Many of the features we see on web sites are made using JavaScript such as drag and drop features and the infamous Lightbox gallery. There are more and more JavaScript libraries to make coding even easier for developers. One of my favourites is JQUERY I find it pretty easy to use and there are many others using it which is great as doing a quick search you can find many snippets of code to help you.

The problem I encounter with sites using JavaScript is that they don’t think of users who don’t have JavaScript turned on. Should they be worrying about this? I believe they should be, more and more users now choose to have high security settings on their computers, especially in larger companies. Not only that, we have to make sure we try and cater for everyone in the accessible web of today.
Next time you visit a web site that has a feature running using JavaScript (if it is easy to recognise) try turning off JavaScript and see how it behaves. Web developers and Designers should be testing this for every site they create. Using the web developer toolbar for Firefox you can easily turn off JavaScript.

I have seen some sites that rely on the navigation to use JavaScript, which in my opinion is a big no no. There should be a fall back in case it doesn’t function. In these cases if JavaScript isn’t on then the user cannot navigate the site and this is really bad for any site.

For Developers, Internet Explorer 6 (ie6) is a problem and it is most definitely one of the things that drives me insane when building a site. For example when building a web site that has a dropdown menu it is a nightmare to accommodate ie6 without using JavaScript. It is possible to have a full CSS menu in ie6 but it creates more trouble than it is worth. It has to have lots more code and it involves CSS hacks which aren’t brilliant. Most will use a full CSS menu then have some JavaScript for Internet Explorer. Suckerfish is such an example. This is a great menu which is really tidy to use and will work in all browsers. I came across Kreisi which is a neat tutorial on how to use the suckerfish menu and also have some JavaScript to run the menu. This way if the user has JavaScript it will show a nice animated dropdown. If JavaScript is off it will revert to a CSS only menu. I really like this approach as it caters for almost everyone. Again ie6 will be an issue but if the user has JavaScript on it will show the animated menu. You then have a choice to make. Should we cater for ie6 when JavaScript is off? In my opinion as long as the site takes this into account by having page links to allow the user to navigate and also a sitemap then I think it is enough. This does depend on your user stats for your site; you may find that you have many users who use ie6 so this approach may not be the best solution for you.

The thing that gets to me is when a site uses JavaScript without a thought to what should happen if it is not on and whatever it is for doesn’t work. I have seen the JQUERY Cycle plugin recently used on some sites and when JavaScript is off it leaves the site with elements on the page that doesn’t do anything when you click them. In these circumstances these elements should be generated using JavaScript so at least if it is off they won’t b generated at all, thus leaving the user to get on and use the site without having to figure out why clicking on these elements that nothing happens.

This has been more of rant but I think it is an important part of any site that you are building to make sure you think about what should happen if JavaScript is turned off.

The gallery that is built in is OK but not my favourite gallery for Wordpress. I am not sure if they just threw it in as there us hardly any documentation, i was very glad to read Sarah’s post else I would of had to of worked it all out on my own.

There are some draw backs with using the new built in gallery, it doesn’t have a Light box effect built in but there are some plugins that can be used, although so far I’ve not found one that will work with ie6. You also can’t easily upload new images to a gallery or edit the gallery as easily as it should be.
I think some users will find it quite hard to use at first.

One thing i find a little odd is the fact there is no way of turning off the built in gallery.
What if you want to use another gallery plugin?

The inbuilt next a previous links are not text links as Sarah explains in her post so you have to get another plugin to change the default thumbnail images to use text.

Then there is the gallery homepage which i am sure many will want. A gallery homepage as i call it is a page with the site’s gallery listed with an image from the gallery and some text to describe the gallery. This can be achived but only with some of your own coding. I am currently making a page template so i can use pages in my (not this one) and then have a page to show all the galleries.

Once i have it working maybe if anyone would like the page template i could make it a download here.

My conclusion so far is that i am a bit confused why the gallery was released before it was ready. I don’t feel it is ready yet as i would have thought they would of added many more features like the Next gen gallery has.

Hope fully they will or others will help to upgradde it soon.

The four questions I asked were:

Do you lurk around reading what others say or do you dive in and post as much as possible?

Are there certain sections you tend to stick to or do you like to read the whole thing?

Do ranks and post number mean anything to you? Do they make you post more?

How many forums do you belong to? Are they on lots of different subjects?

The overall results were that users considered their behaviour on the forums to reflect how they behave in real life. They try to be courteous and try and help or be part of the conversation if they have the time and knowledge. The forum’s ethos can have an impact on how they behave but this doesn’t stop everyone so you may have to watch out for a few forum renegades.

Many will focus on certain sections but will read the whole site to see if there is anything interesting. This can depend on the size and subject of the forum.

Users will also be members of many forums (on average 3 -4) and not necessarily on the same subject but many will sign up to multiple sites on the same subject if it is a hobby or activity they participate in.

Post ranks and badges etc don’t seem to bother most but there are those who love to get certain badges if they mean anything to the forum. For example a trading site will have badges for good traders so users will want to get them. This can also depend on the age of the forum as younger users like to collect and boast about their post count and rank.

I will hopefully be posting more information soon, i hope it is of use to some one

What Open Source platform do you choose to use or do you consider when building a web site?

For those who don’t know memes are like batons passed from blogger to blogger to find out a little more behind the random blogs they read. Just copy, paste and answer!

My top 5 are (in no particular order) - if you don’t know 5 just write as many any you want. This is more about discovering new platforms.

Wordpress
Community Server
Joomla
modx
expression engine

i am tagging:

Sarah
David
lea
Gary
Mark

It will be interesting to see what platforms you use or are interested in!

Why Green?

I help run a children’s site dedicated to green things such as climate change and the environment, this has made me really look into how everything can be greener. At home I’m now recycling much more and I am using an energy monitor to see how much electricity is being used. I ownt go into all that right now but it I have been looking into finding a green hosting company. It does seem an odd request as surely data centres should be running an efficient as possible to save money but some aren’t. I am also looking for data centres that at least buy their energy from providers who use wind and solar energy. There are many hosting companies that are getting wise to this and are promoting they are green. Some however just say they offset their energy use by planting a tree. This I find quite amusing as planting a tree doesn’t do much at all. The tree will takes time to grow and won’t be of any effect for some time so in fact it is initially pointless. One site I found which made me laugh was that they made a point of stating they used recyclable coffee cups in their office. Oh that makes all the difference

There are a few sites that state they are selling green hosting which I have been looking into and I think on paper they look good but the thing that puts me off is that I have never heard of them. I much prefer it when I have been recommended to the company so at least I know someone has had a good experience with them. Do any of you know of a green hosting company?

Right now I’m looking into my existing host to see if they are green and in fact they have won some awards for trying to be green but they don’t buy their energy from any green providers they just try to reduce their energy usage. Is this enough do you think?

Would you go green? Is it something that if you saw on a site that they were using a green hosting company, it would interest you?

Would you expect a site providing a green product or service to be using a green host?

Something I have been pondering over for a while now is the choice of how to build a web site.

Do you always go for a CMS solution and build from there or do you just build from scratch using any code you have used before as a library or do you mix and match?

More recently I have been more focused on developing on existing platforms such as Wordpress or a commercial CMS but is that a good thing? Using Wordpress does allow you to easily integrate other code or scripts quite easily, in fact if you wish you can develop Wordpress plugins to integrate into Wordpress so that the user doesn’t even know there is bespoke code inserted into the site.

So on the surface it would seem developing on an existing platform is the way forward, however using a commercial CMS I find this more difficult. What I mean by a commercial CMS is using a hosted CMS which you would pay a license to use. Most of the time you wouldn’t have access to write bespoke code into the site,  so you can be a bit limited with what you can do.  There are many upsides to using a commercial CMS though such as support and many supply the developer with API’s to play with which can achieve the results you want.

Is it worth looking at developing bespoke sites with an administration panel which is unique to that site? In the past this is what I would have done but I have found users expect a certain level of tools such as WYSIWYG editors, news feeds (RSS feeds), ability to upload images and even video.

Do you develop your own or use an existing platform?
Wordpress or Joomla for example both have the ability to upload images and video, have RSS feeds and WYSIWYG editors all as default or by installing a plugin.

The downside is that the open source software needs updating and in the case of Wordpress this can be a lot. Again though is this good or bad? Ok so you have run a few updates but at least the code is free and is being updated, providing you with new tools and further features to make sites.

If you make a bespoke web site then you are left to develop this yourself. There is an upside to bespoke sites and that is that you have control over the site and how it will be used. You get to build your own funky scripts that no other site will have and make it different from anything else you have seen. Clients can be willing to pay the extra to get the new feature or maybe they are requesting it in the first place so you get to create it.

As a developer what do you do? If you were a would be client what would you prefer?

Now the update is just about finished and they have now signed up Yahoo for their search results, so not only do you get paid for searching they now use a good search results provider.

if you fancy taking a look check out Homepages Friends - oh and this is their new name as well

now head on over to 1month.co.uk now!

What I do want to say is that I do like the fact they are trying to move forward but I just don’t see why they made some of the changes. I’ve heard others like Sarah mention that some of the code has changed or at least some of the ways you were able to control things like the output of pages isn’t the same. Of course the final release might be ok so ill keep an eye on it for now but I hope it doesn’t change too much as upgrading a site would be such a pain and time consuming which is ok if you have enough time to do it.

I hope they continue to move Wordpress forward to more of a cms with blog capabilities. I know there are many using it in this way including myself. I would also like to know if they are planning to update the way templates are used to be more like a cms. I know you can already choose a template for each page you write etc but if for example each template could have its own way of having widgets without being too complicated that would be very good. At the moment if you have multiple sidebars it can get a bit messy in the widget admin.

I would also like to see if they will enhance the way custom fields work, or at least how a user uses them. We shall see

MySearchFunds is a site that pays you to use their search engine which is ASK.com. the search results are ok and it is a nice alternative to using google as some times google’s results have so much spam it is very annoying.