Recently in w3c Category
I know from talking to web designers and developers that Internet Explorer 6 gives them lots of headaches. While it may not be the only cause of heartache it's a clear and tangible one.
Of course there have been plenty of "upgrade to firefox" type campaigns in the past, but most seemed to ignore a simple fact. Many corporate users can't simply upgrade browsers without their IT department's "ok".
Be that as it may if you can get more people away from Internet Explorer 6, then your web designers and developers might thank you.
Have a look at the campaign over on Save The Developers (via)
Of course there have been plenty of "upgrade to firefox" type campaigns in the past, but most seemed to ignore a simple fact. Many corporate users can't simply upgrade browsers without their IT department's "ok".
Be that as it may if you can get more people away from Internet Explorer 6, then your web designers and developers might thank you.
Have a look at the campaign over on Save The Developers (via)
Image via Wikipedia
Why?
Practicalities.
Several web applications I use on a regular basis break badly in Firefox 3, which renders them unusable (typo3) or not as usable as I would like (Movable Type).
I know the guys in Movable Type will fix the issues, though they were waiting on a stable Firefox release before they made any crazy changes.
I've no idea how long it will be before the Typo3 team fix the UI issues on their end.
Unfortunately in both cases the issues arise from Javascript rendering issues ie. the browser engine has changed how it handles it
Ah well!
I've mentioned the horrific salesonline.ie site a couple of times in the past.
They've now taken the site offline and are instead displaying a holder page with their contact details.
At least they're not making us all suffer through that video anymore!
So anyone want to take bets on whether their new site will actually comply with any web standards?
They've now taken the site offline and are instead displaying a holder page with their contact details.
At least they're not making us all suffer through that video anymore!
So anyone want to take bets on whether their new site will actually comply with any web standards?
For a number of reasons I had to look at the SalesOnline.ie site today. I would have thought they'd have got round to fixing its basic brokenness, but I was wrong.
If you try to view that site in any browser you will suffer.
Why?
Basic HTML code hasn't been used.
How hard can it be to specify which version of (X)HTML you're using?
If the "designer" had even picked up a book on HTML for beginners they'd have learnt about the basic elements of a properly formatted SGML document using HTML markup.
To save repetition the concept is simple. If you open a "tag", which is a bit of code to describe how something should be rendered on the screen by your browser, then you should close it. In XHTML that "should" becomes "must".
Any (x)html document will have a number of elements:
HEAD - the top of the document. This can tell you what the document is about and how to treat it ie. is it html 4.* or xhtml 1.*. You can also include lots of other "meta" information
BODY - the main body of the text
Salesonline's site tries to break all these standards.
Neither the "header" nor the "body" tag is closed, so the browser has no way of knowing where the page ends.
They force you to load their video on their main page each and every time you visit - not exactly sane usage of multimedia
And yet they claim to be using "best in class technology". You'd think they'd be able to setup a proper website!
If you try to view that site in any browser you will suffer.
Why?
Basic HTML code hasn't been used.
How hard can it be to specify which version of (X)HTML you're using?
If the "designer" had even picked up a book on HTML for beginners they'd have learnt about the basic elements of a properly formatted SGML document using HTML markup.
To save repetition the concept is simple. If you open a "tag", which is a bit of code to describe how something should be rendered on the screen by your browser, then you should close it. In XHTML that "should" becomes "must".
Any (x)html document will have a number of elements:
HEAD - the top of the document. This can tell you what the document is about and how to treat it ie. is it html 4.* or xhtml 1.*. You can also include lots of other "meta" information
BODY - the main body of the text
Salesonline's site tries to break all these standards.
Neither the "header" nor the "body" tag is closed, so the browser has no way of knowing where the page ends.
They force you to load their video on their main page each and every time you visit - not exactly sane usage of multimedia
And yet they claim to be using "best in class technology". You'd think they'd be able to setup a proper website!
Golden Spider bashing might appear to be a national pastime, but I guess it's all down to the size of the target!
This year they've made a small effort to validate their weird choices by letting us, the public, vote on two of the categories. Of course, as Niall found out, the developers who did their site for them aren't exactly the most competent, as they didn't setup the forms to validate properly.
And what level of esteem should you hold web awards that include Template Monster templates?
There's threads on the "wonderful" awards on both CI and IWF. If you want some of the background then read over the thread from last year as well!
This year they've made a small effort to validate their weird choices by letting us, the public, vote on two of the categories. Of course, as Niall found out, the developers who did their site for them aren't exactly the most competent, as they didn't setup the forms to validate properly.
And what level of esteem should you hold web awards that include Template Monster templates?
There's threads on the "wonderful" awards on both CI and IWF. If you want some of the background then read over the thread from last year as well!
When is a link not a link?
When you can't actually click on it.
Someone started a thread over on CI the other day about NetVisionary nominee Panthius
The footer of the site contains a set of "links" which DO NOT work if you are using a normal browser:
It transpires that the links do work if you use Internet Explorer, which shows how "popular" a browser that is with Irish creative and web professionals!
Regardless of what browser I may or may not be using I'm amazed that someone managed to put together a business website so badly that the links don't work. That takes effort!
When you can't actually click on it.
Someone started a thread over on CI the other day about NetVisionary nominee Panthius
The footer of the site contains a set of "links" which DO NOT work if you are using a normal browser:
It transpires that the links do work if you use Internet Explorer, which shows how "popular" a browser that is with Irish creative and web professionals!
Regardless of what browser I may or may not be using I'm amazed that someone managed to put together a business website so badly that the links don't work. That takes effort!
I just visited the Carlow website. It's horrific. It's embarassingly bad.
Why can't they do something like Clare or Donegal?
Does a county have to rely heavily on tourism to have a decent looking website?
I'd have thought not.
Earlier this week Carlow decided to have a carfree day before the rest of Europe.
Whether this was a good idea or not isn't important, but if you were a resident it would have been nice to actually have access to some information on it.
I'd have thought the local authority site would have been the place to find the information. Of course there was absolutely no mention of it at all!
Anyone who tells me that egovernment is improving obviously hasn't tried to actually use the local authority sites for Carlow!
Why can't they do something like Clare or Donegal?
Does a county have to rely heavily on tourism to have a decent looking website?
I'd have thought not.
Earlier this week Carlow decided to have a carfree day before the rest of Europe.
Whether this was a good idea or not isn't important, but if you were a resident it would have been nice to actually have access to some information on it.
I'd have thought the local authority site would have been the place to find the information. Of course there was absolutely no mention of it at all!
Anyone who tells me that egovernment is improving obviously hasn't tried to actually use the local authority sites for Carlow!
I've mentioned Amas' reports previously and the latest one is as fluffy as its predecessors...
The main thrust in this edition is broadband "takeup". It doesn't mention whether it's actually available or not, which seems more than a little counter-intuitive, though admittedly they do mention availability in their own office:
The other part of their report relates to the mobile web:
If it's Irish companies in general I'd love to know where they're getting their stats.
While it's nice to see them talking about mobile sites this kind of vague reporting is not helpful. If you are going to focus on 100 sites and 100 only then why can't you actually mention which sites you are talking about?
They claim that none of the sites they checked scored 5 on the ready.mobi test (they didn't even tell people where the test was located!), so at least I know they weren't looking at ours!
The main thrust in this edition is broadband "takeup". It doesn't mention whether it's actually available or not, which seems more than a little counter-intuitive, though admittedly they do mention availability in their own office:
Despite a Dublin city centre location, and sharing the same street as the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, AMAS has been turned down again for a DSL connection.You'd think that they might have factored that into the headlines...
The other part of their report relates to the mobile web:
Leading companies and government bodies have a poor mobile and PDA internet presence, according to research conducted by AMAS.Wow! Great headline, but who are you actually talking about?
A survey of 100 organisations, split evenly between public and private sectors, showsThat's incredibly vague and the followup statement doesn't actually collate with anything:
most have adopted a mainly defensive strategy to the mobile internet to date.
A majority of both public and private companies have registered a .mobi mobile domain, presumably to protect their brands.Let's look at that statement more closely. Which companies are they talking about? Companies in general or the 100 that they looked at, but haven't actually named?
If it's Irish companies in general I'd love to know where they're getting their stats.
While it's nice to see them talking about mobile sites this kind of vague reporting is not helpful. If you are going to focus on 100 sites and 100 only then why can't you actually mention which sites you are talking about?
They claim that none of the sites they checked scored 5 on the ready.mobi test (they didn't even tell people where the test was located!), so at least I know they weren't looking at ours!
The Golden Spiders site was relaunched today.
First off I have to say it looks a hell of a lot better than the last one. The last one was dire. The new site looks like someone actually went to the trouble of designing it.
So what do we look at? The site or the awards themselves?
Well, the site is the first thing that you are going to see if you are interested in any form of internet awards.
As I already said it looks a hell of a lot better than the last site (you could add in a "h" there and it wouldn't make any difference), but it has flaws and by the bucket full.
I'm on a reasonably fast DSL line at home and a marginally faster wireless connection in the office.
In neither location does this site load quickly. Why?
There are a number of reasons which are worth examining.
Location: Ireland's "premier" web awards site is hosted in the USA. This gives it a ping time of over 150 milliseconds on a DSL line. Considering Eircom are the headline sponsor you'd think the site would at least have been hosted in Ireland!
If you compare that to say The Net Visionary site, which gets a ping of about 24 milliseconds you can immediately see one issue.
When you combine that with the sheer amount of data that they have crammed into the page it gets quite scary.
The total page size is close to a massive one megabyte in size combined with a further 9 megs of video (which you can't stop!).
Breaking that down further you find there are loads of images that weigh in at over 50k a piece. The header image is over 100k!
In some ways it's a wonderful example of how NOT to do a website if you care about your bandwidth bills, your users patience or general website speed.
The Flash based video is very slick, but why oh why didn't they include any basic controls? All you can do is mute the audio!
So what of the awards themselves?
Well this is the thing I've always taken issue with.
Of the 22 categories only two are free to enter - blogging and charity / community. All the rest require a 150 euro "administration" fee. Odd that, when you consider that other awards that have a commercial angle don't feel any need to levy this kind of fee. While others yet again don't have a commercial angle and somehow manage to run year on year without this kind of charge.
So what of the actual award criteria?
Picking a couple at random:
Best Web Design and Web Development Agency: Judges will be looking for the quality of service delivered to clients in the areas of innovation, meeting requirements, delivery, ROI as well as client and end-user satisfaction.
How are you meant to evaluate that? Work out a deal between your top clients and yourself so that they speak highly of you?
What about web standards, accessibility and all those factors that make a real difference?
Or how about this one:
Best Blogging website: Judges will be looking for well written, well designed blogs which exude the writer's opinions and personality. They will also be judging your blog in terms of its usefulness within a given sector and the level of feedback on the blog from the readers themselves.
Most of the top Irish blogs aren't even using custom designs and the message from the criteria is terribly mixed. Are they looking for business blogs? Personal blogs? Niche blogs?
It's really not clear.
The judging panel this year is strong, but what they'll be left judging is going to be the big question. If so many industry professionals take the awards seriously, how do they expect to get a reasonable cross-section of entrants?
Other people are as impressed as ever, if you'll excuse the slight sarcasm:
First off I have to say it looks a hell of a lot better than the last one. The last one was dire. The new site looks like someone actually went to the trouble of designing it.
So what do we look at? The site or the awards themselves?
Well, the site is the first thing that you are going to see if you are interested in any form of internet awards.
As I already said it looks a hell of a lot better than the last site (you could add in a "h" there and it wouldn't make any difference), but it has flaws and by the bucket full.
I'm on a reasonably fast DSL line at home and a marginally faster wireless connection in the office.
In neither location does this site load quickly. Why?
There are a number of reasons which are worth examining.
Location: Ireland's "premier" web awards site is hosted in the USA. This gives it a ping time of over 150 milliseconds on a DSL line. Considering Eircom are the headline sponsor you'd think the site would at least have been hosted in Ireland!
If you compare that to say The Net Visionary site, which gets a ping of about 24 milliseconds you can immediately see one issue.
When you combine that with the sheer amount of data that they have crammed into the page it gets quite scary.
The total page size is close to a massive one megabyte in size combined with a further 9 megs of video (which you can't stop!).
Breaking that down further you find there are loads of images that weigh in at over 50k a piece. The header image is over 100k!
In some ways it's a wonderful example of how NOT to do a website if you care about your bandwidth bills, your users patience or general website speed.
The Flash based video is very slick, but why oh why didn't they include any basic controls? All you can do is mute the audio!
So what of the awards themselves?
Well this is the thing I've always taken issue with.
Of the 22 categories only two are free to enter - blogging and charity / community. All the rest require a 150 euro "administration" fee. Odd that, when you consider that other awards that have a commercial angle don't feel any need to levy this kind of fee. While others yet again don't have a commercial angle and somehow manage to run year on year without this kind of charge.
So what of the actual award criteria?
Picking a couple at random:
Best Web Design and Web Development Agency: Judges will be looking for the quality of service delivered to clients in the areas of innovation, meeting requirements, delivery, ROI as well as client and end-user satisfaction.
How are you meant to evaluate that? Work out a deal between your top clients and yourself so that they speak highly of you?
What about web standards, accessibility and all those factors that make a real difference?
Or how about this one:
Best Blogging website: Judges will be looking for well written, well designed blogs which exude the writer's opinions and personality. They will also be judging your blog in terms of its usefulness within a given sector and the level of feedback on the blog from the readers themselves.
Most of the top Irish blogs aren't even using custom designs and the message from the criteria is terribly mixed. Are they looking for business blogs? Personal blogs? Niche blogs?
It's really not clear.
The judging panel this year is strong, but what they'll be left judging is going to be the big question. If so many industry professionals take the awards seriously, how do they expect to get a reasonable cross-section of entrants?
Other people are as impressed as ever, if you'll excuse the slight sarcasm:
- Red Cardinal
- Mulley
- Pete
- IWF - the thread that will not die!
- Pixel Apes
- Creative Ireland and again
I've mentioned the Golden Spiders on here several times in the past.
Last year I actually got to attend the night and it was thoroughly enjoyable.
However it's not about the night itself. It's the actual awards themselves that concern me.
Other awards, such as the Net Visionaries, are open to the public in all regards, though there are no actual judges involved. A comparison could be easily drawn to the dot net magazine awards, which allow anyone to nominate anyone else but has a panel of judges (including several names that look familiar). (Disclosure: We're sponsors)
As I mentioned several times in the past, both here and elsewhere, the nomination fee will dissuade many excellent sites from being nominated. When I raised this with the organisers their glib response was to dimiss the €100 - €150 nomination fee as being required for administrative charges / costs and that any "real" business would be able to afford it. Having started my own business from nothing I can assure you dear reader that every euro matters and tossing away €100 on a nomination for an award is not something I'd have done. Even now, with over a dozen full time staff etc., etc. I'd still take issue with paying that kind of fee.
According to the image only email (yes - no links or HTML - they actually send an image in an email!) they were sending around the other day the "new" site will be launching soon. Damien picked up on their inclusion of a couple of new categories, but RedCardinal, myself and others have been left in the dark ... See this thread for more
Wouldn't it be great if this year's awards took into consideration:
I for one won't be holding my breath...
Last year I actually got to attend the night and it was thoroughly enjoyable.
However it's not about the night itself. It's the actual awards themselves that concern me.
Other awards, such as the Net Visionaries, are open to the public in all regards, though there are no actual judges involved. A comparison could be easily drawn to the dot net magazine awards, which allow anyone to nominate anyone else but has a panel of judges (including several names that look familiar). (Disclosure: We're sponsors)
As I mentioned several times in the past, both here and elsewhere, the nomination fee will dissuade many excellent sites from being nominated. When I raised this with the organisers their glib response was to dimiss the €100 - €150 nomination fee as being required for administrative charges / costs and that any "real" business would be able to afford it. Having started my own business from nothing I can assure you dear reader that every euro matters and tossing away €100 on a nomination for an award is not something I'd have done. Even now, with over a dozen full time staff etc., etc. I'd still take issue with paying that kind of fee.
According to the image only email (yes - no links or HTML - they actually send an image in an email!) they were sending around the other day the "new" site will be launching soon. Damien picked up on their inclusion of a couple of new categories, but RedCardinal, myself and others have been left in the dark ... See this thread for more
Wouldn't it be great if this year's awards took into consideration:
- design
- web standards
- accessibility
I for one won't be holding my breath...
