Useability

I'm in the process of re-reading Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug - if I'm going to build a website, I figure it'd be nice to make it user friendly! It's such a quick and easy read, I sommetimes forget just how much great information is in it.

So far, key takeouts are:

• People don't read instructions so make it REALLY obvious
• There's too much text on most web pages - people skim, they don't read
• Make use of conventions - they became conventions because they work

I'm sure there'll be more!

Reference
Krug, S. (2006), Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Useability, 2nd ed, New Riders Press, Berkley, CA

Learning Proposal - Final

Final proposal is here.

I'm doing a kind of aggregator site for surfing. It's not really something I'm going to be able to actually fully use due to all the rights negotiations that'd be needed but it's a really good platform for exploring the apps I want to learn and it may come in useful for some work projects as we do play in that space.

Code Validation

Plugged my Learning proposal into the W3C Validator. When I validate it for Strict XML 1.0 (as per the DOCTYPE statement), I get 73 errors. When I validate for HTML 5, I get 41 errors.

From the look of things the errors are mainly around formatting - using HTML instead of CSS to set the style (font, heading formats, etc).

It's definitely got an issue with me defining the font in HTML...but I hate having to read things in Times New Roman so it had to change for the sake of my eyesight! I'll use CSS once I get my head around it I promise.

B&^(dy Firewalls

Just worked out that the main reason I totally failed at trying to upload to 000webhost in week 3 was the corporate firewall at work. Just tried to upload an image file to Sally (having been accessing it remotely from home for two weeks) and it refused to connect.

Thank goodness for the second (external) connection!

Making Progress

Having finally had something like an idea on a possible website project, I'm now feeling a bit happier about completing my learning proposal. Just hope I'm not biting off more than I can chew with this one.

One big advantage is that I work in a company with a fairly big web focus so I've got a few work colleagues with a fair bit of expertise in the stuff I'm looking to play with. I'm sure I can get some sage words of advice in exchange for a cup of coffee (or a beer on Fridays).

One interesting side note is that I have found my thinking slipping into work mode at some points during this process - monetisation, ROI, branding and partnerships keep jumping into my head as items to be dealt with when, really, they don't have to be this time.

HTML5 Canvas Experiment - More Info

You can find out more about the HTML5 website I mentioned earlier here.

The key thing about it, when you look at the canvas itself, this ISN'T done in Flash!

Week 4 - PHP Exercises

I managed to get about 3/4 of the Week 4 prac done before the start of class. The only thing that stumped me was the inclusion of the word 'of' in the date string. Finally found it at the bottom of the PHP Manual page, you need to use backslashes! I felt smarter than Sherlock Holmes figuring that one out! :-)

I just tried to import the string into this blog but all I end up with is the actual string, rather than the query result.

echo "The date is: ";
echo date("l dS \\of\ F Y h:i:s A");

?>

BTW, does anyone know where the control panel is for my (or anyone's) website?

Useful Book

Who'da thought my random book collecting would come in useful for PHP/MySQL study. I've somehow managed to pick up Usable Forms for the Web (which I think is now out of print) and so far, the chapters on PHP have been great! It's not the newest but it's good for basics...

Full ref is:
Beaumont, A., James, J., Stephens, J. & Ullman, C. (2002) Usable Forms for the Web glasshaus Ltd, Birmingham, UK.

Victory!

I did it!!! I think the issue with 000Webhost was the server (that's my story and I'm sticking to it), my very draft Learning Proposal is now live here!

How to host a web page? Don't ask me!

Plodding through on my learning proposal draft - but I keep getting distracted by the worry that I have NO idea how to transfer the blasted file to my server account thingy, especially since I'm going to have to do it from work tomorrow and that firewall blocks EVERYTHING.

We spent pretty much all of class last week trying to get basic access to the server accounts and never mentioned or practiced ftp processes and I really hate not getting a practice run at things.

If anyone has any helpful advice, I'd really appreciate it because otherwise, it could be going up as a very long blog post!

HTML 5 Canvas / Audio Experiment

http://9elements.com/io/projects/html5/canvas/ (with thanks to @bananasontoast) - this is so much fun! Don't have my sound up at work so can't tell what's going on with the audio though.