http://www.dind.com/blog/critiques/ en-us Fri, 18 May 2012 19:33:26 PDT Fri, 18 May 2012 19:33:26 PDT SiteCrafting.com GearBox 1.1 (beta) http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/customer-service-be/ I recently received a gift certificate to a popular online merchant, aka Company. I'm not telling who Company is, because I like them, and I don't want my comments to be taken the wrong way. The entire thing was a fiasco, but I ended up with a nice warm and fuzzy feeling, simply because the merchant actually cared about my experience. Here's the important parts:If something goes wrong, tell the customer whyNever have an action with out a success or error messageIf you can reasonably accomodate the customer's request, do soRespect your customer's scheduleIf the customer isn't happy, ask them whyI won my gift certificate in a raffle, and to actually get it, I had to email one of Company's marketing people. That part was easy, and so I pointed my browser to Company's online store. I happily added a bunch of stuff to my cart. Once I had filled up my cart with schwag, I went through the registration and information process, and ended up at the payment page.On that page, there was a nice field for adding gift certificate numbers, and so I put mine in and hit 'Submit'. Nothing happened. No error message, no confirmation, no indication that I'd entered a valid number. There was no way that I would proceed from here, because I didn't want to deal with a refund hassle, so I just emailed my contact at Company. She told me that she would get in touch with the people that manage their store, and let me know when it was fixed.The next day, she sends me an email saying that the store is now fixed, and that I should try again and let her know if the problem persists. It does, so I return the email. Then she connects me directly with the store managers at the merchant (Merchant), and I get a new contact (my third, there was one in-between the lady at Company and this one), and am told that I'll either have to call their toll free ordering phone, or order via email.I much prefer to email people than to call them, especially if I don't know the person I'm calling, so I email off my order. I ask that they remove my credit card number from their mail program when the order is complete, and they happily oblige. Finally, my free stuff is coming.About a day later, I receive a shipping notification from Merchant, which lists one of the items $2.00 more than is displayed on the site. Normally, I'd be a bit ticked off, but this time I decide the fight is not worth the effort, especially because I am getting a ton of free stuff from them. The following Monday, my stuff arrives, and I'm happy. The next day, I receive a request to fill out a survey about my experience, and I let them have it. I give them the lowest possible score on their webstore, and on product knowledge (the difference in price caused that). I also put in that I'd like to see trinkety stuff in the store - keychain, stickers, pens and the lot - because it would have been fun to plaster Company stickers all over everything I own (I know, I'm a tool). I send off the survey, thinking "That's the end of that, no one follows up on these things". Two days later, I receive a phone call from a guy named Jason (name changed), right as I start my lunch break. Nice timing, Jason. That shows that they care enough to not interrupt my work day.Jason wants to know if he can ask me some questions about my survey results. After a my brain resets, I answer his questions. (Conversation is paraphrased)Jason: Why did you give us a low mark on product knowledge?Me:  Because the pricing was inconsistent between the website and manual ordering. I didn't want to pursue it because I got a free certificate, and it didn't seem worth it.J: Oh, ok. And why the low mark on our website?Me: Because your gift certificate processing system didn't work, forcing me to order via email. (It's probably because I got the certificate direct from Company, and something wonky happened with the database.)J: I see. Well, we are working on that, and hopefully it won't happen again. Also, I want to let you know we're looking into getting the stuff you recommended.Me: Wow, cool. Even though the ordering experience sucked, I like how customer friendly both companies are. They were prompt, answered my questions, and made sure that I was a valued customer, even though I was getting most of the stuff on their dime. The survey follow up was especially important, because you have to actually pay people to call up customers and ask why they had a bad experience with the process. I imagine that job is terrible, but it made me feel like they care about me. And that's something you don't see very much in the Internet industry. Fri, 20 Oct 2006 09:17:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/ie-7-1/ Seems like the cat's out of the bag. Well, IE 7 is now available for download, anyway. Good to see Microsoft update their browser software after five years away from the party. Can't say I'm personally looking forward to this install but even if the only thing better about IE 7 is PNG support, I'm all for it.Download IE 7 and let us know what you think! You can be sure we'll be doing extensive client testing and will post our thoughts as they solidify. Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:57:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/firefox-20/ Hot on the heels of the Internet Explorer 7 release, Mozilla Firefox 2.0 is slated for official release tomorrow, but, as often happens, they have posted the full release version up on the mirrors already, so you can find what you're looking for at ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0So, some first thoughts... most of it is same old Firefox. Slightly different look (not that it matters to those who skin their browser anyway). I haven't gone out seeking fraudulent sites to see how well Firefox warns me of them, so at this point I'll have to take their word for that one. The inline spellchecker is quite nice. It manages to be visible without being obtrusive when marking misspellings, with word recommendations available via right-click.The biggest advantage that Firefox 2 has over something like IE 7 (beyond all the things Firefox already had over IE) is this: it works. Some articles I've read have wondered why Mozilla didn't push a little harder to beat IE to the punch, release-wise. Well, the reason is simple: they wanted to release Firefox when it worked, and not a moment before. IE 7 is out there crashing Windows and shutting off audio plug-ins (or so my co-workers' testimonials would have it). Meanwhile, I downloaded Firefox today, and the only things that didn't work instantly were a couple of user-created extensions, for which the application immediately sought out, found and installed the updated 2.0 compatible versions. Everything is working as smoothly as (or smoother than) ever.Microsoft is far from alone in this kind of error. Apple's iTunes 7.0 was, quite frankly, a disaster. If you have to start releasing such major bug fixes a week later, well... wouldn't you be better off releasing your application a week later, actually working? I sure think so.I'm sure I or someone else here will be back for a more thorough review once we've had a little more time to properly digest the new features. Mon, 23 Oct 2006 10:50:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/bulletproof-critique/ I ran across a neat article from Sitepoint via Stylegala that you all should read on how to make your HTML 'perfect'. In the world of design, the concept of perfect is non-existant. There is no solution that will work for solving every problem, and there are exceptions to every rule. This article is no different. Read the full article, and then check out my comments.FAQ #1-#7I can't really say anything about these, because they are factual definitions.#8 Yes, HTML 4.01 Strict is a good choice, but XHTML 1.0 Strict, or even better, XHTML 1.1, is preferable. If you need to use deprecated tags or attributes, you really should use HTML 4.01 Transitional. We use XHTML 1.1, for a number of reasons, but we do use some prohibited attrributes (title on tags other than abbr and acronym, target) and syntax (our rich text editor in the cms mucks up the code). We do this because we know the strengths and weaknesses of each decision we make, and we don't make them lightly.#9It's good to make sure your markup validates, but I know that this article won't and I know why. Some errors can be tolerated (like the ending '/' on image tags.), and some can't - a misplaced </table> destroys your layout.#10Too many times I've seen sites where the HTML was terrible, but it rendered properly. Most designers want to make their sites look right, but it's the attention to detail that separates the good from the great.#11-#14Again with factual definitions. I also got bored halfway through #12 - Charset.#15Be careful with using character entities outsite your charset, because The entire range from  through Ÿ are invalid characters. I bet you didn't know that, did you? It's ok, I didn't either until I read this article on A List Apart.#16-#18Not a whole lot I can say about these, but there are some details to pay attention to, like using h# tags in sequential order.#19You can make block level elements look like inline elements, or inline elements look like they are block I am a div displayed inline, and so am I.and I am a span displayed block.The article states this, but I wanted to make a little clearer.#20 & #21If you didn't know this already, please make sure to read it again.#22This item should have been much earlier in the article, at least #8. They've been using semantic for awhile, but they just get around to defining it  now?#23Again, make sure you are using the tags as they were meant to be used. If something needs to be italic, use <i>, if it needs emphasis, use <em>.#24This deserves to be said again: table layouts are bad, for all the reasons in the article.#25<div> is not the new <table>, and documents should not have <div> soup. The div element is a generic block-level tag. It is best used to store other elements in meaningfully connected ways. For example, <div id="header"> is common here, but having six div's within that for each the page title, navigation, login information, and to separate those items is bad. Be like us, resist the urge to replace <table> with <div>#26Just remember to use <table> for the right reason.#27-#31This is all very useful information, much of which I didn't know. Make sure you get it all.#32I would much rather use target="_blank" than Javascript to open new windows, especially because all browsers support the target attribute, and most don't let javascript open new windows with user intervention anymore. In this case, the ideal solution is broken because of the era of the pop-up.#33Actually, the alt attribute should be omitted, but only rarely. At SiteCrafting, we use image icons to add meaning to links, for example, a plus sign on links to add new enteries to a database. If I added an alt attribute to that image, and it didn't display, my link would look like [Add] Add Item rather than Add Item. #34You can have many elements of a given class, but only one element (on a page) with a given id. This does make you wonder why getElementsByClassName isn't in the Javascript core.#35 & #36Essential, but I can't add anything to these.#37This reminds me of the era of frames. Frames were bad, and undead frames like object include and iframes should not be allowed to work. But we had to use iframes a couple of times, because there was no other option to make the system work. Here's the bottom line: Learn the rules of HTML, and this article is a good place to start. Then when you have learned the rules, you can bend them, or even break them, as long as you know why you are doing it. Wed, 01 Nov 2006 09:16:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/joys-object-oriented-php/ It's pretty common for PHP developers to make complex and difficult to maintain scripts, and I am no exception. I write my code in two distinctly different ways: scripts that do a whole bunch of things depending on input, and classes that do a bunch of things depending on how they are called, but from lots of different scripts. But which is better? It's a nice ego boost for any prrogrammer to know they created a script/function/class that is really useful, and well designed, but at some point the code stops being well designed, and becomes gross. I think that point is when you have one script that displays an entire (SQL) table of data, views a particular row, edits that row, can delete that row, or can add new row to the table.If my Software Engineering professor sees me doing that, I imagine that he'll reevalute my grade in his class.The first version of my coding style (a script that does everything), generally looks like this (psuedo code for the sake of brevity): check permissionsif edit request sent    create edit sql    query databaseif delete request sent    create delete sql    query databaseif add request sent    create add sql    query databaseinclude header html fileif adding a new row    display blank html formelseif editing a row    display html form with values filled inelseif viewing a row    display row previewelse    display all rowsinclude footer fileSome of you out there might be copying that down to use in your own code, and I don't mind at all. That kind of structure is easy enough to work with when you only have four or five columns for data, but as you get more and more complicated data structures, and incorporate more and more tables into this style, using files like this can get extremely difficult. There is a better alternative, and that is using Object Oriented PHP. You create a control class for each table of data, and call its seprate methods to perform the tasks you want to accomplish. CodeIgniter gets this design spot on, as each class and function is also translated into a url. For example, if you have a Library class and you want to call the preview method, you would simply point your browser to www.mysite.com/library/preview. My designs aren't quite as good as CodeIgniter's, but they are good (the reason that CodeIgniter is able to have such good url's is due to some pretty complex File Not Found processing). Here's an overview of my classes:class something    variables according to the columns in the table    function load (id)        queries database for the row that has the specified id        assigns the values to the classes' variables    function save ()        takes the variables from $this and creates an sql statementand so on as I need. For each different script, I name it something_save.php or something_view.php, where the first word is the class, and the second is the function name. Somethings I leave up to the php file, like xhtml templates and style, but all I have to put in those files is two lines of PHP code: load() and the function call. This makes the control logic of components of your application really easy to use, and also is better from a Software Engineering view.I hope you can implement this methodology into your own coding, and I welcome comments on how to improve this idea.Disclaimer: I left out a lot of details on the psuedo code, for several reasons, but mainly because I wanted to talk about a concept, rather than a tutorial. Wed, 08 Nov 2006 13:36:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/going-old-school/ As with most people with an email account, I receive a fair amount of spam each day. Most of it is caught by our spam filters and sent to Never-Never-Land where I won't see it. One piece of spam managed to sneak its way through last week that was just too good to ignore.  With all the advancements in technology to filter out spam, how do you get your message out to thousands of email accounts? You go old school.ah us ty mm al td ep vh ag su ga zeee ok yk ch eq jrg ymp fd vj tg yc jv yo vp km zgdadmrv dh kr lclyea fp wv ja au ln bh bn gmdu nw vs he kb ay nq ak fa ko lt er pu kqvyfs pz ovsc dn oj ri lh yp jc fvzw zogle kq an tq wj egpk kz se fv vp hblm cr ju ls zr ji uj jj ko nc ji wd rf sw cwwrqj ui ecx mvhue lexkdx evnu fz ha ei gc ef og py lc dk mf fl qd bp puom ot vk si po fypp xi ze ki qz lwgy in pt xq gevp bq ke at zj hp ym mh pq pe ur kik tc lj ptecon lt iq iui nr qq nm it lo cw bt bo ly qt rlpn is ii pk nteynd fa wpti rv lg pa dn gt jj hu wu vf ju gfmp xlj bh bifl fp ly bfr wq ij xgnbzk xo kp aqx tiu ffrdpe btzppp cbisjv lus os pa fq re vq zdh zq lq au ac ov db oh el od nj qa qs ll mbI got a chuckle out of it.  Nothing quite like using some ASCII art to get your point across. Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:52:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/my-new-car-help-website/ I just got a new car - a Volvo 240 Wagon. I can't wait to take it on a road trip. This is the first time I've gotten my own car, and so I've been dealing with all the licensing, emissions, and insurance paperwork that goes along with buying a car. I've learned two important things from buying the car, and I want to share.Explanations are essentialMy first priority once I had bought the car was to get it insured. So I called up the agents that my family has relationships with, and asked what it would cost to get insured. Of the two agencies, I got two very different responses to that question. The first one told me what insurance I had previously been on, and explained what each part of it was. I don't understand the legal insurance mumbo jumbo, so hearing stuff like "Personal Injury Protection pays for medical bills of your passengers" or "Comprehensive coverage protects against theft, fire, ..." and so on, was a very helpful thing. The other agency just said "What kind of insurance do you want?" Granted, that agent didn't know what kind of insurance I had before, but how am I supposed to know what is available, and what their terms mean? Don't assume that your customers know all the idiosyncrasies of your business. When I'm talking to someone who is an expert in a field I'm not, I want them to tell me what I need to know, and then what I should know.Telling me what the insurance was, and what it covered was a very helpful thing, and it made me think that the agent was looking out for me. She told me what I had been covered for, and then asked if that was what I still wanted. The other agent gave off an air of detached professionalism - get the job done and then get the client out of the way.This can help you two ways: first, explain what you're asking on website, and why you need that information. Second, being more open in this way helps your customers feel better about doing business with you.Information ASAPI also need to get my emissions checked because Pierce County has problems with air quality. I went to the Department of Licensing website to find hours of operation, and found live webcam feeds of their testing stations. (http://www.emissiontestwa.com/waittime.aspx) I can see right away how long I'll be in line to get that task taken care of. Instead of just giving me the information I needed, they gave me more information that I might find useful, and it really is useful. I can plan my trip better, and if wait times are too long at one location, I can pick another. Kudos to the State for taking the effort to do a job right. For you web designers, remember to give your visitors all the information they need, and then what they can use to make their experience better. Thu, 07 Dec 2006 11:36:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/prototype-documentation/ One of the most popular javascript libraries, Prototype, has finally released a decent set of documentation. I'm really pleased, because it was a little difficult to work with not knowing what was available, and how to use all the tools.Their website is very simple and easy to use, and will quickly become one of my most visited sites. If you haven't used Prototype, I highly reccomend taking a look at its features. It makes javascript development very fast and simple, even for complex problems. I've used it to great success. I don't know how it matches up with some other javascript libraries yet, but I'm planning on reviewing all of them. Fri, 19 Jan 2007 10:03:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/little-thought-goes-long-way/ Here at SiteCrafting, we are quite busy with new projects. As such, we have realized that additional staff is necessary to meet the demands for our services. With the addition of new staff members comes the need for more furniture. We also decided that this would be a great time to rearrange the office, and create 3-4 person "pods" for team collaborative purposes. So, we headed off to the furniture store that supplied us with our current desks and chairs, hoping to place an order for 14 new tables. As we had suspected, the tables and legs were not in stock, and we were told that if we wanted them delivered we would need to call their business services line and place an order. So we acquired all the necessary stock numbers for the tables and legs (they come separate) and headed back to our office (note here that the salesperson did not offer to let us use their phone to place an order or go to some ordering desk). And here is where the breakdown in customer service reared its ugly head.Calling the business services line and placing the order went smoothly enough. We explained to the representative that we needed 14 tables and listed the type of legs we wanted (there are multiple styles of legs that go with this particular table). The representative explained to us the final cost which included a shipping and handling fee (which was very reasonable) and we paid by credit card on the spot. We patiently waited for the 2-3 weeks to pass so we could begin rearranging our office.The big day came on a Thursday. A large delivery truck pulled up to our office and brought in all of the tables and and legs. As they were leaving, we started taking inventory of the shipment. We counted the tables: 10 long tables, and 4 short tables. Great! However, the stack of legs looked a little sparse. So we counted ... and recounted. And sure enough: 14 legs! Unless this was going to be some new feng shui layout where each table is balanced on one leg, we had a bit of a problem. We checked the order sheet again to make sure we ordered correctly. The tables were listed as 1p. (meaning 1 per order). The legs were listed as 1pk. (meaning to us 1 pack per order).So lets go back to the phone call. We told the representative we needed 14 tables and legs to go along with it. We did not know that legs were sold as individuals. Nonetheless, should not the representative have made the connection that 14 tables require 56 legs? A very little amount of thought on the representative's side would have saved us a lot of time and wasted resources in trying to acquire the extra legs.Here's how the phone conversation could have gone that would have shown more exemplery customer service. "Sir, I see that those legs are sold individually. Do you require four legs per table, or would you like to simply order 14 legs?" That two-line sentence would have saved us the two extra weeks it is taking to get the additional legs to us, and the extra shipping fees incurred due to the double shipment (thankfully this furniture company agreed to cover that cost). Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:02:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/design-art/ When I was back in school, I would often tell people how my combined Art and Computer Science majors did not mean that I was doing graphic design, web design, or any other kind of mix of computers and art. To them, it was obvious that I would combine two usually separate majors into the usual combination. To me, however, art and computer science are totally separate. The purpose of art is in my mind to either 1) evoke an emotional response in your viewer or 2) create something beautiful. Computers are a communication medium, and the purpose of communication is to deliver information. You can see examples of this every day - in websites of art schools that are impossible to divine information out of, or in strictly information websites that have no graphical content whatsoever. In the case of these two ideas, the graphic-less sites win out in function and usability, but the art school sites look better. The problem is, that the art school sites are impossible to use, and so it doesn't matter how good they look. The clear winner here is the plain, yet content centric site. And the lesson to learn is that content is king, and communicating that information well and effectively is the key to building a good website.For practical examples, let's take a look at two actual websites, craigslist.org and Seattle's School of Visual Concepts. Craigslist is a well known classified ads site, and very successful. They have thousands of posts everyday, and get all that information across to the users in a clear and effective means. But the site looks terrible. Even so, people all over the world use craigslist to buy everything from old couches to hot tubs to fill dirt. Craigslist works because the information is easy to find, and readily available.SVC, on the other hand, is a piece of digital art. It's got a downhome/street grunge design that's really appealing. When I first saw this site, I loved it. But today, I think differently of it. While it's not the worst site I've ever seen, it's pretty close to the worst. Trying to find any kind of useful information on the site is futile, because all the text looks the same, and the busy-ness of the design distracts from the information. Try looking class information from the homepage. The class schedule isn't too hard to find, but once you're there, finding information about a specific class, say something in Advertising is terribly difficult. It's hard to find the Advertising category in the first place because the text that denotes "advertising" is really small, has low contrast, and on top of that, isn't actually text - it's an image.Once you've found the class you are looking for, try clicking on the class name to get more information. You'll see a popup window that barely matches the rest of the site design. You can't scroll (at least, not on a Mac or with Firefox) down if the information is too long to fit in their pre-defined window, and if you've got an extension like FireBug on, you'll see that there's a continuous Javascript error.Once that window is open, click on the Course Outline link on top. I think that's supposed to open in a new window (how many windows, exactly, does this site want me to have?) but it opens in a tab that I can't read because I can't scroll the popup window. I'd expect more from a school that teaches web design classes, but I can't be too surprised because their intro course covers such topics as "Frames ? Advantages, disadvantages, how to create" and "HTML tables and how they can be used to create interesting layouts". Personally, I'd never want to hire or work with anyone that learned how to make websites from this school. They're only about 10 years behind current web technology. The moral of this story is that having a good design does not mean that you will have a good website, but taking time to insure that your content is easy to access goes a long way to establishing a great site. And to anyone at SVC - I didn't intent to be mean to you site; I love how it looks. But seriously, redo it. You can do better. I'd even manage the project in exchange for free tuition.Most people confuse design with art because it's visual, but design is more than just ink on a page or pixels on a screen. Design, or at least good design, is about the communication of information. Graphic design is not exempt from this. Many schools, including PLU, teach students how to use Photoshop or Illustrator to make pretty pictures, and largely those schools succeed. That's not design. What they are teaching is best described as digital art. Good design is something that few classes will teach you, and fewer people actually learn.That's partly why good designers are hard to find. To be a good designer, you have to have obvious eye for what looks good and what doesn't. You have to be able to communicate the important information to people using the website, and you also have to be able to communicate well with the people that are hiring you to design the site, and also the people that build the site. It's very frustrating when the designer gets second guessed by clients or users simply because said client or user has delusions of grandeur. At the end of the day, what makes websites successful? Good content, and information that is easy to access. Pretty images are not useless, but they can't be used in place of good information. But as sites like craigslist show, you can have an ugly design and still have a great website. All the best websites are the best because they have good functionality, information, and content. But it helps if your site looks good, too; it's just not vital. Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:15:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/im-reading/ So, some people are interested in what others are reading at the current moment. So I thought I'd give you a view into the sorts of things that I focus on when I'm not working on conquering the web universe. The fact is, I am always looking for new books and new things to learn. I recently finished a book that was recommended by a client called Indomitable Spirit by Chuck Ferguson which calls itself "The essential guidebook for a lifelong journey of leadership  and the rewards of meeting them". While I'm not certain that it is the greatest book I have ever read on leadership, I believe that the message is very positive and one that reminds us in the service business that what we really are are "caregivers". People appreciate the extra mile and the little things. I don't mean to trivialize it, but it's pretty straightforward and basically tells us we need to take care of those that take care of us. I am in the middle of Now Discover Your Strengths, and Seth Godin's Small is the New Big. The bottom line is I like to read. I am always looking for a good book. If you have some suggestions, post away. Some of my recent favorites include:Zag : The Number One Strategy of High Performance BrandsBuilt to LastGood to GreatLet my People Go SurfingFeel free to share...thanks.b Tue, 17 Jul 2007 20:06:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/windows-live-generation-web-apps/ So, I'm pretty much online all the time. I'm constantly looking for innovative applications and web services. I thought, "I'm going to have a look at what the 'big guys' are doing."We all know Google is creating some pretty great web applications like their maps or spreadsheet apps. Seems decision makers at the big "G" have squarely set their sites on building innovative tools for web users. Surely, I thought, Microsoft has its plan and it's called Windows Live. Once on the site I went no further in their online suite of products than this one word to know it will never work: Install. There was an "Install" button I was required to click after selecting the "web applications" I wanted to use. Not cool. One of the best things about creating web-based applications is that they can work for someone anywhere there's an internet connection and a browser -- no special downloads or programs required. Web apps should just work.Now, this may seem like an overreaction, but when will MSFT start truly seeing that always requiring ties to a specific OS may not be where the future of software tech lies? As we become further disconnected from the chair-to-desk scenario and more reliant upon wireless, always on and always connected devices it seems the path ahead breaks from having to care which this is compatible with which that. If a company like Microsoft were to design a washing machine it very well might be unable to wash my Levi's but have no problem with Calvin Klein's.As I've heard it said before, "Microsoft: the future is yesterday, the past tomorrow."Read Mike's post about another recent Microsoft de-innovation. Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:49:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/android-real-gen-web-apps/ If the iPhone is web apps to go, Google and the Open Handset Alliance's new open source mobile phone API, dubbed Android, is The Joy Of Cooking Webapps. Once again Google has seen a good idea (packing a cell phone full of convenient little apps and widgets that sync with websites and external systems) and figured out a way to make it a great one. If you haven't been following the news on Android, here's the basic scoop: Google has teamed with a group of phone manufacturers (T Mobile, Motorola, etc, just to name a few of the biggies) to create the Open Handset Alliance, who are running on a pretty basic principle (and one that Big OS Developers) have still failed to grasp. If everyone is competing to get the best developers to work on their system, nobody is going to get the best software. So much time is wasted working within proprietary systems and on cross-platform compatibility that the chance for true innovation is weakened, if not lost altogether. Let software engineers come up with what they're trained for: good software ideas. Someone who wants to write a killer chat widget for a cell phone shouldn't have to sit around trying to decide what phone they're going to sink their time and code into. The telecom industry is in such flux that it's impossible to tell just which company is going to be big, or bought, or gone tomorrow.Hence, the OHA introduces a common API, one that the involved parties are commited to using (some say they'll have Android-ready handsets come Q4 of 2008), one that allows open source developers all over the world to simply code, writing Java programs secure in the knowledge (unless something goes horribly awry) that they won't be tied to a single manufacturer.On top of the usefullness of a generalized API, this alliance fosters innovation in another way: once a group of competing vendors band together on something like this, proprietary development concerns go out the window. Apple is still stuck trying to keep most of the iPhone development in house. Android, on the other hand, is blatantly relying on the open source community. And since it is built on the backs of pure hardware vendors, no one has a service provider looking over their shoulder going "Oh no, what if someone ports Skype to this phone? We're doomed!" Well, maybe they are still looking... but they no longer have the power to stop it.What really excites me here, though, is just how much force Google is putting behind getting the developer community involved. With Monday's SDK release, a full year before the first Android-enabled handsets will hit the market, they took a major step toward ensuring the success of the project. I've toyed with the system a bit, and I tell you it is sweet. In addition to command line tools and serious documentation, they've also wrapped the whole toolkit up in an Eclipse plug-in, complete with an incredibly thorough simulation setup: a visual representation of a full-keypad handset, complete with already installed and fully functional browser, Google maps, and address book... you can even place calls (no, they don't go through, but it does record them in a recent call list for you). As if just putting the tools out there wasn't enough, suddenly there's the Android Developer Challenge, complete with $10 million in cash prizes to encourage innovation and development.I don't know about anyone else, but this whole thing excites me to no end. I don't really have aspirations of winning any of that money... I've only done minimal Java development in the last couple years. But it feels good to get in on the ground floor of something that feels like it could be genuinely revolutionary. This really is the next step. Here at SiteCrafting we've already started building mobile web interfaces for some of our clients' more complex business management apps. I'm eagerly anticipating the day when we don't have to put together tiny webpages for field managers to use, because they've got a genuine application on their phone, grabbing and updating live data from the system we've built them.So maybe I won't win $25,000 by having and executing one of the best 50 ideas by February, but everyone in telecommunications, software engineering, web development, and, well... pretty much everyone has a lot to gain from the work that's going to be spawned here in the next few months. I've already started work on my new Android app. Have you? Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:01:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/innovation/ So I came across a great blog post on innovation posted by Peter Dixon - When Super is Just Plain Superfluous and I have to say he just nailed it. So much has been made of the need for innovation that people have lost track of what the word even means, they just know they need to do it. Which I guess is good if you are in the business of providing solutions that help people "innovate".  Unfortunately, every day people are "selling" innovations that ultimately serve no purpose or are just enormous time wasters. From where I sit it seems good innovation solves real problems and makes people's lives better. This could be as simple as streamlining communication, creating more accountability, or saving time through better task management. We strive to make tools that allow organizations to grow using technology and to solve their day to day problems. This, to me, is a form of change that, as it evolves, can lead to true innovation: doing things in a drastically simpler way. What people or companies do you know that are innovating, for real? I'll share a few of our clients in the coming weeks who are, in my mind, truly innovating. First stop:  The Letterman Jacket. Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:57:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/website-innovation-profile-1/ Changing the way an entire industry works is never easy. It can take a lot of time to get people used to doing things in a new way. Fortunately, during the past few years we have witnessed entire industries become disrupted by innovation. The Internet has changed the rules in so many industries - digital music, travel, banking - the list goes on and on. So one of our customers asked, why not Letterman jackets?We all remember (at least those of us that were jocks) receiving our letter and going to the nearest sporting goods store and ordering our jackets. Typically, we chose from a limited set of styles, got measured, paid some money, and then waited 4-6 weeks for delivery. It's a process that still plays itself out in most of the country. Enter Lettermansclub.com...The OpportunityThe folks at Lettermansclub.com found that the process of selecting a coat (now that multiple styles of coats and various patches are available) was time consuming. It was not rare for a student to spend 2-3 hours with a sales person getting measured, fitted, and designing the coat. Once the coat was perfect, the total cost for the coat would be delivered and it often resulted in re-working the coat to fit within the student athlete's family budget.The process was further marred by the lack of being able to "see" the actual jacket and how the color combinations would work. This is similar to viewing three paint sample swatches and having to picture how it will look in a completed room. Oftentimes the "leap of faith" that it would look good was too much and led to more and more indecision. Students would often take the safe road and not add back patches or color combinations they were unsure about.The SolutionThe solution was a fully integrated jacket builder and tracking system. Student athletes are able to login to Lettermansclub.com and design their jacket on their own time. They are able to create an account, color their coat, drag and drop patches, select artwork for their patches, select trim and embroidery colors and submit their jackets online. The system keeps track of the cost of the coat as they are building it so they always know the total cost of their jacket. Once the order is submitted, lettermansclub.com staff are able to print out all the jacket instructions as well as see exactly where patches and embroidery are to be sewn, minimizing errors and resulting in a smooth build of the coat.What's NextLettermansclub.com has a group of dealers across the region and will continue to add dealers across the nation. No longer do student athletes need to choose just the sporting goods store around the corner. They now have an easy online choice. Their local shop is going to be forced to change or will go the way of other businesses disrupted by the innovators. In what area of your businesses can time consuming processes be replaced by innovation? Wed, 20 Aug 2008 17:32:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/iphone-goggles/ As mobile access to the web increases, it is becoming more and more important to ensure sites are usable on mobile devices. iPhoney attempts to address the iPhone camp with a desktop application that renders web pages within a virtual iPhone. After playing around with the app, it is certainly not without its flaws. For one, it is not simulating a true iPhone client environment. This means there is still room for the possibility that pages will display differently on an actual device. The UI is also fairly limited, with the iPhone graphic surrounding the browser window being purely aesthetic with no functional purpose or clickable areas. It would also have been nice to be able to simulate different network speeds to see how pages loaded using typical 3G/HSDPA, EDGE, and GSM connnections.The program does recreate an accurate pixel-for-pixel recreation of the browser window (320x480). It even lets you rotate the virtual phone sideways to view the page in "landscape" mode. It also does an excellent job of recreating the iPhone's browser UI, which can be extremely useful for developers building sites that complement the iPhone's UI appearence. Overall it makes aesthetic testing of a site extremely simple and straightforward, though is lacking in other areas like performance and browser testing. In the end it won't replace the need for a real iPhone to properly test a site, but it is certainly a step in the right direction.Link: iPhoney Product Page Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:44:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/obamas-new-on-internet/ At 12:00 PM, Eastern Standard Time, most eyes were on the swearing in of Barack Obama, 44th President of the United States. But at the same time, a total redesign of the President's official website, whitehouse.gov, was being launched. A few technical observations: jQuery appears to be the javascript framework of choice. They've managed to avoid flash almost entirely. For example, the home page slideshow is entirely javascript-based along with other galleries. Top navigation is well laid-out (splitting long menus up into columns) and works fine in IE6 The designers were nice to the developers: no rounded corners, no drop-shadows over a variable backgroundAnd a few complaints: The footer nav is a little too long; you really only need the top level down there... they've kept pages short enough that it's not an epic struggle to return to the top for the full drop-downs Breadcrumb navigation items are not links Some search results are spitting out inline CSSThey have also introduced a contact form for the Office of Public Liaison, essentially the closest you'll get to being able to e-mail the President, and an extension of the campaign's long-standing use of internet resources to communicate more directly with the citizenry. There is also a promise of "many more ways for you to interact with OPA-IGA at this page in the weeks and months ahead," though what those will be, who can say? My one complaint about the form is treating subject as a dropdown rather than a free text box (the first subject option is "Congratulations", by the way). Also, I suspect we'll see a CAPTCHA of some kind popping up within a couple spam-filled days.(No, I didn't test it for SQL injection. I don't think the Secret Service accepts "but I was just trying to help you improve security" as a defense when they spot a message like that from your IP address)All told, it's a solid website that really emphasizes the new administration's promises of openness. There is a page for Obama's weekly video address, a blog, and pages set aside for the listing of all proclamations and executive orders. I look forward to seeing how it expands with content in the coming weeks.(Plus: it validates.) Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:17:00 PST http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/government-20/ It seems the US Government has finally decided to join the rest of us here in the 21st century. Last Thursday our friends in that other Washington launched Data.gov which suggests a promising future for a transparent government on the web.While many of the latest changes in Washington DC have sparked quite a bit of political debate, one recent change has developers on both the left and the right buzzing with excitement. The launch of Data.gov is the start of an effort to make the vast ocean of data our government collects more accessible and more easily found by publishing it in one central location.Currently, the site has launched with a limited amount of initial data, though it is the first step in what will hopefully be a very successful endeavor. The site currently provides an handful of datasets from various government departments, containg everything from energy consumption and population statistics to births, deaths, marriages and divorces.Most of what Data.gov has to offer is more useful to developers directly. This doesn't mean that will remain the case for long. After all, writing applications and playing with data are two of the things developers love most. This is really the most brilliant part about this project. Rather than devoting time and taxpayer resources to build sites and tools that use this information, it is made publicly available in a raw format that can easily be sliced and diced for any purpose the public sees fit. That's right ladies and gents, our government is crowdsourcing! Tue, 26 May 2009 08:43:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/adobes-browserlab-goes-live/ It is an unfortunate fact of internet life that not all browsers are made equal. Pages viewed in Firefox may look completely different in Internet Explorer or Safari. Most developers consider this a very frustrating part of the development process, and often wish there was an easier way to test things out. Enter Adobe's BrowserLab. Given a publicly accessible URL, BrowserLab will generate full-size images that depict how a given page will appear in various browsers. The free service Browsershots and the paid service Litmus also attempt to address this need, but Adobe's offering is the first to bring together both a well-designed interface and a price tag of $0.One of the most useful features of BrowserLab are the viewing options available. Aside from the standard 1-up view (viewing the page with a single browser) a 2-up view is also available. This will render a page in two browsers of your choice side-by-side and will even lock scrolling to make it easier to compare the two.The "Onion Skin" view is the third option, which is a unique view that will lay one browser's view over another. This view comes with a slider that allows you to transition from one browser to the other. If you want everything consistent down to the last pixel, this is going to be your favorite.While the selection of available browsers is not comprehensive, it does cover the most common use scenarios which is acceptable for most cases. Opera and Google Chrome are the most obvious omissions from the list. While not a deal-breaker for me, it is something to be aware of if compatibility with browsers is important for your project. Another shortcoming is that, being images, you cannot interact with the page being tested. This means that testing for JavaScript and CSS events is not possible.Adobe's offering is very compelling, and currently holds the crown, at least in my opinion, for the most effective cost-free option for testing multiple browsers. It's sleek interface, viewing options, and reasonable selection of browsers make it a snap to ensure your site looks consistent across the board. Fri, 23 Oct 2009 08:30:00 PDT http://www.sitecrafting.com/blog/flashs-stand/ This article about Virgin America abandoning Flash for it's website popped up late last week and it seems fitting since there seems to be a lot of discussion around Flash and mobile operating systems - specifically Apple and the iPhone and iPad. Actually there has always been a lot of discussion around the effectiveness of Flash and people usually fall into two opposing camps - yeah, big surprise I know.  My take is that Flash is a good tool when used in applications that could be made way more difficult to accomplish without it. I believe it is a good standard platform for video and some specialty drawing or gaming applications - but that is about it. Much of what people think about related to Flash has to do with what I call Flash for Flash sake. In many cases the visual affects of Flash can be accomplished in a way more search engine friendly, way more content managed way using xhtml/css and some fancy javascript.  All this is fine and good, but it is not why Virgin abandoned Flash. It was done due to the move by many consumers (in this case, business travelers) to mobile and specifically touch screen devices. Most if not all current touch screen devices do not support Flash within their browsers - the ones receiving the most current criticism are Apple's iPhone and iPad, but devices from Google, RIM and Microsoft do not support Flash either. Actually, Apple's devices do support Flash to a point - video - just visit YouTube on your iPhone and you can view that Flash video just fine.  Here's one reason I believe this to be the case - issues with inconsistent programming from site to site using Flash and more importantly the existence of the hover state. See most Flash menus and games rely heavily on hover. This is not an issue on your desktop PC because all you need to do is put your mouse over the object the action takes place. This is not the case on a touch screen where your finger is the cursor and the click at the same time. How can you hover without at the same time clicking? Millions of Flash sites are out there and millions of variations on hover exist - how can touchscreen OS possibly account for each and ensure a consistent experience? I think Virgin is seeing that more and more of their customers are moving toward mobile check-in - same with Alaska Air and they don't want to rely on a technology that is inconsistent on mobile devices. Their solution is to sidestep it in favor of something more predictable and consistent.  A recent launch of ours, http://www.werealotlikeyou.com, looks a lot like Flash, but actually only uses Flash for audio and video playback. All the animations are done via xhtml/css and jquery. It works great on an iPhone, iPad, etc. etc.  Sat, 06 Mar 2010 13:33:00 PST