meJoe.com

I wrote this at work and thought I would cross post since that content is not available to the general public.

Many of you (our users) are developers and read the same channels we do. An important voice in our endeavors is Steve Souders’ (Yahoo!’s performance guy). His presentation on front-end web application performance is very useful. Here are some interesting points.

1. 80 to 90% of performance issues occur in the browser while rendering, not on the application side. This is definitely our problem.
2. Users with no files cached are prevalent (on yahoo sites).
3. Use fewer http requests: CSS sprites (very cool), combine scripts/CSS, inline images.
4. CDN (Content Delivery Network) change for a Yahoo! site improved performance by 25%. This is an easy thing to try before distributing your application architecture.
5. Modify build scripts to rename static files on every push - take advantage of expires header
6. IE won’t render until CSS is downloaded. Additionally, don’t use @import.
7. Javascript blocks parallel downloads (HTTP 1.1 allows download of two files at the same time per host name). Load them last to minimize impact of page rendering.
8. Avoid redirects

Cleaning the closet effect
You clean the closet, and next week it is full again. Make things faster, and we’ll naturally want to add new functionality that will slow it down. Performance is an on-going battle–make it part of your dev cycle.

This pipes thing is pretty cool. These guys have put a spiffy drag-and-drop interface on the ability to merge RSS feeds. This leads to interesting and simple mashups. For example, you can combine a Reuters news feed, Yahoo maps, and a geographic locater to make an interface that will actually show you news on a map.

The possibilities are literally endless because there are hundreds of thousands of RSS feeds that can all be combined in infinite ways.

AIR judging form (Excel) and FAQ.

Firefox web developer tool bar has everything you need to evaluate your site.

Knowbility Presentations

• Basic Accessibility 2007
• Advanced Accessibility 2007

Cool videos about people overcoming disabilities with technology

Section 508 Checklist

I thought it would be a cute title.  The Tenors I refer to however are not the favorite singers, but the advocates of accessible web design practices.  These are the three groups that for some reason have a stake in creating Web sites that intentionally or unintentionally meet best practices for accessible Web design.

Some background on accessible design.   Accessible design essentially refers to making websites that can be accessed by a wide variety of users with varying degrees of abilities.

The three bed-fellows are:

• Web developers - It makes the code maintainable
• Marketers - Search engine optimization
• Accessibility advocates - It is ethical

I love to think about accessibility in this way because it almost always allows me to discuss accessibility from a viewpoint that matters to my audience. The developers love to use techniques that enhance their code.  Business people are concerned with reaching customers.  Accessibility advocates have those with disabilities in their hearts.

The funny part is that really each group has their own name for about the same set of practices.  They are standards based code development, search engine optimization and accessibility.

Marla Sharp gives excellent presentations on HTML form usability and accessibility.  I first attended her presentation at the California Web Accessibility Conference (CalWAC).

I highly recommend her presentation on Accessible Forms. She runs a Web development shop called 10 Sharp.

I really dig Steve Johnson’s Interface Culture (1997).  Its old, but relevant, and very interesting to read with 10 years of hindsight. For example, he claimed the next big development in the interface will focus on text.  He was dead on (think Google).  Some other interesting comments on text (I’m on chapter 5, titled succinctly “Text”) include:

1. The modern word processor interface has changed the writing process and even our content.  We type faster, can delete instantly, change words mid sentence… the impacts of such abilities are limitless.
2. New technologies are often woefully under estimated.  For example, computers are highly susceptible to utility morphing.  One minute you have a calculator, the next its a word processor, and then its a CD and DVD cataloger.  As Johnson points out, “William Gibson writes in Nueromancer, ‘The street finds its own uses for things–uses the manufacturer never imagined’”.

   The mother of all such underestimations involves an Intel engineer’s mid seventies bid to the board of directors to make a personal computer.  The board asked him what a consumer would do with a PC, “…his most compelling scenario involved filling electronic versions of cooking recipes… It was like inventing the wheel and then immediatley demonstrating what a wonderful doorstop it made.” Johnson’s book is literated with such witty metaphors.

3. The command line was a barrier for user adoption.  Nothing new here, though I’d love to hear his thoughts on what feels like the rebirth of the command line.

Well, sorry to cut this short but back to my vacation (I’m in California remember)…

Despite a long night (it is Austin after all) and a really long day, our team takes the trophy in the Formula-1 Division.

Have you ever walked out of a test thinking you had just dropped the worse bomb of your life, only to learn later that you did very well? I felt that way two weeks ago, until I got the AIR-Austin results back today.

I thought we had a bullet-proof team. With a healthy mix of experience and skill, I knew Team UTSA (Christopher Chipps, Maria Corral, Carolyn Ellis, and Shashi Pinerio) would be a tough contender. Then the last hour of competition. Everything felt like it fell apart. Links were broken, pages wouldn’t load, bandwith was tight, I was just glad to stumble out with a tattered site posted.

I was so sure that we let Personal Connections Health Care Services down that I didn’t even make a showing at the awards ceremony.

Alas, we won. It was a lot of fun, and I am looking forward to AIR-San Antonio.

This makes me think of a recent event in my life that I can only sum up with a quote:

All human wisdom is summed up in two words - wait and hope.
–Alexander Dumas

Hurricane Rita information at UTSA.

Just posted some modifications to our Hurricane Information site. I don’t think the weather has ever had us so busy here in UTSA Communications. I’m glad to help though.

This is a short diatribe I sent to the University Webmasters. Oh how I love tables!

So whats so bad about tables any way? I used to be zealot on this topic, but it makes good sense to use tables.

Some of the arguments I’d like to refute include:

1. Tables require extra code.
Not true, have you seen some of the nested div tags on “standards based” pages? (I counted about 7 on the espn site noted below) Don’t even look at the CSS unless you are the one that actually coded it.

2. Tables are not accessible.
Not true. I had a blind student in a Web class that I teach who used a screen reader. He manuevered tables with no problem at all. With a handy “skip to content” and a linearized format he was more than happy. The most popular screen readers will use internet explorer anyway, so what you see there is what you hear.

3. Tables are not PDA/small screen friendly.
On very small screens, the devices I’ve seen simply remove the table formatting and “linearize” the page. If your curious to see your pages in this way, download a copy of Opera.

Finally, developing CSS-based layout is just plain slow. Develop it in a table, and you’ll know it will look the same in most browsers. At least in our shop, where we output at least one completed new set of templates every 2 to 3 weeks, hassling with a pixel here and a border there is not worth it.

Users don’t care about the code you use. As long as it doesn’t take forever to download, is comprehensible and the content/design is interesting. For these reasons you should learn CSS thouroughly and at least try a couple of CSS layouts. Just remember there is an excellent median:
[Complex CSS layouts] —– [layout table + good CSS] —– [nested tables]

“Tables are dead, long live tables.”

Ducks overwhelming but still make splash

I found a great rubber ducky photo. I slated it for this site-redesign-upgrade project. It made it through all the renditions to a secondary role for this one (see right). Goes to show that you should never hold on to these little design elements, they can completely ruin a decent presentation.

I’ll get rid of that ‘psychodelic carnaval duck game’ some time. It drives me crazy.

I’m also planning to add a home page graphic. The graphic will highlight an idea or theme and keep this site a bit fresher than a text/blog entry can. My designs have been taking this trend for some time now.

Send me a note (see contact above). I would like to hear what you think about this new design.