Continue reading »]]> With the develpment in CMS area, there is all the more push in the market for websites to move to a CMS system, large or small, to manage their content. As a result there are lots of new initiatives for grounds-up CMS implementation.

Usually, a CMS product starts with HTML a set of HTML mock-ups which defines how the site will look like along with specifying the static and dynamic regions on the page. By static, I mean area’s which are not editable by authors/editors and usually controlled by CSS. By Dynamic, I mean, authors/editors can go in CMS system and change content for these areas. Dynamic area could be anything, plan text, images, links etc.

The CMS developers take HTML mock-up as input, define content types based on defined dynamic area’s (and obvously functional specifications) and convert the HTML into CMS templates and content holes. The above approach sounds all straight forward but still there are soo many projects which fails/get delayed. And one of the reasons is HTML mock-ups.

Usually in an enterprise environment, multiple vendors are involved in building a website, from creative agencies, to implmentation partners to hosting partners. In most of the cases the creative agencies which develop HTML mock-ups who has no clue around how the HTML mock-up is going to be fitted in a WCM in terms of templates/ components/ elements etc. They try to make website flashy, attractive without really worrying around its maintenance. Some of the examples are:

• Using images everywhere in the site goverened by CSS than HMTL
• Same block of content using different HTML structure on different pages though the look and feel is the same
• Hard coded height width dimensions for image tags
• Too many variations in layout, which in reality could fit in just a few
• etc.

Even if the HTML mock-up is developed to the best of practices, its usage varies with each CMS. An example, there is a style defined globally which is applicable to all the divs in centre portion of a page. Some CMS systems add their own divs when elements/components are dragged on the centre part. This leads to style issues for the centre portion and we spend lot of time negating those effects.

I think its time for CMS vendors to move forward and lay down best practices, guidelines that needs to be followed when developing HTML mock-up for their product. This could definitely makes easy for creative agencies and implementors to get it right the first time than really spending time on HTML structures just because the choosen CMS doesn’t like the way HTML mock-up is designed. It will really going to reduce overall project cost and project failures.

Continue reading »]]> Its good to see world is ready to move on from Internet Explorer 6. Here is a snippet from IE6 count down site:

10 years ago a browser was born. Its name was Internet Explorer 6.
Now that we’re in 2011, in an era of modern web standards, it’s time to say goodbye.

This website is dedicated to watching Internet Explorer 6 usage drop to less than 1% worldwide, so more websites can choose to drop support for Internet Explorer 6, saving hours of work for web

Internet Explorer 6 usage around the world

As per my previous post Write Once, use everywhere? Content Vs Code, I think it’s perfect timing to get some standards defined around web browsers.

For corporates, its time to move on and this move is definitely going to give great boost on Intranet front, presenting more opportunities and opening new doors.

Continue reading »]]> One of the thumb rule for any CMS system is:

Have just one instance of the content and define templates/components/modules/elements to render it differently

So, Why the same rule doesn’t apply for code written to define styles, javascript functionality across browsers?

Let me take an example from one of my recent project: As per requirements, we need to support IE (6,7,8), Forefox (3.x), Safari (3.x), Opera (9.x). The HTML mock-ups are generated by one of the creative agency who are in the market for good number of years and know their stuff. SO, just analysing the HTML mock-up, total HTML/CSS/JS size is around 1.9 MB (exclding images). Out of which the CSS/JS specifically for handling cross borwser issues is 0.06 MB which roughly forms 3.5% of the total code set. And such
percentage of cross browser hacking code is present on most of the website.

Below are some of the issues from different perspectives:

Development Perspective

• Analyse browsers which the site needs to support for previous web analytics or such tools
• Define graphics which could work across browsers
• Develop mock-ups with this extra code to hack site working across browsers
• Testing effort across browsers. Most of the times the UAT error log will have such issues in good percentages
• More development effort, hence more cost to the project

Maintenance Perspective

• If there is a new version release for a browser, regression test the whole site against the new version
• More maintenance effort and hence more cost
• Re-doing same stuff again and again and again

Users perspective

• Inconsistent behavious of the website across browsers
• More data download on users PC than actually required
• Slow response time as the data size is more than required
• Refresh issues with the release of new styles’Js etc.

Internet perspective:

• More storage space
• Larger network bandwidth

etc.

We are progressing at a fast pace in web development, talking of HTML 5, but we are still struggling to get the basics right.

Web Technologies Journey

Image if we could have standards defined for the browsers which ideally will allow us to write code once and no matter which browser you use, it will just work consistently across all of them. We spend almost 10-15% of the total project time, if not more, on such issues which actually is not project cost but the cost we are paying for not having standardization.

Continue reading »]]> Its been an exciting day on the inaugural day of JAX India 2007. The day was
meant for workshops and I attended half a day workshop on
“Web 2.0? But I am Barely keeping up with Web 1.0 Right Now !”
by Craig R McClanahan. Here is extract from the session:

The session covered from history of web to what is Next Generation web (Web 2.0) and what we should do towards it. Here is extract from his presentation:

HISTORY OF WEB

He started with his experience of Web way back when he started in 1975. From Lonely computers, which were self-absorbed applications to telephone lines (part lines to kids line) which lead to evolution of Internet and standards like HTTP and HTML.

MAINSTREAM WEB APPLICATIONS TODAY

This section of the presentation covered about how the current web applications are. Few main highlighting points are:

• Increasing support for cross browsers
• Key area of development happening around Mobile space
• Server side capabilities are growing
• Programming understanding in multi-threaded environment
• Storage capacity is effectively free, CPU nearly so
• Network infrastructure improving
• Development technologies maturity at a much slower pace and challenges are in coming up with a framework like Struts and IDEs for JS-DHTML developments
• More and more user personalization
• Standardization at different scales and complexities

NEXT GENERATION WEB DRIVERS

Craig stressed on using next generation web rather than Web 2.0 with emphasis on 4 key drivers:

Enhanced User Interfaces

The driving force is the limited usability of web applications compared to applications installed locally. Ajax and DHTML are the immediate solutions.

Lightweight Programming Models

• Strong preference towards simplicity; less code = less initial work, less update work
• Scripting languages again gaining popularity with many large application built with php, perl etc.
• Loose coupling and layer based design
• Increasing preference for quick, iterative approach (Agile model)
• Programming models  
• Ajax and DHTML (server side business logic)
• Ajax and DHTML (client side business logic ) i.e. making web applications
  available offline 
• Browser plugins (Flash/ Flex/ Java FX etc)

Web as a Platform

• Web applications to become more of a service
• Web platform providing Social network effect
• Reducing “local islands” of important data
• Users looking something bigger
• Identity
• Flexibility
• Ubiquity 

The read/write web 

• Web as a Bulletin Board

WHAT SHOULD WE DO

Craigs Top Ten Suggestion List

10 – Expose Data/Logic as services

9 – Incorporate External Content

8 – Seek QOS (Quality of Service) deals from Sources

7 – Give QOS Deals to users

6 – Adopt Agile Processes

5 – Test Driven Development

4 – Architect for Scalability

3 – Embrace Heterogeneity

2 – Reach out to Mobile Clients

1 – Enable User Provided Content

The session turned out to be good for users who do not have exposure to Web 2.0. The first 45 minutes where Craig covered History of web and existing applications was bit too extended and I was looking for more on Web 2.0. Let’s hope the other sessions lined up around Web 2.0 will be able to provide more insight.

Continue reading »]]> We have been talking about Ajax and Web 2.0 technologies for sometime now. At one end Ajax becoming an asset from usability point of view but on the other hand it is making sites less search engine friendly. Search engines for now are not intelligent enough to make a server side request and retrieve the information to index. So it boils down to Usability Vs Search-ability? Which one to achieve?

What is the best way to achieve a balance between the two – making my site usable as well as search-able.

Here is one of the possible approach:

Step 1: To design your site without any Ajax. Javascript
Step 2: Then modify your website to include small Ajax, Java scripts components making sure that the content that gets hidden is available else where in the site which does not deploy Ajax

Continue reading »]]> Here is another Collaboration Feature from Google. Google has introduced a new Gadget maker product for iGoogle (new name for Google Personalized Homepage). The users without having any programming or web design experience can create Gadgets and share with community or other iGoogle user. The Gadgets are as simple as filling out the form in the predefined 7 templates:

• A Photo gadget which is designed to share a series of photos
• GoogleGram gadget that display a new greeting message for every day of the week
• Daily Me gadget which will show what you’re currently doing, as well as quotes, what’s on your mind etc.
• Free Form gadget that as the name suggest will allow free flow of information, image text layout background colour
• YouTube Channel gadget to share good videos on YouTube
• Personalized List Gadget to basically present your list of items. It could be list of your favorite songs, a list of items to buy today etc.
• Personalized Countdown gadget is more like a reminder to any event, happening with a countdown

Apart from this, it provides option to update the Gadget and re-publish so that it gets updated at the other end.

Pretty neat way to bring people togather !!!!

But few things to watch out for:

• Updation at receiving end took a pretty long time to get refreshed with updated information
• No intimation whether the iGoogle user has added your Gadget or not
• If the Gadget creator deletes the Gadget, will it get deleted at the other end?
• A way to establish two way communication rather then just one way for now

Continue reading »]]> Off late there has been lot of web sites that I came across which are trying to provide offline access for their Web applications. The basic idea is that the application can be worked with in a browser offline and automatically sync up whenever you get online.

Scrybe is one such online/offline calender and organizer service that provides offline web application service.

Zimbra is another open source messaging and collaborative application. This powerful web client integrates email, contacts, shared calendar, VoIP, and online document authoring into a rich browser-based interface. Recently Zimbra announced launch of Zimbra desktop with the aim to enable offline access to its online Ajax powered collaborative suite.

This looks to be the trend in the near future. More and more applications are targeting to provide virtual desktop for their web 2.0 applications with the same look and feel. The idea behind all this is to remove dependency of “online enabled”. The idea is that user should not be bothered about whether his net connection is working or not. He should more be concentrating on his job and rest the application takes care. Whenever it comes online, it should sync up with the offline content changes. I am writing this post through Google Docs and I can see that this keeps on syncing up my updates with the back-end. I see this kind of behaviour with most of the Google applications. So, is Google already way ahead of others in the same race?

Thinking aloud there might be two ways to achieve this: The Web application build this functionality within them self and provides a separate desktop install for application/ or takes care within its web application to provide continuous app browsing experience. Zimbra, for examples, provides a Zimbra desktop to install locally. If you think about it, this is not the way forward to achieve. The installation will again be pain for users. The second way is to make browsers support online/offline mode for web applications. This sounds interesting and this is what Firefox 3 is aiming to achieve. The browser itself is trying to build in the basic infrastructure to support offline/online web applications. But I can see many challenges towards achieving this. To list a few:

This leaves me with a question, are we not going to face the same problems that we listed when Ajax was born??

Continue reading »]]> Open Ajax Project or better known as Open Ajax Alliance has added many more members to their alliance. The biggest name to add to the list is Microsoft. This makes a total count of 73 members working towards Ajax Globalization.

Alliance has come up with the term called “OpenAjax Conformance” which defines a set of conformance requirements on Ajax technologies, products and applications to promote Ajax interoperability.
An Ajax library will be with Open Ajax Conformance only when:

1) Supports OpenAjax Hub Specifications (OpenSource project)
2) Javascript objects with OpenAjax Registry
3) Support best practices defined within Open Ajax Conformance

These developments clearly indicates where the http domain moving on. This is also one of the talking points with Web 2.0

Continue reading »]]> Ajax has come a long way in a year’s time. Last year around this time, we first heard about it. Ajax had brought about the a big difference in web applications which largely changed usability arena. Web Applications started looking like rich desktop applications. Let’s look at its journey from rebirth.

First the benefits related to Ajax started emerging with Google Map, GMail providing live examples of its benefit. It really drew people with its attraction. As people started exploring more, saw the flip side of Ajax coin, its drawbacks. There were security issues that started rising with Ajax usage. Meanwhile, big players were playing more a wait and watch game to determine Ajax potential. Open source arena was ready to take up challenge and in a small time frame saw various open source Ajax libraries and frameworks floating over net. Even Microsoft was not far behind and came up with its Ajax framework called “Atlas“. Ajax resources, the libraries and frameworks, started growing, at rapid pace. People started feeling the need of having Ajax implementation for their site.  But everyone had one question in mind, are we really ready to adopt Ajax to improve usability? Though the resources were growing but people were afraid of adopting it due to its unorganized manner. This brought into picture the waiting big giants who started “Open Ajax” project to tackle these issues. And Yahoo too has open sourced its UI Library and framework.

So what’s next in Ajax Domain? Here are few areas where I think it will grow:

• More organized and sophisticated design patterns and open source libraries
• Ajax becoming integral part of IDEs
• Watch out Portal and CMS space and Ajax
• Ajax making more heads in Reporting Area
• Javascript standards across browers
• Steep raise in Usability

Happy Birthday, Ajax !!!!!!!!!

Continue reading »]]> In my earlier post, “Are we ready to adopt Ajax to improve usability?“, I highlighted that best bet for the existing sites is to start small may be including an ajax based components or use ajax to validate form fields etc. Here is one of the example.

This is an Ajax based Opinion Poll which is provided by dPolls which can be a component by itself. So we can build our own components like this and can achieve low to medium improvements in user experience without much risk and low cost.

So just imagine if we able to implement Ajax for small things, how much difference it can bring in user experience and that too without much redesign of existing site and not much commercial cost.