Will Morgan

After putting up with quite a lot of this crap over the past few years, a short 2 week phase of delusion where I thought it was a cool idea, and then my swift realisation that a lot of posers are out there, I think this list pretty much says it all.

The bottom line is this: if you match the below criteria, you are a poser and you should really stop blogging as your blog is fail. Perhaps you should focus your time on actually staying with the cutting edge? By the way, if you’re still stuck in the age of proxy networks, I’ll bring you up to speed: HTML5 and full CSS3 is just round the corner.

So without further bitching, here goes:

1. You post more often than you work on a website, be it your client’s or your own.
2. You know how to work with WordPress, but when it comes to any other content management system or building one yourself, you’re pretty much clueless.
3. Sometimes, you forget why you’re even making a blog post and decide to include an off topic YouTube video instead.
4. The only articles you can pump out are the articles that everyone has done before.
5. Popular topics include: “yet another amazing text editor for Macs” or “why does nobody comment my entries anymore :(”

In summary: if you don’t have anything useful to say on your web development blog that you honestly believe would benefit other devs, shut the hell up and get off my internet.

Yours soberly,

Will Morgan.

I recently stumbled upon the lovely bunch of guys and girls at www.webetalk.com. It’s really for entrepreneurs, which is something I once looked at trying to do. I stick around and take a look at what people like me are coming up with and developing. Beats DigitalPoint these days I tell you…

You can check it out at www.mattwainwright.com. Browse in IE6 and tell me what you think. You need JavaScript enabled, which switches your style over to “accessible” mode and then gives you a short message telling you that you have to upgrade. If you choose not to, it says “Your loss.”

For the source, check out www.mattwainwright.com/script/ie6handler.js. If you have any suggestions, let me know!

But it’s true. Say your client wants a ton of quotes for testimonials around the header section of the page, and you reluctantly agree with his proposition and start figuring out how to do this.

You could:

• a) Use CSS positioning to source order the quotes at the expense of using positioning and other elements that would bork if the user changed his or her text size.
• b) Hard code the quotes in and use PHP or another language to dynamically serve up a random quote every time the user reloaded his or her page.
• c) Use jQuery and an anchor element in the header to load the content dynamically into the DOM, then use a kickass slide function to enhance the page.

I chose c. Here’s my working demo, and here’s why I did it:

1. I really need to use JavaScript more often.
2. The slider functionality allows a few quotes to appear while the user views the rest of the page.
3. Hardcoding in the quotes would really screw my clients’ SEO.

Now, I know JavaScript and SEO don’t really go together hand in hand. However in this instance it’s quite useful to cut out some of the fat from the page and prevent screen readers getting bombarded with information that is, in my opinion, pretty superfluous.

The setup is pretty basic:

1. Put all your quotes in a separate file that is loaded with AJAX into the DOM on load.
2. Add your anchor element into the header section: <ul id="quoteHolder"></ul>
3. Include jQuery and the cycle plugin in the header section of your page.
4. Run this code, that loads the content into the element and then uses the cycle function as a callback: $(document).ready(function() {
$('#quoteHolder').load('script/quotes.html li', function() {
$(this).cycle({
timeout: 10000, delay: 3000, random: 1,
fx: 'custom',
cleartype: 1,
cssFirst: { top: 0, opacity: 1, zIndex: 1 },
cssBefore: { top: -180, right: 0, bottom: 0, left: 0, opacity: 1, zIndex: 1, display: 'block' },
animIn: { top: 0, opacity: 1 },
animOut: { top: 180, opacity: 0 },
cssAfter: { top: 0, zIndex: 0, display: 'none' }
});
});
});
5. Enjoy!

For those of you interested in the use of the handy load function, here’s the documentation page.

Just a heads up to all of you social networking junkies out there: if you are invited to a site called Naymz, don’t bother. The site itself looks sleazy, and is just one big LinkedIn ripoff.

The killer clause however, is the fact they set you up with a forename@lastname.name address, which then forwards to your email address. Since I joined the service, I’ve been receiving a lot more spam sent to my will@morgan.name email address. I’ve sorted out a filter in Gmail that sends it all to the junk folder, as well as disabled the forwarding “service” provided to me for “free” by Naymz, but that filter is still picking up spam.

Beware!

Update: read the comments for Naymz’ founder’s response!

Less and less people are using IE6: its market share has slumped down to 25%. After reading a few angry articles about stopping IE6 altogether, I thought it was time to shed my own lights on the situation, as it’s definitely not something to go ignored.

IE6 isn’t gone for good - yet!

This means that it would only be unfair to completely stop support for IE6 in such a way that it would be completely impossible for an IE6 user to browse your website. 25% is still a fair chunk, so testing in IE6 is still necessary. However…

People need to be forced to upgrade gracefully

This means for me, that I’m going to stop concentrating on making layouts pixel-perfect in IE6 and including things such as the pngfix.js script, as well as whatever:hover. Instead, I’m going to make sure that users can still use basic functionality in the website - such as navigating, filling in forms, and of course, reading the web page content.

Let your clients know this before you start working on the front end…

Tell your clients that IE6 isn’t as important as it once was, and although it is still necessary to make sure that content is visible and the basic structure is left intact, pixel perfectness and bending over backwards for IE6 is not. If your client insists that perfect IE6 compatibility, then let them know that you’ll be charging more as it’s an extra service.

Removing full support for a browser is a ballsy thing to do…

So, explain to your users that they are using an outdated version of their browser, and should upgrade as soon as possible in order to take advantage of the web’s latest technologies.

I remember when I started off web design, inside a weird portfolio style webring where everyone seemed to have a splash page with the small text saying “you must have IE5.5+ to view this website optimally”.. how wrong we were. I don’t believe in monobrowser websites (you like that term I just made up there?) where King John Smith of the company’s digital department dictates how you shall browse a website; I believe in a web where it’s alright to use whatever browser you like, but only the studs of the internet use the modern browsers, who get the special treatment.

Adapt or die. This phrase goes for both browsers and web designers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the moral of the story is don’t be an IE6 hater. I treat the browser like it’s an old relative about to kick the bucket (compassionate, I know) so as of this week I will be explaining to my clients that IE6 compatibility will now be cut back in order to make way for shorter files, less nail biting, and of course, the new kids on the block: being full CSS2.1 utilisation, the dawn of HTML5, and beautiful transparent PNGs.

So I’ve just back from the interview, iPod churning my eardrums and I actually think it might be worth a shot. The designer who interviewed me seemed to know what he was talking about, and the general feel seemed good.

Mandatory call from the recruitment guy afterwards on my way back. Usual spiel. Haha…

I have a job interview to attend today at 2pm. To be honest I’m feeling rather negative about it already as the recruitment agency hasn’t told me a lot about the company, and its website seems less than interesting, innovative or remotely attractive.

This seems to be the trend for most interviews I’ve attended, bar one or two. Fortunately enough, this shop front image doesn’t always seem to shine through and the company seems half decent.

Then I’m asked in for a second interview, and I’m either reminded of the horrid 90 minute commute, the dead silence in the reception room or the total lack of interest about new technologies these companies have.

This one today is in Teddington, so it won’t be that hard to get to, but the website again looks boring and grey. I also cared to take a look at the source code, one of the first things I’d probably be asked to produce if I ever took on a role here, and found this:

<div id="leftCol">

For any coders out there with a brain, you can probably understand why I’m generally unimpressed so far.

I think it’s time to stick to freelancing, make piss poor money, but still retain my sanity. Either that or start an agency… what was that you said about the economic climate?

After posting my first post for today, I decided to give in to the persistent bitching in my admin panel and finally update Wordpress. Wow, how impressed I am, and yet how annoyed.

It’s taken the best part of 2 hours, uploading the zip, unzipping it with shell, getting kicked in the face by Ubuntu and its file permissions/group ownerships, having a beer and thinking “fuck this, I’ll delete it all and then upload each file through FTP”, watching paint dry to pass the time, and then installing it, THEN wrestling with phpMyAdmin with the dodgy SQL backup of all my posts it gave me.

So yes, all in all, the process was productive. Efficient? Pah! No way.

Oh yes, and the even worse news is that I couldn’t be arsed to backup the wp-content directory with all my uploads, or restore the categories, comments, tags, or whatever-other table there was. But who cares, this is my site and these are my posts.. and that’s all that counts, alrightey?

Better theme coming soon.

Since February pretty much, I’ve been working 2-3 clients who’ve given me pretty basic freelance work, and they pay on time, which is lovely, but there’s been a serious lack of JavaScript and challenge given to me lately. This makes me a very sad panda.

I’ve gotta thank Alec for keeping me up to date with what’s going on in the JavaScript world, and I definitely hope I can get this blog looking more jQuery enhanced in the next few weeks!

With that said, I’ll most likely be moving this blog over to my “official” domain, willmorgan.co.uk. With this move, it will free up this domain for my original plans that have been in the oven for over a year!