John Allsopp

Professionally engineered Internet solutions for humans

Cheap: 28 April 2006: I've a client who, for whatever reason, wanted me to host their site on an Indian host. Jeez that's been a problem. I must have tried twenty hosting companies and all but one fell over in the ordering stages, almost all before reaching the payment page.; The one that didn't fall over wrote an email saying the hosting would be set up within 24 hours, and more than 48 hours later, despite raising a trouble ticket and various emails, hadn't.; Now it is up and running I'm getting FTP timeouts and slow response. I've no feeling that I'm going to get support if the thing dies on me.; With the people I usually use I've PHP vsn 4.4.2, on the Indian one it's 4.3.10, so is this thing up to date, is it patched against security problems. On one site (not sure about this one) I read that it's my responsibility to back up my database. My usual hosts back up all the time.; At the same time I went to a client's office yesterday who bought two just plain weird monitors, both of which now have problems. One dies two seconds after powerup, the other has a dodgy backlight.; So I'm back to my theme again. Buying good products and services works. Buying cheap products is a false economy .. it costs money to get these things diagnosed and repaired, I don't think either are much older than a year. And along the same lines, buying cheap web development is always going to lead to lacklustre results and before you know it you're going to want to upgrade your site or do something to overcome the problems you've discovered. Do it right first time. It's a gardening thing .. buy a quality spade, it'll last a lifetime.
The apologist: 24 April 2006: Wow. Excellent writing from this blogger
Cordless meece: 20 April 2006: Cordless mouses! What a waste of time! I bought one from the local shoppe, they didn't warn be about the little button nonsense. You have to press a button on the transmitter and then poke something thin and sharp into a hole in the underside of the mouse to make them connect, and I always forget which to do first because it seems to be different on different systems.; It times out. So every time you make a cup of tea, every time you go to the loo, after every phone call it's back to those bastard buttons and fiddly holes again.; One evening I got an emergency call from the neighbours who had got their new computer out of its box and couldn't make the mouse work. Yep, they didn't know about the buttons, and the instructions didn't tell them. "Ahhhh!" they said.; Now I'm playing with a brand new system from Golden Electronics where the little rubber plunger in the mouse hole keeps disappearing up inside the mouse, and between that, it running out of batteries, and the keyboard also having a connection button (and a dodgy D key), I've just about had it.; The comedy of this new system is, the mouse is cordless, the keyboard is cordless, but you can't move in the room for the wires to the 7.1 surround sound system.; Give me a wired mouse and keyboard any day.; While I'm on the subject of Golden Electronics, this client powered up her new computer and it went bang. Seems she'd accidentally caught the voltage toggle with her nails and set it to 110v. Golden Electronics' response was "we'll send you a new power supply, you can fit it yourself it's easy". Quite apart from the fact the box is sealed with labels saying you'll invalidate your warranty if you open the case, installing a power supply is easy for me but not for your average computer user. And what would they have said if we'd damaged something else while fitting this new power supply? Would a car company just send you a new carburetor in the post and expect you to fit it? So, a big BOOOoooo! for Golden Electronics.
Red Hot Chilli Peppers: 15 April 2006: I caught the end of the Red Hot Chilli Peppers on, yep, Jonathan Ross and it struck me how similar their ending was to visiting my grandparents when I was a kid.; My parents would conduct similar false endings, saying they must go, then actually standing up ready to walk out, but in the end we got wise and just sat there, knowing the conversation would still drag on for another half an hour.
Intacto: 10 April 2006: We watched Intacto over the weekend and in it there was a scene in which there was a line-up of people watched from behind one-way glass. They were asked to step up individually to the glass and from the other side, the observers took a polaroid photograph of their face. The camera flashed, as it would, since it was dark in the observation room.; What I can't work out is whether that would work. How does one-way glass work? The light from the observation room doesn't travel into the interview room, otherwise the interviewees would be able to see the observers, that's the point. So the camera flash wouldn't reach the interviewees. So where would that light go? It wouldn't all reflect back off the glass otherwise that glass would be a mirror to the observers. The film didn't show the flash lighting up the interviewees (or the observers).; Or, does one-way glass work on the basis of light differential. At the instant of the flash the observation room is lighter than the interview room. Does that make the effect reverse? For a split second the observation room becomes visible to the interviewees and the light from the flash can travel into the interview room. That can't work either, because that would make the observation room people see the glass as a mirror and the flash light would bounce back.; Or is it all about coatings on the glass, so the one-way effect works in only one way. In that case, why is the observation room always dark?
Ideal: 10 April 2006: A new case study for you.
Spring: 9 April 2006: Spring is very late this year, but despite a snowstorm ending a football match just up the coast from us it looks like the greenynessness will be with us very soon.
Splogging: 6 April 2006: Have you noticed how search engine results are piling up with nonsense websites which seem to just have a few bits of text and a lot of Google Adwords?; The chances are that what content's in there has been nicked. It's called Splogging and here's a great article on what to do about it. The Wikipedia link in the article gives some good information and resources too.
Weald and Downs: 5 April 2006: My client pointed me at Weald & Downs at the time we were redesigning our front page. Just looking at it now, I've just had a mini crisis because I felt their front page looks better than ours.; I still think it's initially more attractive. It's more sophisticated, graphically. On my Linux machine using Firefox it appears like a brochure with fairly wide left and right whitespace margins and a top margin too. That's nice, it feels upmarket, it feels solid. There are gradients, and the page is neatly divided into zones. It uses the portal techniques of providing snippets of information designed to tease people into the site.; We focus, on the other hand, on the most popular things people want to do on our site and provide those as part of a short piece of text. The idea is to get people to read that text.; Once you start to use both sites, though, you start to see the John Allsopp difference. Everything is clickable, and where you end up makes sense. For instance, on my site, the two initial images are clickable to see more details of that particular cabin. That makes sense, no?; I don't like the disjoint on my site between this new home page and the rest of the site. Personally, I wouldn't have a front page but the client wanted it and sometimes there's only so much persuasion you can do before it starts to look like you want to resign the project, which I don't.; If you click the middle link on the Weald and Downs site, the text "I would like to build my own home", you don't seem to end up on a page about building your own home. I think (fingers crossed) all our links make sense.; I get the initial impression that the Weald and Downs site has triggers for all their main markets. That's annoying, because that's where I'm supposed to be strongest. I've opted for functional choices such as providing links to pre-selected lists of log cabins, to our case study, and yes, there are a couple of links related to our target markets.; Mindful that many site visitors will be American, I always like to be clear about where we are, that's why I say UK and Ireland right up front on our site. American visitors can quickly move on. An American visitor to Weald and Downs has to click the 'contact' menu link and then has to know that Woking, Surrey is in the UK.; I looked at the Weald and Downs site on Internet Explorer over Windows XP with (I think) an 800x600 resolution screen and it looks different. The left and right margins are gone .. the screen is more or less filled (actually I got a horizontal scroll bar) and, disturbingly, the proportions of the main image are stretched and changed. So which is correct? Neither. That really doesn't work for me, it introduces a real element of doubt.; Then I looked at the code behind the site. It's a minefield of nested tables. For the uninitiated, tables were used in the early days of web design to force page layouts, for instance to create headers and footers, columns and so on. Since then our standards authority, the W3C has developed the idea of style sheets which enable the content of a page to sit in one file, and the instructions about how that page should look to sit in another. This allows the look of a page to be changed just by swapping the style sheet. This is important when you think about the different ways people use the web. Does someone viewing your site using a mobile device want the same stylesheet as someone using a desktop PC? Possibly, but at least this way you have a choice.; I'm reading a life-changing book 'the cathedral and the bazaar' by Eric Raymond in which Raymond talks about how the software pricing model is mostly broken.; It's accepted in software circles that the main cost of software is in its maintenance, like a service. Yet software packages for desktop use are sold like products, for a fixed initial price. This, he says, encourages the industry to produce shelfware .. software that looks sufficiently like it will solve your problem for you to buy it, but that quickly shows itself to be useless when you get it home. That way you'll never actually use it, and so you'll never make any demands on the company's support infrastructure.; Clearly Weald and Downs' site isn't shelfware, but I do see parallels. Their developers have clearly prioritised the initial attractiveness of the website, whereas I've clearly prioritised usefulness, functionality and good engineering. I still believe that's more important. I believe in form following function. I also believe that a well engineered site costs less to maintain into the future and is much cheaper in the long run. You may not think you'll use your website software for long, but it was code written in the sixties and seventies that was still running that gave us the Y2K scare. Software just keeps evolving, it rarely gets re-written, so the core algorithms and routines can last for decades.; Yet I know that many of my clients aren't easily going to understand the difference. What looks nice sells. Actually, it's probably that I've not delivered the message clearly enough. So why should a client choose me and my 'functionality' priority over another company that prioritises visual attractiveness?; The Internet is about people. If you're selling, you have to make a relationship with the person you're serving and that's not going to happen over one or two clicks. If a site isn't functional it quickly becomes apparent and your potential customer will leave.; What's functionality? A website should do something. For example, on my log cabin site, you can select log cabins that match normal human criteria such as how many bedrooms you want and how many floors. On the Weald and Downs site you are categorised and then have to download a PDF file for each possible matching product. If you provide functionality, people will return. You will build a relationship. That will help you sell things if that's your aim.; Functionality means usability. Can people use your website? Do the menu words mean anything? Can they find their way around? Can they get what they want?; People treat the web like a cash machine, they just want what they want. No-one's ever remarked to me on the beautiful graphics at their favourite cash machine.; Functionality means accessibility too. Is it possible for, for instance, a blind or visually impaired person to use the site? All my sites are formally user tested. Go here if you'd like to be one of those testers. Given how the Weald and Downs site changes according to the browser being used, I'd be surprised if it received much more than a cursory check in whatever browsers were to hand.; Functionality means your site can be accessed from any Internet connected device (eg. a mobile phone).; Perhaps most importantly, a functional site is one that is findable. There's no point building a great site if it doesn't have a good search engine position.; To my mind, all those things are more important than the look of a site.; Once function is covered, however, there's a very strong case for attractiveness. Functional and attractive, well that's a winning combination. Many clients, however, don't want to spend that sort of money. The cloth usually has to be cut to fit the budget. In that case, it really should be functionality that gets the most attention. That is what makes my sites work.; Having said all that, what is really annoying is this happened at all. I enjoy graphic design, I respect it, I study it, I offer it, I do it. I really, really shouldn't find a nicer looking site than one I've designed myself. So I need to up my ante. Something like that anyway :-); If anyone has any views I'd be grateful to hear them, I may even publish some.
Katrina: 5 April 2006: Continuing on a random and carefree 'disasters from the air' theme, here are some amazing post-Katrina New Orleans arial shots.
Chernobyl: 5 April 2006: I was reading an article on Chernobyl in The Independent this lunchtime and had the bright idea of using Google Local to peer into the top of the reactor.; I soon got the impression that it covers only the USA and UK, so ended up downloading (why?) Google Earth.; Entering Chernobyl into the search area I ended up with the facility to find a local pizza company near the Chernobyl Benevolent Society in Utah. I am making that up, but it's not so far from the truth.; Pointing myself towards Europe, the same thing happened except this time the organisations it found were in the UK.; I've no clue where Chernobyl is .. I'm using Google Maps to find out after all. It labelled Paris, where I could go up the Eiffel Tower. I think it was missing the point a little.; I Googled for more information. Chernobyl is in the Ukraine. A Google Maps search for Ukraine turned up Ukraine. Still no marker for Chernobyl.; A read of the document I'd found revealed Chernobyl is 80 miles north of Kiev. Google maps had marked Kiev, if I'm right about the way they'd spelled it, but there's no scale on the map so I've no way of knowing how far 80 miles is.; I wandered up the river a little and found a few places but nothing of note.; After writing all the above and looking at this it occurred to me to use those co-ordinates. That's a complete faff too. I did find Chernobyl in the end, but the picture was too fuzzy to provide any interest. And I couldn't find any pizza outlets. Actually there was one but the reviews said their pizzas were a little too crispy.; I went to look at Scarborough in my frustration. That's fuzzy too. But it marks out such crazy places as Hayburn Wyke. So, Google Earth, named presumably, because it gives you the whole Earth, actually does the usual US corporate thing and provides an Americo-centric view of the planet. To the level of thinking that the most important thing to me is wandering up the Eiffel Tower after eating a pizza. Maybe if I'd wanted to buy some slacks on Oxford Street I'd have fared better.; Having an Americo-centric view of the planet is one thing. We all see the world from our own viewpoints. But putting that out as product is something else. Now we're in the world of propaganda, of shaping the world to your viewpoint. It's dangerous. There's a lot of world outside the US borders. So much for "first, do no harm".; On top of that, for my purposes, it was totally bloody useless.; Maybe I'm just an ungrateful grump, but it pisses me off when a company sets up my expectations and then totally wastes my time.; Prev Chernobyl