyping or wireframing can really help in the overall design process, and there’s now a wide range of tools on the market that aim to help you in this process. A recent Sitepoint article lists 16 of these tools and rates their usefulness.

The list of tools is good, convering favourites such as Omnigraffle, Axure and Balsamiq to other applications which can be used to wireframe such as Powerpoint or Keynote. If you’ve not looked into these kind of apps before then do check it out, they also lists the price of the apps so you’re sure to find something within your budget.

10 Lessons every freelancer should learn

If I remember rightly, I came across this link from one of the people I follow on Twitter and it covers some killer tips on how to be a better freelancer, covering everything from self promotion, organising your workflow, finding time for your own projects, keeping motivated and how to charge appropriately, this is a must-read for anyone considering freelancing, or indeed those already in the freelance world.

Some great tips come in the way of keeping customers happy and generating repeat business and I’d like to squeeze in a forth link here to another Sitepoint article (sorry) which covers how to upsell additional services to clients as a freelancer you should be looking at maximising the amount of money you can make from each project through added services, whether it’s packaged services such as hosting, logo design or business cards.

I don’t really freelance but I do manage a couple of small sites I built on a freelance basis, and I get recurring revenue by hosting them on a small reseller account. I’ve also been able to tempt the customers into paying for a years hosting rather than a monthly cost by rounding the amount down to an even figure, which while it’s only a couple of pounds cheaper, always got chosen.

Back to top

Interview: Sarah Parmenter on the difference between developing for clients and developing for yourself

Ryan: OK, so onto our interview section and what we are going to do today is an off-the-cuff interview with you, Sarah, er, so for people who don’t know who you are, er, do you want to introduce yourself.

Sarah: Sure, my name’s Sarah, I’m based in Leigh On Sea in sunny old Essex and I own a company called ‘You Know Who Design‘ that’s been going for about nearly seven years now, um, and I just do web development and sometimes I dabble in a bit of graphic design. Um, when I started off when I was younger, it was more graphic design than web but now it’s purely web and, er, yeah, it’s what I love doing.

Ryan: Right, OK, and we think a good topic to have a chat with you about would be the difference between developing for clients and developing for yourself.

Sarah: Yup

Ryan: So, er, let’s start off. Do you give yourself time to work on personal projects?

Sarah: I do, but not as much as other people do; whenever I see on Twitter, there’s a lot of people who have a lot of personal projects on the go and it generally tens to be on a Friday as well (all laugh), you see Twitter on a Friday, generally full of people, um, doing their own stuff but I tend to, if I’m doing something I tend to, maybe, give myself a couple of hours if I’ve got a spare, if I’m waiting for a client to get back to me on something and I can’t proceed with anything. I put client work first, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but that’s the thing that pays the bills, so, um, they always come first and if I’ve got a bit of downtime, I’ve always got projects that I want to work on, but possibly haven’t got the amount of time to dedicate to them as I’d like. I think it’s probably the case with everyone.

Sarah: Yeah, absolutely. You get some time, don’t you, through work?

Paul: Er, well we did sweet talk our boss into giving us 5% time, which was supposed to be like Google’s 20% time, where they get a whole day to work on personal projects, if it benefits the company.

Sarah: Really?

Paul: Yeah, well we got, like an afternoon on a Friday, which is kind of sidelined at the moment.

Ryan: To spend in the pub (laughs)

Paul: That’s personal projects, I’m sure. No, it’s kind of sidelined at the moment, we’ve got some major projects on which are taking up all our time with some heavy deadlines, so we’ve had to shuffle that. Hopefully we’ll start to get that back over the summer and work on some cool stuff instead of the business stuff.

Sarah: I think it’s rea
lly difficult, because obviously your client stuff does have to come first, and even if you’ve dedicated an afternoon or a couple of hours, if something comes up that morning, or if you’ve got a problem that needs sorting, unfortunately, it’s just the way it is, your client work has got to come first.

Paul: Yeah, pays the bills.

Sarah: I mean, a lot of personal projects, a lot of people’s personal projects, do end up very lucrative for them, and you could argue that it’s just as lucrative to just go along with your own personal projects, but I think in general, most people would find that their client work would, er, would have to come first.

Paul: We’re trying to convince our boss to let us build, er, an iPhone app

Sarah: Really?

Paul: and sell it on the app store. He’s not having none of it, because we’ve told him we all need iPhones to test it on, he just won’t buy them for us.

Ryan: and a mac to develop on

Paul: a Mac to develop on, yeah. For some reason, he’s not warming to the idea.

Ryan: he can’t understand the thirty grand, you know, outlay to…

Paul: We’ll easily make that in a day on the app store (all laugh), I keep telling him this.

Sarah: the app store!

Paul: Yeah, the app’s 50p, you know…

Ryan: Er, completely sidetracked there, erm. What differences do you find, er, between developing for clients and developing for yourself? What major differences do you find?

Sarah: I find, when I’m doing stuff for myself, I’m actually a lot less decisive on stuff. I sort of, because I’m immersed in, maybe my own branding, or sometimes it’s really good to look at it from an outsider’s point of view. If you’re doing stuff for clients, I think sometimes it’s easier to look at stuff and go ‘well, that needs to go there and that needs to be there to catch someone’s attention’ or you need to move that or make that a different colour, and when it’s your own stuff I think you tend to be either really creative and you don’t really care if you get stuff wrong, or if, do you know what I mean? It’s more, sort of… the boundaries aren’t there, you’re not time-constrained, there’s no brief, you just go off on one, doing whatever you want, whereas with client stuff, there tends to be a bit more, erm, what’s the word, consistency across everything, and I find, personally, when I’m doing my personal stuff, I could sit in front of Photoshop pushing something from the left-hand side of the screen to the right-hand side of the screen for two hours, wondering whether it looks right or not, whereas if it’s a client site, I think ‘right, I have to make a decision on this – where would this go, or where would it be best placed, and you make a decision and you move on, because otherwise the more time you, you take going backwards and forwards is, er, less money that you’re earning, so I think I tend to be more decisive with client work and with my own I tend to be a bit more, erm, easy-going and, er, possibly a bit more creative, in the sense of trying things that I haven’t tried before. Erm, yeah, I think it’s just good to be (pause – all laugh).

Paul: I think personal projects give you time to play with the stuff that you wouldn’t normally risk putting into a client’s site, things that might take you a week to figure out.

Sarah: That’s what I, sorry a man just walked past my window in a pair of shorts, as I was answering that question, which completely put me off,

Ryan: Was it an ugly man, or a good-looking man?

Sarah: No, he was an old man.

Ryan: Oh, right. OK

Sarah: I wondered if he had dementia or something, and he thought it was summer.

Paul: Was he in just a pair of shorts?

Sarah: Yeah

Ryan: A pair of shorts and a smile?

Sarah: No, and a newspaper.

Paul: Strategically placed.

Sarah: It just completely sidetracked my thinking pattern, then.

Paul: That’s OK.

Sarah: Oh, sorry.

Ryan: Where were we? So, which do you prefer, developing for clients, because obviously you’re doing that every day, or do you prefer developing for yourself?

Sarah: I actually prefer developing for clients, erm. I prefer getting a brief and thinking ‘right, how can I best interpret this brief, and get the objectives that they want, er, they want to get out of this website, how can I do that in the best possible way?’ Whereas, I think that when you do stuff for yourself, you don’t necessarily write down a brief as strict as you’d get when a client is sending through something. So, I, I actually prefer developing for clients, I really like, I don’t, I really like doing all the end, getting to the end product with a client. I think I get more satisfaction out of that than I do when I’ve done it for myself, because I still look at it in a very critical point of view, I still think, ‘oh well, maybe I could make those buttons a slightly different hint of green and it will look better’; whereas, with client stuff I think it’s just all about decision making, I think you tend to make more decisive decisions with client work than you do with your own. You think of your own as an ever-ongoing project that you can forever tweak and make changes to, whereas with client stuff you, once it’s live, it’s pretty much. You might get to update…

Ryan: Yeah, it’s difficult to come back, isn’t it?

Sarah: Yeah. Exactly. So I much prefer developing for clients, when they’re nice clients!

Ryan: Yes, we only like the nice clients.

Sarah: Yes, we all like nice clients.

Ryan: But do you think personal development time is important, do you think it’s important to develop your own projects?

Sarah: Yeah, I do I think it’s important from the sense of being, when I personally do lots of my own stuff, I find that I tend to be a bit more, erm, creative, in the sense of I’ll try stuff that I might think ‘oh, that’ll look awful, I won’t bother doing that for a client site’, but I might try it and actually surprise myself and think ‘oh no, actually, that’s a really good technique to use’ or do something a bit different because you’re not constrained by time when you’re doing stuff for yourself, necessarily. But I think, I do think it’s really important to do your own, your own thing, because I think it’s also a learning curve, you might try out different systems to use, you might decide to learn something, you might decide to use something like, if you’ve never used WordPress, you might decide to go and bolt WordPress onto your site just to see how you get on with it, you might try different apps. I think it’s important, because it frees the mind to use other things that you might not necessarily get to use when you’re in an office environment or, or perhaps even day to day because you don’t have the time to learn it, so I do think it’s important, but I don’t think it’s the, er, the be all and end all of everything.

Ryan: I think, er, a good tie-in question, not specifically about developing for clients and, er, yourself. Erm, keeping it with blogs and stuff, do you allot yourself a, like, time to read your feeds and, er, things like that, and to keep up with them, because I’ve been so busy in the last two weeks, my feeds have just gone like – you know when Google Reader says ’1000+’ and that’s it, it’s just stopped counting, it’s gone ‘look man, give up on these feeds, you’ve passed a thousand.’

Paul: You need to declare feed bankruptcy, I think.

Sarah: I tend to do this really annoying thing, where if someone posts a good link on Twitter, I’ll open it up in a browser window in a tab, and then if someone else posts, I’ll open that in another browser tab, so I’ve got about 100 tabs open in Firefox that I never get round to, to looking at, which slows the whole thing down and end up having to then bookmark them in a little folder called ‘Interesting Links’, that I never get around to reading.

Ryan: When you look back, they’re four years old and completely out of date.

Sarah: Yeah.

Paul: The shocking thing, because I do the research for the, the Boagworld news and push it all through the links, I probably churn through 150-200 feeds a day (Sarah: gasp), which is so many feeds that I haven’t got time to read them, which is shocking; I get so much information, so many good things that I’m pushing out to other people, that I just don’t have time to read them, there’s too much information.

Sarah: Do you skim-read them?

Paul: I do, I skim-read, I usually read the first few paragraphs, just to see what the article was about, clip out the interesting bits of text for the previews and then send it on it’s merry way out of Twitter and then I’ve written a function that, every time someone clicks a link on Twitter, it kind of lets me know, tracks back and so I can see, right, which… and I watch it, I’ve got live stats and streaming on one of the spare monitors, so as this link goes out onto Twitter, I can see it being read, so I can actually what’s actually what the people are reading, what’s been interesting that way, instead of me thinking ‘that’s genius, we’ll use that on the show’. It’s actually kind of crowd-sourcing information like this.

Sarah: Yeah, that’s a better way of doing it, isn’t it? It’s more productive.

Paul: Yeah, but I do the same, it’s like something I really want to read, I’ll open it in a tab and I’ve got the permatabs thing on Firefox, so I’ll set it so that I can’t delete it until I’ve read through it, but usually it just ends up there for weeks.

Ryan: I tag them in Delicious, so I’ve got like tutorials and stuff that I think ‘oh, that looks fantastic’ and I’ve got a ‘to try’ thing, which is slowly increasing in number and I never sit down and have a go through the tutorials or anything like that.

Paul: Yeah, I think the key is to follow a few key, key things and not try and follow too much information, and then just look at what everyone else around you, the people that you respect, in what they’re sending out and try not to get overwhelmed because there’s a lot of information out there.

Sarah: Dead right, there’s so many, it seems to be a new thing on Twitter to actually post those sort of links, day in, day out, which is really handy because there’s a lot of people who have a lot of good stuff on Twitter.

Paul: Oh twitter.com/boaglinks is the premier source of all this information, of course.

Sarah: Of course! (all laugh)

Ryan: Er, OK, so I think the final question to you, then Sarah, is, erm, what inspires you to pursue your personal projects?

Sarah: Erm, oh, that’s a difficult one. I kind of get inspired in strange places, when I came back from the Future of Web Design and Future of Web Apps, I kind of get inspired by other people, not necessarily the apps that they’re producing, or work that other people are producing, but I sort of feed off other people’s energy, strangely. If other people come away from something really, erm, excited about something, I tend to think ‘oh, yeah, that sounds like a good, like when Adobe Air came out, that was a kind of a buzz around that for a while and it got me thinking ‘um, what can you develop with that that would, you know, might be interesting to other people or that other, that other web designers might want to use?’ but that’s kind of what happened with my own app, Olive, it’s kind of on the backburner at the moment, but there was a problem that came up at work and it was coming up time and time again and I thought ‘there must be something out there that actually addresses this issue of, of erm, client management, so went around, couldn’t find anything and then ended up building it, and it was actually built more for me, rather than other people and when I sent it out to a few people, they really liked, and got into using it and, erm, it’s just kind of handy if you build something that’s, that’s great for you, but equally other people find interesting as well. It’s, erm, it’s a win-win, really. I mean, I use it all the time, and there’s other people who do as well, bu
t at the moment it’s, er, needs a lot of updating, because I’ve been so busy with client stuff, but maybe I should have put that first, but clients pay the bills unfortunately.

Ryan: Absolutely, absolutely. I think I, erm, I think I overthink things, so I think to myself ‘oh, I’d love, love for this to exist’ and then I think to myself ‘I could spend the next three years developing that’ and, and someone would do it better than me, you know and just finding time as well.

Paul: Yeah, I think it’s right what Sarah says, you’ve got to scratch your own itch, you’ve got to find something that you would want to use so much that you would spend that amount of time to build it, and then if it’s for you, it doesn’t really matter that much if no one else wants to use it because it does something that you want it to do.

Sarah: Exactly.

Paul: And it’s a learning process, you can choose any language. If you want to learn a new language, if you want to learn Django or Python or something, you could build it in that, just to learn that language, erm, and then send it out in the world, see if people use it.

Sarah: Exactly, that’s kind of what happened. I was learning quite a bit about Ruby at the time, because Olive, Olive’s built on the Ruby on Rails platform and it was so interesting just to get an insight into how different developing with Ruby is compared to PHP. That was just worth it in it’s own right, really because I find that I learn much better with real world examples rather than looking at a load of code. I find that if, if I ever get something like that, I have to take it apart, almost, and then try and work out how to put it all back together so that it works. I think I learn better by doing that and a lot of people do. If you going on to any of the tutorial sites now, there tends to be a lean towards developing an app or something small; I think on the Nettuts at the moment, website – do you guys know that one?

Ryan: Er, yes.

Paul: Yes, ah the Nettuts, oh yeah.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s a, there’s a sway towards actually building like login systems from scratch and things like that on there, where it’s actually showing you the code and then showing you how it works in real world situations which I think is really good, for me, I don’t know about you two, but I personally prefer picking stuff apart (laughs).

Paul: Yeah, absolutely. I usually start at the very lowest common denominator, like a user access system, and I’m learning CakePHP now which is, kind of a Ruby clone for PHP and instead of using their in-build methods which will do it all for you with build this, just write these classes and it’s like ‘No, it’s like the most basic thing I can do in this language, let me learn how to do it’, and I’ll learn that way.

Sarah: Yeah, yeah, that’s, I think when, erm, when I looked at using Ruby for, er, for Olive, I didn’t build it, it was built by a guy, a brilliant guy, Adam Cooke, but I was still really interested to know how it would work and how Ruby is different and the first thing I did was built a, erm, a basic recipe, sort of database thing with, it was off of a tutorial site and I think it’s great if it gives you just a little bit of insight into something that you might not have already realised or known about building your own stuff, then I think you have that sort of passion to go forward with it, you have that confidence to then think ‘oh, well I’ve done that tiny thing, maybe I can do something else with it. Whereas, if you’re doing it for clients, you don’t, you wouldn’t really venture into using another programming language that you weren’t comfortable with on a client site, unless you were a bit silly.

Ryan: Absolutely, absolutely. Paul told me a really funny thing, in between, er, when he told me he was learning CakePHP. He said, I’m trying to remember what it was that you told me, it was ‘if Ruby’s French, CakePHP is French with an English accent’

Paul: Yeah, its kind of the same, just not quite as elegant.

Ryan: Yeah, I thought that was fantastic, that was so fantastic, I made it into, I have some rotating quotes on my web-site, and that made it into my quotes, that was fantastic.

Much thanks goes to Simon Douglas for transcribing this interview so quickly!

Back to top

Listeners Questions:

Is Using Off-The-Shelf Software Wrong?

Jon Writes:

I guess my question is about the use of off-the-shelf software. I must admit I feel slightly uncomfortable using it at all. As a decent sized agency of 9 people, with our own very capable developers, I can’t escape the nagging feeling that we are “cheating” slightly by using an off-the-shelf platform at all. Although we adhere strictly to licensing requirements, most of our customers do not know that their stores are powered by what is essentially a ready made system, which we then skin, configure and populate.

What are your views about off-the-shelf stuff and the pros and cons of using it on client work?

Thanks and keep up the good work!

I think the main source of your discomfort is the fact that your clients don’t know you are using off-the-shelf software for their projects, which raises the question why not?

Your clients have approached you to provide them with a service they cannot perform themselves. Whether that is building a system from scratch or integrating and customizing an third-party system to meet their needs, you are still the expert.

There are very powerful off-the-shelf e-commerce systems, blog engines and CMS’s that should be thought of as weapons in your arsenal rather than “cheating”. Explaining to your clients why you are going to use a particular system for their project can be hugely beneficial. It shows that you don’t want to waist their time and money re-inventing the wheel.

Therefore, the pro’s are:

  • It meets there project aims
  • You are experienced with the system
  • It’s supported by a third-party team of developers who are dedicated to that one product and includes a vast community of other users who support each other
  • It can be implemented in a shorter period of time than building from scratch (i.e. cheaper for the client all round)
  • It’s a tried and tested system (You could even give your client a list of other successful companies that are using it)
  • It is also more than likely that a third-party product that has been around for several years is a more reliable and robust system than the one you develop in a couple of months.

That said there are always inherent risks in using anything third-party, whether it be API’s, frameworks, libraries or software and I have a general rule of thumb that I try to always adhere
to:

Don’t implement something you don’t understand!

If it breaks, it costs you time and money to fix the problem, and that’s once you’ve diagnosed what that problem is. The longer it takes you to fix the higher the risk that your client is going to lose confidence in your ability to deliver.

So take the time to do some dissecting and learn how to use your tools as fully as you can prior to implementation.

How do you price and quote different projects?

Jamie who’s just started up his own web development company is having trouble working out how to price and quote different projects and wonders if we have any tips that we’ve found helpful when quoting for clients?

One of the hardest things when starting out, and even for established businesses is finding your feet with pricing. I think the biggest lesson I learnt is not to under-quote just to gain the business, even though you are in need of clients. It makes no business sense to work for peanuts, you’re better holding off for a client who respects the work you do and pays honestly for that work rather than being a design machine churning out work just to make ends meet.

The other important thing I learnt in my first year of business is, clients who barter with your prices are generally bad news. We’ve all heard it, “if you can do this one at x-amount we have plenty of other work in the pipeline we want to use you for” – while this sounds tempting, 9 times out of 10 the promise of the further work never comes off, even if it does they would normally expect further work at the “cheap” price they paid you before, as you accepted it so you must be happy to work for that right? Wrong.

I always find it helpful to ask the client for a ballpark figure prior to laying out the full proposal, this negates you wasting time putting together the proposal of cost plus terms and conditions only to find the client wants to build ebay on a budget of £300.

I also find ballpark figures helpful because I find it easier to provide the client with options, even if they have a relatively small budget there is normally still something you can do, even if it is very basic – but it gives you a starting block to explain if their budget was a bigger they could bolt on a CMS system or have a better shopping cart, then explain the benefits of those. You’d be suprised how much the budgets are then increased by.

It’s all about providing the client with the best solution for their project at the end of the day, and if you think the best solution would be bolting on Expression Engine or the like, you need to give the client the choice to do this and expand their budget if necessary rather than cut them out of the equation because of it, it’s all about educating the client.

130. Air

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On this week’s show; Paul talks about better understanding disabled users. We have a tip from Jeremy about problem solving and Jonathan Snook introduces us to Adobe Air.

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

Housekeeping

A few pieces of housekeeping I wanted to quickly mention at the start of this week’s show.

  • FOWA – The guys over at Carsonified have been kind enough to offer boagworld listeners a 15% discount off of the upcoming Future of Web Apps conference in London. The conference takes place between the 8-10 October and is an absolutely superb event. To claim your discount use the code FOWA-bw at checkout. There are only 50 discounted places, so be quick.
  • SXSW – Talking of conferences can I ask a favour of you all. Marcus is desperate to go to next years SXSW conference in Texas. However he is only allowed to go if he is speaking. As you may know speakers for SXSW are chosen using a voting system. So, in order for Marcus to attend SXSW he needs your votes. Give an old popstar a second chance. Go vote for him now!
  • Think Vitamin - Finally I just thought I would quickly mention an article I have recently written for the Think Vitamin website. It is entitled "the 5 hidden costs of running a CMS" and I thought you might be interested in check it out. It is an extract from chapter 8 of my book the Website Owners Manual, which as I have said many times before, you can download right now ;)

News and events

Designing for emotion and flow

Not long ago I wrote an article for boagworld on the importance of context. In that article I highlighted elements such as time, mood and environment as key factors that contribute to a users context when accessing your site. This context directly impacts how the user interacts with your site. What I didn’t tackle in my article is exactly how context should affect the way you design.

An article called "Design for Emotion and Flow" on the boxes and arrows website, takes my post a step further by going into a lot more detail about what affects users behaviour and how we should design in a way that accommodates their state of mind.

Its quite an in-depth article but worth the read. It touches on user physiology as well as issues of environment and although it can be slightly theoretical at times, it focuses in on what you can practically do towards the end.

Articles like this always leave me with mixed feelings. They can easily feel overly analytical to the point where you wonder if they are applicable in the real world. However, in my experience if you take the time to read and digest them, they start to influence the way you design on an almost subconscious level.

7 essential guidelines to functional design

By contrast our next article is much more down to earth. The "7 Essential guidelines to functional design" is another post by smashing magazine and focuses on some fundamentals of good design.

However, don’t get the impression that this is just an article for designers. The principles it talks about also apply to developers and website owners. Basics such as the goal and audience for your site are things everybody should be considering.

According to Smashing Magazine the 7 essential guidelines to functional design are:

  • Consider our product’s goal
  • Consider who will be using it
  • Consider what your audience intends to do with it
  • Is it clear how to use it?
  • How does your user know it’s working?
  • Is it engaging to your users?
  • How does it handle mistakes?

Whether this is the definitive list, I am not so sure. However, it is a worthwhile read especially if you are just starting out.

15 companies that really get corporate blogging

While we are on the subject of lists our next post is "15 companies that really get corporate blogging". What can I say, I am a sucker for a list!

This one is really for those of you who run a website and in particular run a corporate blog. As the name suggests it lists companies that do a good job at blogging. However, it is not the list that attracted me to this article, it is the reason why the companies got on the list.

There is a lot of good advice to be gleaned from this post. Just a few snippets I picked up include:

  • Don’t just pimp your products, talk about other stuff too
  • Post regularly
  • Encourage conversation
  • Be candid and open
  • Offer advice and lessons you have learnt

The list could go on. Corporate blogging is by and large a disaster with many companies just failing to ‘get it’. According to a recent report, 56% of corporate blogs just republish press releases and two thirds hardly ever receive comments. However, as is highlighted in this post there are a growing number of organisations that are doing things right and we should follow their example.

Learning from signage

If you have listened to this show for any length of time you will know I am a great fan of looking beyond the web for inspiration. I also believe there a lot to be learnt from other forms of design including signage.

It would appear that Mark Boulton would agree with this sentiment judging by his recent post on airport signage. Mark, compares the signage in two airports and looks at how the lessons learnt apply to web design.

Some of the gems he discovered include:

  • Signage should work without colour coding
  • Only designers care about fonts
  • Don’t rely too heavily on pictograms
  • Always put your ideas to the test

This is a great article which should (if nothing else) encourage you to look at the world around you for inspiration.

Back to top

Interview: Johnathan Snook on Adobe Air

Paul: Joining me today is Johnathan Snook who I recently saw at the @Media conference. It was great to see you there again Johnathon.

Johnathan: A pleasure to see you there as well.

Paul: You really got me with your presentation. It was an excellent presentation. Very, very enjoyable, and you touched on the subject of Adobe Air. It wasn’t the main thrust of the presentation, but it was the bit that really grabbed my attention so I thought "let’s get you on the show and have a bit of a chat about it" if that’s O.K. with you.

Johnathan: Absolutely.

Paul: Good. So, let’s start from the absolute basics so that we’re all on the same page. Could you just explain very briefly what Adobe Air is so that people that haven’t come across it before kind of know what it does.

Johnathan: Certainly. Adobe Air is a development platform for making desktop applications to make desktop applications cross-platform. So, something that you build once and that would work on Windows, Mac OSX as well as Linux.

Paul: O.K. And this is built using web technologies…

Johnathan: Yeah, It’s really great that they’ve managed to leverage what they know things like Flash, Flex, and really the kicker is being able to develop desktop applications using HTML, CSS and JavaScript that, obviously, a lot of us web developers are going to be familiar with.

Paul: Sure. So, I mean that’s I guess why we’ve included it on the show even though it’s a web design podcast, that kind of line between the web and desktop applications seems to be blurring and Air is a big part of that. What drove you to kind of investigate it and kind of look into Air as a product?

Johnathan: For me, it was just a curiosity. The platform, what it could do, knowing that I could create a cross-platform desktop application was kind of enticing. When we build for the web we’re trying to do things as cross-platform as possible make sure that we target as many browsers as we can, and really be able to reach out to the people and do really cool things. So, for me it was like, O.K., well what can I do with this what are the possibilities. One of the first things that went off in my brain was building a Twitter application. At the time, when Twitter was up for more than 24 hours straight, it was kind of cool to be able to build a desktop application to kind of separate out from the web, because the web site was frustrating me to know end, and to be able to put in stuff that made the site more usable for me and in the end was a tool that I got to use every day and that I enjoyed to use.

Paul: Cool. I’ve kind of got a basic understanding of it. I understand what it does and I understand the kind of technologies that exist under it, but can you kind of give me an idea of, you know, how it works as such. I know how to create an HTML page, CSS and Javascript and stuff like that. How do I get from there into turning it into a Air application?

Johnathan: It’s surprisingly quite easy. What happens is, if you look at the Air runtime, is it essentially runs your Air application, so you don’t create a .exe file or a .dwg file you don’t create an executable in the traditional sense. What you end up doing is creating a .air file that you use to distribute. The Air runtime actually handles that. Building that .air file, there is an SDK available from Adobe that allows you to compile this Air file. So, those Air files are pretty straight forward, they’re really just like a ZIP file with some extra information in it. So, to create an actual Air application, you can do it just using a normal text editor, you can do with specific IDEs like Eclipse. If you’re into Flex development, they have Flex builder. If you’re into just doing HTML and CSS kind of thing, you might want to look into Aptana they have Air support built right in. If you’re a fan of Dreamweaver, there’s a Dreamweaver extension for automatically compiling your application, and being able to set properties on your application. So, things like how big should the window be when it opens up, can I resize it, what kind of stuff can I do with it. That obviously, in this GUI sense, to a certain degree can make things a lot easier. So, I think there are a lot of benefits to using an IDE with built in support, but you don’t have to. There is the capability of just using a normal text editor and then running the SDK command line sequences to actually generate the Air file. It is really straight forward.

Paul: So, the one selling feature or one thing about Air that’s been promoted quite heavily is the fact that you can take online applications offline in a sense. The application is still usable even if you’re not connected to the Internet at a particular point in time. I think they showed off, right from the beginning, an eBay example of that where you could do all kinds of things offline, and then when you connected it was all uploaded. How does that kind of process work? There must be some kind of local database that’s running, one presumes.

Johnathan: That’s correct. I think some people may be familiar with Google Gears in having the local storage using the SQLite database. Adobe Air actually does something very similar. They do have a local SQLite database that you’ve seen create local databases and store any information there. There’s actually different ways. You have access to the local file system, so you can certainly write new files. Say, if you wanted to create new text files, xml files, new binary formats. So, if you wanted to create an image editing software that stores files in a binary format, you could do that. So, there’s a lot of flexibility there because you do have some access to the local system. You have network connectivity, so you can do either regular AJAX calls or you can do socket connections. You can connect to web servers. You can connect to remote database servers. You’ve got a lot of flexibility and a lot of control because of that.

Paul: You seem quite enthusiastic about the development environment. What has been your impression of it. Was it something that was a steep learning curve, but when you get there it’s really cool, or is it easy straight out of the box? What were your impressions?

Johnathan: I think it’s going to depend on what it is you’re trying to do. I think that there are going to be some frustrations. There are going to be some things that you have to understand about the environment. To give you an example; the HTML/CSS stuff is pretty cool it basically runs on a WebKit engine, which is the same engine that powers Safari. That gives you a lot of control and stuff, but ultimately that WebKit engine is still running within a Flash runtime. So, there are some limitations to that because of the fact that Adobe just simply hasn’t built in certain support. Things like support for double byte character encoding, so Chinese and Japanese character sets can be more difficult. However, they are working on that. Version 1.1 is supposed to be coming out soon it will have support for that, but right now you’re limited because of that.

Paul: What kind of people should be delving into this. Is this the kind of thing that only a hardcore developer like yourself should be touching or is it something that somebody like myself that would be a front-end interface designer should I even bother picking it up or am I better keeping away?

Johnathan: It’s really easy to develop in. I think you can make really quick solutions really straight forward. To give you a comparison; there is a Mac software called Fluid for creating site applications, but that is separated from the browser. You can kind of plot the same kind of things with Adobe Air because you do have that WebKit engine. You can basically use it as a browser. So, to give you a quick example; Muxtape, which is an online mix-taping thing you upload MP3s, and then people can go to your page and listen to your mix tape… The problem is that if you accidentally close the browser, you lose that information. I think there are a lot of websites that have this stickiness factor where you want to decouple the application from the browser. So, I put together a really basic example in which you type in a URL and it loads up a mix tape. That’s a very straight forward interface, but to be able to do that in a desktop application that I can minimize to the dock or the system tray is something that is, I think, a lot more appealing than running this kind of stuff through the web browser. And, it was really easy to put together. I spent about an hour one evening to put that kind of thing … I mean it is a very basic prototype, but the fact is that it is very straight forward to put that together. So, I think if web developers have ideas, they can really take advantage of that and build pretty cool stuff.

Paul: So, it’s not something we need to be intimidated of, then.

Johnathan: No, absolutely not.

Paul: The other thing that maybe is a bit of a concern to us very standards-based designers in comparison to the Flash community is that Adobe says we support CSS and HTML, as well as Flash, but obviously Flash is their product. You kind of get this feeling that they’re going to always support Flash more and that CSS and HTMl are a bit of an afterthought. Is that the case, or is that unfounded?

Johnathan: To a certain degree, it is the case. It’s, I think, unfortunate. I think they are more familiar with Flash. They’re more familiar with that environment. So, as you try to build the equivalent of a browser within this Flash runtime it’s going to be extremely difficult and I think things are going to get missed. And, I saw that sort of along the Beta process. Things like no support for "undo." I mean, that’s a pretty basic thing, but the fact that that’s not built in there does hamper people trying to build HTML-based applications. It works great in Flash-based applications and then what you end up running into is, to give you another example with Snitter, my little desktop Twitter application because it’s built using HTML and CSS, it had certain limitations, but there’s other Twitter clients built with Adobe Air that were built using Flash that actually have different limitations. So, people would say, "Well this application can do it just fine. Why can’t yours?" You have to kind of explain to them that it’s because of the limitations of how the environment was developed. Despite the fact that they are both still Adobe Air applications, technically they’re done differently and there are maybe more limitations as a result of that.

Paul: Is there an opportunity to mix Flash and XHTML and CSS and whatever else together, or do you have to make this decision up front?

Johnathan: No, absolutely not. Certainly, within the Adobe Air environment, you have that flexibility to create these little hybrid applications. I think Snitter, for example, is a good example of it. There’s a lot of Flash components out there that can do certain things. For example, a bunch of folks made an iMap component, so you can actually connect to an iMap server. However, that component is Flash-based. Another component out there that I saw was a Jabber client. So, let’s say you wanted to do a GMail chat client or some other Jabber-connected application, you can import those Flash runtimes into your application and use them from Javascript. So, you do have that flexibility to use both technologies and take advantage of that. I’ve certainly done that with Snitter, and I’ve done that with other applications as well because we have that flexibility of the environment. I think there is that sort of understanding that you can do that, and actually look out for the solutions that not only are HTML and Javascript, but that are Flash-based as well and come up with new ways of thinking because I think, traditionally, as web developers, we tend to separate those two as much as we can.

Paul: That’s quite interesting. You talked about this kind of hybrid approach of combining Flash and HTML at @Media combining them together and about how we had some fears as standards-based designers of even touching Flash in any kind of context. Is that a kind of approach that you would apply beyond Air to the web generally?

Johnathan: Absolutely. I think MuxTape is a great example of that. To be able to play MP3s isn’t something that’s easily done using Javascript. However, you can take advantage of Flash and use its capabilities to play MP3s to create new interfaces that aren’t specifically 100% Flash-based; that we have something that’s still HTML and Javascript that interacts in ways that I think a lot of us are comfortable with, but still have access to a lot of features that Flash offers to us you know, the fact that we can create the bridge between the two; we can do that on the web just as well as we can do that within Adobe Air.

Paul: O.K. That all sounds very interesting and it certainly has made me want to kind of pick up Air and have a play with it and kind of get my hands dirty. I guess, perhaps as the last question then, is what tips would you give to people like me that haven’t yet touched Air and are considering having a play. What are the big traps to avoid? What are the good things to start with. Where should I begin the journey, so to speak?

Johnathan: I think probably one of the first things you should do is head over to the Adobe web site. They have a number of really good resources to start off with. Obviously, you’re going to need the SDK so you can actually build your applications, but they also have the dev center where they have a number of introductory articles to learn how to build applications and it doesn’t mean those applications have to be built using Adobe applications like Dreamweaver, you can certainly do them without. So, there’s a lot of really good tutorials on there. From there, they lead off to a number of resources outside of Adobe that would certainly help you get started.

Paul: What about mistakes? What were the big mistakes you made up front that, with hindsight, you would avoid? Or, did you get it right the first time?

Johnathan: I don’t make mistakes! Well, I think one of the cool things about the environment is certainly the flexibility to take advantage of a lot of advanced CSS. Because you are using the WebKit engine which, when it comes to CSS 3 support, is one of the most advanced, you know that you have support for things like rounded corners, border radius, that you have support for multiple backgrounds, image-based borders you can do some really cool stuff with that that is really fun to play around with. You can create transparent applications, so if you wanted something that was completely and uniquely shaped, you can do these really cool things. The downfall for that is that you can quickly start running into performance issues. If you start creating all of these alpha PNGs that are layered over the top of each other, they give you a lot of flexibility, but unfortunately are a performance drain on how much your system can actually handle. I think that was one of my initial mistakes going in and saying "Wow, I’ve got all of this stuff that I can use let me throw everything at it" and then realizing that, you know, maybe that wasn’t the best solution. I think we still have to be wise in considering how we structure our CSS, how do we structure the design in such a way that, while it’s still flexible, it still does things from a performance-minded aspect so we’re not doing things that are going to unnecessarily slow down or application. Those are things that we’ve got to think about.

Paul: That’s some really good advice Johnathan. Thank you so much for coming on the show. That was a great introduction to Air. Hopefully it’s encouraged a lot of people listening to the show to go out there and give it a go. Thanks for coming on and talk to you again soon.

Johnathan: Awesome. Thank you very much.

Thanks to Aaron Cooper for transcribing this interview.

Back to top

Listeners feedback:

Getting a feel for accessibility

Our first contribution is from Kenneth and is about accessibility:

I listen to your podcast all the time and am working hard to become a very good web designer. My question for you is about accessibility, I hear a lot of people talking about it but not a lot of web designers are working hard on it to create sites that disabled people can use. I want to be a person who builds accessible sites that really work. How would someone know if their site is really accessible? How can you feel what disabled people are feeling when they visit your site? Could you talk about the different tools that disabled people use to go online so that we can use those tools and try to understand how they feel.

Okay. Let’s start by clearing up a minor point. Validation is not directly related to accessibility. Having a site that validates does not make it accessible. Equally, a site that does not validate is not necessarily inaccessible. Admittedly a site that validates is more likely to be accessible, but that is all. It is great you validate your code and you should continue to do so. However, it is okay if your site does not always validate. There are good reasons why Boagworld does not and I am sure the same is true for Clear:Left.

Let’s turn our attention to the heart of the question; how can you better understand the experiences of disabled users? It is an admirable aim but one that ultimately is impossible to achieve. There are so many different types of disability that you cannot associate with them all. That said, I can make a few suggestions which might help.

A good place to start is by trying out a screen reader. Increasingly screen readers are bundled with operating systems. Recent versions of Microsoft Windows come with a basic Narrator, while the Mac OS includes a more feature-rich screen reader called VoiceOver. However, the most widely used screen readers are the separate commercial products like JAWS for windows. This is probably a good place to start as JAWS offers a free trial version for you to experiment with.

However, be warned. When you first use a screen reader it is an intimidating experience. They take a lot of getting used to and can leave you with the impression that a blind person will never be able to use the internet. An alternative would be to watch a demonstration of a screen reader in action. Ian Lloyd did an excellent demonstration for Boagworld a while ago.

Of course not all visually impaired users are blind. Some use screen magnifiers which enlarge screen content. Again, most operating systems have this functionality built in so you can easily try this for yourself. However, there are also a number of commercial products you can try out too.

The other form of visual impairment worth investigating is colour blindness. Although not as serious, it is far more common and affects a large number of users. There are a couple of tools which will give you an idea of what a colour blind person is seeing. The first is Colorblind Web Page Filter which allows you to enter a url and see what that page would look like to a colour blind user. The second is Sim Daltonism, a colour blindness simulator for the Mac OS. Both will help you better understand what the web is like for colour blind users.

The final little tip I want to share with you is kind of stupid but does sort of work. I do a lot of design for the elderly and they often suffer from a mixture of visual problems and motor issues (like arthritis). In order to better understand their experience I have bought a pair to ski gloves and some reading glasses (I don’t need reading glasses). Every now and again, I surf the site I am designing wearing both the glasses and gloves. The glasses make the screen hard to read while the gloves hamper my use of the mouse and the keyboard. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to select something from a drop down menu wearing ski gloves!

Turning problems upside down

Our second listener contribution for today is not a question but a tip. It comes from Jeremy and he writes:

I can’t remember the name of the book off the top of my head (Getting Things Done?) that you’ve been recommending, but you mentioning it reminded me of a problem solving method that I learned a few years back that I thought you might enjoy. It’s called turning the problem upside down. It sounds stupid, but honestly it works pretty well.

The principle behind it is if you can’t figure out a solution to a problem or are having trouble coming up with different ideas, you turn the problem upside down, or invert it, and then come up with solutions for the backwards problem. For some reason it’s much easier to think of the backwards solutions. Then you flip them back to normal and there are your solutions. Sounds confusing, so here’s an example:

Problem: You want to increase traffic to your website

Turn the problem upside down: You want to decrease traffic to your website

Some ‘off the top of my head’ Solutions:

  • Make the site unfriendly
  • Randomly shut it off
  • Never update anything
  • Be rude
  • Keep key content hidden or difficult to find

Now let’s flip the solutions back again and see if they solve the original problem:

  • Make the site more warm/friendly
  • Make sure it stays up reliably
  • Be good about frequently updating content
  • Be aware how of my copy and if I’m talking down to my visitors
  • Make sure the good content is easy to find and prominent

What a great little tip! Excellent when you are suffering from creative block. I love it when you guys send in suggestions rather than questions. I know from the forum that the boagworld audience is hugely experienced and its great when you share that experience. Keep them coming!

112. Jina

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

On show 112: How to be more efficient using HTML snippets, Jina Bolton on women in web design and moving to a mac.

Play

Podcast: Download (30.4MB)

Download this show.

Launch our podcast player

News and events | Using HTML snippets | Jina Bolton on women in web design | Listener emails

News and events

Some customers are not worth caring about

My first piece of news is a post by Gerry McGovern. In his latest post he argues that some customer are not worth caring about.

The thrust of the article is that by appealing to everybody, you ultimately appeal to nobody. This is something I see repeatedly from clients who define their target audience as “the general public” or “men under 50.”

You also see it among developers who become overly concerned that people using IE4 with Javascript disabled might be unable to access the site. Even content providers suffer from this problem, dumping content on their websites “just in case somebody finds it useful.”

Ultimately building a website has to generate a return on investment and some customers don’t generate that return.

Version targeting rumbles on

Next up is two new articles on A List Apart, which once again tackle version targeting. Jeremy Keith argues against it, while Jeffrey Zeldman defends the position.

I have tried to stay fairly objective in my coverage of this issue. However, although I understand the position of people like Jeremy, I believe that Microsoft have done a good thing.

The arguments against strike me as somewhat naive and arrogant. We live in a world of compromise and yet as compromises go this isn’t a bad one. By adding a single line of code we have the ability to control how the market leader renders our sites. As Zeldman says…

Designers and developers should be popping corks, hugging each other, and weeping with joy. IE no longer sucks. No version of IE will ever again surprise us with unexpected displays or behavior.

Perhaps I am overly pragmatic, caring more about real world scenarios than purity of solution, but I am hopeful about the future.

Let users tagging your posts with delicious

The last news story is two posts from Christian Heilmann. The first is a Javascript technique that returns any delicious tags associated with the current page. This is a great way of introducing tagging to your site, without having to tag all of your own articles. The downside is that when users click on a tag, they are not taken to other articles you have written. Instead they see all delicious links associated with that tag. Good for the user, maybe not so good for retaining users.

The second post by Christian is another Javascript solution. This time he provides a mechanism for walking a user through the key features on your site. It generates an animated series of popup caption boxes beside different screen elements. It is definitely useful for showing off key features to new users. However, I have to wonder if a good screencast wouldn’t do the job better. Nevertheless, it is an interesting proof of concept. Check it out.

Back to top

Feature: Using HTML snippets

If you are part of a web design team or skip constantly between projects, then you might want to consider an alternative approach to writing your HTML. Discover how we became more efficient at Headscape by using HTML snippets.

Back to top

Expert interview: Jina Bolton on women in web design

Paul: Okay. So joining myself and Marcus today is Jina Bolton. How are you, Jina? Good to have you on the show.

Jina: I am doing well. How are you?

Paul: Yeah. Well, other than the weather that we just keep complaining about, things arenít too bad here. We are bearing up under the strain. So, for those of you that havenít come across Jina before, she is now an internationally renowned speaker

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: and author and incredible web designer. And is the kind of quality of person that is selected to appear at South by Southwest (SXSW) Marcus just for your interest that she is the kind of person they are looking for not you.

Marcus: You know, I know that because I got a magazine thing through by South by Southwest and there she was on the cover of it.

Paul: Ummm!

Jina: [laughs] Yeah. I got into a little for that too.

Paul: Why did you get into trouble for that? Who with?

Jina: The company I work or. Iím not really a speaker on behalf of that company, so

Paul: Ahhh, I see.

Jina: and they printed that company name by my name.

Paul: Right.

Jina: Anyway, different subject. [laughs]

Paul: Okay!

Marcus: [laughs]

Paul: And the company you work for will remain nameless and notorious for their strictness over things like that, so

Jina: Yeah.

Paul: There we go. But, basically yes Marcus. They want young attractive, intelligent and clever designer rather than an aging pop-star. Sorry about that.

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: [laughs] I can live with it.

Paul: Yeah. Jina has been kind enough to let me come on her panel, so that should be fun shouldnít it? Iím looking forward to that.

Jina: Yeah, I think it will be great.

Paul: If we actually get our act together and organize it.

Marcus: But, Jina is obviously that much richer after you have paid her Paul.

Paul: Well yes. You know I did have to bribe my way on. But, it seemed to work, so that is good.

Paul: So, there are so many things we could have gotten Jina on the show to discuss. She seems to be talking a lot about CSS lately. Mainly just by putting the word sex in the title of everything she does, which seems to improve your ratings to no end.

Jina: [laughs] You found my tactic.

Paul: Yeah. It seems to work for you Jina, so thatís good. But we wanted to go for a little bit of an unusual subject. I wanted to really look at the role of women within web design because well letís face it, your kind of a rare breed in some senses Jina. There arenít as many women in web design as perhaps there should be. And I just thought that it might be an interesting subject. And Iím sure that you have some opinions on it and so maybe we can encourage I know that there are a lot of women that listen to our show that maybe havenít moved full-time into the world of web design and maybe youíve got some advice to offer. So thatís the kind of plans. Does that sound okay with you?

Jina: Sure.

Paul: Good. Okay, well letís kick off then just by asking a really kind of obvious question, but kick us off with this Do you believe that women provide something unique to the world of web design, and if so what is that? Is there actually a difference? Is there something that makes womenís role unique?

Jina: Ummm. Well I think that there is something unique being brought to the table, that personís own personal style because I think that men and women have the same skill set. Now of course there are a lot of women that have a feminine style, so they do bring that into play, but I think it is more style than it is the natural skill of designing itself.

Paul: Okay. So, do you believe that there are kind of genetic differences really? ëTheyí make all kinds of things for example that woman have better color perception than men, but men have probably got better 3D acuity and things like that. Do you think that that actually makes a difference? Or is that all so marginal, that itís not that big deal?

Jina: Well I havenít really thought about that to be honest. As for color, I donít know. I guess, you know, a woman sense of color perception is supposed to be more acute. Maybe they could bring better colors to the table, but I think the skill sets are pretty much the same. I guess, you know, a lot of men can design for men and men can design for women. I think the skill sets are the same.

Paul: Oh, okay. So you wouldnít believe say, for example, if there was a website that was primarily aimed at a female market that it should be a female designer that works on a site like that?

Jina: Ah, well. So I do think that a female designer would have an easier time knowing how to cater to a female audience because they are that audience. But I donít think that it would make the website design better. I think a man would be just as capable in creating for that female audience.

Paul: Ah, that is interesting. Marcus, what do you think about that? I kind of always naturally presumed that somebody is more capable of designing for their own gender.

Marcus: Iím surprised by Jinaís answer to be honest. But, thinking about it, it is something that you think ëYeah, it makes more sense for women to design for women.í but really itíd to do more with the content. I think it would be hard for a man to produce content for a site aimed at women. But maybe the design is something, like Jina says, is more the designers have a set bunch of skills and whether you are a man or a woman it really doesnít make any difference. So it is more of a content issue.

Jina: I do agree that it would be easier for a woman to do it, because like I said she is that audience so sheís gonna know what kind of things a woman would like. But, I donít think that would make the website design any better because a man would be able to do just the same.

Paul: Hmmm.

Jina: You know it is kind-of sort-of like to ëbring issues into ití. Like, I had a firm that was from India who was asked to design for the National Civil Rights Museum and his isnít African-American, nor was he even American, but he did a fantastic job. So, I think for gender it would kind of the same. Like, if he was African-American he probably would have had an easier time but he would still have been creative with the artistic part.

Paul: So basically, he had to work harder to achieve the good design, but he could still do it.

Jina: Right.

Paul: Hmmm. Yeah. I do see where you are coming from on that. You mentioned earlier about a kind of feminine style to design. Do you think there are differences in style? What would you class as being a particularly feminine style of design?

Jina: I think it is really color choices and font choices, as well as certain patterns like some designers I think of at the top-of my head *Vera-Ley* and *Legha Alfanterra* they both you know if you look at there websites they are very very feminine. You know my website is really feminine looking, but I think it is because of the colors theyíve chosen and the font choice weíve picked and as well as the patterns. I notice a lot of guys tend to go for the grungier things and the girls kind-of go for more of a clean look. But I think those are stylistic differences.

Paul: So when do you think that kind of where do you think that comes from? You know is that something that is trained into us? You know, blokes tend to go for grungiest stuff? Even from being a kid I guess ëboys are blueí and ëgirls are pinkí, you know, all that kind of thing.

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: But, how much of it is nature and how much of it is nurture do you think?

Jina: Ewe I have no idea. [laughs]

Paul: [laughs]

Marcus: [laughs]

Jina: But, I do think it comes from the way people are brought up like you said ëgirls are pinkí and ëboys are blueí. I think it is really what that person has come to like as they have grown up.

Paul: Hmmm.

Jina: To be honest, Iím not a real fan of pink at all

Paul: [laughs] Good for you.

Jina: but I use it in my website for some reason. [laughs]

Paul: [laughs] I mean yes. You see the trouble that you are making Jina, is that we are trying to make informed comments on this show and nothing that we ever say on this show is informed.

Jina: I think, this topic is kind of just subjective I guess.

Paul: Yeah. Basically you are saying that I picked a dumb subject. That is what you are saying isnít it?

Jina: No, no.

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: A good topic to talk about it, but it is kind of confusing.

Paul: Yeah.

Jina: You know and when I started out doing websites, I used to do websites for rock bands. And all of those sites I did were grungy so I am kind-of contradicting myself.

Paul: Ahhh. So I mean, I guess the big question is that whether you know obviously the industry that you have chosen is a male dominated industry. There are far more men out there. Certainly there are far more high profile men out there on the speaking circuits and writing articles and all of the rest of it. I mean do you perceive that as a problem?

Jina: I am not really sure if ëproblemí is the word. I do think it is getting better. I see a lot more women speaking now and even attending conferences. I see more and more women in attendance. And of course, more women writing articles in books, but I think it may have to do with that it is a fairly new field, in comparison to other design related fields. And so now that it is getting taught in schools, more and more women will start getting into it.

Paul: Hmmm. I mean that raises quite an interesting question. You know, how did you get into it then? From you know, what is your background and how did you end up being a web designer?

Jina: Well actually, my Dad was playing around with making his own personal website and I was intrigued by the idea of publishing to the Internet. So he kind of showed me really-really basic-basic HTML using font tags and tables.

Paul: Yeah.

Jina: I grew up as an artist so I went to art school and I was actually going to be a print designer, but as I was learning HTML it became my hobby and it just kind of merged and became my job.

Paul: Hugh. Okay, fair enough. It is just interesting to know. Okay, so do you think we should be you know you talked about that there are female designers learning at school these days on how to become web designers. Do you think we should be doing active as a community to encourage women to come into the profession? I mean, I know for an example, that there was a lot of talk at one stage about proactively discriminating in conferences to encourage there to be more women speakers. Publications need to make a point of using female authors in order to you know setup role models almost artificially. Is that something you would encourage or do you think that is a slippery slope?

Jina: I have mixed feelings on that. As a woman, I have definitely benefited from people that were looking for more female speakers or more female authors so it has definitely helped me. But, I think discrimination is sort of a fine line and if a guy is more capable and more skilled he really should have more of that opportunity than a woman who is not as skilled. I wouldnít want her to get in, just because she is a woman. But, the fact that there are more opportunities is helpful so I am kind-of on the fence on that one. It is sort of like the same way I feel, and I know this might be considered controversial, but the whole you know like when you get a job. Are you getting hired in my case, if I get hired because I am a woman and I am half Asian versus somebody who maybe is a White male, but who are a lot more skilled than me. I donít know how I feel about that. You know, I am all for more opportunity, I think that is a really good thing. But I think that any discrimination is discrimination.

Paul: I mean it is an interesting one, as somebodyís employer, and I donít know Marcus will feel about this but there are occasions when I really think we miss out as a company. I am sorry to say, we are an all male company, all thirteen of us. And not because we have gone out to be that, in fact precisely the opposite. Weíve often offered woman jobs and they have turned us down actually.

Jina: [laughs]

Paul: And it is a very sad reflection on us. But, I mean Marcus how would you feel about actively going out and saying ëRight, okay, we want to hire a female designer because we want that female perspective.í?

Marcus: I am not too sure how I feel about that, from an employment point of view. As an employer, I think you have to look at who is the best candidate. But what I was thinking about when we were talking about earlier, and this goes back to what I am not talking at South by Southwest (SXSW) this year

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: and one of the reasons of why I am not doing that.

Paul: Itís because youíre White, middle-aged and middle-class.

Marcus: No, but one of the things the people who are organizing the panel have to look at different they have to think about ëOkay we are going to have a bunch of panels talking about business, a bunch of panels talking about designí you canít have everything. All the panels cannot just talk about business, for example. So you have to think, okay we will have to split it equally between the different types of genre, if you like. Now, doing that we also want to have an equal split between men and women, I donít think there is anything wrong with that. As an employer it is a different thing. I am not sure, where the law stands on that.

Paul: Ummm!

Marcus: Iím not sure we actually would be able to say we have to have a female employee, or whatever. I think you would be discriminating against other people by doing that.

Paul: Yeah, I guess you are. But, I think we are actually (I have to be honest) I think we suffer as a business to some degree. A classic example of that was not long ago we worked on a website for a higher education institution where over 75% of the people that went there were women. And we were having to do a design. We did the first design and we put it in front of bearing in mind all of our designers are men and we put in front of some test users and the overwhelming response back was ëYouíre trying too hard. You know it is kind of overly feminine.í And it would have been so much easier in that situation if we had a female designer there just to say ëGuys. You really donít need to make it pink and you donít need the little fairies in the corner.í

Marcus: [laughs]

Jina: [laughs] Exactly, you donít want to go with crochets with pink and flowers unless that is the brand you are going for.

Paul: Yeah, I mean that is a good question actually. Do you think there is any bear in mind there is a lot of male designers out there that are listening to this show what are the absolute no-noís? How can they design for a feminine audience without kind of really going over the top? You know, is there any kind of advice you can give, or is it just kind of feel as you go along?

Jina: I think you definitely want to get critiques from women, like if you have peers letís say you are working at a design agency and there are female designers around you, get their opinions. If you donít really have that, I donít know, I guess go to Starbuckís or something

Paul: [laughs]

Jina: and get some critiques because I am just up more for just keeping it simple and clean.

Paul: Yep. That sounds like good advice. I think we are going to have to wrap it up there Jina. Not because I am bored with talking to you, but because the sound quality on Skype sucks so much today. I think weíre gonna have to get you back on the show another time to share maybe some more stuff.

Jina: Okay.

Paul: I donít know, maybe when you are over in the UK that might be possible. Iím sure that it will happen before too long.

Jina: That sounds good.

Paul: Okay.

Jina: And it might even be our Internet connection. I am sorry about that.

Paul: Thatís alright, these things happen. I blame Marcus personally. I never have problems except for when he is on.

Jina: [laughs]

Marcus: Ha ha ha.

Jina: Thatís awful.

Paul: [laughs] Okay. Thanks very much for your time and we will talk to you again soon.

Jina: Okay. Alright.

Paul: Bye.

Back to top

Listeners email:

SXSW

This week we have a couple of questions about SXSW:

Rich asks…

I am attending sxsw for the first time this year. What should I expect and how can I get the most out of it?

Last year was my first year at SXSW and to be honest it is overwhelming. Before I went I planned out all of the panels I was going to attend but to be honest I wasted my time. I don’t think it is really possible to prepare for a 10 track conference. Ultimately what you go and see will be dictated by how much energy you have left after the various parties you were attending the night before!

Talking of parties, in my in my opinion it is the social aspects of SXSW that is really the most interesting. At the end of the day, you can find out about most of the topics covered online. However, it is meeting and chatting with other web designers that is the really inspiring bit. To this end I would suggest two ideas.

First, take time to just sit in the corridors and get chatting with people. If you are in a good conversation, don’t worry too much that you are missing the panels. Its amazing who you meet just sitting around. Oh yes, and don’t be afraid to introduce yourself to anybody. Most people are friendly and if they are not… screw them!

Second, if there are people you know already attending or if there are people you want to meet add them on Twitter. That way you can see where they are and what they are up to. As a newbie last year, twitter was how I found out where all the best parties were. Definitely add me as I intend to keep twitter up to date with my comings and goings.

Talking of parties and socialising Matthew asks…

Have you considered doing a live show at SXSW?

We have considered it but have decided against it. To be honest, sxsw is manic enough without adding a live show. What is more, I don’t think live shows are that interesting to those that are not attending. This means we will not be releasing a show on the 12th March. However, we will be recording as many interviews as we can cram in, which we will be using over the coming weeks and months.

Although we are not doing a live show, that doesn’t mean we wont have opportunity to meet up. Boagworld is once again sponsoring the Great British Booze up, which is happening on Monday 10th March from 7:30pm at Shakespeare’s Pub (314 E. 6th Street). Full details at http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/403331/

Moving to the mac

Brenda asks…

You mentioned on the Christmas list that you recently converted from Windows to Mac. How did it go? Did you have to buy all new software, or were you able to convert licenses for some of it? What was the learning curve like? What do you miss most from Windows? What would you say the overall budget for this was (emptying out that duct tape wallet)?

A very timely question Brenda. With Marcus intending to buy a mac, we have been discussing the switch. I have to say that for me it went very well. Within a week I was entirely happy working on my new macbook and could do everything I did under windows and more. I have certainly never looked back and can honestly say I miss nothing.

However, I confess I was in a luxurious position. Unlike most people I had Headscape to pay for the raft of software I had to purchase. Admittedly companies such as Adobe allowed me to transfer my license from windows to the mac (after jumping through some hoops). However, that was not always the case. Fortunately most of the software I purchased was only $30-40 each. However, that can quickly mount up. The biggest waste was on Microsoft Office. To begin with I couldn’t imagine life without Outlook and Word. In hindsight, I really didn’t need it. iWorks which costs a fraction of Office does everything I need and Apple Mail is a much more pleasurable experience than Outlook. I didn’t keep track of how much I spent on software, however I would guess it was $200-300.

Overall it was a great move and I love not only the mac OS but the great software being developed by some very cool mac developers.

To leave an audio comment for the show skype “boagworldshow” or call +44 20 8133 5122.

, , , , , , , , , ,

HTML snippets

Posted in Development on by Paul Boag

If you are part of a web design team or skip constantly between projects, then you might want to consider an alternative approach to writing your HTML.

At Headscape efficiency is king. If you are efficient, you increase profit margins and keep prices competitive. You can only charge as much as the market allows. If you want to increase your profits you need to complete projects faster, while avoiding lowering quality.

As part of our efficiency drive we identified 4 problems…

  • Designers have to work with each others markup. We all code in different way and this creates a learning curve when a project gets passed between designers.
  • Integration HTML markup into server side applications was time consuming. Because designers coded in a different way and change their markup for each project, it was time consuming to apply that code to web applications like our in-house content management system.
  • Designers were constantly reinventing the wheel. Each project was built from the ground up with little reuse of markup across projects.
  • It was confusing switching between multiple projects. In order to ensure the most efficient use of time, designers are expected to work on several projects simultaneously. Unfortunately, switching between project is confusing because each had different markup.

We required some way to standardise tour markup.

Templating doesn’t work

At first, we produced templates for the different types of pages. For example, we had news listing, text and FAQ templates. Although this worked, they were not very flexible. As soon as the content or functionality began to deviate from the norm the templates had to be heavily customised. This undermined the benefits they provided. They also didn’t allow flexibility of design. Although content and design should be separate, it rarely works that way. Sometimes content needs to be marked up up in a particular order. Other times extra divs are required. The templates didn’t accommodate either scenario.

We needed a more flexible approach.

Using snippets

The solution was HTML snippets. Content such as news listings, forms, navigation and FAQs appear in a vast majority of websites we build. By coding these in a consistent way each time they appear, we solve all of the efficiency problems mentioned above.

Take for example news listings. Most news listings look the same. They have…

  • Title
  • date
  • link
  • description
  • and sometimes an image

Because of this consistency you can code in the same way each time. Content will change, each will have its own unique id and sometimes an element might be dropped (e.g. the date or image). However, fundamentally the snippet is consistent

This consistency allows…

  • A designer picking up the code to instantly understand what is happening.
  • A developer to quickly integrate it with server side code because the integration is consistent every time.
  • Pages to be built faster because you are dropping in pre-generated markup

In affect all the designer has to do is build an HTML framework. This consists of the overall containers (main content, secondary content etc.) He then drop snippets into that framework in whatever order he requires.

However, the benefits don’t stop there. You can also associate CSS with each snippet of HTML.

CSS fragments

If your HTML snippets are consistent, you can also build up a library of CSS fragments to support them. Take for example our news listing. Not only does it often contain the same content it is also often laid out in the same way. The image sits to the left while title, date and description sits next to it on the right. Because we know what the markup looks like, we can create this layout as a CSS fragment that can be dropped in whenever this HTML snippet is used.

We are not limited to a single CSS fragment per HTML snippet. Over time you can build up a variety of different CSS layouts for each snippet that can be used as the design dictates.

This approach provides a huge productivity benefit as the HTML and CSS can be built up in a ‘pick and mix’ fashion. However, you can also take the principle one step further and apply it to Javascript.

JavaScript functions

Each HTML snippet can have associated Javascript functions. These can be dropped in just like CSS fragments. These functions carry out common behaviour associated with that HTML snippet.

Take, for example, a FAQ snippet. A common behaviour with this snippet is to only display the answer when a question is clicked. Because we have consistent code in the snippet, it is easy to build a function that works with it and can be dropped in as required. Where possible keep your functions generic and not tied to a particular HTML snippet. However, where that cannot be done, we have standard HTML that allows us to reuse functions across projects with no editing.

Conclusions

In many ways this approach is a cross between microformats and frameworks and so in itself is not groundbreaking. However, from an efficiency standpoint, the impact is overwhelming. Without a doubt it will speed up development times and allow you to turn around projects quicker.

Who do you ask to tender for your web project?

Posted in Web strategy on by Paul Boag

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?

One option is to search on google filtering by geography. There are valid reasons for selecting a web design agency within the same country. Issues such as currency exchange, time zones and differences in company law can make working with international agencies challenging. However, beyond that, geography doesn’t play a large part. A web design agency is just as capable of designing a website whether they are next door or a few hundred miles away.

The best approach is to rely on word of mouth recommendation. Nothing beats a recommendation by somebody who has already worked with a particular agency. The best recommendations come from people you know and respect. Start by talking to your suppliers or other business partners. Who did they use to build their websites? What was their experience like? Next, if you are apart of a trade association see if they have any recommendations. They often have lists of preferred suppliers and even if they don’t you can always ask who produced their website. After that, try looking further a field. Search online for any forums or mailing lists related to your sector and ask for recommendations there.

A final option is to look at websites that you like or consider successful. Most websites will have a link somewhere to the agency that developed them. If they don’t, then a quick search on Google can often reveal the agencies name. However, it is important to be careful if adopting this approach. Just looking at a website does not tell you the whole story. The underlying technology could be a shambles, the management may have been appalling and the project might have exceeded its budget and missed specified deadlines. If you do select an agency on the basis of a website then you may be wise to call the website owner first and get their opinion on the agency.

By combining the various approaches above you should have built up a considerable list of agencies. How many agencies you choose to send the brief to is subjective. It depends on the size of the project and the time available. Invite too many and you have a lot of proposals to read and presentations to sit through. Invite too few and you may not receive enough responses to carry out a fair comparison. For an “average” website redesign (if there is such a thing) anywhere between five and ten would be a good number. However, the chances are that your current list is larger than that. How then do you refine it down to a reasonable number?

Assessing an agencies website

The most effective way of finalizing the list of agencies you wish to tender is by looking at their websites. An agencies website can tell you a lot about whether they are right for your project. The problem is that web design agencies are very aware that they are judged by their websites and so put a lot of effort into projecting the right image. Your challenge is to look beyond the superficial gloss and focus on what can be learnt about the reality of their offering.

It is easy to get seduced by alluring graphics and exciting animation. However, I suggest there are four essential pieces of information that you need to focus on.

  • Do they have the capacity to deliver? You need to be confident that their team is big enough and has the right skill to deliver your project. A good agency will ensure that information on the size and makeup of their company is available, in order to help you make that judgment.
  • Do they have the right experience? Agencies who have experience of working on similar projects or in the same sector, can prove invaluable. Their experience will dramatically reduce the learning curve and this will impact costs and timescales.
  • Can they produce the right design style? When we discuss design in the next chapter I will argue that brand identity and target audience, rather than the preferences of either the client or agency should dictate design. It is therefore important that the chosen agency is capable of designing a user interface suited to these requirements. Most agencies show examples of their work on their websites. Look for examples that are aimed at a similar target audience or mirror the style to your existing branding. Failing that make sure the examples on their sites demonstrate a broad range of styles. If all the sites they produce have a definite “house” style and that is not inline with your requirements, then look elsewhere.
  • Can they deliver your technical requirements? Good web design is about more than the user interface. Increasingly, web projects involve complex development work. An agencies website should demonstrate a capability to deliver these kinds of projects. There should be examples that are comparable to your requirements and using similar technologies.

If a website does not provide you with the information you require, then take the time to pick up the phone and speak to the agency directly. A five-minute phone call can be more enlightening than pouring over a site for hours.

Hopefully this process will allow you to create a definitive list of agencies you wish to invite to tender. Once the brief has been sent, expect the agencies to call with various questions. Be sure to note down the calls you receive. Who took the time to call you and who did not? Of those who did call, which asked intelligent questions and which had not read the brief thoroughly? These are all clues that help you build up a picture of the agency and informs your decision making process.

Podcast 24: Selecting a content management system

Posted in Classic shows on by Paul Boag

With almost all clients wanting to have at least some control over their websites, the choice of content management system has become a key component in a successful website project plan.

Download this show.

This week Paul and Marcus are joined by fellow Headscape employees, Mark Crawley and Chris Scott in the new Headscape office!

Boagworld news

This week Paul rants about a new web design podcast while praising another that has been nice enough to massage his already over-inflated ego.

Talking of over inflated ego’s, Paul wants to remind everybody about the Geek Dinner being thrown in his honour (well that’s how he likes to think of it) this coming Thursday. Paul and Marcus can’t wait to meet all four of their regular listeners in person as well as making a load of new geek friends who have never heard of this podcast!

Techno buster: Server side and Client side

Why is it that all web developers like to speak their own special language? This week Paul and Mark unpack the differences between server side and client side by trying to explain the roles and limitations of both in plain English.

Main feature: Selecting a content management system

Paul kicks off by discussing the four types of content management systems:

  • Editing of static HTML websites using tools such as Dreamweaver and Contribute
  • Editing of specific site sections like news and events
  • Editing of entire site content including site architecture
  • Enterprise level content management with workflow and permissions

The discussion then expanded to look at the pros and cons of bespoke content management systems vs. off the shelf products. Finally we ended by looking at what factors should influence your decision when choosing a CMS.

Factors included:

  • The flexibility to control site design
  • The hosting requirements of the CMS
  • The functionality offered by the system
  • The expandability of the CMS
  • The learning curved required to implement and use the CMS
  • Your budget
  • The systems support for accessibility and web standards
  • The quality of the WYSIWYG editor

Related article: Designing for your CMS

Web resources: CMS related sites

Open Source CMS
This great site allows you to view demos of every open source CMS imaginable as well as providing user ratings and an extensive forum. As the name suggests this is a great place to start when looking for an open source CMS.

CMS Matrix
This site allows you to compare several content management systems based on a variety of criteria including security, flexibility and support. This is an excellent site if you are trying to narrow your field of options.

Xstandard
Xstandard is truly a top of the line WYSIWYG editor. It produces valid, accessible code as well as allowing designers to limit the control content editors have over the appearance of a site. We have covered this editor before but it’s so good it deserves a second mention!

Your thoughts

We have received loads of email relating to content management systems already and so we know this is a big area of interest for our listeners. Share your thoughts and experience of using content management systems by posting a comment here.