Quick post today but may help save someone a bit of time debugging and back tracking with code.

When using a combination of Sifr ( replacing fonts with a Flash and Javascript combination ) and jQuery ( Javascript codebase which can be built upon for numerous web coding uses ) there was a problem. The code animations and display worked fine but Internet Explorer was throwing up an error. Firefox and other browser were fine. All very easily sorted by simply linking to the Sifr code, after linking to the jQuery code.

The best web browser in the world is about to get even better. Help Mozilla break the record

Download FireFox 3 on the 17th June 2008

Was just away to order the monthly supply of books from Amazon.co.uk and i noticed they have had a redesign. Not overly keen on the visuals of the site as a whole, but when looking through i am stunned to see three basic, fundamental errors that is quite shocking to see on one of the worlds most visited and profitable online businesses.

1.) Viewing on a 1024 x 768 monitor there is side scroll ! If Amazon are saying that this is now, a depreciated size of monitor, they are mistaken.

2.) A click here link? Imagine a user viewing the page with a screenreader, (which is software that reads out web pages for blind users), is going to read out “Click Here”. This means absolutely nothing to them, the link should be descriptive and read the text to the left of the actual link : “Forgot your password”. This would helps to users they understand what they are about to click on, and navigate to. Imagine if a page had a 15 “click here” links. How is anyone going to navigate that page with ease! This would help both accessibility and usability of the site.

3.) Last but certainly not least, viewing the source code of Amazon.co.uk shows its riddled with tables, inline css and javascript. The worst offender of the three being tables, which could inspire a whole series of blog posts, why not to use them, alone.

Overall

Now these are three basic errors that i came across within minutes of being on the site. Im quite sure there would be be many more, on further inspection.

I’m shocked, annoyed and disappointed that in 2008, a business so “credible” as Amazon are have redesigned their site to such a low standard.

Being on Vista since launch date ( coming up to a year a and half believe it or not !) we have had to revert to older PCs to check what web sites look and perform on with IE 6 and 7.

With IE6 still having a prominent (and unfortunate) foothold of up to 40% on some of our sites, its absolutely vital the site is fully tested and rendered in this browser. Its sometimes possible to get away with one stylesheet that covers all the browsers, well i say all, but Firefox, Safari, Opera, IE6 and IE7*. Internet Explorer 7 renders far better than 6 but still suffers from little blemishes here and there. It is sometimes necessary to use conditional stylesheets when the lovely guys at Microsoft’s software just wont step into line, despite contengincy measures.

A little off topic with the conditionals but the point is that IE6 needs to be tested in. It wasnt possible till now on Vista, but the fantastic guys at DebugBar have come up with an app that you can test any version of IE in Vista and XP.

The software is still in Alpha but this is looking very promising indeed. Its about time for something be available. However it really should be Microsoft that had something developed, web designers are the ones that spend millions of hours getting CSS to play nice because their own software isn’t up to scratch.

* These are the main web browsers but sometimes IE5 other minority share web browsers need to tested in. It all depends, as with most things in web design, with the target audience.

P.S : If you relatively new to to the web design scene you are very lucky indeed IE’s market share has almost disappeared.  Think coding difficulty for IE6 multiplied by 3.

Browsing about numerous sites to see what is going on from other design agenies is always fun, and sometimes you come across real little ‘gems’.

This is certainly one – a little stick man killing a dinosaur may not sound like much, but the programming and testing gone into this would have been very time consuming to say the least. Its the physics of it that makes it so impressive.

http://kakarod.com/v3/

Thanks guys you have wasted another 10 minutes of our time !

A short trip over the beautiful area of Bavaria, Germany, last month turned out to be a very expensive trip indeed! It wasn’t the cost of the flight, the cost of the hotel or even the cost of food and drink!

The culprit was the handy, yet too handy, Apple I-Phone. Browsing Google maps and keeping up with news from the British Isles cost an astonishing £280! At £7.05/MB that works out at measly 40 megabits of data! Browing one Google map of the area is about 300k of data and represents £2.35 of British currency.

The I-phone is very handy bit of kit, being able to check emails just about anywhere and view any website( well close – any website without Flash) on the go is what people have dreamt about for a good while. Off course mobile phones have had the ability to get online for a number of years, however its the I-Phones touch screen and fantastic usabilty that makes it a “joy” to use, rather than “fiddly” when comparing it to previous mobile browing experiences.

The Edge network is of course, free to use if you are within the boundaries of the North and Irish seas, but be very aware if you happen to turn “Data Roaming On” when travelling out with the United Kingdom.

Last week (Tuesday 26th February) BBC took their Beta version of the homepage into live production. As its my Firefox home page which i view many times a day, i thought id give my thoughts on it and 5 ways how id improve it.

First off i think the BBC (or the hired team) has done a great job. The site makes extensive use of AJAX and clever Javascript’ing which allows user customisation. The clock is a clever addition and the natural way the second tick round by adding a slight fade is a nice touch. Its these little, subtle additions and thats add to the users perception of quality of a brand / business.

I love the way i can choose what content appears on my screen. I quickly got rid of the Children, Radio, TV ( which ill get onto ) and I-Player sections and adding in sections such as business, technology news and a few others. Dragging those content sections into my prefered locations was a breeze and highly intuitive, in the way the cross hair appears when hovering over the top of the rounded box, housing each content area. There are numerous other things i could i go into detail about it works but i highly recommend you try it out for yourself. Here is what id do to improve it.

1.) Implement a Login system: If you change computers, change locations, swap web browsers or clear your cookies, then unfortunately all the fun of creating your own little personalized BBC homepage has been wasted! The website stores your customized details in a cookie. A simple way round this would be to implement a log in system which would allow you to login within a standardised user name and password. Then users would be able to view their on own settings anywhere, on any device. Some of you may think it only takes a few minutes (or seconds depending on the extent of the customization) to the edit the page options each time. If your someone like me however that uses multiple computers and devices in different locations, frequently, it becomes a bit of a pain. The BBC may have a security / privacy issue with this solution ( which im sure they would have thought about. This login system however, would improve the experience for a number of users.

2.) The size of the BBC main advert. Unfortunately this section, in the top right of the web page, cannot be customized as it hard wired into the design. As the main computer i use has a 1024 x 768 screen, this part of the web page takes up about half the screen height and more about 3/4 of the screen width. Its obtrusive and takes away importance from the other sections i pay more attention too. I can live with it, sure, but it would improve things and allow me to access the information iv carefully customized to my preferences.

3.) Lovely shop window but: The design, look and feel of the front page is great, however when you click on any of links to the news stories, the old, outdated website appears in all its glory (or not). Its like having a fantastic shop window with intriguing products, but when you look further into the shop it has poorly maintained facilities. I’m guessing the BBC will be updating these inner pages at some point, but i think it would have been better to wait ( depending on how long its going to take ) and launch it all at once.

4.) TV listings. While i watch selected BBC viewed programmes, it would have been a welcome addition to have competing broadcasters programme listings. As this is the BBC’s own site they have omitted these for obvious reasons however from a users point of view i don’t just view their channels. For this reason i turned off that section in my customisation. I could even live with it if they had their own channels heavily promoted compared to others, but for now ill look for all TV listings from other available media.

5.) CodeWise – From a web designers point of view: Much of a what a web designers / developers does goes on in the background (and what 95% of everyday, general web users don’t see ) and that is the code. This can be viewed from Page > View Source (in IE7 :: The browser which the majority of people will be viewing this article from.) It uses some on page styling, which would be better put in one of the already used standalone CSS files. It also fails with the CSS validation, on a tiny matter which is due to the lazyness of the design team.

Well that’s 5 of ways id improve the new, exciting and modern BBC homepage, which i really like on the whole and i commend them for doing a great job. As with any website ( and i mean any on the entire web) however, there is always room for improvement.

Please post any comments you may have.

A very quick post today but this might be helpful to fellow Flash’rs.

I couldn’t get the controls of FLVPlayback to show when uploaded on a live server.

After an hour or so of looking for the solution, i worked it out.

The skin / controls are published in its own .swf, that is quite straight forward.

What you need to do however, is place the MojaveExternallAll.swf ( in my case, but can be any skin ) in the same directory as the file producing the swf code. This was showreel.php found in the root directory. By simply moving your skin file in there ( the root directory), will solve the problem and the FLVPlayback controls will now show. This is because of the way SWF Object works. There is a method that you can edit the component file, but for the sake of one tiny .swf file in the wrong directory, i dont think its worth the hassle. I hope this is helpful, if anyone is having the same problem.

At this time of year we get numerous job applications and students looking to submit their CV’s. Here is a huge tip that may just tip your job entry over the others.

We specialise in web design. Therefore a CV with a link to a live website would be highly advisable. We aren’t looking for a winning submission to The FWA but something that shows you have a clear interest and passion in the subject would give the submission extra merit. When i got my first web space 7 years ago i was excited just by having my own little place on the web, even though it was quite ugly. Web Space has decreased in price since then and you can now buy your own domain name and webspace for under £30 a year. From there you can then experiment with all types of media. Just about all web servers will accept Flash files, Quicktime Movies and even dynamic scripting such as PHP. A portfolio site would be the best bet, this will allow you to upload your college / university projects. A section for experimental work would also be great to see, showing that you have a strong interest in design and multimedia after the set projects.

Now this may seem like a lot of hassle or bother to you. If it does, unfortunately web design may not be for you. You should be excited and enthuasiastic with the freedom that a little web space gives you. As i’m sure you have worked out through your studies, design is a highly competitive field. However with a little web space and passion you can give your CV a kickstart, that may just land you that first job.

Just a quick post today.

Testing one of my latest sites threw up a strange problem. In FireFox. when clicking on an CSS styled link a dotted border appeared. Testing in all other browsers were fine.

After a Google search, I came across this written by Nathan Smith back in January 2006.

By using: a{ outline:none;} in the css that sorts it. For maximum accessibility he recommends using a:active{outline:none;}, but for some reason I couldnt get that to work. Thats all for now.