Jacques Marneweck's Blog

Picked up from over at Damien's site:

Over the past few months, I've mentioned in my weblob a number of new and exciting layout techniques that have surfaced. Below is a summary of the traditional CSS-based, tableless layouts, and these new techniques that you as a web designer would hopefully consider while planning a standards-compliant site. I've also included what I believe are the pros and cons of each technique, links to examples, and where possible have credited their author and/or origins. This summary is a WIP.

Posted by Jacques Marneweck at 7:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is a good article online which explains why we should be using international date format (ISO) when representing dates on dropdown lists, etc.

Imagine one gives a date to you which is 03/04/05 depending on where you are located you could say it's either the 4th of March 2005 or the 3rd of April 2005. Representing the date as 2005-04-03 one can clearly see that we are talking about the 3rd of April 2005.

Posted by Jacques Marneweck at 5:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Every now and again I tend to look at my favourite brands websites, to see if I can spot any issues with their website or mailers which I've subscribed to, which should be perfect, but in a real world environment it is never the case.

For example, prior to sending off the mailers, they should be checking the mailer and double checking it. Does the links work? If I cut and paste the link into the webbrowser does the link work? Do I get any 404 errors when checking the links? If you do, contact the person who puts your mailer templates together to fix it. I spotted a glaring error with the one link on the Clickatell's balance update mailers. If you cut and paste their "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of the mailers you get a nice 404 page. Basically they have a whitespace between before brocure on the text copy of the link which reads http://www.clickatell.com/ brochure/unsubscribe.php, when it should be http://www.clickatell.com/brochure/unsubscribe.php.

Also they were using mailing lists to promote purchasing SMS credits with a discount and some bright kiddies decided to mail the mailing list and would you believe it their mails were sent to everyone on the mailing list in question! Another big no no! One could mail the list and set return read reciept, and you get a nice list of users subscibed to the list, which isn't a good thing (tm).

I think that the moral of the story is that communications should always be checked. No matter how trivial they seem having a few people checking them for the obvious errors from spelling to links not working is as important as the copy in the mailer.

Continue reading "What's wrong with your favourite brands mailers and websites?" »

Posted by Jacques Marneweck at 4:40 PM | Permalink

Musica seem to be a couple of matches short of a matchbox. They have added digital downloads onto their website but they have only made it work under Internet Explorer (they also state or better) which really sucks as they are telling people visiting their website that you are an idiot because you are not using Microsoft Internet Exploder or a Windows based PC and that you have to use Windows Media Player.

The site you have tried to enter requires Internet Explorer 6 (or better) with Windows Media Player 7 (or better) on Windows XP, 2000, Me or 98. Click Here to use our Doctor Download application to help you check your configuration alternatively Email Dr Download. Please try again.

I think that they are missing out on revenue potential from users who are not using the Windows platform and who use Open Source webbrowsers such as Mozilla Firefox. Bad decision on Musica's part.

Posted by Jacques Marneweck at 1:39 PM | Permalink

Via Dan Cederholm:

You know those desk calendars where you tear off a page for each day of the year? Typically, each day comes with a little nugget of useless info to start your day. Someone should create one based on CSS bugs, where each day talks about a different bug and its workaround. Perhaps even more nerdy than the “365 Days of Dragons, Merlins and Magical Stones” that I’ve been meaning to covertly purchase.

Until then, perhaps I’ll start posting reminders here as I rediscover old favorites. While there are some bugs that we run into every day, immediately knowing their remedies, there are others that pop up here and there, only to be looked up again and again to be reminded of their workarounds. It never hurts to publicize these suckers now and again.

Posted by Jacques Marneweck at 4:20 PM | Permalink

Internet Exterminator's support for web standards is shocking. Unfortunately one needs to ensure cross-browser compatibility so you end up having to hack css to get it to work under Interne Exploder. Then you have to work on your Javascript and Javascript hacks to get Internet Exploder to work similar to Firefox, Mozilla et. al. when posting forms etc. etc. with multiple submit buttons. Can't Microsoft just package Firefox as the default webbrowser on Windows? It sounds like a very good idea to me ;)

Posted by Jacques Marneweck at 1:33 PM | Permalink

I have been doing more research into Web Standards for a project which I'm working on and I've come across some interesting reading into why clients want web standards. It is no longer about designing a website which only looks good in Internet Explorer, but which looks similar in every webbrowser it is rendered in. Various companies do not believe in Web Standards, including Web Designers who I have worked with in the past. One of the projects which I am currently working on does not yet validate correctly as XHTML for various reasons. Over the course of the next couple of weeks the site should validate after all the web output has been cleaned up.

Why Your Clients Care About Web Standards

"Don't bury the client with the technical jargon of standards-based design. Focus on the cost effective traits and market advantages of standards and you will have their full attention."

Posted by Jacques Marneweck at 7:09 PM | Permalink