August 09 2007
I was reading this article yesterday about html5 and WhatWG (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group). Pretty interesting stuff that I am actually excited for. So I started snooping around to see what other people are saying about it.
Some people think that we shouldn’t focus on anything new until we fix the current models. This means getting the browsers to be fully compliant with what we have and focusing on javascript and the dom to be on par with markup and style. Other people are saying that this will be a good thing for the semantic web, for more relevant search engine results, accessibility, and the future of web applications. I wouldn’t mind a more structured document that more clearly outlines my pages content. Of course, I can just use the classification system already in place:
<div class="article"></div>
The class attribute exists for other reasons than providing a css hook.
Isn’t this is a much more descriptive way of organizing your content though?
<article></article>
Using a class works fine, but is too easily misused or underused. I don’t have a set method each time I build a site yet. I am getting there slowly, but each site is different. Sometimes the class is called post, sometimes article, sometimes main_content. How can we then expect the semantic web to even know what we are talking about if even we don’t speak the same language all the time. And what about the developers who don’t speak English? Can we expect all screenreaders, or google, or whatever, to interpret every possible version of “article” exactly the same every time? Of course not.
If we had a guideline that all developers could follow then perhaps we wouldn’t need a new system. Microformats makes some headway towards this, but wouldn’t it be better in the long run if we had the markup we needed, instead of faking it with endless span and div tags? HTML is just as hard to read now as it was when it was nested table soup.
I am all for moving ahead even if there are some broken pieces. It is foolish to think that we can get them all fixed in the first place.
July 20 2007
We recently finished a website redesign for an established online house plan vendor. Along with the redesign of the look and feel of the site, we were tasked with upgrading their ancient online shopping system. We chose to use Litecommerce for our ecommerce platform since we love their other product, X-Cart. X-Cart was the best option we found for small to medium businesses looking to start selling online, or for those that needed a more complete, versatile system. These are not Amazon level players, and their requirements were light. Litecommerce was attractive first because of X-Cart and our wonderful experiences with it, and second, because of its price. It’s cheap. The basic package is $95 and is enough to get started on a very small store. The third reason was that it was built with expansion in mind. Their system is easy (easy-ish?) to extend and customize. From their website:
With years of experience in e-commerce software industry we designed LiteCommerce to meet the most challenging requirements set by business owners. Clear separation of template system, code and data makes the software highly adaptable for actual business needs: look & feel can be updated with your favorite HTML editor like DreamWeaver or FrontPage; add-on API along with open source allows the functionality extended/altered according to your individual e-commerce needs.
The clients only strict requirement was that its search feature had to have specific features that are not a part of your basic ecommerce system. We were able to write our own custom search engine that extends the basic functionality of their default search engine as well as optimized the overall speed of the search. Our search actually runs faster than the default search.
On the negative side of things, the system is slow, and the API documentation is very poor. They also claim it is open source, but it is not licensed as such. We can edit some of the code, but not all of it. The guts of the program are encrypted. Finally, support is a pain in the ass only because of the time difference. They are located in Russia, I am on the west coast of America. It takes at least 24 hours to get a response.
While putting this system together I realized that I really don’t know about the other options for ecommerce. OSCommerce and Zencart seem to be popular, but I was unimpressed. What I really want is a platform, like a framework, to build a truly customized experience. Something like Codeigniter or Expression Engine, but aimed at online shopping.
July 18 2007
A simple function that returns an html select menu. The first parameter is the name of the select menu, the second is the associative array of options, the next is the value you want selected, and the last is a string that you can insert into the select tag for custom id, class, or javascript event handlers.
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May 23 2007
This exact mobile-viewable need is what drove Dave’s company to “rethink” their website’s Accessibility. The existing Accessibility was best summed with the following Representative Line. It’s a hyperlink to their statement on Accessibility…
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May 17 2007
Coda brings all these tools together in one neat interface. You can organize your files using Sites, edit with the text editor, utilize the built in preview functionality, style your pages with the CSS builder and even access Terminal with one click for those times you need to do a little MySQL or other Terminal task.
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April 26 2007
Im losing it over here. I am working on updating the look of a new clients website. Sounds easy enough, just open up the templates, rewrite the shitty html, and be done with it.
No fucking way is anything ever that easy.
First of all. It was written before web standards became the new hotness. I am talking a shitload of nested tables and font tags, no real hierarchy, misuse of style sheets, improperly written tags, heavy use of deprecated tags, inaccessible web forms, etc. Its a fucking mess. And this was after an “seo” company got their hands on it and “optimized” it for high visibility and all that.
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