The most recent project from my web design company in Spain, Zumo Internet has been launched. IPS UK Ltd supply commercial roofing products. They supply and arrange contracting for some of the largest roofing projects in the UK as can be seen from their case studies of installed roofing systems.
22
Feb 09
Thickbox, accessibility and search engine optimisation.
Recently I noticed that whilst my new project the Vietnam War Timeline was organically racing up the search engines, through virtue of being in a niche and growing daily in content, the bounce rate was exceptionally high. A lot of traffic was coming in but not venturing beyond the entry page.
After a very quick investigation it became apparent why this was: all links off the timeline fire a new Thickbox window with the relevant content. It’s a nice way to keep people within the timeline when they need to look at more content. Moreover, it’s unobtrusive, meaning the links can just be followed as normal by non-javascript enabled browsers. Continue reading →
20
Feb 09
0×80040600 (how to fix a corrupt Outlook pst data file)
Firstly thanks Microsoft for another of those beautifully crafted error messages.
I got one of these nice 0×80040600 Send and receive failed on all of my Outlook email accounts and after an hour of Googling and fidgeting with my laptop I managed to get to the bottom of it and find the fix. So here it is. Continue reading →
12
Feb 09
Web design in Spain from Zumo Internet
It’s been a long time coming, but at last my company website for my services of web design in Spain has been launched.
The site promotes my services of web design in Spain (that is the most gratuitous bit of SEO I have ever undertaken in a post) and has been dangling around for 9 months as just a holding page. I decided to employ HTML 5 to develop the site just out of plain curiosity to learn. Although the elements in there make use of existing HTML elements rather than pushing the envelope too much.
It’s been a nail-biting, but exciting year for my fledgling business and slowly but surely enough clients have rolled in to give me a solid base to expand upon. I have more plans for the coming year, but nothing was ever going take precedence over the web site. It’s straight to the point at the moment but I intend to build upon it in the coming year to match the progress of the business. But for now, just enjoy it.
06
Feb 09
Tips for Manipulating dates in MySQL.
Bypassing PHP to manipulate dates.
I despise working with dates in PHP. So much so that I now manipulate my dates using MySQL so I have everything I want in a php variable delivered by one SQL statement. Adding, subtracting, calculating differences and performing other date manipulations can be a pain in PHP. If you have a database connection running in your application it can be much quicker and easier to read if you work with dates in your SQL. The key to this is that you don’t need to work with tables and records in a database to use SQL. Many of the examples below don’t make queries against any record sets and yet they return valid results. Continue reading →
16
Jan 09
How to make your web 2 app accessible.
This is the shortest article I have ever written on the subject of accessibility. For me it’s a comforting thought that it really is this simple to make a web 2.0 app accessible.
- Make a web site that works without JavaScript and follows the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
- Grab a library such as jQuery that allows you to inject your bells and whistles with an onload / document ready method and keep your JavaScript out of the body of your HTML.
More accessibilty techiques can be found at the recently re-launched Made For All.
07
Jan 09
More Made For All accessibilty articles online
The remainder of the archived articles from the original made for all are online:
- Accessible place holder text in forms
- AAA – Acronyms, Abbreviations and Accessibility
- Serving up accessibility with Apache
- Designing for users with dyslexia
- Describing document text for accessibility
- Beyond the alt attribute: Accessible web graphics
- Building Accessible Tables
What strikes me when reading through these 5 year old articles is how relevant they all still are, more so with the growth in mobile browsing devices. With content from Ian Lloyd, Anitra Pavka , Joe Clark, Gez Lemon and of course the author of this blog these articles are a little piece of the web that begged to be saved.
06
Jan 09
Made For All back online
After a 6 year hiatus, Made For All, the first online publication about accessible web development is back online.
New articles are due soon that deal with accessibility and modern web development which has come along way since MFA was first published. I am proud to take the rein on the publication again and look forwards to producing more quality articles on creating accessible web content.
In the meantime, two old articles are now back online:
- An interview with Julie Howell of the RNIB.
- An interview with Joe Clark, author of building accessible web sites.
30
Dec 08
The Vietnam War Timeline
My newly launched project, a timeline of the Vietnam War, is now online.
The project provides an interactive timeline of the conflict that allows users to scroll through years and see key events and related media in a chronological order. This is still the beta of the project insofar as the information is still being added, but contributions are expected and welcomed from veterans, historians and other with an interest in this war.
Information for the techies: the project uses jQuery to power the timeline and the backend data is stored using MySQL and delivered with PHP. The timeline degrades gracefully to allow for viewing in non-javascript devices. Future updates are to include an RSS feed of the latest added information.
The project is run and hosted voluntarily by myself.
15
Dec 08
The Vietnam War – A Reading List.
As a child Robert Mason dreamed of levitation – years later he was flying with the 1st Air Cavalry in the Vietnam War. At 14 I stumbled across his account of his training and services at the stick of a Huey 1H in my step-father’s book collection. “Chickenhawk” in me a fascination of two things at an impressionable age: helicopters and the Vietnam War.
I have chosen these books because they tie up the persepectives on some key aspects of the Vietnam war, namely:
- What lead from the French being defeated to the American Invasion.
- The experimental use of Helicopters and the Airborne Cavalry.
- The ground fight from the persepctive of the foot soldiers (Grunts).
- The differences in tactic between the PAVN/VC and the US Military.
- Dispelling of certain myths surrounding the war and its veterans.