Brandnoo. A Blog by Ben Hindmarch

Yes, it’s one of THOSE lists.

Edit - Ruby on Rails and ASP.NET aren’t languages: I did know that. Apologies - I added these last and didn’t update the post title. ‘Kermit isn’t really a celebrity’ - thank you to those who pointed out that HTML isn’t a language, but I thought the hint in the text indicated that. I’ve had a great response to this post, so thanks again to those who’ve taken the time to comment and pass it on.

Ruby on Rails Paris Hilton Flavour of the moment and very simple. Able to turn her hand to many things, but the results won’t be anything groundbreaking.

ASP.NET Tom Cruise Unpopular with some because of his social views, but completely unavoidable. A juggernaut of the industry and will always get the job done and make buckets of money for his backers.

C Al Pacino He’s been around for a while now but is still the best at doing what he does: possibly the best performer in the industry. Has influenced more future stars than anybody else.

Actionscript Peter Jackson Achieves some really nice visuals and will deliver the ‘wow’ factor like no other. Appears to have had an entire rebuild for his most recent release.

PHP Jennifer Lopez Love her or not, she’s still favoured for her back-end capabilities. Most people are familiar with at least one of her projects.

Coldfusion Michael Jackson Still has some fans left, but most have jumped ship. Was the super star of his day, but those days are long gone. Will probably try to make a comeback at some point, but nobody’s got high hopes.

JavaScript Ashton Kutcher Often plays roles where he appears dumber than he really is. Has a reputation for ‘punking’, can offer a few nasty surprises when he decides to pop up.

Erlang Eddie Murphy Likes to play multiple roles at once, but nobody seems to know what to use him for.

LISP Quentin Tarantino Has done some intelligent work in the past, but hasn’t been put to much good use recently. Probably not destined to kill Bill, but would like to reduce him to Atoms one day.

Java Renee Zellweger Has played roles requiring some bulk, but can just as easily shed that weight for other roles requiring something more lightweight.

*Updated* HTML Kermit the Frog Kermit isn’t really a celebrity. He’s completely flat when he hasn’t got somebody managing him through the back-end. He’s easy to understand and is accessible to all with the right script.

Others Of course I’d have liked to add Python, C++, Pascal and others but have just ran out of imagination. Please use comments to add more.

I’ve been reviewing the document at the w3c about the new elements in HTML 5. I won’t repeat what the document covers, so read it for yourself at http://www.w3.org/TR/html5-diff/. This article is aimed at discussing the new elements and attributes used in the new version. Looking at the additions from the perspective of a marketer rather than an academic I can see several issues I would have.

Just as a side note, I am aware that browsers released in the future will continue to support HTML 4 and other previous versions, so I’m not trying to encourage any kind of panic. I’m simply imagining using HTML 5 (based on the linked article, above) for the things my team and I do every day.

Tracking
There’s a new attribute for the a and area elements called ‘ping’. This is used for tracking, so when a link is clicked the URI is pinged at the same time. This is designed as a simpler alternative than the current method that involves sending the user to a page that tracks the click and redirects to the content page. This also gives the user the ability to switch tracking off. I know that absolutely none of my clients would appreciate this as a feature (why would they opt for profiling a fraction of their audience opposed to all of it?). Another aspect of this would mean that users would be made more aware of website user tracking. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but I could imagine plenty of confusion for a lot of users in determining the difference between regular audience trackers and snooping on an individual. How would you explain tracking to your aunt without her feeling as if her privacy was being invaded?

Forms
HTML forms are getting some fresh air. New input types support inserting time-related data, URLs and email addresses. Added to that is the attribute ‘required’ that’s been thrown into the mix. This is a step in the right direction given the number of bad JavaScript form validators in circulation, but the helpfulness of such an addition is limited to how browsers implement the changes.

If I were to create a simple form asking a user for a name, email and serial number I may run into some problems. For the ‘name’ field I would just add the required attribute on a normal text field as a name is going to be text: there’s nothing else to validate. The email field would use the new input type of ‘email’, and also the required attribute to ensure the data was indeed an email address. But what of the ’serialNumber’ field? There is no input type for my serial number, so in order to properly validate the data as being a valid serial number I’d have to use a regular expression within a JavaScript function to check that the field value follows the format I expect. I’d be mixing native browser data validation with supporting JavaScript functionality, which I think is potentially very messy!

I think the addition of the time and date input types are really useful. It means users can select dates from a familiar interface. I think the email and URL field types are an attempt to bring data validation to the browser, and given the complexity and the range of data that often goes into forms I think that this could prove difficult.

The good bits
There are some really nice additions to this version of HTML. Making the embed tag a w3c recommendation will mean easier Flash implementation in the future.

Header and footer as elements will possibly confuse new web developers with both ‘head’ and ‘header’ being used in the same document but for different uses. They will probably be more useful for SEO reasons, as I don’t see why developers would stop using div tags with a ‘header’ or ‘footer’ id attribute.

The nav tag will be great for improving a web page’s accessibility offering, since it enables the developer to indicate where the site navigation sits.

I’m interested in the canvas element, and what that will mean. It is meant to provide a space for rendering media on the fly and spawning on-page games and graphs.

There aren’t many new features that I saw that are geared-up towards AJAX fans, however the ‘event-source’ and ‘output’ elements might prove to be useful.

Back with forms, there is now a ‘form’ attribute to be used within fields that means a single form field can belong to more than one form.

No more frames!
Framesets and frame elements have been shown the door in this version of HTML. The Iframe element still exists, but the w3c found that the standard frame elements were decremental to accessibility so therefore scrapped them. I haven’t seen frames used in quite a while, but I do remember them being an important part of my first few websites in the 90s. I’ve also seen framesets used by SEO companies (the SEO content would go within the ‘noframes’ tag). I think scrapping frames is a good move, but it could really help accessibility.

Problems with HTML emails and CMS content
One thing my agency do quite a lot is build HTML emails for subscribers to our clients’ brands. With the end of the width and height, background, and most importantly the style attributes it’s going to be hard to build HTML emails for applications that have poor HTML parsers. This includes Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! online email readers that all parse HTML email content on the server before it’s displayed in the browser to prevent the content impacting the application interface. I agree that in principle, all style information should be kept out of the HTML template - this is the job of CSS. Although building emails is a big part of my team’s responsibilities and the abandonment of the inline style information is going to either force the email applications to be more compliant or is going to make life a living hell for the guy in my office who builds these emails!

Also I’m writing this in Wordpress: one of many CMS’s available for free or commercial license and one of millions when counting the bespoke CMS solutions created all the time. To allow authors using these CMS’s to control how their information is displayed (such as alignment, colour etc.) the style attribute would have to be used. I cannot see how a CMS could be efficient in managing style information as a separate entity to the content being written given that the style attribute is to be pulled as an HTML standard.

My thoughts
I think the w3c have been careful in analysing popular use of HTML and how they can improve it. Although I think the developments of HTML in this version may be trying to become too involved directly with the user that might create a lot of poorly implemented web pages. I also think that dynamic content created with CMS applications and such have not been considered properly.

I definitely agree with attempts to improve accessibility, and the inclusion of better data descriptors will no doubt help that effort. However, I doubt that the ping attribute will prove popular with developers unless users come to expect to be able to choose whether they’re tracked or not; I question the need for browser-based form data validation; I’m also unsure about the decision to rely more heavily on CSS over inline style information.

This week I’ve been working on the Mr Whitty Sings Christmas site. You can go to the site, watch the live video stream of Mr Whitty and even request a Christmas song for him to play. It’s gone down pretty well so far. Possibly the funniest moment was a re-enactment of Jesus’ birth. Jesus was a doll of one of the Little Britain characters and Joseph was in an Elvis costume.

Happy Christmas
Mr Whitty, the human Christmas jukebox

This is a trick vulnerability I learnt about from a talk I went to by Rasmus Lerdorf called ‘Exploring The Broken Web’. He took delegates on a 30 minute whirlwind tour of security vulnurabilities on the internet, specifically what can be done with XSS combined with a bit of social engineering.

He only briefly skimmed on an area that interested me. He exposed how a developer can check a user’s browser history, by just asking for it.

The trick is to use a small (and very simple) JavaScript code along with some CSS to find out which websites a user has visited from a list you provide.

Rasmus mentioned the script as something of use to phishers (they can find out which banks you bank online with and send you the appropriate phishing emails). I saw a less immoral use for it (although I won’t deny it’s still immoral): purely for marketing statistics. If I had a site selling t-shirts, like www.bensfunkytshirts.com I could use this script to find out if my visitors had also been to threadless, bustedtees and designbyhumans - or any other site.

Here’s the CSS:

<style type=”text/css”>
<!–
#links a {width: 0px; overflow: hidden;}
#links div {margin: 0; padding: 0;}
a {position: absolute;}
a:visited {left: 1px;}
//–>
</style>

Here’s the JavaScript:

<script language=”JavaScript”>
onload =function() {
var links =document.getElementsByTagName(’a');
var visited =new Array();
for(i =0; i<links.length; i++) {
if(links[i].offsetLeft==1) visited.push(links[i].id);
}

//reveal on page the results
for(i =0; i<visited.length; i++) document.write(’You have been to ‘ + visited[i] + ‘<br />’);
}
</script>

Finally, here’s the HTML:

<body>
<div id=”links”>
<div><a id=”Yahoo” href=”http://www.yahoo.com/”>.</a></div>
<div><a id=”Google” href=”http://www.google.com/”>.</a></div>
<div><a id=”BBC-News” href=”http://news.bbc.co.uk/”>.</a></div>
<div><a id=”SlashDot” href=”http://slashdot.org/”>.</a></div>
</div>
</body>

I’ve put an example of the script working up here:
http://www.hostengage.com.au/dev/historyInquisition/

If I were to use a simple piece of Ajax, or to stick the sites I know you’ve visited into a simple hidden form, I could easily learn far more about your browsing habits than you would want me to know.

Update (2008-06-12)
I’ve finally got round to putting together an example of this working.

waterfall-abseiling

Originally uploaded by The Feds

We went canyoning in the Blue Mountains last weekend. It was amazing. We put on 5mm wetsuits (thick) and followed a stream down through a canyon: jumping into rockpools backwards, sliding down rocks and finally we abseiled down a 50 foot waterfall.

We did it with High n Wild in Katoomba. They really knew their stuff. We did an abseiling day with them in the winter, so after two trips with them we’d definitely recommend them.

The other week I met up with my old Technical Director whilst I was in London and spent a short while reflecting on how hard it seems to be to find developers, and then further to that how hard it is to find developers suited to agency work.

Now I’m in an agency where I’m the only Web Developer, I’m on the interview panel when it comes to finding other developers. This process has meant I’ve realised how hard it is to find people suitable for the job. There seems to be a mix of designers wanting to try their hand at developing and semi-skilled developers trying to go for a senior position before their time. The creative industry doesn’t seem to attract the talented developers it requires.

I’ve met a few other developers who are skilled but wouldn’t like working in a creative agency. They’re application developers, not web developers. When I asked, they said they actually make an effort to stay clear of jobs like mine. I was not going to be able to convince them to send me their CV. Finding Web Developers for our agency isn’t going to be so easy.

There are characteristics I think developers in creative agencies need to be born with or quickly acquire in order to survive:

1. Social skills. Geeks notoriously don’t have the best people skills, and when it comes to working in a creative agency where sitting in the corner keeping to yourself isn’t going to work, you’re going to have to face up to the fact there’s no getting out of going to lunch with the chatty project manager who thinks as a web developer you should be able to fix his X-Box. I’ve also had to feign an interest in sports a number of times, just to keep up.
2. Ability to work with computer illiterates. Being able to resist self-harm when I’m politely asked to download files and burn them onto a DVD as that is, apparently, what I do for a living. Oh, and I can also offer lots of advice about PowerPoint transitions.
3. Put a project down, picking it up again; repeat. This is more about developing in a way that allows the project to be continued after being put on hold for x amount of time. For example, I’d stop working on Project A because a more urgent Project B needs kicking off, then a number of weeks later I’d be asked to carry on with Project A from where I left off for a couple of days until Project C gets signed off. And no, I can’t get more time for Project A as it’s already over-budget and we don’t want the client back in for another meeting about timings as he eats all the best cookies and hits on the receptionist.
4. Explain yourself in small short words. Bearing in mind that some people in the office still think that a hyperlink is a new type of Japanese train, they’re not going to understand DNS propegation is the reason we can’t launch the website right now, after lunch on a Friday afternoon. Explaining technical concepts to non-technical people take a long patience and short words.
5. Fight for testing. Or test post-launch. Testing is something expected by everyone to be in the project plan, it even makes it into the Gantt charts the producer writes up, but it will be the first thing to go if the deadline looms a little too close for comfort. Or there may be a testing phase, but this is soon followed by changes to the creative that nullifies all testing done so far. Or there will be a testing phase, but only after the site has launched. I can’t point the finger of blame at anyone in particular, as it’s the way things work when you’ve got a small project with a tough deadline. The client asks for changes but the deadline won’t move. Proper testing seems to be a luxury reserved for those clients lacking extensive change requests and a clear understanding of what ’signing off’ really means.
6. See the design as the designer sees it. I’m anal about my work, so quite rightfully the designer will be anal about hers. A bad designer will never say when I’ve messed up a design because she’s scared of me, a good designer will tell me about a mistake I made, a great designer will tell me that I messed up and then tell me why it needs to be fixed. If I can understand the thinking behind the design, I can build it better.

I don’t think that working for a creative agency makes me a better developer, or a worse one. I do think it means I have to approach projects differently. I think working for an agency means you So there are quite specific skills that I think are needed to work in a creative agency as a developer. A lot of these skills are a little different from the stereotypical developer skillset. However, a lot of very talented developers do prefer the creative environment (I just need to find them). I like the small and exciting projects I do in a creative agency. I don’t have the attention span to stay put on one application for months on end. I’d rather download files and burn them obediently to a DVD for the TV producer who doesn’t know what a codec is, whilst performing self-harm here at my desk with a soggy cocktail stick.

I recently interviewed a contract developer for a project we’re short of people on. I was going to be on vacation during the project, so the developer needed to be self-sufficient and able to fully understand the task at hand so I could brief him before I left. I hired a freelancer I thought was best for the job. He wasn’t.

Things I’ll now see as hints I shouldn’t hire a developer:

1. Boasting that he can touch-type as one of the leading items in his skillset
2. Claiming his previous employer ‘didn’t understand him’ and spends 10 minutes ranting about them during the interview
3. He has a law degree and claims that he’ll rip any contract apart
4. He can’t talk plain English to plain English speaking people. Types on an imaginary keyboard as he speaks.
5. He’s 42 and lives in the mountains with his mother. Probably
6. Says something ridiculous and possibly inappropriate in a meeting, then claims it was a ‘brain fart’.
7. Tells my junior behind my back that he’ll learn nothing from me. Tells him that indenting code is a waste of time.
8. Keeps saying ‘crunch crunch crunch’ really loudly when explaining how his code parses data
9. Seems to think a brief is below him, but doesn’t seem to have fully understood it 4 days later
10. Won’t give a time estimate after reading the brief; technical spec; and after several meetings. Has to wait until he’s spent several days working on a script for which you have no use, and then finally saying that he’ll need 8 weeks for a 3 week project without offering any formal breakdown of timings.

This is someone who claims to have 10 years of experience, which is twice what I have. Of course, I’m taking responsibility for hiring the muppet and I thought that with 10 years under his rather long belt he’d find this project easy. Lesson learnt. Next time I’m definitely checking references, asking for sample code and disregarding the claims of grandiose experience and perfect development skills.

If anybody knows of a good PHP developer in Sydney with agency experience please get in touch.

Here’s an idea I’ve had and will never do anything about so I thought I’d put it out there and see what people think.

My problem is that on my Facebook (this idea could apply to other sites but in this post I’m just going to use Facebook) I have lots of people listed as friends. I have a few close friends, then I have friends who I know but who aren’t close - workmates, friends of friends and so on. Then the bulk is made up of the people who I haven’t seen in years, but for some reason are still my friend. The result is too much information for me to manage that isn’t effectively organised. Sure, Facebook lets me define who I want to hear more about and who I want to hear less about, but this is a manual control and I think it should be able to work this out by itself.

How can a system like Facebook work out which is more important to me: wedding photos from someone I went to school with; knowing that my flatmate ‘is bored at work’; or photos of my workmate’s new dog?
Continue Reading »

Why do people I haven’t spoken to in years and haven’t thought about in nearly as long request to be my friend in Facebook? Why do I do the same thing to the other kids who lived in my neighbourhood when I was growing up? For the same reason: to see who’s fat, who’s failed and who still lives at home.

There’s the albino kid who dropped out of school; the sporty kid who was loud; the clever one who was obnoxious; the guy who I thought would never be a civil servant but is. All of the above: their lives aren’t quite as rosy as their school reports may have indicated.

It sounds elitist and terribly mean, but everyone seems to be doing it. Only the other day someone I work with said how she just saw wedding photos on Facebook of a girl she went to school with who punched her in the face once. She got fat and hadn’t aged particularly well, which had an immediate and positive effect on my colleague’s outlook on herself.

I think it’s all about self-assurance. The best way we can see how well we’re doing in life is to compare ourselves to those we started out with. Where are they and where am I?

Of course success is measured by the individual’s perception of what success is. The girl my workmate poked fun at may in turn see my colleague and think how she’s approaching 30, working too hard and still has no ring on her finger, and then there’s no sign of kids for the next few years at least.

The friends in your Facebook aren’t necessarily your friends. They’re individual benchmarks for you to measure yourself up against. Although be warned: the slow kid who wet himself in school assembly that one time who is now a successful entrepreneur with a supermodel wife may find you on Facebook and might just ruin your day.

Possibly the best/worst web innovation I’ve ever experienced is StumbleUpon. Once you start hitting the little green button you can’t stop. You come across a few of those ‘free movie download’ sites that aren’t free and sites by bad designers trying to promote themselves as good designers, but you don’t care. You hit the friendly little button again to feed your hunger for web comics, lists of things you never needed to know and movies of car accidents, pictures of funny looking people and I was just looking at photos of a vampire slaying kit. I don’t need to see that. I don’t need to see any of this stuff, but I’ll click again because hell - my cursor was over in that direction anyway. What does David Lynch say about product placement in a video interview? Do I care? I do but I don’t know why!

It’s an addiction. It has to end.

CTRL + F11 switches off the StumbleUpon toolbar. It was beginning to be a major distraction from work, so making the toolbar disappear has made me more productive (so I can then spend more time writing on my site. Nice one Ben). Now I can switch it on during my lunch break and when I’m on the phone to someone who talks too much. After these I switch it off, and get on with work. Perfect.

Then I press CTRL + F11 again! Damn! It’s the same button to switch it on as it is to switch it off! Who thought of that?! I need a hard way of switching it back on. Something where I have time to stop and think ‘hey, Ben - do you really want to do this? This is the next 30 minutes wasted!’, and then I’d stop switching it on.

Someone needs to write a StumbleAddiction plugin and write it soon. Thousands of Stumblers are at risk. The economy will suffer. The markets will crash. The developed world will fall to it’s knees. Is StumbleUpon doing the work of Al Qaeda?!

It’s a problem. Can somebody fix it?