Category Archives: browsers

Web Standards and W3′c Standards

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Early this month, the web have finally seen the W3C first draft version of the The XMLHttpRequest Object. I consider it an extremly important move of recognizing the presence and the “treat” of the Ajax.

First of all, lets be honest – there have been a lot of the applications since the XMLHttpRequest appearance i believe it was the 5th version of the Internet Explorer, which introduced it. Since then, it has evolved, become recongized, loved and hated, made every browser on the market copy and implement it, evolve as a part of a buzz-word (web2.0) and finally achieved a status of becoming a W3C standard.

After some careful reading and analizing i have noticed, that the only property from the XMLHttpRequest MSDN documentation that didnt make into this draft was “responseBody”. Honestly i have never seen any application which would take use of this “array of unsigned bytes” – normally everyone are connecting XmlHttpRequest with the WebServices, and when you have a XML DOM in front of you, its much easier and the reasonable to deal with it with the DOM methods. Also, having the “responseText” property around is helping in the cases, when no XML is getting in the result and for the rest of the cases when some binary data is being transmitted from the server the usual “responseText” was a reasonable answer. Thinking that the binary-encoded data in the response would depend on the server, and thinking that there are no other then IE implementations of it, i also doubt that “responseBody” is going “to jump” into the final version of the document, since on the list of the authors there are no Microsoft representatives.

Finally, i would like to say some words of gratitute to Microsoft. I know that i have not been such a good friend of the “empire”, critisizing for stealing ideas, destroying ideals and so on. I also used to say that there are almost no things around, which would be created by Microsoft – only bought or stolen. This time i just have the words of the gratitude for helping javascript to advance, and for teaching me personally (once again), that there are good things on each side of the wall.

Portwatch Austria

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About 1 month later then expected, here are the results of the research… First of all – seeing Austrian’s pages after the Spanish is not the most pleasant thing which can be done. Having set my expectations extremly high for the Austrian’s municipalities i was quite disappointed with the most of them, though at least one of the pages was quite up to the expectations.

  • Frames in Austria are as good as dead (and its a good thing) – the only site to use them is Burgenland, which represents about 11.1%.
  • The same number of sites (1 – 11.1%) is using a table-less design and its not much, i have to say
  • Carinthia’s site is the only one which does not use any doctype at all, and its pretty much against the vast majority (88.9%) of the rest of Austria
  • Only 1 site (11.1%) has a valid HTML, and its too few. Too few, to be considered something as a tendention in the governmental sites
  • 2 sites (22.2%) have a valid css and once again it is a very low numbers, for such an advanced country as an Austria
  • The screen resolution 1024×768 is something, that should not be required at the governmental sites, and the percentage 44.4% is way to high, thinking about the number of the users with a laptop
  • Just a couple of sites have a fav icon which represents about 44.4%
  • Just a three sites (33.3%) have some other language(english) integrated, and though the number i expected was much higher, its not that bad as it seems from the first sight
  • Web acessability has a relatively small percentage (about 33.3%), though i have to say, that i was very positively surprised with Vienna’s implementation of the priority 2 of the WCAG

The max percentage for the municipality in Austria is about 91.6%, which is very close to the maximum percentage, which one of the finest Spain municipalities has obtained (96.7%). The minimum of the 10.9% is again lower then the spanish(15.8%) but again higher then the portuguese(0%).

As the Portwatch own page is still under construction, i have joined the final result with the Portwatch page.

Results Austria

Portwatch Spain

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Finally, after some days i have come to finallize the results of the research. First i should say that i was quite surprised. I have not expected, that there are so many advanced regional governments in Spain. It is a pleasure to surf on such sites as Galicia or Catalonia. I am really impressed, maybe because the municipalaties i have seen before has never shown big dedication to their internet representation.

The results are speaking for themself:

  • Frames in Spain are in declain – and only 3 sites are using them (15.8%), but i think there should be even less then this number.
  • Positive surprise 7 sites are using table-less designs (36.9%)
  • 10 government sites are using doctypes – thats more then a half (52.6%), and its a positive number
  • 3 sites (15.8%) have valid HTML, and thats a good start, and i am confident that this number will grow in the next years, anyway i was expecting much lower results.
  • Only 4 sites (21.0%) have a valid css, but there is a big number of the sites, which have to do minor changes to pass the validation
  • Only Extremaduras site optimized for the 1024×768 resolution, and knowing that this is one of the poorest regions in Spain, i have to say, that this is the thing that they have to change. All others have less strict requirements to the resolution, which is how it should be done.
  • A reasonable number of sites – 11 (thats a 57.9%) have the idea about using the icons on the net
  • In a country, where more then 1 variation of the language is spoken, i was expecting more then 6 sites (31.6%) having support for at least 1 more language

The max percentage for the municipality in Portugal is 27.7%, when in Spain it has reached 96.7% and the min percentage was 15.8%, which is quite a value for the portuguese municipalities, thinking that the min in Portugal was 0%.

The final results are applied to the beginning of the Portwatch page.

Results Spain

What about the future – what are the next steps ?

The answer is simple – continuing with the other european countries, but i am also going to do a reality check, by totally revising the current portwatch system verifying its sanity. I am aint no interested in creating a scale which does not represent anything. =O)

Also i am going to give this project a proper site and as i am considering inviting some people to help me with it, i think portwatch deserves its own subdomain or even a domain, we will see.

And as for the rest – the next targets are Austria and Germany.

IE 7 beta 2

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Nice one …

The very first feeling – i have seen so many things somewhere else … where ? … OsX … again ?
Yeeees (with the intonation of Morpheus).

Interface has been twicked very nicely, thought the very first thought of mine was actually – is it IE 3 or IE 7, the icon should be undone, redone and so on. Oh, i know about that this icon make a part of the “new” aqua “air” interface, but at least on 2 different computers it does not look so fine. The “clear type” fonts are impressive – very nice antialliasing, Quick tabs – copright Apple Microsoft, Zooming feature – fantastic( thanks, Opera Microsoft ), but the most important feature of them all is a tendency (first step), into the direction of the good css support. The one, that the most webdesigners were asking, crying, calling, emailing, spamming, begging on their knees for the last 5(five) years. God wishes, we will have some more real websites by the end of 2006-2007, if iE7 will appear this year alongside with Vista, of course. =O) The search toolbar is where it should be – with msn search as a default option, add-on manager is a very nice and hopefully usefull functional option – you can see all(?) the activeX “stuff” installed on your computer, addons that “run without requiring permission”, currently loaded and currently used add-ons.

Usability – the reload and stop icons have been moved to a very strange position. From one side, its nice to have them separated from the rest of the functionality, but from the other side, you have to get used to their new place, and they are way too small, to be noticed instantly, and even after noticing, the people outside of the computer industry will have some problem understanding their functionality, judging only by the icons.

About CSS – some of the things i did with the hacks, are obviously broken, there is no big surprise here, but its nice to see some real css changes in microsoft policies.( I _hope_ they will get the stuff right, before the final release ) And as one of my friends is going to start working at microsoft – i have to be more careful, when writing about them. I will have a pleasure fixing these little things when i see the final product, but not before i will see it on my computer (promise != final_product && hope(7.0b < 7.0) )

On IE7 beta 2, this blog (which design is still very far away from my wishes) has some minor glitches, and i am going to twick them as soon as the final release going to appear. =O)

I see this effort as a very good and important movement of recognizing the importance of the web design. Lately, microsoft were "feeding" us with the new versions of development tools, but only last year i have finally heard the announcements of the new products dedicated web design. As at this moment the vast majority of the population is using IE, all of us depending on its progress.

In the next few days i am going to do more IE testing, as i am very excited about the progress, that the biggest share browser is going make.

PortWatch

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20 principal portuguese municipal websites have been deconstructed, analized and compared with the current webstandards, in a friendly attempt of advising those municipalities about the current state of the web and the points of view of a lot of webdesigners. Aveiro, Azores, Beja, Braga, Bragança, Castelo Branco, Coimbra, Evora, Faro, Funchal, Guarda, Leiria, Lisbon, Portalegre, Porto, Santarem, Setubal, Viana do Castelo, Vila Real, Viseu – are those, which sites have been included in this part of the Portwatch.

I was trying to create some kind of a definition what a modern municipality site in the year 2006 should have – and i came with the idea of the declaring this small list of the standards, which i consider to be important or “nice to have”: good support for different browsers, no frames, table-less design, good modern doctype, valid (x)HTML, valid CSS, minimum resolution 800×600, favourite icon, different foreign languages, and WCAG

To be short i will show a few statistics from the final result:

  • Frames in portugal are still popular – 6 sites are using them (30%)
  • No good design practic (fluid, table-less designs) were found between those 20 municipals, and its a big shame.
  • Only8 websites are using doctypes – thats about 40% of the whole pie
  • No valid html – at all, 0 sites, 0%, nada.
  • Only 5 sites (25%) have a valid css, thats a start … in a year 2006
  • 6 sites (30%) are optimized for the 1024×768 resolution and i think it is to much, counting the number of computers in portugal with the resolution 800×600, though it is not that bad i would say.
  • Only 3 sites (thats a 15%) have the idea, about using the icons on the net
  • Only 3 sites have support for different languages, it seems that the most municipal minds are not interested in having more tourism

If you are interested in what came out, then check it out and take a look at the the results

Portwatch graphic (small)

Why standards do not work ?

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Why standards do not work ? It is a question that i have been asking myself for quite some time. Its not only the problem of the web, its been a natural problem in all the areas, everywhere around the world. Perhaps, ironically, the humanity is trying to avoid some kind of an artificial control, even the nature in itself does not have standards defining everything with absolute(100%) precision, though a nature has a tendency to define some certain rules – gravitation, growth, life, death and so on.

I think that as long as the “manufactures” of the web-related software (“browsers”,”visual designers”, “readers”, and so on), avoid putting stricter rules to the web, there wont be a lot of standards following. Why ? Because, the most do not care. Sad, by true – have been working in some countries in some different companies, i have seen that the final results, and have heard the thoughts of the web-designers. Timeframes, technical difficulties, . Those who wish, wont get a lot of support from the administrative and marketing departments. Its like, its not easy to answer such questions as “Is is possible to sell ?” or “What will it give us ?”. As long as it is not a question of working or not working, there wont be a lot of thoughts about following the standards.

I think that W3C did a good job of introducing the XML. You have to have a good structure for it to be usable, and so i think, that the move to the xHTML was a very reasonable one. The problem is that almost noone has noticed and followed that move. I think that there are some requirements, that should be fulfilled, before the web standards will become widely accepted:

  1. Some good WYSIWYG visual editores, producing valid code. As of now – there are none on the market, though i have to name the Dreamweaver 8 ( it has surprised me very positively ), and until some editors wont be accessable to the mainstream public, the vast majority of webdesigners, will continue producing (?)HTML(?) code with GoLive, FrontPage and co. It is one of the reasons, why i think that the work of WebStandards group should be much more appreciated.
  2. Bigger browsers market – i think, that this one is pretty much clear. With an absolute dominating power of the crippled IE there are still no big alternatives, though Firefox is rising fast, it has allready awaken the sleeping giant, and the next IE version seems to be not so far (as it was 1 year ago) =O). I would love to see 3-4 browsers prevailing on the market – please, dont get me wrong, i dont wish to return to the Netscape-Microsoft case, but i think that if the market would be devided between IE-Firefox-Opera-Safari, we would have a different kind of progress, and even the marketing departments of those, who produce them, would be more then interested in fulfilling their job, by saying – “we have full standard compliance, and its 15% more then our competitors.”
  3. Web-applications giving advantages to the use of the standards – lets take a look at the browsers, for example. If Opera would give some additional functionaly(for example live content re-editing – curstomization and adoption by user needs) to those pages, which are not reendered in “quirks-mode”, then for any web-designer this would be an interesting and an important thing to not forget.
  4. There must be done some moves in promoting, advertising and convincing the web-community of moving toward the standards. There are a lot of “galleries” sites doing an amazing job, by promoting the use of (x)HTML and CSS, but i think that even more things can be done – for example by promoting competitions between the young designers (schools,universities,..), then a big (especially designer) companies (or big ones like Apple,IBM & Microsoft) could help out, by providing additional publicity and even some prizes. I know it sounds very naive, but “sky is the limit” and as Ghandi said – “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”.

For something to work, to function – there must be conditions and needs. If at least 50% of those requierements would be fulfilled, then i believe that the use of standards would start to be a normal requirement and an overall victory in the battle for the use of the standards would be not so far away.

Google Web Authoring Statistics

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Google Web Authoring Statistics – are: nice, cool, interesting, useful & unusable, advanced (SVG), ignorant (no alternative solutions), fascinating (information).

First of all of course, as usual for Google (insert here a sad smile), – no doctype for those pages was found, at least no valid one. And then, no real alternative for firefox – i am strongly supporting the firefox, but not at the price of destroying everything else by not providing any alternative at all. Its a shame, that such imaginative company as Google, has had no ideas (?) about accessibility while doing such statistics. Safari, i have tried on this page has crashed (with the latest “panther” installed) – not nice, not nice at all, Opera 8.51 shows black squares instead of any useful graphics, Adobe SVG Viewer with IE has not provided any reasonable result, to talk about. And by the way, the only firefox versions to view the graphics are 1.5+, that means that a very big part of the firefox users are also not capable of viewing any result (SVG was included only since the 1.5 release).

They could have provided some alternative – images or text, why ignore more then 80% of the web users ? Very strange move, i have to say, and a pretty weird one. Anyway – from what i have managed to see inside those results – a majority of the pages are still “made with tables”, more then 50% of the <background>’s have “bgcolor” attribute, more then 80% of the scripts are have attribute “language”, and my favourite one – “A scary number of pages use <table gridx=”" gridy=”" showgridx=”" showgridy=”">, not to mention the multitude of <csscriptdict>, <csactiondict>, and <csobj> elements.” (see for yourself )

I hope that one day, the majority of the web developers will start looking at the WCAG, and at the other web standards, but until that day … enjoy the titles like “best viewed with not your browser“.