Web heroes: Roger Johansson…

Wed Oct 18

There are certain people on the web whose knowledge, experience and expertise are almost unparalleled. Roger Johansson is one of these, and his site should be required reading for anyone building stuff for the web. He is, for want of a better phrase, the dogs.

So many thanks to him for providing the solution to not one (not three, not four, not five, not six) but two of the biggest bugbears I have when building sites. Behold:

1) Closing the gap in list items in IE
2) Opening new windows with Javascript (version 1.2)

Marvellous, my life is that little bit more complete.

Well, actually it isn’t. The neat Javascript to open new windows looks for a ‘rel’ attribute on the link with a value of ‘external’. For this particular site I’m working on I need to it open a new window for every link that goes to a different domain than the page is on. Still, that’s not too much of a challenge when standing on the shoulders of giants.

Hats off to Roger!

The art of eating (out)…

Tue Oct 17

The estimable sil gives sage advice on dining out with the family. Wise words.

We dined out last Friday too, at a local Italian restaurant. Very tasty it was, and if everything goes according to plan it sould be a profitable evening. Why? Well, they don’t have a website, and after the meal I was chatting with the owner who said he has two other restaurants without websites, too. “Hmm, I know a man that might be able to help you” I said, offering him one of my cards.

I’m not usually one to spout about projects I’m involved in (yeah, right), but this one really got me interested. For one this the restaurant is fantastic, and it’s always a pleasure to design sites for high-quality proucts or services. For another the place had character and characters. Not just a charming interior, but entertaining, engaging and vibrant staff. Just what you need in an Italian restaurant.

So, all in all the perfect canidate for a great website and blog.

Browsers from another dimension…

Fri Oct 13

Crop circles are one of those mysteries that have always fascinated me. Just like the web thing, it’s the mix of creativity and technology to produce something almost magical that really attracts me. And when it’s quite obviously a master race from another place that leaves us such blatant signs on the earth, who are we to disobey.

So, read the signs, people, read the signs.

Roll up, roll up…

Wed Oct 11

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the most amazing show this side of the firewall! The star of our show is none other than Chris Taylor, now Officially a member of The Guild of Accessible Web Designers!

That’s right, I was inducted (don’t ask about the ceremony, it was embarrasing to say the least, and left me badly chafed) recently and can now display this logo with pride over any part of my body:

The Guild of Accessible Web Designers logo

So I’m wearing it proudly on my … sleeve :0)

Other attractions in the show include (some of these are thanls to the great M@):

- A motley travelling band of web developers who, in village halls up and down the country, will, in front of a *live* audience, code up a rudimentary CRM application in a matter of hours without the aid of a safety net!
- A daredevil riding on a single-class Javascript application high above a pit of ravenous syntax-checkers!
- A troup of animated GIFs doing the can-can
- Chris himself taming the dangerous and wild Internet Explorer beast
- The hilarious Peekaboo Bug Brothers
- The beautiful and mysterious world of Madame CSS
- A juggler simultaneously keeping 4 browsers in the air, all rendering a single page in completely different ways?
- A lightly greased contortionist extricating himself from a web of Visual-Studio-generated HTML?
- The amazing disappearing !

And for the finale? A thousand abstract base classes released to gently float down onto the audience….. Imagine the gasps!

So what are you waiting for? Tickets are on sale now!

I’m certifiable, apparently…

Tue Oct 10

Today has been a busy, as per usual. However I had a small and pleasant surprise when I started to investigate the Microsoft certified professional courses that are available. After all, I have no qualifications whatsoever in web development (or indeed in anything even remotely technical) so I thought I’d try to get at least one certificate to hang on the wall. A helpful friend sent me this link to a sample Microsoft exam for the MCWD (Microsoft Certified Web Developer) qualification, which I think would be a good one for me.

I didn’t have high hopes, even though only 75 percent is needed to pass, because frankly I’m still learning this asp.net thing and wouldn’t consider myself a guru by any means. Still, armed with precisely no research or revision, I bravely had a go. And I got 80 percent. That’s right, 24 out of 30 if my matchs is correct.

So, either the exam is easy (possible) or I am a genius (unlikely). It’s funny that the questions that tripped me up were the ones where I tried to pick the ‘clever’ answer, but it turned out to be the simpler answer that was correct. I’ll learn that for next time. Plus a couple of the questions on web accessibility were, to be honest, well behind the times.

Still, I was glad to see that the exam ranged from accessibility to SQL usage, via internationalisation, personalisation, Javascript and more. So it looks like I’ll be booking the real exam sometime soon. And, with any luck, I’ll have a proper qualification after all.