Category Archives: Code

IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

Posted on by David
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Here is some helpful information from the MS IEBlog about how to run IE 6 and 7 on the same machine.

IEBlog : IE6 and IE7 Running on a Single Machine

This is really important for any web developer or designer since IE6 will be with us for quite a long time to come.  The downside here is that it isn’t possible to run both browsers within the same instance of the operating system, which is why MS is offering a free virtual server with which to run 6 in parallel. Not ideal.

I’m surprised that MS didn’t foresee this need before they launched 7.

Yahoo and Microsoft Adopt Sitemaps Standard

Posted on by David
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Does your site offer a site map for search engine crawlers yet? It just became a lot more compelling to offer one now that Microsoft and Yahoo have begun supporting it:

In alphabetical order, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to all support a unified system of submitting web pages through feeds to their crawlers. Called Sitemaps, taking its name from the precursor system that Google launched last year, all three search engines will now support the method.

Providing a sitemap according to the specification will make it easier for the search engines to rapidly index new content you add to your site.

Coding Like 1995

Posted on by David
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From Gary LaBranche at Association Forum: 100 Million Served

There were less than 20,000 Web sites in the world in 1995, all with limited usability [Gary probably means functionality here. -dg]. In the spring of that year, I served on a team charged with developing a Web site for an association, and recall the debate about including a membership application. Half of the team argued that it was a waste of time and no one would ever apply for membership online. The other half argued, “What the heck, it can’t hurt.”

The joke was on us. Just five years later, online applications were the leading source of new members.

Everything looks pretty obvious in retrospect, doesn’t it? What bothers me today is not that people don’t recognize the potential of the Web (they do to a large extent) but that poor knowledge of usability and design impedes their ability to really take advantage of it. Given that it is feasible for almost any group to enable online payment for transactions, the competitive differentiator online now often comes down to how easy it is to complete the transaction (assuming roughly equal value of product, of course).

Targeting Accessibility

Posted on by David
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A new court ruling you should be aware of that sets a precedent for web site accessibility:

The court held: “the ‘ordinary meaning’ of the ADA’s prohibition against discrimination in the enjoyment of goods, services, facilities or privileges, is that whatever goods or services the place provides, it cannot discriminate on the basis of disability in providing enjoyment of those goods and services.” The court thus rejected Target’s argument that only its physical store locations were covered by the civil rights laws, ruling instead that all services provided by Target, including its Web site, must be accessible to persons with disabilities.

…

The plaintiffs charge that target.com fails to meet the minimum standard of web accessibility. It lacks compliant alt-text, an invisible code embedded beneath graphic images that allows screen readers to detect and vocalize a description of the image to a blind computer user. It also contains inaccessible image maps and other graphical features, preventing blind users
from navigating and making use of all of the functions of the website. And because the website requires the use of a mouse to complete a transaction, blind Target customers are unable to make purchases on target.com independently.

The irony here is that there is no good technical reason for not having a highly accessible web site these days. The limitations of Target’s site mentioned above are all old school design techniques that are quite simply out of date and unnecessary. Why they didn’t just update their site design instead of fighting a costly court battle is beyond me.

Assessing Coding Quality of Potential Developers

Posted on by David
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I responded to a question earlier this week about how you can judge the quality of a web application’s code. The question was from someone who would be receiving the source code for the app in question once it was finished and they would be responsible for maintaining it after launch. How can you tell if the code is of high quality and easily maintainable if you are not a programmer yourself?

Here are a few things I would look for in this situation:

  • The application provides helpful/friendly error messages to users when something bad happens. If they have put thought into error handling then they have probably done so throughout the application.
  • They use a code versioning system repository for developing the application. Any programming shop who knows what they are doing should use a tool like this. If they are not, I’d consider them amateurs.
  • Source code is well documented. Browsing through the code, you should be able to understand what each section does, even if you are not a programmer. If the comments are too cryptic or few, then it will be harder to maintain when they hand it off.
  • The application uses classes for commonly executed operations. If the same bit of html has to be rendered repeatedly, make sure they have that pulled out into a single class rather than simply repeating the code over and over throughout the application. This makes maintenance much easier.
  • They use unit tests. Unit testing can be somewhat challenging with web apps but can be done. Unit tests are a series of tests that will check that the application is functioning properly after a change is made (regression testing). I’d consider a shop doing this effectively to be very competent.

Some of those obviously require a coder to asses for you but at least you know some questions to ask that will get at whether the developers in question have good practices in writing code. It is no guarantee but will weed out the poorest candidates.

Here are a few books you may want to review if you want to learn more about good development practices:

(had an issue with my amazon links, list to be reposted later)

Also see Joel Spolsky’s reading list.

AMS-CMS Integration Audio Download

Posted on by David
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You may recall that I did an audio conference a couple weeks ago with Wes Trochlil on the potential and pitfalls of integration association and content management systems. The session was very well received by our attendees at the live event.

I am pleased to now make the program available as a download: Understanding the Potential (and Pitfalls) of Integrating CMS and AMS Systems Audio Product. For $99 you will receive an MP3 file of the audio and a PDF of the slides. A sample of the audio is available in this post.

And here is a special one week offer to my blog readers: use this code when you buy the product and get 40% off! This code will be good until one week from today (May 24, 2006). Enter this code in the shopping cart to receive your discount: V823R4E1 Please feel free to share the code with anyone you think might benefit from this unique program.

Learn more about the audio program.

http://www.audioblog.com/playweb?audioid=P31bc3801ea0660e0757bb7158480fa6eYF97SlREYmN2&buffer=5&fc=FFFFFF&pc=CCFF33&kc=FFCC33&bc=FFFFFF&brand=1&player=ap21

Lean XHTML and Precise CSS

Posted on by David
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For those of you employing or exploring standards-based designs using CSS (and this should be all of you!), check out this post on Lean XHTML and Precise CSS. Looks like a good method for organizing your stylesheets. CSS files can get pretty complex as your site develops, so having some organizational method will make life easier down the road. The article also reviews the benefits of keeping presentation code in CSS and out of your page markup.

(Via 456 Bereas Street blog.)

Feel the Power of Standards-based Design

Posted on by David
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Chris Spurgeon works on the American Public Media family of web sites. He recently posted on the Well about some changes he made to the Marketplace web site:

I just changed the tab navigation of the Marketplace radio show website (www.marketplace.org) from vertical tabs along the left hand side of thepage to horizontal tabs along the top. Other than uploading the new tab graphics, all I had to do was tweak 2 CSS rules and the change instantly appeared on more than 5 thousand static pages. So damn cool.

Chris graciously gave permission for me to quote his post here. This is a fantastic example of how going to a CSS design allows you to make significant changes quickly by editing just a single file.

Another thing to note is that if you look at the source code for the page, you can see that it includes corporate branding and search elements for the overall organization that do not cleanly separate content from presentation. The reality of web design in large organizations is that you often don’t have control of everything and have to work around various things that are not open for negotiation. However, the rest of the page does separate presentation from content markup, which enabled Chris to make that big change so easily. This shows how you don’t have to follow a purist approach to still benefit from these techniques.