Digital Davey

It’s a known fact that some airlines and concert ticket promotors etc add extras at the end of the checkout process before you pay, but I could not believe that it’s catching on with some e-commerce sites are starting to do the same thing.

I was on a site ordering a product from a fairly well known sports/cycle website and went through the checkout process and was informed that I had free delivery which I thought was a bonus.

Then the big usability clanger, They added quick delivery charge of £3.99 without asking the user first so the total increased.

I do believe this is something that the user should make the decision on if they want a quicker delivery or not. Retailers/airlines, concert ticket promotors etc must realise the public hate this and would love you more if you gave them the decision to make not you.

Credit Card Charges

This brings me to the dreaded credit card charges which apparently are going to be outlawed by the Government that airlines etc are charging per person. Now if you are an MP that has been involved in getting this pushed through, have you actually thought about this.

Yes, you will get this law pushed through and as you put it  “claim it will be a great triumph for the consumer”. WRONG…..

All they will do is move the charge which was labelled as a credit card charge and rename it as admin fees.

I think what needs to be done is having a law to say that the total price has to be displayed with charges at all times through the process, but to be honest this is common sense and will not happen very soon.

Over the last couple of months I have endured the other side of the fence when it comes to CVs in the interviewing side of things instead of handing mine over for an interview.

One thing which I have found out over the years is most (with the exception of a couple) recruitment agencies is that they don’t read and they don’t listen, except those who blame the database system for bringing up your details when they shouldn’t.

Take my CV. Quite clearly says that I was looking for London or Cambridge and for a Front End Developer role. What do I get? Roles for Sheffield, Bristol, Nottingham and the best one…. Amsterdam.

The other bit is that it says very very clearly that I have knowledge of JavaScript but is not that great to which I get a role past to me for an expert in JavaScript with at least 2yrs experience. This varies across my skill set.

I still get emails today with roles for Dublin, Southampton and Bedford. That’s this week alone.

Now I know this may not account for every person who works in a recruitment agency but surely you look before you press send.

So, why do they send CV’s that do not resemble anything like what you have asked for? This does not improve your chances of getting any respect, in fact this reduces your chances of being used next time as you are unable to produce valid candidates to the table.

A Web Developer is different to a Web Designer, this has been my main frustration over the years.

Tips for candidates

Make sure you take along a few copies of your CV as some (not all) like to adapt your CV to the role so when the potential employer looks at it they think it’s great until they ask you the questions and this leaves you with a blank look on your face cause you have not got a clue what they are on about.

I have had this done quite a few times and is embarrassing and a waste of time for you and the interviewer.

On the defence of them, I have come across a few of them that are genuine and do keep you informed but like I said, these are not in huge numbers so be careful.

I have been coding since 1999 and professionally since 2003 and always strived to produce valid standards code.

One thing I have noticed over the last 12-18 months is the amount of sloppy code that has been produced as well as bad testing and checking. I have been guilty of this on a couple of occasions but this was down to stupid time scales on the project concerned.

Having to deal with checking code on some projects that has been outsourced and this is not tied to one company, the quality of the code that has been produced has been appalling.

• No standards based code produced.
• Testing not done correctly

Having seen at least ten amends passed through for one project with basic errors that should have been coded correctly from the beginning i.e. alt tags, it is really frustrating.

There is also the practice of commenting your code but I know that not all developers agree to this but it is so important as if any other developer works on the project and you have not set out the code properly then it will look a mess and the developer will take twice as long to amend the code.

With all the wysiwyg software out there and newer developers not actually finding out exactly why elements of code actually work the way they do I fear this will only get worse.

I learnt code by trial and error, not by getting an editor to do it for me or by copying and pasting code from a site and not actually understanding what it does. By breaking it and then fixing it again you actually learn the code.

Just to add by not doing standards compliant code you risk yourself by falling foul of not meeting accessibility standards as well. This could land you in deeper trouble if legal action is taken against the site, as we live in a world where people sue others for the sake of suing.

So please please please learn your code and don’t drive down the quality of our industry so it’s makes it worthless. By doing this you also drive down your salary as well.

I think there comes a time when companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft etc have to put a full stop to certain things.

Patent trolling is one of these things as it will start reducing choice due to them being over protective about what was invented by them or more importantly patents they buy from other companies.

This is to stop others from bringing out other models in competition with theirs or to push up base costs as they will then have to pay the other for using a certain patent and making the phone more expensive so eventually pushing it out the market.

If companies were to spend as much time buying up patents and spending money on lawyers then, pushing it all towards newer technology that does things like keep their battery life longer than a day then we will be all in a happy place.

And don’t forget that imitation is the first form of flattery. If you think you have a product that is first class, people will buy it then let others copy it.

One thing I have been trying to learn and actually put into live sites over the last two years has been jQuery and JavaScript.

Finally, after this frustrating period of time it has finally happened.

Now the question is: Why did I not pick up on how easy this was in the first place? My aim at the beginning of the year was to learn the core of JavaScript in my own time and then go on from there which I did to an extent.

The last couple of days I have been busy beavering away and finally come out with something that is working and has a purpose other than text sliding in with Hello, I’m Dave slapped on it.

At this point I would clarify that the bit of jQuery/JavaScript that I have produced by my own fair hands is not complicated by any means. The more experienced Developers will probably laugh when they see what I have done as it is really basic stuff but I am chuffed to bits as I have finally cracked what I have been trying to achieve for quite a while.

One thing I have learnt over the years from various designers, books and articles that I have read is how important it is to know what users look at and how important it is to know them when designing and building a site.

I have come across an interesting article from Webcredible which highlights a lot of the points that need to be addressed when doing this.

A few years I was used to test a site using eye tracking. I had a list of things to do on the site which included picking items, go through the shopping cart as well as finding out information on the site.

The surprising thing that came out of this was you look at areas of the site that you would never thought you would, and the completely miss others which were important. It’s amazing where your eyes go and you are totally oblivious to it.

This comes to the conclusion that when dealing with websites make sure you do your using testing before you build the site fully so things can be corrected before too much time and money has been spent on it.

If your client tells you they know their customers, go out and do some user testing on their current site and present the results to them. You could also do this with a simple html mock-up of the new site before the full build as it will be invaluable when the stats of the site start rolling in.

Sifting through various websites this lunchtime catching up on digital gossip as you do and cannot believe that less than a month after releasing IE9 Microsoft have released a preview of IE10. Full story on Mashable.

At this point I really think that Microsoft need to pull support totally for IE7 as we are still having to support IE6 for IT Depts that are still back at the beginning of the last decade. I know this is possibly down to software that it is currently using but some of it comes down to the budget they have to spend over the year.

My idea now is that Microsoft can place the ugrade from IE7 to IE8 in a Service Pack that needs to be downloaded to continue support for Windows XP which would be the obvious route but cannot see this happening.

I was thinking at this rate by 2014 there will be IE7/8/9/10/11 and possibly 12 to support although I am hoping that 7 will have been pushed out by then. The bottom line is what will IE’s usage be in 2014 especially when all the mobile/tablet markets are surging at this time and also what will the usage be on IE 7.5 mobile browser and will they have brought that upto IE9?

I am just glad that we can code websites so it can emulate a previous IE browser as this takes the pain away for a lot of it.

When do you start testing sites a new browser? When it’s still in beta or do you do you wait until official release (Release Candidate – RC) appears?

It’s an interesting question when looking at IE9. Last September Microsoft launched IE9 beta and since that day two more previews have been released with still no sign of the RC being allowed into the outside world.

Having been in the world of web for over ten years I have seen browsers come and go and lots of different versions of each being released. Some with big flaws in and others that have chugged along quite happily until technology waves bye bye.

The thing is I have had my fingers burnt when trying beta browsers in the way that you test your sites out, you see the problems and then make the changes only to find out that when the RC version surfaces that they have either fixed it or turned it into a bigger nightmare so it looks nothing like what it’s supposed to.

I have also found in the past that installing beta versions does nice things to your pc like causing the browser to hang, crash or get a nice blue screen.

Or if you uninstall that when restored to the previous version it will never be the same again as it has slowed down or done something else to it.

At this time I have not installed IE9 beta and still deciding on whether to or not. The other problem with the browser is that IE9 only works with Windows Vista and 7 so leaving lots of XP users sat with IE8 until they buy a new one which is what Microsoft wants.

Yes, I agree that Windows 7 is a better OS but there will be millions of users either at home or at work that will have XP for years to come so this will make IE8 the new IE6.

All I can see is by 2014 we will be seeing at least four maybe five versions of IE (6,7,8,9 and possibly 10) out there that will cause thousands of us Web Developers so much pain.

We all hope that companies will have upgraded from IE6 by then but there will always be some that will hang in there and the chances are that the site you have to build that needs to support it will always end up in your lap.

Let’s just hope that all the IT Depts in the world will soon just cut their losses and just upgrade to Windows 7 and let us only have to deal with IE8,9 and maybe 10.

Yes I do know that some software will only work with certain browsers but does that show the quality of the software that has been bought and the upgrade support it has?

One of my targets this year that has slipped by the way side over the last twelve to eighteen months is web standards and me going on at people to comply with them.

The points below sums up the reasons why that you the Web Developer and the company you work for or own should take web standards seriously.

From a Web Developers point of view:

• Make all your code W3C complaint. This includes checking not just your main page but your CSS as well any other code that is written.
• Write semantic code as this will allow your page to load faster and there will be far less code in the page and that any other code i.e. CSS is sat where it should be.
• Faster page loads and compliant code means the likes of Google very happy and will help with rankings. By the way I got the off someone who works at Google before anyone questions this.
• Compliant code helps with Accessibility and I don’t just mean partially sighted people. It means mobile devices, set top boxes… anything that is not a PC or laptop that can view the internet.
• This also means your maximising your number of visitors to the site.
• It makes your code easier to maintain and saves time in the long run.
• It’s future proof as by placing hacks in code you can potentially have big hiccups further down the road and fall on your backside. This also means you will have a million and one questions fired at you from the boss when it does go wrong.

From a company point of view:

• Your not supplying a top quality product to your client. It’s like having a top of the range Mercedes with a Austin Allegro engine so it looks good but naff underneath.
• You and your company are cheating yourselves and your clients. The client has spent thousands of pounds on a website that they have entrusted in you to design and build and at the end of the day what has been created is a half finished job.
• Yes ok,  a lot of them do not know that but a potential client further down the road might look across your examples and know more than what you think so do not disrespect them.

These are purely my points of view and most web developers should agree with so if you have a view on any of these or I have missed something then please post them.

Just found this interesting view point on Web Designer Depot about how you fail at being a Web Developer.

This brings the whole of my last post into question as item number two on the said article about brings about the title of ‘Jack of all Trades, master of none’.

The article is completely right that if you are the Web Developer who does it all you will never excel at any one given thing.

So my revised targets for 2011 are:

• Javascript - The plan is to get the core of it there by end of March and know the majority by the end  of the year.
• PHP - To master the majority of this by end of year.

The Web Apps will come in time especially picking up the Javascript along the way as I know HTML and CSS3. As for MySQL I think it will be a slow burner and will get around to it eventually and I will still harp on about best practice as this is one thing I am very aware of.

Although my CV is swimming in things I have done in the past it also says that I have not mastered them all bar a few.

Have a read of it and see what you think?