Under the weather

Hello all and I hope you had a good Christmas. I am especially happy for my shiny new XBox360, and hope to be on XBox Live soon to be shown how to play games properly!

I'm currently back up north to celebrate the new year with my girlfriend, and will be back at university revising before too long.

Until a time very soon,

Enjoy the new year, and I wish everyone all the best for 2007!

UML and the FYP

I've been getting my head into some analysis as part of my Final Year Project at university. I've decided to use a hybrid RUP/WISDM methodology throughout the project (as required by the university), and this requires the use of UML.

After getting hold of this great book, my knowledge of the UML has grown incredibly and I'm able to apply more and more of it to my design patterns and software architecture diagrams.

Once I have got the analysis stage complete (which ultimately requires a UML use-case diagram to act as a model of the system requirements) I'll be able to use more UML in the design stage. I can't wait!

Server and FYP Progress

Its always nice to give an old dog a new life, and that is exactly what I did. My mothers old P4 1.6GHz machine has been re-installed with Windows Server 2003. It runs beautifully! The best part is, it only has 128Mb of RAM. The worst part is, it starts up quicker than my main box.

On the Final Year Project front, all seems to be going well. I am into my analysis stage now, and hopefully I will get the opportunity to get started on the design soon.

Bye for now.

Southport

Saturday saw me go to Southport with my girlfriend to join a re-union of the Switzerland gang. What a fantastic night! Starting off in Lloyd's, then moving the Bakers and then Starsky's. A great night was had by all, so a quick "Thank you" to all who made the trip.

Blogger Beta

Last night I moved my blog from the current version of Blogger to the new beta version. What a pain! I had to re-code a part of my atom consumer after several hours of head scratching!

I cannot wait until my new blogging system is done!

Barwell->Leicester

Saturday saw me and my lovely girlfriend travel to Barwell in Leicestershire to visit several friends from our time in Switzerland who had all decided to meet up for a grand night out.

Leicester is a fantastic place to go out, and such cultural diversity re-assures me that it is possible for people of multiple faiths and backgrounds to get along.

A quick thank you to Nick and Dave for being great hosts, and thanks to Mark for making the effort to come down from York.

I'm sure I enticed Nick and Dave to head down to Stafford one of these days...

One small step...

IE7 is now a "high priority" update on Microsoft Update. Great news for the web design community.

Microsoft even admit that this release of IE doesn't address every issue with web standards support (take the "q" tag for example), but it does represent Microsoft's effort to try and get back in the browser game.

Lets hope that Microsoft listen to the needs of web developers and shape a better product in the IE releases to come (they are connected with the Web Standards Project after all).

To twist Neil Armstrong's words: "This is one small step for web standards, one giant leap for Microsoft web standards compliance".

Also, Windows Media Player 11 has been released too!

Design Patterns

Sorry I've been away for a while, but it's been hectic here in Stafford.

I have beeen experimenting with the use of design patterns for a few weeks now, and they definitely have their worth. My final year project's technical documentation will use lots of UML, so its more than relevant to my studies. Hopefully I should have something to upload and share with the world, so those who don't use design patterns can get a nice feel for them and perhaps use them in their application (be it web or not) design.

I also downloaded Firefox 2.0 the other day and I have to say its a major upgrade, with lots of benefits. In-line spell checking and faster load times are very welcome!

On a side note: I have about 19 computing books for sale (in an effort to clear my shelves somewhat). If you need an addition to your bookshelf, then they all start at £3-£5. Eventually they will find themselves on eBay, but readers of this blog should get first refusal.

Your development feels how you feel

For the past week I have had a cold. I hate being ill, as it slows down my development. It also doesn't help that I have 3 projects on at the moment. Oh well, I'll feel better soon, so then I can get back into some serious coding!

My Final Year Project is also now in full swing, but I shall not be sharing a title with anyone until christmas when I have passed the middle point of the project. By that time I will have started coding and will have an on going demo to share with a select few.

The third week of University has passed, and I'm yet to get an assignment (apart form the Final Year Project).

I will have something to add to my portfolio soon when these 3 projects get completed in the next 2 months.

Vista RC1

I have just finished having a little play with Windows Vista RC1. What a fantastic improvement on XP! To be honest XP has been kicking for a while now (its nearly 6 years), so its about time Microsoft got on with things. I have had a play with Internet Explorer 7 Beta also, and was impressed at the 'improvement' in standards support. I say 'improvement' because as Roger Johansson pointed out, its not all there yet.

The Flip-3D feature of Vista is fantastic also. Very smart and it doesn't hit the processor as hard as you may think.

Vista also has a points system for how powerful your computer is. My system has an overall score of 4.9, meaning the lowest score I got for a single category was 4.9. My ATI Radeon 9800XT graphics card scored a 5.9 in the 'graphics power' category, meaning I don't have to upgrade as soon as I thought I would.

On a side note, the Playstation 2 is set up now, meaning I can complete some of my games before I go out and buy any more!

Website Changes and Settling In

As of today I have implemented a fresher look for my website. I have re-worked the menu system, and I have now included my ma.gnolia bookmarks too.

On the other side of things, I am settling into Stafford again. I'm now almost a week into my final year, doing a Final Year Project, Design Patterns, Algorithmics and Advanced Programming Language Concepts modules.

Amazon is going to love my business for books now.

On a side note, I have some rave flyers on eBay (in my latest bid to free up some space!). Place a bid if you fancy.

Ciao for now!

Roll on third year

As you may or may not know. I am a student at Staffordshire University. As of yesterday I have moved back up to Stafford and will be looking forward to getting back into the Assignments/Essays/Exams lifestyle.

I will carry on web designing/developing during my third year. This will help with experience and knowledge within the web designing/development field.

It was great to see the gang again after being away on placement. Many of my friends went abroad too last year on placement, mainly in Germany.

I will miss Switzerland, as I worked for a fantastic Agri-Business and met my wonderful girlfriend there. I will always miss the snowboarding, but hopefully my financial future will be kind enough to me to allow me to go back. I also got to meet Jeremy Keith and Andy Budd last year too (they came over to give some usability training and a DOM Scripting/AJAX workshop).

I will miss the guys and girls I lived with the most, so here is a shout out to Nicola, Matt, Mark, Stijn, Jimbo, Dave, Radha and Michelle.

Rather than dwell on how much I miss last year, I will instead look forward to this next year with an open mind and with lots of optimism. Third year at Uni.... bring it on!

Feed Me... or just too much information

Mini Feeds are now available on Facebook. Every person now has a mini-feed on their respective profile, which shows status updates, additions of photos by your friends etc. Great idea, but I feel it may be giving outside people too much information about whats going on in the magical world of you.

Do I really need to know when John Smith last fed his fish? Do I really care if someone removed a tag of me from a photo? I do care when poeple claiming to be your friend (of whom which you have not accepted the friendship request), have access to everything thats going on. Of course you can restrict access to your Mini-Feed in your public profile, but unconfirmed friendship requests still see your restricted access profile until you give them the boot.

Major access flaw? Or is "what they could have seen"?

I for one am deciding whether there is any value in the Mini-Feed. We'll see...

Re-write in Asp.net 2.0

My site has been re-written in asp.net 2.0, meaning faster loading times and less coding (for the basics at least).

I have been grabbing the master page concept, after finally installing Visual Studio 2005. It has taken me this long to install it as I have had to put up with Visual Studio.net 2003 whilst working in Switzerland.

Luckily most of the code ported over fine, but I had to change all of my System.Web.Mail stuff to System.Net.Mail, which actually makes it easier. I also owe thanks to this site for some great help.

Anyways, expect my portfolio to grow soon, as I have a few projects which I should be getting on with!

Zweiundzwanzig

Today I'm 22 years young. I'd just like to thank everyone for their kind e-mails/text messages/cards etc.

Cheers,

Aaron

Back, Upset, Anxious

Well I'm back in the UK as of last Thursday. I feel upset to have left Switzerland, but happy to be back in the UK. I am moving to Stafford in 4 weeks time in order to undergo my final year at University.

All the guys who I met in Switzerland, get in touch! It would be great to hear from you!

Scary musical automats

Yesterday was the day planned for my farewell activities. My superiors kindly took myself and another leaving student to The "Musikautomatmuseum" (Musical Automats Museum) in Seewen, near Basel. After the initial scary "IT" vibe, I finally appreciated just how some of these things are made. A great meal followed (also in Seewen).

I was then presented with a lovely book (signed by my colleagues), and a brand new HP iPAQ. A fantastic, practical gift I will most certainly make use of in the next years.

Prost!

AAA Baby!

After much testing and reading up long W3C, WCAG, and documents, I can now confirm that
www.aaronallport.com qualifies for a AAA WCAG rating.

It is very nice to have done this at such an early stage, as it now means I can incorporate the WCAG qualification process in any updates I make to my website.

On a bad note... only 2 more days left working in Basel. I'm officially a tourist for another week, so that will give me an opportunity to take my camera out and jump on a train.

Website design refresh

After some development time, I am pleased to announce my website now has a nice fresh design, and is still fully XHTML 1.1 Strict. The new template allows far greater flexibility, and the back end has been re-engineered somewhat to remove unnecessary complexities.

Next thing to do is the WCAG rating, and then I can maybe think about some new themes.

Please feel free to get in touch with any thoughts/comments you may have for the new look.

7 working days

It kills me knowing that I only have 7 more working days as technical lead for the project I have been supporting for the last year.

I am currently in the process of handing over various documentation and duties, and it feels like a tiny piece of me gets torn off from my body each time.

It also means I have 14 more days in Basel, Switzerland. I'll be dragged kicking and screaming from here!

On the plus side, I do have a final year of University to attend, which shall prove interesting. I have modules ranging from "XML and Web Services" to "Distributed Enterprise Web Applications".

One sad step in life preceeds a step of anticipation...

Bookmarking and website progress

I have recently added my bookmarks onto ma.gnolia. Here you can find some great resources and blogs to aid any form of web design and devlopment, as well as general programming.

It also serves as a great place to get all of my bookmarks from when I leave Switzerland and go back to the UK, which is in about 3 weeks time.

A new version of my website will be available soon, and this includes my own blogging system, which will publish entries back to my blogger.com site when I have worked out how the ATOM api works.

Bis dann...

Website documentation... or lack of it!

A new student has started working in my office, due to the fact that he is taking over my position fully in 4 weeks (when I'll be dragged kicking and screaming from Switzerland). I was horrified to find that very little technical information there is about the web application I have devoted so much time to over the past year.

I now find myself having to teach the student with demonstrations and looking through the code together. I am trying to piece together a technical manual at the same time, to act as a reference for him when I leave.

It makes me wonder.. How many web sites or web applications actaully have a technical guide?

I'm not after a fancy class diagram either!

Ignorance and standards compliancy

Being a "Microsoft Partner", the company I work for employs Internet Explorer as the standard web browser for all of its users.

A new student has joined the company two days ago, and immediately "needs" Firefox installing on his computer. Here's the transcript of a conversation I had:

ME: "Why do you need Firefox. Standards within the organisation require you to have IE. I get to have all of the Browsers installed as my job is a Web Developer."

HIM: "Firefox is better."

ME: "No argument there. But that doesn't really provide a real need for it."

HIM: "I want to be able to read my Blog."

ME: "Surely you can just read it in IE."

HIM: "It only works in Firefox."

ME: "Why didn't you design for IE too?"

HIM: "It's standards compliant."

ME: "And?"

HIM: "Besides, I don't want people using IE to read it."

ME: "That is 85% of your potential viewers. Just because it's apparently standards compliant, you can't be ignorant and shut people out."

It frustrated me, how he came across as a purist, but then revealed that Firefox was the only browser he designed for. He's a Browser Targeting Developer, not a Web Developer.

New people are coming along claiming that they only develop with standards compliancy in mind. In truth, these people are designing for Firefox, because Firefox is a standards compliant browser. It's not the only browser, and certainly isn't the most popular yet. Even if Firefox had 85% of the Web Browser market, it still wouldn't stop me from developing for IE and Opera.

Constructive criticism

I'd just like to give my thanks to the people who have given me some great tips and improvements for my site so far. Your help has been brilliant and well received in helping me build my site.

Thanks go to: Steve Daniels, Nicola Carroll, David Purdom, Matt Dovey, and Mark Wraith.

I strongly believe that a website designer should welcome all comments, both good and bad inorder to make their site much better. If people hate the contact form, why do they? Hopefully I can be in a position some day soon to show my site as an example of usable feedback.

On a side note, I have recently aquired the domain name www.aaronallport.com. This should point to my site on the 9th July 2006 onwards.

Blog integration

I have finally integrated my blog into my website. It took a sunday morning, two cups of coffee and some toast with marmite, but its now there.

Blogging on aaronallport.co.uk

I have nearly finished aggregating this blog on my website. I have developed a lovely atom feed consumer which I've dropped right into my asp.net framework (which is still small, but continously being developed). I have to sort out the display slightly, but hopefully will have something to push tomorrow.

Live!

The big day has finally arrived... my website is now live!

Although there may be a lack of content on there at present, rest assured that there will be over the coming months. I also need to start creating some themes for the site, a nice content management system, and get that important Web Accessibility Guidelines "AAA" recommendation.

Here's the link: http://www.aaronallport.co.uk.

Please feel free to look around, and let me know your feedback. I allow anonymous comments on this blog now.

Cheers,

Aaron

Fraud tackling

As mentioned yesterday, I had successfully signed up for hosting. Trouble is, the hosting company I used get rather serious when it comes to ge-referencing your IP address when you sign up, in an effort to tackle fraud (which is a good thing).

My work computer goes through a proxy in the US, so instantly there is a problem as my home address is in the UK. On top of this, my working address is Switzerland, so I have had to write two rather lengthly emails already to clarify the situation.

This puts a bit of a hiccup in my pushing live plan, but hopefully it will get sorted soon.

Hosting Secured!

I finally got my hosting secured today. Very cheap and secured for 2 years. As soon as my setup details are through I can finally push my website! It seems a long time in the making, but I have probably spent more time sorting out hosting than actually doing the site.

I'll post the web address as soon as it's live, then its time to re-engineer the engine behind the site, validate xhtml/css/acessibility.... the list grows!

Ta ta for now..

Hosting...

Website front end is now fully complete. I am going to get the site "as is" up on the net soon, whilst I concentrate on the back end stuff to enable me to publish blog entries, CMS, etc. I am also stratching my head trying to get the site WAG certified. Its a mammoth document, but hopefully I'll get through it.

I aim to push next week once I have sorted out some hosting.

Bis dann...

Website almost done!

Its nearly done and its looking good so far, with fully valid XHTML 1.1 Strict and CSS 2.1. W3C Accessibility is in there too, and its all shaping up nicely with the XML/XSLT content management system I have developed.

Hopefully I will be able to push next week to let some of you see what I'm about!

Ciao

Tackling non-standards compliance in asp.net 1.1

A lot of large organisations still use .net 1.1 and subsequently asp.net 1.1 because of processes, software packaging etc.

In these rock 'n' roll standards compliant days of the web, a fundamental problem remains. Asp.net 1.1 likes to use proprietry attributes (such as script language="javascript" as opposed to type="text/javascript"). This means your asp.net 1.1 web application fails in some standards compliancy isuues, namely proprietry attributes in your markup.

Using some fancy DOM Scripting may be one way of removing unwanted attributes and inserting the right ones, but surely that's just holding your hand up and saying "I know its dirty markup, so I'm going to brush the dirt under the rug and pretend it was ok all along". Trouble is, with a little searching, clients can uncover the "dirt from beneath the rug".

How else are you going to remove the proprietry "language" attribute from the postback event?

Holiday Snaps

I have finally got some pictures from my holiday off my camera, and I thought I would share a few for your viewing pleasure...

This is Mark, clearing the beach as soon as he took his top off!














This is a view of our beach at sunset. The water was freezing, but nice and clear.













This is a view of the sea at sunset. You can just about make out Mark's head from the top of the rock.






Ciao for now...

XmlDocument woes

I have been making extensive use of .net's XmlDocument object within an asp.net application I am developing to generate XML files. I do love the ease of this object, but it takes such a large amount of code to do anything complex.

Maybe that's an idea for something to add to my framework library...

The website is nearly done, content being added all the time. Any time now...

Moving along, and why I still hate full-on CMS

The website is starting to move along nicely now. I have had time to finish all of the "vanilla" design, plus all basic behavior is there. I need to add that content now, and I can see this taking up a lot of my time.

This is where a CMS or Content Management System may prove useful. I ended up making a very basic version of a content management system for a customer website once, as the only functionality they needed was to alter the content, not alter the design or behavior.

The reason I made my own basic CMS for their website was because many CMS systems allows to user to create and manage complete websites. I designed a complete website for them, and used a "tag replacement" system with resource files that are used to replace the tag with the appropriate content. This is all managed from a secure part of the site, acessible only by the administrator of that site.

I see the benefit of CMS systems, but I still think they should be left to Content Management only, a web designer should be responsible for the web design.

Website build underway

I'm back from my 5 night trip to Majorca, complete with a dose of "man flu". I have started building my website, with strict separation of content, presentation and behaviour. With most of my department not in the office this week, hopefully I can get a chance to get some serious design and behaviour stuff done, so I can spend the next couple of weeks adding content. I will send out a web address as soon as its in a state worthy of being shared.

I have been developing my own framework DLL alongside the development of my website, in order to help me avoid repeting common tasks during website development. This DLL also contains many useful functions, such as doctype declaration. I now use an asp.net literal control at the top of the page, and set its text property to "DocType.Xhtml1Point1Strict". This avoids me mis-spelling and head-scratching. This is still in early development, but I aim to release it as a free download in the near future.

Hopefully I will shift this cold soon too. Sniff sniff...

Holidays... and instantaneous email, delayed by a day

Last minute deals are great aren't they? I got a lovely holiday booked to Majorca for the equivalent of £380. I have to fly from Stuttgart, but InterCityExpress train travel to and from the airport was included in the price.

Things have been working well today, but I have learned how inefficient the email system used by our web application is. We have a dedicated server with an external company, which sends automated emails to an external mail provider of that company, which sends email via several relay servers until it reaches its destination. Oh, and this can take up to a day in the worst circumstances.

I guess external mail providers must think one day ahead...

Flexi-time - So flexible it can break apps

I am classed as "lucky" among my close friends as having a job with flexi-time hours. This essentially means, I can do my 40 hours per week when I like, providing I work at least 2 business hours per day.

The web application I work on decided to break today when it got updated, as a simple stylesheet change made generated html useless in email messages. Being the technical lead for the application, it was my duty to fix the problem.

When your boss is on travel and your project manager isn't at work, life can become difficult. This was especially true today, as there was no communication as to why the change to the stylsheet was made or what it impacted. It took me most of the day to drill down to the problem of why emails weren't displaying any images.

Take one of those plastic rulers from when you were at school. Bend it hard enough and it breaks...

It seems professionals sometimes lack at the fundametals

Today I decided to go through the markup code that is used with html emails sent from the web application I work on. A customer requested a change to an email template, and so I went on about honouring this change for them. The email templates were not created by myself, but rather an out-sourced company of "professionals". To put it short, I was shocked.

In the age of the web, standards compliance is now the bread and butter of a web developers job. I was shocked to see multiple uses of the same id on the same page, and the use of tables for layout. Have these guys ever heard of CSS? Apparently not. A 2 minute job turned out be be an afternoon of html formatting (and enforcing the use of classes) and CSS.

Next time you rest assured that simple tasks will be completed well by a "professional", think again..

Signing on..

Hello all and welcome to the first installment of hopefully a long line of blog entries.

As you may or may not know, I am a university student currently on work placement in Switzerland. I am working as a web applications programmer for a world wide Agri-Business. I'm currently living and working in Basel, which lies squeezed between germany, france and Switzerland.

I'm still waiting for summer...