I’ve been working feverishly away on this project for a while. It’s still technically beta, but here it is: World Cup Predictor. Plug in your World Cup match predictions and see who you think will win…
Archive for the ‘ Web Design + Development’ Category
World Cup 2010 Predictor
Monday, May 3rd, 2010Accessibility guideline #1: Don’t claim it if you’re not
Saturday, July 14th, 2007The Google Blog has a recent post entitled ‘Overview of our Accessible Services‘. Last time I looked at Google’s search code (which was only last week actually) I remember it being a particularly messy mix of invalid HTML and table soup (but this is Google: who for some reason are exempt from producing structureless mark-up on their main website in the 21st century, unlike almost everyone else on the planet).
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4oD? Not on a Friday night.
Thursday, May 3rd, 2007(Alternative title: My-quest-to-watch-Peep Show-as-soon-as possible- as-I-almost-certainly-miss-it-every-Friday).
Channel 4′s 4oD was down last Friday night at 11:30pm. This really isn’t that surprising it was just after the latest episode of Peep Show had aired, and I imagine thousands of people over the UK were wanting to watch it after getting home that evening.
Thankfully it was up again on Saturday morning and I downloaded the new episode without a hitch. Of course until I tried to watch it around 12pm, when quite possibly everyone else burned the night before were attempting to download the episode yet again.
Now this is where DRM (and bad design on the developer’s part) really bugs me: the video file was on my hard drive somewhere in some mystical format and location, but without being able to connect to the 4oD site, I couldn’t watch it. Madness. Surely it’s easy enough to change the service so you can watch downloads offline, but if this was a torrent download (or any regular download) then this offline business wouldn’t even be an issue.
In similar news, the BBC’s iPlayer is coming later this year, apparently.
Stuck!
Thursday, May 3rd, 2007Looking for hotels tonight on Radisson Hotels website and I quite literally got stuck. Trying to select a date range, the pop up date picker conveniently hides behind the big flashy Flash banner like some shy child cowering behind a parent’s leg.
Manually entering dates is also frustrating as some part of the Javascript intermittently clears the field when changing focus between the fields. Initially I honestly couldn’t get a date in. I’ve since tried again and it worked (barely). Just as well there’s a fairly obvious Reservations link in the top bar.
By the way, anyone know of any good hotels in Calgary?
TV on Demand: 4oD
Sunday, April 22nd, 2007I’m very excited about the fourth series of Peep Show. I’m also quite excited about being able to watch new Peep Show episodes on demand from Channel 4, something which they’ve been advertising quite heavily (their service being called “4oD“).
So I checked out the on-demand service yesterday after Angela had missed last night’s episode. I remember how easy it was catching up on Extras series two last year: just go to the BBC Two Extras site and click on ‘view latest episode’. Very easy.
Peep Show wasn’t quite that easy.
Microsoft Live Mail Redux
Saturday, November 4th, 2006Well, perhaps not quite a redux on my previous Live Mail post, more just a recent observation.
However, as I said in the last post, I am still compelled to check Hotmail now and again as I still have a few emails of importance coming in between the far more steady stream of spam. Clearing my inbox today I noticed the Live Mail team have changed the way the inbox interface is laid out. The main difference is that the checkbox for each item now shares its place with the new mail icon:
Basically both icons toggle depending on whether the email is new and/or selected. In practice this is just really bemusing to use. If you want to select messages to delete or move, there is no obvious checkbox. When you work out they’re hiding between mail icons (emphasis on hidden here), the actual task of selecting the check boxes requires a high degree of accuracy: the checkbox is sitting on anchor block linking to the email message, so if you’re slightly off target with the small checkbox you end up opening a message as opposed to selecting it.
And my last gripe is that the checkbox/mail icon column doesn’t line up with the master select checkbox in the top left corner. There is actually room for the checkbox to sit next to the mail icon and be underneath this master selector. Wouldn’t that make far more sense?
I don’t know what the rationale behind the design of this is, but the caveat here is that this is a beta product after all. Although I made that point in my last blog entry as well, after pointing out Live Mail was purely IE6 (now IE7 as well). Windows Live Mail now loads in Firefox 2.0, although load is a pretty abstract concept:
24 errors/504 warnings? Nice.
And for the record, Live Mail is still long way off the simplicity and usability of Gmail.
Yahoo! My Web 2.0 — Flog those buzzwords
Wednesday, April 26th, 2006I just noticed Yahoo!’s My Web 2.0 service. Is this the second version of ‘My Web’, or is it just blatant buzzword exploitation as I suspect? Oh, there are tags, contacts, sharing… I think it’s the latter. Is this a genius stroke of marketing on Yahoo!’s behalf or just a cheap shot at capitalising on the latest web buzzword?
Google Calendar
Thursday, April 13th, 2006Another week, another new Google product, another new post about Google product.
Google Calender has finally been released to the public, and it looks very slick. But one surprise with it is that the developers behind it have actually created some valid HTML. Google Calendar even has a doctype! Perhaps the days of Google’s notoriously bad HTML is behind them.
Douglas Bowman was involved in the project, which may have had something to do with it. (Possible quote: "by the way guys, c’mon — your web apps are awesome but your HTML sucks!").
On the functionality side, I’m not sure how much impact Google Calendar will have until it synchs with handheld devices. I’m sure they’ll attempt this in the future, and then along with Gmail, Google might actually give the likes of Outlook a real run for its money. Outlook is hardly the be and end all of desktop communication and organisation — but even Doug Bowman sings Google Calendar’s praise over iCal, which is always getting praise from the Mac camp.
A Look at Google Page Creator
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006Well, I got an invite to check out Google Page Creator today. The good news is I doubt this will threaten my career; the bad news is… actually, there isn’t really any bad news (except perhaps some of the tacky templates available, but to be fair, they look pretty slick compared to the good old days of Geocities).
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British Design Museum and Accessibility
Friday, March 3rd, 2006According to the British Design Museum website, they are:
…well-equipped to welcome visitors with disabilities. Our facilities include: lifts, wheelchair access, adapted toilets, and audio guides for selected exhibitions.
The irony of all this is that in the HTML version of the site (as opposed to the Flash) this text is rendered in a GIF with no alt text (and not considering the fact the site launches several pop-up windows). So unlucky if you’re visually impaired.
Or does this raise the question of whether you could truly appreciate a Design Museum if you were visually impaired? Or an art gallery? Or museums in general?
Regardless I do love the irony of disability services information appearing in probably the most inaccessible way possible.