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...