JeliNet Blog

Funny things blogs. I'm not one for reading them myself, however I've been surprised at how much I've learnt from some very well written examples. Many seem to have crossed over into the realms of informative websites. Hopefully I can add my little bit to the vast pool of webby knowledge and opinion that makes up the world of Blogs. . . . if not . . .well I'll just add some ramblings. Maybe you'll read this and decide I'm the sort of chap you'd like to work with. Or not!

 

An excuse to add a date . . .

January 19th 2008
If I said I'd been too busy with web design for 6 months to leave any comments here you'd think me economical with the truth . . . unfortunatley it is the truth of the matter!

Life at the top (of Google)

June 13th 2007
When I lived in NZ I dreamed of having a record playing on commercial radio - I just wanted to hear what a broadcast compressor would do to one of my mixes! A track I put together ended up playing on an A rotate - every 3 hours - it was fantastic! Unfortunatley I then discovered that putting the next record on was really hard - once they had a hit they liked to keep it for weeks! In the end I was sick of hearing it! But not that sick . . .

Google is a bit like that. When you get your site optimised and hitting the top it's exciting and rewarding. Problem is this. If you make a mistake in your copy, or change your organisation's name it can stay in the search engines for some time! But it's a small worry. The fact is well-optimised sites are hugely useful. This year I've been closely involved with seeing the real-world results from such sites I've designed and built, including one for my daughter who has picked up sponsorship from her site at www.karategirl.co.uk. I know my commercial customers pay for their sites in a short time through improved sales, but seeing non-commercial sites such as the Karate ones benefit their owners is very rewarding.

At the same time I continue to see designs for sites that stand a reduced chance of being found by Google et al. It seems a shame to me. I honestly believe that a well-optimised site can look good & any compromise in visual impact for the sake of more people finding the site is a worthy trade-off. It takes me back to the record I had on NZ radio - it had to be edited to fit the format, but it was worth it. At least it didn't languish unheard in my studio.

Panel pins and nerves

March 10th 2007
Next Tuesday I am once again an invited panelist for the MusicTank at an event in London in my capacity as a web designer to offer advice for budding artists and producers on how to maximise the potential benefits of the internet. Naturally I'm as nervous as hell, but also very excited. It's a great honour to be invited back to one of these events and I'm especially wrapped to be attending having been unable to make similar events in Birmingham and Dublin last year. If anyone reads this who is attending, or following the event has attended I hope to be able to do my best to help make the evening as fruitful as possible for you.

http://www.musictank.co.uk/events/buzz-building-squeezing-the-most-from-the-web

Smoked Bacon Paste and Web design

March 4th 2007
I was pondering between Chicken and Ham or Smoked Bacon paste to put on some toast tonight when, whilst waiting for the bread to burn, I casually read the ingredients. I didn't much fancy the Chicken and Ham so I opted for the Smoked Bacon. The ingredients were  . . . 46% Chicken, 24% Smoked Bacon!! So how the hell can something that is nearly half chicken and one quarter bacon be labeled as 'Smoked Bacon' ?! It was actually Chicken, legally, mathematically and morally.

I'm sure there was something illegal about the paste label, but I've got better things to do than chase the issue. It got me thinking about my industry. Too often I hear about customers paying for one thing and getting something else. Usually it's a case of paying far too much. They wanted Bacon and ended up with Chicken, but paid for Caviar. At the same time I get a lot of positive feedback about how this site is open and honest. All I've tried to do is put the ingredients of web design on the front of the label and not hidden on the back. Be aware that some web site suppliers don't even tell you the ingredients, so you won't have a clue how much chicken your bacon has in it. I think that when I come to review the layout this site I'll develop the clarity of what web design is further.

Help - PC terms!

October 6th 2006
Small item on the BBC1 news tonight described the person who was the subject of a story as an 'actor' and a 'comedienne'. So, she was not an 'actress' - that would be a gender-label that might infer a lesser role, but she was also not a 'comedian' - that could be a gender label that might perhaps be gender insensitive? It's now clear to me that acting is gender neutral but comedy is gender specific.

And there was me thinking php was difficult to get right . . .

Still alive

October 2nd 2006
Can't believe that 3 months have passed since I last wrote here. It was madness - so much work, then suddenly nothing. Except my wife decided the best way to enjoy my new found time off was for me to install a new kitchen. Even web designers have lives off their computers. I'm more than a dab hand with a saw, a gearbox, a paintbrush, a bit of timber, juggling balls (can you juggle backwards?) and even the odd musical instrument but plumbing a kitchen? Everytime I touch a pipe it leaks. I just can't be doing with plumbing. It's black magic and all DIY plumbing parts are designed by plumbers with a vested interest in ensuring they don't work.

I'm getting back into work with some great projects, especially a new Karate website for Wadokai Southwest. Along with a site for 1254 Squadron and 1358 Squadron ATC these are examples of how easy it is to make a big difference to some folks lives with a well designed website. The web can deliver very smart things but sometimes just delivering some solid information in a tidy way is enough. A web site can give an organisation a wonderful sense of cohesion, or a term of reference. It's another aspect of my job that is really satisfying.

A customer whom I spent some time training had assumed I was Iranian from my name 'Jel' until they met me. It had never occured to me that my nick-name could create such an impression! So, I've thown an image onto this page to let you decide . . . I wouldn't care what nationality I was, after all whatever you are born into you are proud of. But just in case you are wondering . . . I'm English by birth and I'm also a New Zealander by naturalisation. I once flew over Iran at about 38,000 ft. On the English front I can trace my paternal line back to Elizabethan times (that's Elizabeth 1st). But on my maternal line I'm completely Welsh. I love having Welsh blood. But 'Jel' is not Welsh. At all. That's cleared that up then.

Feasting season

July 7th 2006
It's been a hugely busy month for training sessions with customers. In each case a small amount of time has made a huge difference to the folks I have been asked to help. It's not until you come to show someone how to do something that you realise just how much you know (or don't know) yourself!

I've not had any time to think let alone do anything but work for a while. 16 hour days 7 days a week. Feast or famine - that's the nature of freelancing & this is feasting season. Last week I was nailing English and German versions of an ecard for one of EMI Classic's biggest releases of 2006 at 4.00am. By 8.30am it was on a projector in London in front of the people that matter, being admired. Those are the times when the job really is satisfying. At the same time a young lady I trained the week before had finally published her website after a year of battling the idiosyncrasies of Dreamweaver. Both were equally as rewarding.

<object> of my annoyance

May 21st 2006
Microsoft has lost a legal battle over the way Flash movies are displayed in Internet Explorer so now they, along with all sorts of other active content, have a nasty border around them and an annoying prompt to keep activating them when you want to click on something. The solution involves some smart javascript, which of course some folks disable in their browsers. So it's another serious set back for exciting content on the net. Who picks up the bill for fixing all the flash sites? Web designers? No - we didn't ask for this mess. Site owners? No - they didn't ask for this mess. Microsoft? No - they obviously didn't want to lose the legal battle! So it must be the judge who made the decision. I doubt they will pay!

I expect it will be another nail in the coffin for Internet Explorer, which is a shame for ordinary computer users who default to the browser with their copy of XP. Read more about it all here.

Searching Questions

May 5th 2006
It took me some time tonight to work out how to put the lid back on the pate. It was a unique, hitherto unseen, design in this house and so it was not what I was used to. On examination I could see no advantage to the design other than to be flash, different and make me think the pate set me apart from other pate consumers. In the end it's bland taste won the day and despite the Brave New World Lid it will not be purchased a second time.

So it is with websites that have Search buttons just for the sake of it. Bad design. If the site is well designed I should be able to quickly find the information myself. I don't trust Search Engines that return dubious results, any more than I trust folks who make pate lids more complex than they need to be. Let's keep life simple. Let's make websites easy to navigate. Lets not have Search facilities for sites that really have only 30 pages. Let's reserve them for sites with thousands of products. A Search facility should work for a living, not get in the way of my intelligence and throw insults at it. A pate lid should just be a lid and nothing more.

Now for a second round of toast, but this time I think Jam is calling . . .

The moon on a stick

April 14th 2006
Had a funny week. On Tuesday I had the pleasure of being a guest speaker at an evening organised by the Music Producer's Guild and Music Tank (in association with the Strongroom in London) where I gave a paying audience my infinite wisdom on web design for the music industry. It was very enjoyable and I must thank Harry Leckstein and Jonathan Robinson for the opportunity. At least two of the panel were freelancers and it was brilliant to be able to meet another human being outside of my sometimes lonely office.

A couple of days later I had some critisism about one of my web sites from a stanger half a world away. I'm all up for critisism - it's how we improve. However, in this case the source wanted to advise me how to make a website viewable on ALL browsers and ALL versions of those browsers. Techincally impossible if you want the site to look good - i.e have images. They also wanted to point out that web designers should not assume the end user's browser. Technically wrong too. Life is full of assumptions - it's how we progress!

So, highs and lows. Oh well.

Odd month - you get that

March 28th 2006
A funny few weeks. Heaps of work on but I don't feel I've done very much! One new job - Africa Live - The Roll Back Malaria Concert, has been a proud highlight. As well as being for a worthy cause it was also completed in record time. Freelancing 'record time' is doing 16 hour days, even if the project is technically late! For all the stress and questioning of one's sanity there is still a huge buzz to be gained from delivering a product that the customer is happy with! If you're wondering whether Freelancing is for you . . . well this last few weeks would be normal in this business. Periods of boredom painting the kids bedroom and wondering if the next set of bills will be paid mixed with frantic stress and impossible deadlines. Anyway . . . back to laying a laminate floor. I love my job :)

XHTML new window targets and javascript

March 5th 2006
Don't you just love it. Strict XHTML does not allow target="_blank" so the suggested solution is to use a javascript alternative. Brilliant. The javascript has to use event handlers that upset the rules accessibility (unless you have alternative handlers, which is tricky) and besides, opening a new window via javascript is basically a pop-up, which everyone hates and software blocks! I'm sure there a good reasons for it all, but does life have to be this difficult?

Anyway the result is that I'm forced to take you to other web sites in the same window. Some folks argue this is good - they hate new windows. Personally I think they are good - if I go off sideways to take a look at some information I like to think the original site is still in a browser window. The number of times I've found a great site and then lost it, or worse logged out accidentally... Then there is the whole thrust of tabbed browsers encouraging multiple windows (after all that's why the operating system is called 'windows'). Personally I like lots of windows - my left hand is locked into the 'Alt-Tab' key position. But like all things, it's a matter of opinion or personal preference.

Paying for Emails

March 4th 2006.
I read recently that AOL, amongst others, are thinking about a system of email delivery that charges for priority email delivery and allows the rest to languish in serverland for as long as it takes until they are eventually delivered. The very thought of an Internet that is charged for in such a manner is abhorrent. The argument goes that spam mail is blocking up email servers and gobbling up half of the net's bandwidth. So the answer, as always in life, is to punish the innocent and allow the wicked to win the day. Why can't spammers be given an international statutory minimum of 10 years in prison when they are caught? Because, say some, the crime is not that severe. If the eventual charges for emails generates billions of pounds world wide then that, surely, is the cost to the innocent consumer of the crime of spamming?

The key thing to fight for with the internet is equal access for all and equal payment for all. That is, payment at the point of connection and not thereafter depending on which network you use. As soon as you introduce private networks with subscribers you effectively build housing estates with 12 foot high fences on line. As in the real world, you shouldn't increasingly isolate yourself from the bad folks, you go back out into the world and claim it for the good ones. That's what used to be called justice.

Hidden internet

March 1st 2006
Have you ever wondered about how much of the internet is in not in English? It's been estimated that in 2002 the size of the non-English internet became larger than the english one. Much of it is hidden to us in the West - not because it is secret but just because our search engines don't routinely index Chinese or Japanese sites etc.

Funny really - we seasoned net users and creators are seeing the virtual world through an increasingly limited field of view.

Now China is developing it's own Top Level Domain name system to break away from the US controlled Domain System. And who can blame them? Perhaps the unity of the net really is a fragile concept . . .