I’ve been using lipsum.com for years to generate lipsum text for page mock-ups. HTML-Ipsum is a really simple site that takes lipsum generation one step further. This site generates html based lipsum but includes useful mark-up such as bullet lists, paragraphs and headers, allowing you to quickly preview the styles you’re applying to your website.
We’ve all had users who ask the most obvious questions. This excellent tool allows you to answer them:
I’m a big Led Zeppelin fan and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to their reunion gig. Imagine my joy when boarding my British Airways flight to Orlando to discover a certain Robert Plant on my flight. I’m not the sort of person who normally gets star struck so walked past him as I ventured through Business class to my cattle-class seat. But by the end of the flight I had decided it would have been rude not to thank Robert for the gig. Okay, I might have had to let my bag go around the carousel a number of times so that I could ‘accidentally’ bump into him to thank him, but it was great to meet one of my favourite artists.
Lotusphere 2008 was my first Lotusphere and I’m used to academic conferences that can be a bit of drag when you’re not presenting. But after meeting one of my idols, I knew Lotusphere was going to be good!
(Some friends falsely accuse me of being the reason why Zeppelin did not reform. I think this is grossly unfair. All I did was to suggest (blurt out) to Robert that whatever he decided the fans would accept his decision)
Is there a band you’d like to see reform? Would you like to see a major band play for a select audience? Then owngig.com might be the site for you. You say who you would like to see and how much you’re willing to pay and if there are enough people interested owngig will attempt to make it happen.
I know some bands have used this approach, but if owngig.com can link their site into existing social networking communities such as Last.FM, Facebook, and MySpace, they could be on to a real money spinner.
Somehow I don’t think there’s enough money in the world to change Robert Plant’s mind and join the rest of Led Zeppelin on tour. (I’ll be posting Lotusphere related Plant story later today)
Apparently Stephen Fry is having problems with Vista in a rather public fashion.
When I installed Vista as a Boot camp installation I was so relieved to see it, it was almost pleasant, but I can understand Fry’s annoyance. You see Microsoft have a secret weapon to make us University staff enjoy the Vista, their awful ordering process.
In October Microsoft released Vista under it’s ‘Ultimate Steal‘ programme. This provides University staff and students with incredibly cheap software. Since I have a Mac Pro with 10GB of memory, I was getting sick of XP (32bit) only seeing 2GBs so decided to ‘upgrade’ my Boot Camp partition to Vista 64bit Ultimate – all for the princely sum of £40.
Unfortunately, what Microsoft didn’t advertise was ordering through their online system (provided by Digital River) would be the single worst web experience I’ve had since I started using the web pre-Netscape 1.0!
This is Microsoft’s idea of service:
On the day of release, no Vista was listed on the catalogue page. But since it required you to register to prove you work for a Uni, I register anyway to get my username and password.
The confirmation email containing a validation link telling me to keep my password safe – but it did not explicitly tell me what the password was! (Although it’s pretty obvious i.e. http://url?stuff=stuff&pass=number)
Despite not being listed on the main site, Vista did appear on the on the ordering screen (listing OSX as a valid upgrade system!)
Selecting the 64 bit version for download I decided to save £10 by not purchasing the physical media. At no point was there a warning informing me that the physical media was required to upgrade from a 32 bit OS, but more about that later.
A confirmation followed informing me that my card details had been accepted and to download three installation files, save the serial number and print out the installation instructions. The only problem was, there are only two files and no serial number!!! The page helpfully informed me that I could download the files again at any time from my order screen.
Checking the source of the download page thinking that there was some unclosed tag, there was no link to the missing file anywhere on the page. However, the download urls for the two files followed an obvious pattern, but creating a manual link using the pattern didn’t return the missing file. I downloaded the two files, hoping that the confirmation email would contain the serial number and link. But that would be too easy.
Logging on to my account there was a nice order summary page, but no files. Not even the two I already had. There was also no serial number and the link to the full invoice didn’t work either, throwing up a username password screen that took me back to the ordering system.
(I did re-try a few times and once I did get an order page does – but no links and no serial number)
As you could imagine I was a little bit annoyed by this point. But the only option was to use the online feedback system. It was one of those systems that make you go through the FAQs before reaching a feedback page. Eventually I got a feedback box and sent one of those, ‘I’m fairly technically capable and the sort of person who doesn’t want to waste tech support’s time, so yes I really have a problem’ emails, I outlining all the problems I’d experienced (so far).
In fairness to Digital River, I did receive a fairly prompt reply (within 24 hours). Unfortunately, instead of answering my problem, the reply directed me back to an FAQ telling me to download the files from my order page!!!!
Since I’m ever so slightly less famous than Stephen, and a tad less witty, I don’t see the point of Twitter. So my frustrations at that point weren’t made public, but Stephen’s twitter feed sums up my feelings at the time. But despite this, I replied politely asking them to re-read my previous email and answer my problem.
Three days later I received an email from Microsoft with a serial number and a link to the missing file. I suspect the instructions Digital River published on the download page were wrong. But with a broken online system and awful technical support and no further help, it was very frustrating.
Even after receiving this final email, Digital River’s system, although now listing the serial number and the missing Vista install file, failed to list the two files on the confirmation page – god knows how you get them if you didn’t download them at the time.
However, since I had all files, I didn’t care.
Remember I mentioned the instructions on the download page? Me neither. Luckily I’d printed them out, because there was no way to call up this page from the account pages.
Running the installer unpacked Vista to a local XP directory. It was at this point Vista kindly informed me that to upgrade from XP 32 bit to Vista 64 bit, required physical media because I needed to reformat the partition!!!! ARGHHHHH.
So back off to the support site again, but nothing. Assuming it was my mistake I went through the ordering process – but at no point in the ordering process was there any warning that I needed the physical media and I couldn’t find any options to amend my purchase to add the media. The only option appeared to by to purchase a second Vista license.
At this point I’m ready to do something I never do – use a pirate copy, figuring that I’ve paid for it already. However, not wanting to give up, I discovered a tool that could take the unpacked Vista files to create a valid install DVD. Once I had the DVD, everything worked flawlessly.
In fairness to Microsoft, they did contact me a few days later asking about my problems and it does appear the Digital River site is now (mostly) working.
After all these problems, I had a rather unique Vista experience, I was actually really pleased to see it!!
The day after my last post, I just happened to visit Ideajam after I’d been doing some testing in Firefox with Javascript disabled. It completely threw me. Very little of the site worked and most of the text was missing.
Notice how all the login options and promote options are missing.
Ideajam is a valuable resource for the Lotus community, but it’s also a commercial product. So a commercial decision seems to have been made to implement alternative language support as expediantly and flexibly as possible through rendering the page using Javascript. Although this works, it’s not the ideal solution. Ideajam also makes heavy use of javascript to improve the user experience using AJAX calls to handle votes, dynamically generated tag clouds, etc. It clear that the developers made every effort to make the user experience pleasurable.
But it throws up a complicated question, what is accessibility?
I think there are two different approaches to accessibility.
The first approach is to view accessibility as making the website easier to use for the majority of users through the use of javascript to handle the simple interactions. Ideajam is clearly developed using this model.
The second approach views accessibility as designing websites that ensure that ‘no one is left behind’ by making the site work without javascript. Often these sites are government, educational or charity websites. Designers in the second category often have to make design compromises so the needs of a small minority of users are supported.
I obviously have to take this second approach, but have tried to be pragmatic adopting a ‘core’, ‘plus’ and ‘core plus’ design model.
The core model is used for areas of the system used for teaching and learning. This includes module websites and core university support information. The core model adopts the ‘no one should be left behind’ model. Everything works without javascript. About 90% of StudyNet functionality falls under this category.
The ‘plus’ model provides us with the extra flexibility to develop interactive facilities using client side javascript interaction handling, and we use this model in social areas where the students’ educational experience won’t be effected. We try to ensure the functionality works for as many users as possible, but will cut corners and develop client-side solutions.
The core plus model is when we make the decision to develop both the server-side and client side interaction.
Often we have to make a decision as to whether it’s worth doing the work twice. i.e. developing front-end using javascript to handle interactions and also having to do the work a second time handling the interaction through a series of server posts. More often than not, we take the decision that to only develop the more longwinded server-side interaction and this obviously compromised the interface for the majority.
Using ideajam as an example, it could be developed under a ‘core plus’ model. Multiple language support would almost certainly be rendered on the server side under the ‘core’ model. If the tag cloud can’t be generated quickly server-side, then we would develop it under the ‘plus’ model since the tag cloud isn’t essential functionality. For the vote buttons we’d probably adopt a ‘core plus’ model – links would be standard hrefs calling a server-side agent, but for users with javascript, the agent could easily be designed to handle AJAX calls without significantly increasing development time, so we’d also add handlers to make the AJAX vote. You would then have an ideajam that covers both accessibility approaches.
This year I put in two Lotusphere abstracts, a BOF and presentation on ‘accessible web design‘. To be honest neither abstract was very good having been put together at the last minute. If I’m honest, I’m relieved that I won’t have the worry of presenting and can just relax and enjoy the week. But I’m always uncomfortable attending conferences when I’m not presenting, especially at such an expensive conference (why doesn’t IBM sponsor educational establishments – most academic conferences are half the price of this one?)
Accessibility is extremely important in my job. A large proportion of ‘Web 2.0′ sites are designed without any real consideration of accessible design and I have a concern that Domino 8.5 will encourage the Domino community into adopting Web 2.0 technologies without understanding the problems they might be creating.
When I was a design student I visited the ‘Royal National Institute for the Blind’ and met one of their designers. He explained that the RNIB believed that spending some time with a student designer to explain some of the of the issues surrounding designing accessible products, would be repaid many times over, if that designer adopted sympathetic practices in industry. So I’ve always tried to show as much consideration as possible when designing websites, for the issues faced by people with disabilities.
At Lotusphere 2008 there were lots of wizzy AJAX being demonstrated. Not once in any of the session I attended, did a presenter discuss the accessibility issues created by the inappropriate adoption of AJAX. For example, the excellent ‘Great Code Giveaway’, showed developers how to make views exciting through AJAX. The fact that if you had Javascript disabled, you got nothing, wasn’t mentioned. Looking at the code afterwards, there were simple approaches that could have allowed the code to degrade to a more basic accessible design. I imagined Domino designers rushing back creating a whole host of inaccessible websites.
After chatting to some of the Designer and Domino teams, I wasn’t filled with confidence that Lotus are really tackling accessibility in Designer 8.5. So although I’m relieved I don’t have to present, it’s clear to me at least, that Lotus should have scheduled one of the accessibility sessions.
I hope it doesn’t come across that I’m bitter for not getting my sessions on to the agenda, I’m really am not. There was a far better accessibility abstract posted to IdeaJam that also hasn’t been included in the programme. It’s just I know how frustrated I was at last year’s Lotusphere that accessiblity issues were completely missing from the agenda, I’ll suspect this year I’ll be be doubly so.
It appears that Safari’s use is rising. One recent report by Net Applications places Safari usage at 7%. Although other stats sites such as thecounter.com put Safari’s percentage at around 4%, it’s good that other browsers are finally making in-roads into IE’s dominance.
Although there’s been a very big increase in student laptop use on campus, I would say that Mac usuage has only grown in line with the general trend. So Stats for our systems are closer to ‘thecounters’ results. Our figures are:
Although my life would be easier if we stuck to a single browser. I’ve always recognised that as a web developer in a University, I have a responsibility for information to be as accessible as possible. So have resisted efforts to move to a single browser platform (IE). I the long term this will pay dividends as students switch to ‘standards-based’ browsers such as Firefox. In the short term with IE6 being so heavily used and a requirement to provide access for the majority of users, it does significantly increase development time.
Our student population has a very wide demographic, everything from 18 year old’s, coming direct from school, to ‘mature’ health professionals here to develop their professional expertise. It means I have a proportion of users who are not confident computer users often using older computers, so IE 6 usage is still very high (‘encouraging’ them to upgrade would put pressure on our helpdesks)
A big advantage of most of the modern browsers such as Firefox and Safari, is that they encourage users to update when new versions become available. They make it easy, even for the users who aren’t confident, to upgrade to the latest and most secure version. In fact our stats show that for Safari and Firefox, a high proportion of users are using the latest versions. Unfortunately with Internet Explorer, we’re still seeing nearly 25% of Internet Explorer users are using Internet Explorer 6. If I factor that 60% of all accesses are from on-campus, where computers are using the latest version of Internet Explorer, then the percentage of our students’ computers using Internet Explorer 6 must be nearer 30-35%. So for us at least, there’s still a long way to go before we can drop that browser from our test suite.
After commenting on Apple finally admitting that the mac isn’t invincible, they’ve pulled yesterday’s link. Guess somr in Apple believe their own marketing hype
Ok lets make this clear before anyone jumps on me. I am a Mac user. (2008 Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, and a 12″ Powerbook – and a Mini at work).
As a Domino developer I have to use Windows at work and I have various XP VMs on my Macs. I would never dream of running XP without a virus checker and it’s always the first piece of software I install when I get a new box. But now Apple are recommending all users install a virus checker.
A few weeks ago I had my first case of a user with a ‘Mac’ virus – actually a Windows Word macro virus that works on Office on OSX. So although it didn’t have a payload that damaged Macs it’s still a virus. The user has continued to post documents containing the virus despite being told to install a virus checker. So it’s clear that some people have bought into Apple’s marketing hype and believe that they will never catch a virus and it’s this category of Mac user who will be the targets of the first virulent Mac virus. So it’s good that Apple are being pragmatic.
If you’re interested in installing a virus checker but aren’t yet ready to let anything Norton produce sully your Macs, then you could try ClamAV, a free virus checker. At least it will ensure you don’t pass around Office macro virus.
I’m setting up this new domain and I’m having to setup my own domains and since Media Temple don’t handle .co.uk’s, I couldn’t set them up when I purchased the server space. So while I was waiting for a dns change to be propagated from a UK registration service. I wanted to test that I had configured the server correctly for the new urls and discovered a remarkably useful ‘hosts’ file in both Windows and OSX that allows you to override your dns server and redirect urls to ip addresses. Remarkably useful and I don’t know why I wasn’t aware of them.
On Windows there’s a file called ‘hosts’ in
c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
You can edit the file using a text editor and add in your testing servers url and the ip address to direct the browser to. e.g.
127.0.0.1 mywebsite.com
OSX also has a ‘hosts’ file in /etc/hosts
Again you can edit the host file by using
sudo vi /etc/hosts
and then add the required host definitions.
A interesting idea, an advent calendar of useful web development tips. It seems to have been running for a few years but it’s the first time I’ve seen it. The first article is a web developer’s checklist for a web designer. Personally I’m not too keen on their design, but they appeared to have covered a wide range of topics in previous years.
is a Learning Technologist working at the University of Hertfordshire
