MillsMash

From time to time I use web sites which frustrate and anger me. I’m left wondering why they are hard to use, why so little thought has been put in and why some obvious opportunities have been missed. But what really really makes my blood boil is when I see a site that has been badly developed, especially when a developer has taken a reasonable, sometimes simple concept and made a complete mess of it.

Today I have, amongst other things, been looking over a clients site, Sorouh. The website is far from the worst i’ve seen in this region, in fact it looks positively up-to-date compared to some i have seen. The design is simple with a good amount of information and even has a site map for SEO purposes but then i started to notice strange things. The site map link was not being recognized as a link, on hovering over the “Developments” menu the link shown was different from the page you landed on. Then i looked at the source code and i nearly cried.

The developments home page is nearly 800Kb in size, the homepage html alone is over 1700 lines and 155kb in size and the javascript is 700 lines long and 214kb in size! All the page displays is a bit of flash, a few images and some 400 words! Who ever developed the site seems to have included every Ajax / Javascript library. The have surrounded simple links with entire html tables which then have onClick events on them which over-rides the link its surrounding. Every menu link is re-written in javascript and the links that appear in the html are different to the ones that appear in the javascript.

I fail to understand how someone can code such a simple site so badly. Time is not even an excuse as they have way over complicated it and at least doubled if not trippled the amount of work they needed to do. Programming should be simple, elegant and serve a purpose, not a complete waste of time and space! What makes this worse is it’s so un-necessary, adversely affects SEO and impacts the time taken to display the page and thus the user experience.

Forgive me father for i have sinned. It’s been too long since my last confession in that time I have accomplished, learned and failed at a variety of things on one’s walk through life…

Yes, its been far too long since i last posted a blog entry and considering i’m suppose to be believer, supporter and general advocate of the wonders of all things online it’s a fairly disgraceful position to be in. Unfortunately this post is going to be a short just to reassure that this blog is still alive as am I.

Since my last post i have been fortunate enough to join a wonderful company, The Brand Union, in their Middle East office. I have taken up the position of Digital Director for the region which basically means I’m their new geek in residence. My main role will be to advise our clients on the virtues of the online world, how it applies to their brand and the best ways they can exploit it. I will also be assisting the company to utlise digital resources to the full.

You  can now also find me on twitter @ http://twitter.com/tlgm should you wish to follow my random rambilings

I will be back soon with more insights into life in Dubai, latest online developments and the usual ramblings. Until then i had better have several bloody Mary’s, i mean hail Mary’s

Since i was a child Christmas has been about spending time with family and friends and try to forget the woes of the year & work. Admittedly most years have massive arguments, fights over presents and certain family members falling asleep by 5pm. However, one thing that was certain is that no-one would be shopping not just because all the the shops where shut but because we had better things to do. Hell it was one of the fours days of the year that my step-father, being a green-grocer, would actually shut his shop (the others being boxing day and new years day + 2nd Januray). It was always strange but good to wonder around my local area and see all the shops shut and that the only people out and about where out for a walk generally with their family and friends. If fact since 2003 its been illegal for ‘large’ shops to open on christmas day.

However, it appears that, according to IMRG, nearly 4 million British people went online on Christmas day and spent £102 Million pounds! That to me seems immensly sad and an indicative of the state of current society when 10% of the population (over the age of 16) are spending their time (at least in part) shopping on their computers. It’s bad enough they are on their computers rather than interacting with their family and friends bar for the following reasons:

• Trying out a new game
• Communicating with family abroad / else where.

Has society really got to the point where would rather shop online on christmas day then spend time with family and friends? Ok i accept that there are people out there who don’t have large families or if they do the last thing they want to do is spend time with them or even that they are not christian and don’t want to celebrate Christmas. But to consider that 10% of the adult population is shopping on Christmas day, now that is sad! Christmas is truely dead!
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/245079/four-million-brits-went-online-shopping-on-christmas-day.html

David Cameron has recently stated that:

“Fibre optic broadband is changing the way people work and do business, and it has the potential to completely transform our economy.

“It could open up new markets for our creative industries, promote innovation, create new, family-friendly jobs as people can work from home - and help reduce carbon emissions.”

Really? What in the same way that we would have paperless offices and remote working within the last 10 years? I’m curious as to what basis he makes this claim.  I don’t see that fibre will bring anything other than a faster more reliable internet service. It will allow for IPTV, IP Telephony and a better on-line experience overall. As for working from home, current broadband allows for this and for the vast majority of what people need in as such that they can:

• receive and send large emails with attachments,
• use skype and other comms programs even with video
• remote desktop into work computers
• use online services such as salesforce.com, google docs etc

What would Fibre-to-the-home give them that they have not already got? And even with broadband things have not improved  within family life. In fact with faster connections, blackberries and the like it seems that people are working longer and harder causing a larger drain on the individual and the family. You could argue that faster ubiquitous communications are actually putting a great strain on familys as we all spend more time in front of the computer and not interacting with each other.

Businesses definately need faster internet connections as more and more personnel use the company connections for work and pleasure. Homes also need faster internet connections as more devices come online, with more laptops in the home and soon more appliances ‘needing’ internet connections we do need more bandwidth. I’m all for faster internet and Fibre-to-the-home but it won’t make the massive impact that Cameron is promising. Just another headline grabbing political gimmick!

Over the past few years and more notably over the last 12 months Linux has started to make real in-roads into the traditional MS Windows market place with its inclusion on OEM systems from Dell, IBM and HP as well as the likes of the OLPC and cheap Netbooks. This has not just been driven by a desire to reduce costs but also by the fact that Linux has matured greatly over the years and some new flavours are really starting challenge MS Windows with regard to usability and functionality. Couple this with MS move to ‘open up’ MS Word document standards so that they can now be easily opened & edited in other programs due to their XML nature and suddenly there are very few reasons not to at least try out Linux.

Other than some very basic Unix monkeying back at university in 1997 I’ve not explored Linux at all and being a techie/geek that was just was not on. Especially seeing as you can now get VMware Virtual Server for free. Using a ‘virtual machine / server / computer’ allows me to install Linux on my laptop from within XP without it affecting XP in the slightest. The virtual machine appears as a new program within XP so I can use both simultaneously with only a minor hit on performance. As my laptop has a dual core 2.4 Ghz processor and 4Gb of RAM it can easily handle running Windows XP as a main OS and Linux running from within VMware. Hell I could also run XP in VMware as well and it wouldn’t blink however that would require a new license for XP if one was to stay legit. As the basic VMWare server and Ubuntu are completely free doing this costs’ me nothing more than disc space!

So I’ve downloaded the latest version of VMware & Ubuntu and mapped the Ubuntu installation (ISO) to a new VMware machine. Once I turned it on it happily booted into the Ubuntu installer and away it went. It was simple to install with no issues what’s so ever and now I have a Linux on my laptop without any concerns about it corrupting Windows.

But, what’s the point in all this if I’ve already got XP & Office & everything else I need happily running on my laptop other than as a proof of concept and to confuse people looking over my shoulder? In an acronym: LAMP! LAMP stands for Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP and represents a series of packages you can install on your server to have a fully fledged web server.

Before I created this blog I had never done any ‘real’ work with PHP or MySql but when I saw that my hosting company was providing a means to roll out WordPress easily to my account I thought ‘why not give it (Wordpress & Blogging) ago’. That meant getting to grip in some ways with PHP and MySql to install the software and configure the blog to look & feel how I wanted. Admittedly installation was very easy and the only PHP I’ve so far had to do is filtering posts for specific pages but coding it is none the less.

Unfortunately the version of WordPress offered by my host is quiet old and out-of-date so having got to grips with that version of WordPress I wanted to see what else I could do as well as what the newer versions offered. The only way to do that was to install WordPress myself and I sure as hell was not going to load XP up with yet more server software etc. to try it out. This is where the beauty of a virtual machine comes in, I now have a fully fledged Linux installation (admittedly minus any pretty interfaces due to VM graphics card limitations) with LAMP and WordPress installed. I’ve also installed WinMin which is a web based GUI for administering a range of items including MySql, Apache as well as the OS and I’ve been very impressed with it. I can now play away with all the packages to my hearts content without threatening the stability of anything but a ‘virtual’ test system.

OK, I have to admit its not gone entirely smoothly. During first attempt at installing WordPress I managed to corrupt MySQL and the only way I found to resolve it was to completely whip the machine L There may have been an easier way but everything I tried seemed to make the matters worse and as I had no data on the machine it was easier to wipe it and start again. This is where Virtual Machines come into their own as not only does formatting it not affect the main XP system but all the data for it is stored as a single file in a directory on my laptop. This not only means that I can back-up the system at different stages extremely easily but I can also spawn infinite versions of the OS just by copying the file and mapping it to a new virtual machine!

My experiences so far with Ubuntu and LAMP have been varied. I’ve been incredibly impressed with how easy certain things are to do and the wealth of programs available from the initial installation as well as through the package installed. However, other ’simple’ things like refreshing network interfaces, installing packages which are not on the main list and updating some packages has been a nightmare. Needless to say a lot of it includes command line usage which I don’t mind if only I knew the commands. On the plus side the web is full of answers to the majority of the questions & issues I have had, Google is your friend J

I would highly recommend to any geek / techie / developer to have a go, you’ll be surprised how easy it is and it does not cost a penny. However I would say that Ubuntu (Linux) is not quite ready for non-IT-literate people like your granny but it’s not far off.

I’ll keep you posted on my experiences…

I wrote this a while back as a guide for clients who where thinking of redeveloping their website and thought i would put up on the blog. Content Management Systems (CMS)  have come along way since this was written so I will update it but it still has some valid and valuable points…

BENEFITS OF A CMS

Benefits of a Content Management System
A Content Management System (CMS) provides a range of benefits over traditional static HTML pages. The main benefits of a Content Management System are:

Fast & Reliable Updates

The single largest benefit of using a content management system to administer a website is the ability for authorised personnel to edit the content which appears on the web pages without having to have any prior knowledge of web development. The success of many of today’s popular and successful websites owes a lot to the frequency with which content is updated. The use of a CMS system allows company personnel to update the sites content easily and frequently ensuring users return regularly.

The majority of CMS systems work very much like the popular MS Word office application making them very intuitive to users. These systems also provide a variety of additional functionality to ensure the integrity of the site, e.g. Work flow process, version control and Staging area’s. The document below outlines the main benefits of additional functionality.

Training

One of the main benefits of a web based Content Management System is the reduced training requirements for users to be able to access the system. No prior HTML experience is required to enter data or control it’s formatting. Control of formatting can vary depending on the content ensuring pages always conform to expectations while still providing users with the flexibility they would need and expect.

Web Access

A Content Management System would provide one central web area to edit content. The main benefit to this that a user can access, modify and publish content from anywhere in the world; as long as they had access to a web browser and the site. This reduces licensing costs and restrictions on user locations as the majority of computers now have both web access and a web browser. When this is used in conjunction with workflows and security policies it leads to a highly efficient and secure system which is still flexible enough to meet the requirements of an ever growing and changing intranet.

Workflow

Workflow ensures that no content can appear on a site without having been checked and signed off by a variety of users. This guarantees that no content can appear on a site ‘accidentally’ and that the content has been checked for spelling errors, accuracy and validity at each stage before being published. This also provides an audit trail which ensures users are accountable for changes and allows administrators to track user actions and the progress of work
A typical work-flow could be:

• Edit
• Review
• Publish

Componentisation

Componentisation allows for content on a page to be broken down into independent objects and for content to be divorced from its presentation. It also allows for pages to be accessed and modified by multiple uses simultaneously as each one can work on different areas without affecting the other.

Work Distribution

As content on the intranet will be controlled by hundreds of users, a Content Management System would ensure that a variety of users could work simultaneously on different content on the same page or across multiple pages. At the same time it also prevents users from editing the same content at the same time.

Advance Editing

Content held within a Content Management System can be preset to be published at set times allowing content to be edited but not published until an approved time. This is particularly useful with industry news and events where early release of information can be detrimental to the company and its employees.

Versioning

Versioning ensures that every change to a page or component on the site is stored so that items can be easily and quickly rolled back to a previous state without having to re-edit them. It also provides administrators with information on the date and time of changes as well as the users involved.

Globalisation

An ever growing percentage of web users first’s Language is not English and represent a lucrative market if a website can accommodate their Cultural needs including Language and Interface variations. A CMS system provides an easy way to create pages which can service a number of languages and cultures without requiring new pages or sites to be created. Access to the CMS can be given to Language specialist to allow companies to outsource translation work without jeopardising the integrity of the site.

Blue Printing

Blue printing is the process by which child sites can be created using a parent site as a template. The child site is then able to inherit all the structure, content and functionality of the parent site which can be customised and built upon. This enables site administrators to quickly and easily roll out new websites or micro-sites with the minimum of effort.

Storage

A Content Management System provides a centralised storage location for all content on a site be it simple text, binary files or multimedia objects. The benefits of this are that assets can be accessed globally, tracked and backed-up. It also ensures that content is stored in a structured format which allows it to be easily located by users.

Backup

As content is stored in one central location, backing up and restoring data to all areas of a site can be easily managed from the central location by very few staff.

Publishing

Content Management Systems provide the ability to publish content to a variety of targets. Not only does this mean that content can be published to a server for testing and approval but it also means that different content can be published to a variety of websites while still being maintained in a central location and without duplication. Another ability of Content Management Systems is to enable the same content to be published to a variety of clients for example: Web, PDA’s and Cell phones, without requiring content to be inputted multiple times.

Security

Content Management Systems allow access to different areas to be restricted to the users who are in charge of a particular area of a site. For example, content editors can freely edit content but only authorised personnel would actually be able to publish content once it had passed through the work-flow system. Equally on authorised users would be able to change the presentation and layout of content. Different types of content can also be assigned to different users allowing designers to change graphics without them being able to change textual content.

Search & Locate

As a Content Management System ensures content is stored in a central structured format it provides users with the ability to easily locate resources which would otherwise be dispersed across a variety of locations and computers.

Getting Wired about being Wireless in Dubai

In a modern city you would expect internet connectivity to be fairly easy, prolific and rapid. It seems however that in Dubai if you expect it to be easy or fast it will be anything but!

I’ve been travelling around different cafe’s attempting to browse the internet, a few coffee shops have their own connection which once you purchase an item you are given their WPA or WEP key which works reasonably well. However, the majority of Malls and coffee shops use Etislat’s wireless connection which is very much like BT’s OpenZone in that you have to pre-pay to gain access. And this is where the fun begins.

Although the Etislat’s gateway portal has a facility to take credit card payments, trying to create a new user account has resulted in a system error (which they know about according to shop staff). This error has perpetuated for over a week. The portal also gives a contact support number however this number on works from Etislat mobile and landline phones, I’m on du (another Dubai mobile provider).  My UK phone works with Etislat however it does not recognise the local number either.
So I discover, after being bounced around from shop to shop, you can purchase pre-paid ‘i-zone’ card which you can then use to access the internet. However, trying to find a store that sells these is another matter. I am currently sat in the Emirates Mall, one of Dubai’s plushest which boasts Etislat i-zone wireless throughout, but you can’t buy any i-zone cards here! I’ve been told that you can purchase ‘pay as you go’ mobile phone credit for Etislat phones and use that however you need an Etislat mobile phone to use it!!!!

Finally I manage to purchase an i-zone card and attempted to use it. One would assume you just scratch of the panel to reveal a code and enter that into the gateway webpage, right? Oh no, not in Dubai, here you enter the code and your mobile number, you are then sent an SMS text with another code which you in-turn enter into another webpage to gain access. I try this but enter my du mobile number and guess what, I get no text. So I try the same number with UAE country code, still no text. So I try my UK mobile (which is actually connecting through du) and within 5 seconds I get a text! Turns out the service won’t work with du, talk about anti-competitive.

So, I’m on the internet and surfing happily away for 2 hours when suddenly my wireless connection drops and I’m assigned a new IP address (don’t know why) meaning my previous wireless session is dropped and I have to re-login to the gateway webpage. However this time it tells me the account is already in use and I can’t connect. I try going to the log-out page in the vain hope that I can force it to log my machine out but no. So I try phoning the support number on the i-zone card again that only works from an Etislat phone! Thankfully the store I purchased the card from is only round the corner so I pop-in and explain the issue, the lady is very understanding but cannot help. However, she kindly suggests I use the shops landline to phone Etislat and speak to them.  After endless phone options and speaking to two operators I discover that as I did not log out (not that I could off or wanted too) it will take ½ hour for the system to disconnect me due to inactivity at which point I can re-connect. The operator, obviously, has no way of doing this himself, that would be easy and there is no page I can force it from! So I wander round to another cafe which takes about 25mns and connect again, however this time the Etislat wireless refuses to give me an IP address. There is another ‘open’ wireless connection called Tsunami which I try (ensuring my firewall is set to max) and it works and takes me to Etislat’s gateway portal where I can login. This all works fine but I’m extremely concerned that Etislat’s wireless does not work and that this Tsunami connection is a trap for tourists. If it wasn’t for the simple fact that Dubai is one of the safest places I’ve ever been (I’ll happily leave my laptop for 5mns in a public place!!!) and that I am security conscious and aware then I would not dream of using this Tsunami connection.

Now today I am in Mall of Emirates, my credit has run out and I can’t buy more here, there are no free connections and  the credit card facility is still not working. So the only thing left to do is to write this rant in MS Word and then post it up when I eventually get a connection.

I’ve also noticed that this mall has 2 open wireless connections, one called ‘ETISLAT’ and one called ‘etislat’. The one if full caps, which is normal the SSID I connect to refuses to give an IP address while the lowercase one works fine, if only I had credit. This is not only insane but amazingly lack security and poor usability. But then this is Dubai, what am I to expect….

——————-

UPDATE:

Turns out there is a Virgin store in the Emirates Mall which has an Etislat stall in it and they sell the i-zone cards. There was an Etislat stall outside the Virgin store and not only did they not sell the cards they did not know there was a stall in Virgin or that they sold the cards. Interestingly when i tried to buy the card the sales person asked if i was really really sure and did i know the issues in connecting

I recently read an interesting blog post by Jeff Atwood where he discusses the importance of developers being profficient and quick typists. This is something that i have long felt strongly about however I tend to take it one step further. I believe developers should not only be able to type quickly but they should also know a huge array of keyboard shortcuts. I dont just mean the simple Ctrl+C (copy) & Ctrl+V (paste) but also Alt+Tab, Ctrl+Tab, Windows+E, Windows+R, Windows+D, Ctrl+Enter (for IE & FF) etc…. I have even gone as far asking developers in interviews what keyboard shortcuts they use the most!

To some this may seem crazy but as Jeff discusses we spend the vast majority of our time in front of keyboards and should be able to produce work quickly. This doesn’t mean firing out drival like a team of monkeys, i mean the speed of input should constrict a developer as little as possible. One of the most frustrating things for me when working with /watching other developers at a computer is when they constantly use the mouse to copy and paste, change windows, search etc. It’s soooo slow. One of my favorite shortcuts is Ctrl+Enter in IE & FF which automatically enters “www.” and “.com” around a phrase in the address bar.

I have to admit that i have yet to master all of Visual Studio’s shortcuts, especially the dual key ones like Ctrl + E, C (comment out code) however i think my speed round most menu’s makes up for this and i do try to learn new ones with every bit of work i do.

One exception though is how important it is when showing someone else how to do something on a computer, be them a novice or an expert, is to slow yourself down and ensure they are following your every move. I know that some people have been mesmerised / confused at watching me use a computer as they don’t know what i did to accomplish something. I skip between windows, menus, scroll down pages etc without thinking or stopping. This can mean that the person that i am demonstrating something to or working with either can’t keep up or is utterly confused by what i have done which is often counter-productive. This is often componded by people being ashamed to admit they did not follow or understand something and going often and wasting hours of their own time and others.

Some of my most used shortcuts are (starting from most obvious):

•  Ctrl+
  • C = Copy,
  • V = Paste,
  • X = Cut
  • W = Close window
  • Enter = In Internet Explorer and Firefox this surronds the text in the navigation bar with “www.” and “.com”
• Shift +
  • Enter = In Internet Explorer and Firefox this surronds the text in the navigation bar with “www.” and “.net”
• Windows +
  • E = Explorer,
  • R = Run,
  • D = Show Desktop
  • S = Select (OneNote)
  • Tab = In applications which support tabs this goes between the tabs
  • 1 to 9 = In applications which support tabs this goes to a tab of that number
  • (nothing) = Opens start menu and then use Arrow keys to naviage
  • (nothing) and then Tab = Opens Quick start menu
• Alt +
  • Tab = Changes window,
  • R = Run,
  • D = Show Desktop
  • S = Select (OneNote)

This is far from a complete list and I’ll add to this as time goes on.

Btw: My current typing speed is around 60wpm so still some improvement to go…

A developer has asked me about testing individual sites configured for load balancing to ensure each is working properly. I have found the best way to do this is to set-up a new DNS record (or external IP) for a site and point it to the server you want to test.

Generally when using load balanced sites across two servers I tend to create three records for the sites:

For example:

• Test.site.com = loadbalancer.site.com
• Ws1.Test.site.com = ws1.site.com
• Ws2.Test.site.com = ws2.site.com

You will also need to add the individual urls to the appropriate website properties in IIS (or similar)

Also, i configure all servers to add the server name to the http response headers which you can view using firefox’s web developer tool bar. This lets you see which server is rendering the page without giving away any secure information and is hidden from the users view.

An example of such an HTTP header for a server named WS2 would be:

Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2008 14:18:23 GMT
Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
X-Powered-By: ASP.NET
Webserver: ws2
Content-Length: 5558
Content-Type: text/html
Cache-Control: private

200 OK

While trying not to do any work and tidying up my online presence, i’ve finally gotten around to creating my own online blog! While its not going to be as enthrawling as steven frys blog i hope it will still entertain and provide some interest to some people. Please feel free to leave comments and check back soon or subscribe to the RSS feed to see new articles.