Blog Standard Stuff

Jesus H Christ. Am I the only person in this country who’s absolutely fucking sick to the back teeth of seeing England flags attached to the rear bumpers, rear windscreens or back windows (on crappy little plastic white flagpoles that are wedged in the wound-up window) on seemingly every third car at the moment?

Folks, you live in England, and unless you are actually foreign it’s probably a given that you want England to do well in the World Cup, so the plastering of the England flag over every conceivable space is really not necessary (please, somebody tell the likes of Asda Walmart which insists on devoting entire aisles to this shitty merchandise). Oh, and this news just in, sportsfans – the feckin’ World Cup hasn’t even started yet!

To take a drive around town of a weekend, anyone would think the world cup had actually started and people were celebrating the winning team’s victory, but sorry to tell you that you’ve got another couple of weeks until you have a license to decorate your cars like the prize idiots you are.

If you want to support the team, do it the old-fashioned way by going down the pub, queuing for the first half of the game, making your way back to the only spot in the bar where you can see the one-fifth of the projection TV screen, only to spill half of your drink as England score a goal and the crowd erupts. Before realising that the goal is ruled off-side.

This is an email interview that I did for Matt Mickiewicz over at SitePoint - it’s to go into a newsletter that goes out to SitePoint’s various sales reps and distributors. I’m not sure it it’s going to be used anywhere else online, but I thought it would be useful to publish here anyway - tell you a little more about the book I wrote.

What do you think makes your book different from all the other “beginning web design” books on the market? Why?

I can do better than just think that it’s different - when I was at the beginning of the book-writing process, I did my homework and researched the other beginners books. Without exception, when I flicked through those books I kept discovering advice that was outdated or just plain wrong, despite some of them having undergone rewrites (in second and third editions). It was actually quite shocking and made me realise that the SitePoint book was very much needed - a beginners book that taught the right skills from the start, rather than cutting corners for quick results, thereby teaching bad habits that later need to be unlearnt.

Why should beginners worry about tables, CSS or accessibility?

Firstly, because it’s the right thing to do. Although I would argue that they don’t need to worry at all. The worry comes from learning the wrong way at the beginning (see response to previous question!) and then thinking that accommodating these ideas is going to be difficult - and it can be if you are trying retrospectively fix issues. To answer the question point-by-point, though, tables are not needed for layout these days, and by not teaching that method, it will allow beginners to redesign their sites far more easily and reap benefits of having their sites work on a much wider range of devices. CSS, well, it really is the way to add presentation to a website, and I’d be doing a misjustice if I suggested otherwise. Finally, accessibility: in all honesty, I’ve not covered that a huge amount in the book, but have ensured that all the techniques and approaches are accessible, and have provided the reader with more information about the topic so that they can learn at their own pace. It is a big topic in its own right, after all.

Who do you think is the ideal reader for this title?

My mum. Or my sister. Or maybe even yours? Seriously, I had my sister in my mind when I wrote the table of contents. She is a 40-year-old mother of two tearaways, uses the computer for email, browsing the web, a bit of shopping, but is not a techy by any stretch. She’s now a Mac user because she got fed up with virus problems and wants things to just work. When she has difficulty with anything, she asks questions in non-technical ways, and she learns by the same methods. With that in mind, I set out to write a book that would enable her to build a web site without any prior knowledge, without requiring her to go out and buy any new software but to make use of what’s already there (or free to download) and I didn’t try to force too much information in one go. So that was my model reader - and I’m surethere are many others out there like her. Now we’ve just got to stop these people buying the other beginners’ books and read the good stuff!

How much will readers learn from the book? What will they be able to do once they finish reading it? What’s going to be their next step?

From a complete novice, the reader will learn how to use the tools at their disposal to create a small web site that is standards- compliant, accessible, easy to update (via a blog), can be searched by visitors, looks good (particularly if they have some nice images to use) and that others can contribute to (via the blog, also). By the end of the book, the reader will understand the basics, will have put them all to use and will be in an excellent position to further their skills, having already got CSS-layouts, semantic markup and web standards awareness under their belt. In short, they’ll be better set up for all the other excellent intermediate/advanced books out their than they could ever achieve with the other beginners books. I truly believe this!

In this day and age, why would someone want to build a website as opposed to putting up a page on MySpace or starting a blogger.com account, both of which require a lot less knowledge and work?

I will give you an analogy. It’s a car one (something I’ve used before, but hey ho, it works for me!).I have a 30 year old VW van. I bought it in Aus, drove it all around Australia, then kept it, shipped it to UK and am continually making changes to it - a little tweak here, a little fix there. Now, money permitting, I could go out and buy a spangly, jaw-droppingly good split screen camper van, a real show-stopper. But I would not feel any sense of achievement as it would be someone else’s restoration work.

I feel the same about hand-crafting a site vs getting something off the shelf. The off-the-shelf approach is fine for a quick hit - and I won’t deny that for many people that will do just fine - but if you do it yourself you’ll get the result you’re after, have much more control, get a greater sense of achievement and will truly learn a skill that you can put to good use later. Who knows, it could be the way that you earn a crust one day? I don’t know anyone who makes a lot of money by setting up Blogger accounts for friends, but I know a lot of people who make a good earning - more than I do, I am unhappy to report! - by creating web sites for clients that could not possibly be created using a tool such as those you’ve mentioned. They have their place, but sometimes it’s just not enough, know what I mean?

End of the ‘interview’ …

So, if having read that you feel this is the book for you (or mum/sister/brother/whatever), please head on over to SitePoint and order your copy today. Ah go on, I’ll be your best friend!

My book got a mention on Boagworld’s podcast, and I thought I’d transcribe and respond to some of the comments Paul made here:

"It’s called Build Your Own Web Site the Right Way using HTML and CSS. What a nice snappy title! He needs to work on his title a bit."

Yeah, not my choice of title. It is a bit long-winded, but then if it were called "Beginners Guide to Building a Web Site (with Web Standards)" – or some variation on that theme – the very audience that it’s aimed for probably wouldn’t get it. Would the absolute beginner know what web standards are or why they matter? So while I would love to have had a shorter title (e.g. CSS Mastery, DOM Scripting), those titles only really work for those who know a bit about the topic. Or at least that’s my theory as to why SitePoint went for that title. Anyway, Paul continues:

"The book came about because one day he was hanging around in PC World or whatever, as you do if you’re a geek, and he picked up the books about HTML that were on the shelves, dummies guide on how to build web sites and that kind of stuff, and was horrified at the fact that they all taught horrendous ways to build web sites, very old-fashioned, very out-of-date, not very accessible etc [Marcus – ‘ In schools they do as well’] … Yeah, I know, they still teach table-based design … So basically he decided to write a web design book that taught you from absolute basics, from knowing nothing about HTML, CSS or anything else of how to build a web site but doing it the right way, as his snappy title says"

Well, that’s almost right, but I can’t claim to have had the idea for writing the book, to be honest. What happened was that when I had made a start on the early chapters I wanted to check that I was on the right track, so on a weekend shopping trip I did a bit of ad-hoc research … and that’s when I discovered just how badly a book like mine was needed. It basically gave me a lot of encouragement because in the early days of writing the book, despite feeling proud to have been approached about the book deal, I did have a slight feeling of "does the world need another book about HTML?". That very unscientific bit of research in Borders and Waterstones really made me appreciate the importance of getting this book right!

"Apparently it’s an excellent book, [I’m not going to argue with that! - Ian] I haven’t got a copy of it, I haven’t seen it. But I’m always getting asked, y’know, ‘how do I get into web design, how do I learn it?’ It seems like this book is a good place to start."

Paul, you’ve hit the nail on the head there. I realise that it’s difficult for me to get my peers to buy a copy as they won’t learn anything from it, but it is the book that they can reccommend to their friends/colleagues/loved ones safe in the knowledge that they will learn the right way and, at the end of the book, be at a level where they can pick up some of the other excellent web design books out there without feeling that they have to re-educate themselve on the importance of standards, semantics and such like.

An interesting question. How about ‘may you go boil yer own head you bunch of frickin’ morons‘.

I dunno, it was all looking so promising when they actually appeared to be asking permission before whacking a whole bunch of spam pharmacy links in the comments field. Jeez, this stuff just never ends

From the moment I was first introduced to photo-sharing site Flickr, I was smitten. I loved it - loved the interaction it offered, loved the ease with which I was able to upload and share photos, loved the fact that storage and bandwidth allowance was so high (beyond what I’d be able to upload on any given month, at least on the paid-for service). In short, I became a total Flickr advocate. But something still bothered me …

The old navigation - confusing!

Some of the navigation was, prior to yesterday’s updates, confusing to say the least. For example, let’s say I wanted to find the recent activity (stuff that people have commented on/added notes on) or check out other people’s photos that I’ve commented on (to see if any other comments/conversation has ensued). For the former, I could find the link in the footer. For me, this was not ‘footer material’ - it’s one of the most important pages on Flickr. What’s it doing there at the bottom? Anyway, that’s a side issue. The confusion for me is that this page and the ‘photos you’ve commented on’ page are, essentially, two sides of the same coin. Yet I could only easily find the first of those pages. To get to the other page I needed to first pick a photo, one of my own actually (which, depending on where I am in Flickr at the time, might involve 2 or 3 clicks to get there), then scroll down underneath the photo where I’d find a link to both those pages. This is just one example where I’ve found the placement of navigation confusing and inconsistent, and that required me to be familiar with the site and remember the route to these pages. There were other issues, but I’ll not harp on about that. I have other things to harp on about …

The all-new Gamma version

Flickr have gone from ‘Beta’ to ‘Gamma’ stage in the last 24 hours. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen that badge applied to any web site! The changes are mostly navigational ones (thankfully), although there are general UI tidy-ups and a re-working of the Organizr (which really needed it - I cannot count the number of times I got script time-out errors when using it). I’ve yet to really get to grips with the changes, so there may be a follow-on to this post, but my initial thought is:

How are Flickr getting away with it?

And by that I mean, how is it that a site that is loved so much by the tech-savvy, blogging and web standards community (read nerds, pedants etc - I can say this, ‘cos I’m in that group!) seems to escape criticism of its make-up/build? At least, it seems to me that it does. We’ll criticize the smallest validation error in sites that otherwise do an excellent job of sticking to standards, but Flickr, well … it looks so nice and all that, who wants to say bad things? Well, I do, for one.

Little mistakes that should not be there

Where are the alt attributes for these images below, folks?

And these fancy drop-down navigation items? They are not keyboard-navigable.

Oops. And, as an aside, they do not even work with a mouse when I try to use the site at work - the company firewall actively blocks JavaScript that appears that it might be doing something nasty, which it has done in this case. I tried to disable scripting (using the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar), but there is not a noscript alternative for this navigation. To get to any of these sub items, I now have to disable style sheets to reveal the links and then re-enable CSS when I get where I want to be:

Do people still do this? Apparently so. Spacers, yeah!

View profile? How about ‘view luxuryluke’s profile’ as an alt attribute? Simple enough to do - not sure why this kind of thing gets missed off:

And again, some more prudent alt work wouldn’t go amiss. How about simply using ‘See all public photos tagged with SitePoint’? The ‘Click this icon to …’ part is somewhat superfluous.

Don’t mind me, I’m just a pedant

This may seem like another example of pedantry, but I believe simple things like those I’ve noted above are easily avoided. There are bigger issues that I could address (such as the keyboard accessibility of the site as a whole, the overuse of tables for layout that could be solved with relatively simple CSS), but I’ve said enough for one day. I’m off to throw stones at some kittens now, grumpy old git that I am.

Interesting … I was considering whether to treat myself to another laptop, and the MacBook Pro was looking very tempting, but also just a little on the expensive side. Today’s announcements about the MacBooks got me all excited again and so I started putting together some prospective purchase scenarios. I have to say, the new black MacBook looks very sexy … but at what price?

I discounted the ‘beginner’ MacBook (which won’t burn DVDs, no good for me) immediately and tried a couple of different configs with the other MacBooks on offer - both have 2Ghz processors, but there is a difference in the hard drive size. The white MacBook has the smaller drive at 60GB, while the shiny, oh-so-sexy black one sports a 80GB drive. And that, it seems, is all the difference (aside from the colour). But here’s the weird thing - when I uprated the memory on both machines and maxed the hard drive size on the white MacBook to 120GB, while bumping the black one up to 100GB, the white MacBook still came in cheaper. Compare (results from UK store taken on 16 May):

The higher spec machine is now the white one - now with a whole 20GB bigger hard drive - and is still £10 cheaper than the black MacBook!

So, what would you do - pay for the privilege of getting a black MacBook, or go for a higher spec … and the likelihood that you’ll maybe mistake your new MacBook for your old iBook G4 on more than one occasion :-p

I’m thrilled to announce that my book, Build Your Own Website the Right Way Using HTML and CSS, is now out on SitePoint. I received my personal copies today and am really pleased with the end result (it’s surprising how much fun it is to re-read your own work in this format … but it’s a real bummer when you find a typo!).

I’d really appreciate any mention you folks can provide for me - that’s assuming that anyone other than family members reads this blog :-D. If you feel like promoting a book about web standards that you could happily give to your mum and know that she’ll learn the right way, please do link to this page (and if you really want to help promote standards such that Google points people in the right direction, it’d be great if you used words such as beginners’ guide to web standards or similar).

Anyway, that’s my shameless marketing plea over - I really hope you can help in some small way :-)