Nikoport

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.

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.

As it was written by Derek, Molly, WebStandards.org and a lot of others - there is a new law suit, by U.S. National Federation of the Blind (NFB) against a major american company - The target. As always, the opinions over the web are very divided, but as for me, i am sticking to those, who believe, that it is a good thing. It’s time for those, who ignore the standards, to start learning them, even if it means by this way.

Having some friends with disabilities, i know what it takes for them, to have a normal access to those things, which the most of us, using without thinking if its a gift or not. Once, i have even dedicated myself to some kind of the research, connected with the disabilities - i have seen a lot of not working elevators on the train platforms with a lot of stairs, ramps with such degrees, that i had fallen from the willchair while trying to convince 2 friends, that those ramps are ok, “accessable” buses with no adaptable entrances, and a lot of stupid people around, ignoring the basic needs of those, whom they might become, if they would have just less luck.

So if the big enterprises are ignorant, i see no problem of the people with the special needs, taking advantage of them. Really, dont get me wrong, i find such law suits as a “McDonald Hot Coffee”, as completely ridiculous, but when it is about the basic rights of those, who close to us - i dont feel a lot of pitty. Especially, when somebody was warned and asked for whole 9 month. No i am not talking about a poor little store, but about the company, whos name is a reference and who’s earning should have easily allowed them using the accessability standards.

Counting, that the Amazon.com is “powering” the Target’s site, i have to say, i would love to see both of them recognized as the responsibles, because for me - they are. I hope to see this thing spreading a little bit across the web, to see the people demanding a better sites and in the end effect seeing more quality work over the net.

p.s. and as it seems, that they have fixed some things over the night, it is allready producing a good effect and prooving, that they are capable of doing a good job, so i hope this law suit will help them to finish the job fast … as fast as it possible =O)

Through the StyleGala i have found this site, which critices the point of using tableless design, and i have found this article extremly interesting. While not agreeing in a lot of aspects, i feel it represents an important point of view — an opposite point of view, which have been missing inside the webdesigners community.

Here are some points where i do not agree:

• Bandwidth — I believe that for the most home-made sites (like this one), which do not have millions of visitors per day, the bandwidth mayy not play a very important point, but for any corporate site or just a site with a lot of visitors — it can be pretty important thing. And as i have seen some corporate sites from the inside i can tell, that there are too many cases, where refacturing the HTML cuts some very serious percentage.
• The future of the web is full CSS — yes, and even microsoft with the IE are also following it. Yes, microsoft have their own extensions, but Opera, Safari, Mozilla and others do have them as well. The best example of a good idea coming into the world of standards and being accepted by the communities is the AJAX. And i have no doubt, that though IE 7 wont be available for anything below Windows XP, microsoft will convince the most of the users of switching with the time to Vista
• Remembering the styles applied to different pages after some monthes — the same as in a good professional programming, if you did a good job, giving good names to your functions and variables, you wont have a lot of problems. If you are calling your style or id something like “white” or “blue”, and not with the functional name — then most probably after some time you will start getting a lot of problems
• Is full CSS faster — i dont know what kind of a “typical” page was represented in that case, but while doing some sites i have noticed the reendering speed inside the Visual studio for example. And having 200 rows or more in a buisiness web application is nothing special at all. Once again, for a home site with a few things, probably the difference wont be noticed. And one more thing — not everyone enjoying having the fastest computers at home
• Return on investment — a well done page with a CSS, will enable the webdesigner doing a lot of the global changes in just a few seconds, and if a webmaster is tricking you telling that he needs the same time, then you better look for another one
• W3C standards are useless — why everyone including microsoft are following them, ok not all of them, but as in the real world — some are getting through, while others not.
• Separation of strcture and content makes websites more organized — no point to argue about it, organizing a page helps maintaing it
• 31K & 51K for a page — i see a lot of difference, even if its 41K & 51K. Once i decided to “reorganize” a page for some business application and it went straight from 130K to 73K, now that was big change, i would say. And if your application is being loaded like 500 times per hour or more, then very soon you will start seeing the difference
• Common sense of skipping small images and webpages by the webdevelopers are the things which are not compattible. It is ridiculous to think, that the people with disabilities are in way or another should be “presented” a different page, then the others.
• Selling your product is a question of marketting, which has nothing to do with a structural presentation of the page, though a good marketer can use the standard compliance as a prefential factor to his cause
• “May work well” by Zeldman is much better then “wont work” by the tables design

But from the other side:

• CSS Complexity — even today one of my friends was talking with me about the complexity of the CSS, i believe it is a valid point of view, the structure is not that simple, when you are starting out, but once getting in, and when creating a well-thought structure it can be very efficient
• Tables are not only for the tabular data — i agree that sometimes tables can be used as a part of the interface, when the interface is pretty tabular
• Always ask for “Return On Investment” of the LATEST STANDARD before going — as it should be done with any other thing, i agree with it. No need to use the CSS 3, especially because it is not final at this moment, but if you ignore the movement, you are risking to find yourself in a situation, being some years behind the rest of the web

Anyway — a lot of the issues depend on the point of the view, but i think, that the standard compliance(not a blind one, cause that would be stupid), brings a lot of advantages, but once again i think its good to do the “reality check” from time to time, to see if we are still going into the right direction.

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

Why AJAX vs Web ? Because it seems that ajax is rapidly conquering the net, but at the same time, after working with this concept for quite some time, i can say that it can be a pure pain in the ass head:

1. No usable “back” buttons - in the most cases after clicking on the “back” the application dies instantly
2. Asynchronous operations - while executing a script don’t forget, that your AJAX request may not have arrived and(or) still not being processed, so all sequent actions counting with an “instant” execution may be badly “disappointed”
3. Complicated cascading changes - don’t forget, that there are some events in HTML, which are not executed automatically in Javascript (for example changing selected index of the <select> element wont fire the onchange trigger)
4. Too “fat” clients - user don’t like their experience of slow browsing, and that is one of the reasons why they love AJAX (no pages reloading), so making a very rich “fat” client will make them remembering the page reloading experience, and then - you will get no big point in using AJAX
5. There are still some users around with browsers which do not support the XmlHttpRequest
6. AJAX is not a savior - it wont save you from the normal coding problems, nor will it provide with a brand new GUI interface - because you will still have to check & test your GUI’s usability

Dont get me wrong, i am not against AJAX methodology, i am hardly using it, but i think that it requires a lot of attention, and as it is still “young”, there are a lot of problems around, waiting for the developers, starting with it.
If you are not afraid of all these things - then go on, make yourself a name with a new “web 2.0123″ application =O)

Fantastic, brilliant !

I have upgraded this site to a wordpress 2.0.1 in a few instants with just one step. My dear God, is it possible that software can be so usable as the wordpress is ? I bow in front of the creators. Just one month after the release of the 2.0 they have managed to resolve more then 100 bugs. Every software has problems, but i think that in modern times, the reaction time is one of the most important issues about software developement. Great job, i am looking even more forward to the wordpress. I have spent some reasonable time choosing a blogging software, testing and using various systems at home, but nothing had impressed me more then Wordpress (Textpattern for example is much less usable and the idea that i have to learn some tags to do my custom styling does not please me at all.).

Looking forward of getting more of wordpress…

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.