Over the years I have found that web awards tend to fall into three types:

• The mindless handout of awards to favour colleagues.
• Awards for the prettiest or most unusable but funky hip design.
• An award that is a true test and representation of the best in the industry.

What I find that you are really  looking for is a web award competition that acts as a yard stick to measure your skills that is judged by your peers in the web industry, not advertising executives.

Something that congratulates the web designers and developers that are following web standards and producing sites that are accessible and inline with the latest in best practices.

That means something. It should be hard won, against the best that the Australia web industry has to offer.   With lots of meaningful categories that complement the sites you develop.

An award that will give you that recognition for all those late nights, un-billable hours and murderous deadlines.

You know it would be perfect if it was also a value asset that would promote you and your clients business as well.

Maybe I’m just dreaming.

…However this is what the Australian Web Awards, now in its 5 year of handing out awards, has been doing.

Now I have been involved with the Australian Web Awards committee now for two years. This is  a completely volunteer run event.  In a way it’s totally about giving back to the community.  It was amazing last year to see the high quality of the submissions to the Web Awards.   Also of interest was the outstanding effort  of entries that made it through the judging and vetting process to the finals.

Last year, I was expecting the East Coast to be dominate in the awards and produce an overall winner.  However it seems the East Coast doesn’t have what it takes, and the the West Coast was triumphant.

Which is a strange outcome given there where very few Western Australian judges.  I do wonder if the East Coast really does have  what it takes.

Nominations for the Australian Web Awards are open now, yes right now! They close on the 8 July 2010. No extensions.   I would be thinking about getting your entry in now.

The bottom line is if you think some of the web sites, produced over the last financial year are good enough to stand up with the best in Australia, then you should be entering the Australian Web Awards.

Do you have what it takes. I’m sure you do!

Well Internet Explorer 8 is out of Beta and has finally been released.   It didn’t meet the IE8 in 2008 proclamation that some where betting on.  But no matter at least it is here, better late than never, eh.

Yes it’s faster meaner, clean and generally  a better browser than IE7.   There is lots of fancy stuff I can’t use from a design view as other browsers don’t support it, but innovation is still good.  As a User Experience designer, it’s a nicer browser to work with.  It lines up and supports most of the standards, mind you I do suspect it was written to pass Acid 2 specifically and not o be complaint with all of the upcoming W3C guidelines.

You would suppose now we have IE8, all will be forgiven, the pain of IE6 will be swept away,  everything is going to be sweet and rosy.  Not more design pain, not more impossible CSS  with IE6, no more hacks, just a perfect world of browsers, IE8, Safari, FireFox and Opera.  I can here the bird singing now, as I lazy in this field of cool grass.

IE6  will slowly die off as the corporates move to the new browser leaving IE6 behind, Microsoft is even helping with a conversion guide.   We can even have pages in IE8 look like we are using IE7, with the IE8 compatibility mode. Perfect.  So all is right as Ben Buchanan says we can make 2009  the end of IE6.

It’s Not the Browser

But no this is not to be. We need to look at the big picture folks.  Sadly IE 8 wants to be the IE6 killer, but like its version 7 brother, but it’s still born.  No trumpets or fanfares for IE8.   The problem goes a  lot deeper than the browser.

It’s an operating system issue.

Now let me explain, medium to small business usually upgrade  their systems via a somewhat adhoc process.  With a little testing to ensure the upgrade is going to work,  they then roll it out across the organisation. This means that these smaller organisations can have the lastest browser etc without any hassle.

However larger corporates, where most of the IE6 remaining install base is, will take their time. These guys are very regimented, they work with Standard Operating Environments (SOE), Everything is tested, and tested again to reduce having a support disaster.  In some cases up to one year of testing can occur,with selective users, using the latest operating systems and common use desktop and intranet software.

As we know on the 6th day (IE6) Microsoft rested, and rested and rested.   Well they also rested with Windows 2000.  This resulted with a large corporate uptake of Windows 2000.  Sadly  the most recent browser that operates with Windows 2000 is IE6.  A lot of corporates are using Windows 2000 still, hence they are locked into IE6 , like it or not.   They just don’t have an alternative Microsoft browser that is going to allow them to move forward without changing the operating system.

What Next?

So if we want to help kill off IE6 we really need corporates to consider moving to Windows 7, skipping XP and Vista and as expected with a new SOE there will be the new browser.   Now given the time frame and the conservative nature of these organisations, I can’t see them conducting a mass roll out until early 2010.  Now support for Windows 2000 is due to die in 2010.   So this is a win win for the corporates.

Depending on the Microsoft production cycle that browser in the corporate SOE  may be Internet Explorer 9.

It’s all a numbers game, personally I would like to see IE6 disappear below 2% on my clients browser statistics tomorrow.   That would make me very happy, but as a realist I just know I’m going to be cursing IE6 for a while to come.  Not that the old girl is getting any special treatment these days.

Still I hope that I’m wrong.  What do you think is IE6 now doomed because of IE8?

Seems the W3C is running into a little trouble with it’s validation service.    You know know the one, the HTML and CSS  validation tools that allows you to validate your sites to the W3C guidelines.   They are now calling for financial assistance in the form for sponsorship and donations.  This does raise the question how is it that the W3C with its expensive membership fees and list of prestigious supporters has gotten itself into this type of predicament.

It seems that they are not just the cost of the usually suspects like bandwidth and hardware, but it’s the human factor. Basically the W3C needs more people to help with the project.  You may ask why now, what has really changed. Well consider the general maintenance  and any expansion for upcoming guidelines releases.

What concerns me is maybe the validation service funding is working on a very old school model. Granted you need a centralised service that can be held up as the primary reference point.  Okay we have the W3C Foundation, but why does the W3C have to use the old centralised  paid staff development model.

But You Can Contribute Code

Like with the HTML5 working group experience maybe the W3C needs to realise that the community maybe able to help by contributing developmental time not dollars.  This is not really that big a leap as the software concerned is already open source.  You will note that the W3C is very willing it seems for community to contribute code wise it’s just they aren’t telling us this in big neon lights.

In fact there is supposed to be a “grass roots” supporter program from the W3C foundation  with membership of Friends of the Web, however the information on this is not very forthcoming.  If you know more, please comment below.

Mind you thinking on this, I can bet some of the upcoming work is going to be that not that really sexy or exciting in development terms, hence just the type of things suited to a paid position.

Engaging Community

I’ve said it before the W3C is like an immovable cargo ship,  it’s just going to take a while to change direction, even if the people controlling it realise its navigating the wrong course.

Maybe the W3C really needs to do a  little more engaging with the local web community groups, like getting back out there and talking to the local Professional Web Associations directly.  Afterall these are the people usually pimping the best practice method and are already avocates, the people that are the leaders in the web community using the services the W3C provide.  Instead they tend to be using a few choice A-lister web industry types as conduits.

Has the W3C got its funding model right, or does it need to get back to the people and re-engage with them and get community support for it’s projects liike  the validator.

Now that, WA Web Week is well and truely put to bed, with Edge of the Web, WebJam9 and the WA Web Awards done and dusted; it’s now time to inject some life back into this blog.   Yes the posts have been a bit scant of late.  Sorry about that, the real world has been getting in the way.

So you have a site that you have lovingly designed coded and integrated into your CMS of choice.   You’ve delivered it to the client, perfect.  Not a pixel, word or image out of place, following industry best practice.  A work of art, electro-prefecto.

A few months later you review the site in passing.   It’s a complete mess, all the layout is using fonts, tables and there are pictures that are just resized 2 meg inserts. Plus what’s with this animated gif banner it now has.  It’s the classic showcase gone wrong.

Finding an overall solution to this type of problem, as you know, isn’t that easy. Like most of the web industry issues, it just doesn’t have a one size fits all solution. However there are a range of measures you can take  that will help reduce the pain.  Now the main limiting factor on all these solutions is the client’s budget (like that’s a new aspect, eh).

• Get Content Early

  Seems like a bit of a no brainer, but knowing all the major content layout requirements before you finish the UI design is major boon.   That way you can allow for those special cases. It’s the old 80/20 on these things, with the special cases requiring the most effort.  It can be argued when this level of UI for specific information types gathering should be done and by whom, at the low resolution of the design with the Information Architect and User Interaction Designer, or later with Front End Developer/Designer.  One thing is for sure don’t provide for this and the client will just stylise the best they can.   Mind you it’s impossible to allow for everything.

• Involve the Client

  Remember it’s not your website, it’s the clients.  So involve them, get them putting content into the CMS way before you have even wrapped a design around it.  This allows for two things.   The client gets to play with the CMS, and you get to see the content as it comes in and allow for it in the content design (see above).   Now it’s a good idea to still determine what that content is going to be so the proposed UI can take maximum advantage of it, and don’t get too many surprises.

• Educate

  Now you are going to have to training the  client in the use of your CMS and maybe a little bit more than just the technical basics. I’m not suggesting you get uber technical or the like with the under lying HTML. But things like the basics of what is a semantic layout (ranking headers). Basic layout methods for the relevant information types, like when to use tables, lists, definition lists, blockquote, images and the like.  In a way you are just tying to educate for the general best practices for information and report layout.

  Considering providing a style guide can help, sometimes.  Some places will use it like a bible for the layout of the web site, others will just ignore it,  your should get to know the client well enough to make this choice.

• Trim Back the CMS

  Given all the education in the world, it may pay to trim back the functionality of your CMS rich text editor (RTE).  Taking out the font size and color changers that insert font tags.  And  then allow for the use of class selects if you can.

  I know this is asking for the impossible, but parsing and cleaning up a word document cut and pasted in the RTE wouldn’t come a miss either, even to the extend of removing font tags, extra classes and the like.

• Web Standards, Break Them, Sometimes

  Of course if you go down the route of allowing clients to style via using classes, I will assume that you have very meaningful class names that can be easily understood for what they do by the client. Using classes like “image-aligned-right”, “text-indent-left-one-tab” or “large-highlighed-text”   Now this may not be the ideal in terms of best practice, but it’s a rule you have to break if you want clients to use classes and CSS style layouts, sometimes we have the break a few eggs.

• Do Nothing

  In most cases people will be used to the word processing rendering model; where there are only limited number of general information types and everything else is laid out via a table.  Doing this predates the web. That’s right, MS-Word and Word Prefect have a lot to answer for (showing my age now).   Hence with these types of ingrained information display models it becomes hard to break the mold.

  So why bother, just ensure they have a sense of pride and know what looks good and not.  At the end of the day you can’t control it.  And frankly does it really matter if they get it wrong and use tables for layout within the CMS or use font tags.  This is better than misplaced header tags. Maybe over time you can educate the client into using a best practice.  But at present it’s just easier for a client to use what we would consider bad practice to layout the information, live with it, you are not to blame.

So what do you do to avoid the digital disaster, if anything? Are there any other special things you do to ensure the client maintains to the site as you both initially envisioned?

Last month Molly Holzschlag lead an interesting discussion on the divided state of the web standards community on A List Apart.  Now we all know this has been happening for a while, this fragmentation of the web standards community.

Molly is prompting people to get involve with their web standards group of their choice, in an effort bolster the community, and maybe reverse the trend.

Okay it’s a good idea in theory; but in reality, from a personal view I’m tired of the same thing time and time again.  Take for example the Web Standards Group mailing list (we don’t have a local WSG) I’m finding the constant rehashing of topics and questions and answers a bit pointless, to the point that I’ve just lost interest.

Other standards groups, via their mailing lists or forums, can be at times almost hostile to newcomers, or just not interested in new blood.   Frankly I just don’t have the time to be bothered trying to be heard in such an environment.

Elephant in the Room.

Partly I blame some of the strong personalities involved, particularly in the volunteer web standards communities such as WHATWG and WaSP.  Especially with the WHATWG I have found the dominance of any discussion by a solid clique core.  So much so that outsiders are not seen as being welcome at all.   This in itself alone does not help foster the extension of a community at a time when getting volunteers of any way shape or form are becoming hard and harder to come by  worldwide.

From what I have observed, people have also just altered and shifted their view points, true they are still thinking of web standards in a way, but in most cases the gleam has gone from the shiny prize of standards perfection.

What do you think, have we all just moved on, learnt it all  and have now moved on?

The need and desire to move forward with the latest new innovation in the browser development community has lead to the implementation of early W3C draft guidelines by various vendors, in what is gearing up for an escalation.

Bring on the Darkest Hour.

It is this type of pressure the pushes the web community forward as well. You see the slower things move, the more we want the shiny new design toys that the browser vendors are offering, as they are building the hearts and mind of their browsers.  It’s really in a way gearing up to a war, a browser war.  A time of chaos and confusion, of  custom tags and the like.   So maybe this is the twilight before the darkest web standards hour.  So be it, it’s all a cycle, the wheel will turn.

Maybe all this web standards and best practice is really just a waste of time.  After all what real benefits, do web standards  deliver for the general web user. Remember a site can be highly usable and accessible, but still be a web standards horror story.  So if the user experience is good, do web standards count, optimistically I would like to think, yes.   But realistically maybe that is a no.

Sorry Mols I think it’s not looking good.  What do you think, is it time to drop web standards?

What a difference 6 months makes.  Now Microsoft are back to their old tricks.  So what have they done, well it seems now that Internet Explorer 8 will not be defaulting to rendering in complete standards compliant mode that Microsoft promised.

What Microsoft have promised is a compatibility view which allows the user to switch from IE8 rendering to IE7 rendering if the page is not forced (via code insert) into IE8 rendering mode.  So what this means is if you have a standards compliant page that IE8 will place an icon on the tool bar, to tell you that you can shift the rendering to the IE 7 engine if you like.

That Icon

It’s not that you have an icon (shown to the right), that I’m concerned about. It’s that the icon is representing a negative outcome.  A broken image, a sign that something is wrong, when it most cases there will be nothing wrong.  As Ben Buchanan explains in detail, this creates a fault premise that the user needs to fix something when there is no reason to.  Mind you Johnanon Snook doesn’t think it’s really an issue.   I wonder if there has been a series of tests done on the perception of what people think this icon will do.  Iconography is always a user interface minefield.

Now why have a broken page represented in the icon at all. Why not something to do with switching. Something that has a positive slant not a negative one. To the right is a quick idea. The broken one for me is just too negative.

And We Come Full Circle

So if we want to ensure we don’t have the “Compatibility View”, we have to put in a meta tag (from Microsoft):

The best way to ensure users have a great experience with your website, and thus don’t have to use the Compatibility View feature at all, is to test your site using Internet Explorer 8 and update it as necessary. In the event that a user selects Compatibility View for your site, you can “bring them back” to your desired layout mode via use of the version targeting <META> tag / HTTP header. A new content value, ‘IE=EmulateIE8’, rounds out the list of supported values and assists in this particular scenario.

Now isn’t this a little like where we started. Sometimes it’s 2 steps forward, 3 steps back.

They Win, Again

If you have an Intranet, you can automatically render in IE7 mode, or elect to have any URL always rendered as IE7 for your corporate SOE. This will be beyond most users, but that’s not who it’s aimed at.  It’s for the Enterprise, this is just a case of the corporate intranet winning again.   As Hakon Lie points out  what Microsoft is playing the numbers game the Enterprise PC numbers are higher so the Enterprise gets what it wants.

I expect if the web design and developer community cry foul again that Microsoft will flip flop back the other way.  creditability for Microsoft on this issue is wearing a little thin.

At least the development of IE8 has been “interesting”.

Well this week the web in a small way moved a little closer to the full semantic web as Yahoo announced it’s now indexing for the semantic web and microformats (which is really good to see).

So what is the big deal. Isn’t this semantic thing something the web standardsi have been touting for a while now. Does Yahoo finally joining in make any difference.

Well yes in a way it does, it means that Yahoo are taking the step in the correct use of semantically formated and organised information as a tool to understanding the context of the information that is being indexed.

This means that the search results will be in theory enhanced for those implementing for the semantic web. What is required now is Google to follow suit. If they do this will mean having a semantic valid site will be a distinct advantage. As expected this will bring a flurry of work for web standardsi.

What’s the Semantic Web

However the true semantic web doesn’t exist, yet.

It is the concept on a global scale that the entire web is readable by machines and that the information that has been read can be understood in the context of which it was read.

In a way it’s about publishing information on the web in a series of standard ways that allow anyone (including machines) to read and understand the information no matter what the format. Problem is with the web as it is at the moment is not achievable. As the information is hidden locked in the pages of the web with no allowance for any correlation at all.

One thing the semantic web is not is web 2.0 or even the mythical web 3.0 as Matthew Hodgson points out.

Web 2.0 is all about the people, communication, connection and interaction. The semantic web is about machines, communication and interaction with information in a open cloud of data with no forced interrelationships.

Now don’t think of the semantic web as a separate entity from the web as it’s not; its just an extension of the web. The addition of metadata to the existing web allows, via the use of RDF (Resource Description Frameworks) , to turn the data into structured information that can be machine understandable.

Is there any point to the Semantic Web

The really interesting thing with the semantic web is that in principle of data aggregation of the information. Take for example with a semantic aggregation service to should be possible to search for a local music festival, the predicted weather conditions, previous years reviews and pictures, without these information sources being interrelated directly. All this from looking up one event. This is achieved purely on the context of the machine readable information and the pattern information matching.

It gets better, want to look up all the reviews for the latest book you’re interested in, well via the collected semantic search results of microformats it’s possible to list all the reviews of the book extracted from their places on the web and even provide an average rating.

But remember just because the information is machine understandable this does not mean suddenly it allows for some meta artificial intelligence. All it infers is the ability to solve defined problems via defined operations. Still the machines have to told how to use the information. It just means that we can see what the information is like, in a similar way you can with a database.

So is the semantic web the future or is it still a pipe dream?

This was primarily in response to the IE6 to IE7 compatibility backlash by the corporate sector; as IE7 broke a lot of Intranet applications. We all bitched and grumbled, Jeremy Keith got up on his soapbox. But basically we all go on with it, understanding (but not liking) Microsoft’s positioning. That was in the past.

This morning we get the backflip. So now the word is:

We’ve decided that IE8 will, by default, interpret web content in the most standards compliant way it can.

So this means by default IE8 will move forward with the rendering as an improved standards compliant browser. The implications of this are outstanding.

If Microsoft does stick to this decision it will vindicate what myself and my fellow standardista have been practising for years is all worth the pain, tears and late nights. It will shake out the cowboys in this industry once and for all.

Let’s Opt-Out

Now this begs the question. What of the corporate sector that berated Microsoft over it’s broken Intranet applications running on IE6. I can’t see them being happy with the move. Are they now going to lobby Microsoft to change back. Or is Microsoft going to allow a “Opt-Out” meta tag, that renders the browser at the stated level in the metatag. This would make a lot of sense to me. Want a page rendered as IE6 drop in the IE6 attribute on the tag and IE8 becomes IE6 as a rendering engine. Inserting one line of code into a dynamic application can’t be that hard for the corporate sector can it?

Are you as stunned as me with the backflip!

Jordan Brock kindly videoed the two talks presented by Lisa and Rachel, encoded and uploaded them to Vimeo.

Rachel Cook, despite being 8 month pregnant, amused us all with tales of Silicon Valley and web 2.0 startups.

Ideas 4 – Rachel Cook at Ideas4 on Vimeo.

Where as Lisa Herrod on her birthday trekked all the way from the East Coast to present on holistic usability and accessibility with Usability More Than Skin Deep, Proving that checklist help but real people should be part of the equation.

Ideas 4 – Lisa Herrod at Ideas4 on Vimeo.

Thanks go to both Rachel and Lisa. You really made for an awesome evening.

It’s been a few days now since the release by Chris Wilson on the official Internet Explorer Blog and the subsequent follow up by Eric Meyer and Aaron Gustafson (as requested) showing support for and explaining in detail the introduction of the X-UA-Compatible Meta switch. Now the post to read here is the Microsoft one. That is primary to the whole deal, it explains somewhat why this was done.

What’s it all about.

Basically from Internet Explorer 8 there will be the provision of a meta tag. If you want to use the features of the rendering engine for IE 8 you have to insert this meta tag. If you don’t well your page will render as if it’s been developed for IE 7 (that’s the fall back).

Hence we are ending up with version control flagging for each web page. So you have to opt in to get the features like better standards support and the like from IE 8 and beyond by resetting this meta tag each time the browser changes.

So in web speak..
If DOC TYPE and X-UA-Compatible Meta Tag
Render as indicated by meta tag
elseif DOC TYPE
Render as IE 7 (Standards Mode)
else
Render in Quriks Mode
endif

The Emotional Roller Coaster

I haven’t commented on this, besides on twitter and a few blogs around tracks. I have been basically letting my opinions settle.

• When I first read about this I was outraged. “What are we going back to the dark days of the web”.
• Then I was considering the footprint size of the resultant application, mainly due to different rendering engines, the patching problems and hack attack holes.
• Like John Resig I was also considering the impact on JavaScript having to determine the rendering engine for the page.
• Then there was the possible future death of web standards, the removal of the future proofing concept. That had very concerned.
• Finally I ask who is going to control the registry of User Agent Acronyms that will be used? Will that be a free for all?

It was getting a little strange, a good number of the web community was lining up on opposite sides like Jeffery Zeldman and then Jeremy Keith, If Andy Clark had an operational blog I’m sure we would have been his 2 cents pence worth. Did they know something they are not telling use. Anger was subsiding to confusion. What was really happening?

Browser Wars – Not.

Well we know that the WaSP-Microsoft Task Force have been working on this for a while. The question does come up if this has so many problems, what where the alternatives, like. Is it possible that they where so bad, or that Microsoft just put a gun to the task force’s head and said “We are doing it with you or without you.” – I really hope this was not the case. I guess we will never know with a cloak of NDA around it all.

With the roll out of IE7, we in the web industry think it was a blessing (better than IE6 anyway). Not so in the Microsoft camp.

They are in the real world you see. They have clients with developers that don’t care about standards, about correct CSS, about cross browser compatibility. Yes they do exist. They are a majority, we are the minority. Yes we are very vocal, but we are small.

But IE 7 broke the corporate applications; it broke the implementations of ActiveX and Jscript The bringing of ActiveX and JScripting into line with standards compliance maybe a little harder than Microsoft wants to admit. It cost time and money to fix.

So if you major corporate customers complain about your implementation methods and demanding that the default playing field remains static. What are you going to do. Well if you want to stay in business, you are going to listen to these paying customers.

Then we have the web industry, do they in general pay for Microsoft products (beyond the operating systems) in general no.

So we have annoyed paying customers and on the other hand a minority of free loading noisy upstarts. This is business, money talks in this case. Web Standards lose to business reality. The opt-in stands so the corporate sector can opt-out by default.

As Lachlan Hardy says:

Microsoft doesn’t tell you it’s going to do something of this scale unless it means it.

What people are going to do

I’m consider it’s going to get to the point where you are sick of putting the meta tag in, so you just sniff the browser header, and insert the correct meta tag as the page renders via a backend script.

You have other problems as well like when you go to render generated content as expected in the current version of CSS, but you have to check first that page is going to be rendering as say IE8 otherwise its going to only render as IE7. So then IE8 is really IE7..okay? That is going to get very confusing. Maybe its a move to force people to stagnate.

Is it Good?

Is it going to be helpful? Well, yes, may make life for debugging a little easier and testing as well, as you can stimulate multiple browsers with one version of Internet Explorer. However this doesn’t take into account (at this stage) sub-versions of the render engine. .

Ian Hixie is recommending we all opt-out or put “IE7″ in the meta tag, forcing the rendering engine to IE7. Nice, so the web stagnates. This is just what we don’t need at the moment.

We need to keep Microsoft at the table and educate like crazy these corporate sector developer cowboys. We need to get out there and get mentoring. We need to turn the corporate sector around.

It’s just one line of code but I can still see blood on the browsers over this one. Microsoft has been force to cave to the demands of their own monster.