disturbing comments

Disturbing Comment of the Week #1
Attending a presentation from an external company who are trying to get their feet in the door of the corporation I work for, I was called upon to explain how we were currently delivering some of our eLearning training content.

The demo was good but nothing we haven't seen before, which I explained and went on to say that this type of training (completely flash based), was quite time-consuming to produce and complex. In our industry, fast turnaround is essential; from product conception to engaging training resources to design and development and ultimately to rollout across the business can take a matter of days to weeks depending on the circumstances. In general, I only produce a full flash module for training that is long-term, not going to change much in the near future or can really benefit from the creation of a fully self-contained user-experience.

External companies usually don't handle this pace very well and warning signs always burn brightly in my mind when they start saying things like 'Oh, yes, you can edit the content yourselves - well, some of it - actually, only the really templated stuff'. We've been singed before with outside providers not sharing files and ultimately the content becomes useless because we can't change it, they disappear off the face of the earth, or demand some ridiculous fee to hand over the goods.

As I went on to explain the complexities of Flash to the management team, covering interface design, creativity, graphic design and actionscripting, I was horrified to hear them say, 'But we can just send a few people to a course, can't we?'

I shuddered on the inside.

Disturbing Comment #2
Perusing a Web Standards digest yesterday, I came across a thread concerning the take-up of Web Standards in relation to job-ads. The conversation was around the fact that either employers don't know about Web Standards and so promoting yourself as WS developer doesn't get you very far, or Companies that understand the importance of WS have given up expecting recruits to have this knowledge and are resigned to be expecting to train them in-house.

One reply in this thread bemoaned that 'all employers want is that you know Dreamweaver, and Dreamweaver spits out completely bad and invalid code, so we shouldn't be using it, and why can't employers realise this '.

Clearly, this person doesn't know Dreamweaver like I know Dreamweaver.

DW does not do this. Any program that generates code for you is going to need a little tweaking but really, the tweaking involved here is so minimal it adds nothing to my development time. I set it to produce XHTML and most of the internal checking is done for me. I set up my style sheets and validate them and off I go. No fuss. Most pages validate first go with the W3C validator, and if not, it's usually because I've done something silly.

People who make these comments don't seem to understand that you have complete control over the code in DW - you can work in a split screen mode or All code mode or Design mode; whichever you choose.

Yes, your Auntie Flo might use DW for the local Lawn Bowls Homepage and all she ever looks at is Design Mode (though at the price she's more likely to FrontPaging) and so the code is never massaged; but don't underestimate the power of this application in the hands of a true HTML'er - it boosts productivity and makes site management easy.

You go, good thang.

Fabulous Fangs for FireFox

This looks mighty interesting - a screenreader simulator extension for FireFox. Not meant to replace testing in the real thing (eg Jaws) but it's pretty nifty.

Fangs for Firefox

no razzle no dazzle, just keep to the left

Imagine if every web page you visited looked exactly the same, whether it was an application, a banking site, a news site or a knowledge site. Imagine if you had to visit these same sites every day, all day.

When one of these sites wanted to hold your attention, show you something new, teach you a new trick, how would they perk up your brain to say ' Hey now. That's different, that looks interesting. I'm going to enjoy this experience'?

Intranet Dependence
A company Intranet is a controlled Web space. A large Intranet can contain vast screeds of information all interlinking, mixed with user applications for payroll, people management tools with in-house systems, product information and corporate communications - and training. Workers become dependent on the Intranet to perform everyday tasks and so they sit looking at it every day, all day.

In the past, the Intranet where I work was sprawling and lacked control; individuals developed sites for different Business Units, and many small groups. Some were colorful to say the least, some inventive and some extremely professional. Unfortunately people with no design, usability or otherwise training ran amok.


Oh Intranet, Wherefore Am I?
And then Big Brother stepped in. Now all sites are controlled by way of a central developer tool (which we all hate) and forced templates. In many ways this is a good thing. There is standardisation, there are content publishing rules and the organisation can feel more secure about what is 'out there'. On the downside there is a distinct lack of 'brand' in the sense that everywhere you go looks exactly the same; there is a 'transparency' between sites - it's very difficult to orientate yourself to where you are in the mass of sites that form the Intranet as a whole.

You Are Here?
There are only a few visual clues that assist you to realise when you have changed from one site to another rather than simply from one page to another within the same site (they don't allow new windows or popups). One clue is template color however there are only 4 template color schemes allowed in the publishing tool and 3 are unattractive. Most developers choose the same color template (mid blue) as it is the most pleasing to the eye. Other clues include breadcrumb trails and banner site titles but as these are visually identical in every site, they do not work.

Variation in content display is discouraged and if you try anything different the opinion is that you are 'showing off'. They actually don't want people to be creative. Yet, it's only creativity that will assist in orientating the site visitor within this environment of sameness. That doesn't mean a plethora of dancing frogs either.

No Climbing the Trees
Although the old Intranet had it's problems, most people did not have trouble with orientation; they had difficulties finding information but factors affecting that included inefficient search engines and no metadata. It seemed easier to see how one site related to another as they had different 'personalities' or flavours and either lived on seperate servers or on seperate directories; looking at the URL gave you clues to where you were. Now sites seem to float in a void - they all have seperate URLs, every single one - there's no backtracking up the tree.

Time to Sparkle
Slip into the mix of Intranet content a large dose of eLearning. The big brother approach is to make that look exactly like the rest of the Intranet because 'users don't like to have to think'. Excuse me but isn't that actually what we want them to do when in training? Don't we want to snap them out of the everyday and perk them up into a different state of mind?

"Now it's training time! See the interesting things we have to show you? Doesn't it look inviting and different to what you stare at all day long? Don't you feel valued that we have gone to so much trouble to create a module that looks pleasant, vibrant and fun enough to help you absorb all the information we want to shove at you?

Queer Eye for the Intranet Guy
"Oh but users don't want different navigation methods. And we need to make it all the same so they know exactly what's an instruction and what's an important note and what's a learning check question and what's a top of page arrow"

[Carson] Ever heard of CSS people? [/Carson]

Unfortunately, most of the Intranet big whigs don't understand CSS. They don't understand its relationship with content and presentaton. They haven't twigged to the fact that all the elements of any page can be structured exactly the same but presented in different 'skins'. One guy was even trying to get us to 'register' our style sheets with a central body so they could check them for accessibility issues. Pardon moi? That's like reviewing a recipe to decide what the cake tastes like!


Smack in the Face with a Wet Fish
I have developed a multitude of online modules that presentationally all look entirely different; different color shemes, different text areas, different buttons and banners. Look closely however and you will see that they are all actually functionally the same. Navigational elements and methodologies are identical.

The learner knows what to do without instructions as far as getting around goes, however the visual 'smack in the face with a wet fish' makes them sit up and prepare themselves for a new experience - they are automatically encouraged into learning mode.

So, away with thee harbingers of creativity doom and get thee to a nunnery. Tend to thy Intranet if must be but keep thy sticky fingers out of my elearning pie and free the workers!

speakeasy - the accessibility of language

It's funny when you are thinking about something one day and it becomes reality, or at least springs into focus, the next.

There has recently been a changing of the guard in my place of employment that I haven't quite liked. A new broom can be a good thing but when that broom brings all its little dustpans and mops (aka a personal posse) along with it, it can be disconcerting. I think, 'Hey, whoa there, hang on a minute; what just happened?'. Suddenly, it seems that that everyone around me is walking the new walk and talking the new talk and I feel left behind or 'out of step'. But deep down I have a suspicion that much of it is for show; they are afraid that if they don't take on the 'new culture' that they will be discarded.

managerial jargonism
The other day I listened (accidentally of course; I had nowhere else to go) to a phone conversation that one of the mops was having with some of my team members. This person's entire conversation was smattered with managerial new-age jargon and I found myself screaming, 'Just talk plain English why dontcha!'.

Luckily I was only screaming on the inside.

Eventually I couldn't stand it any longer and stuck my earphones in as far as they would go and let the music drown out the drivel.

It's all about 'committing to outcomes', 'being comfortable in your space', 'developing strategies to move forward' and 'taking responsibility for value-adding to the workspace'. Aaargh!

chunking down not dumbing down
I spend my days turning technical, legal and business mumbo jumbo into chunks of easily digestable information that my audience can swallow. In one sitting. They don't have time to read and re-read details so it has to be in a format that is instantly understandable and clear. So why is management feeding back this corporate gobbledegook that means little and acts as a coverall for their (hidden) agenda? I don't respect it and I don't respect them for forcing it upon us.

weasel words
And then yesterday I read a book that delighted me. Death Sentence by Don Watson exposes these 'Weasel Words' as nothing more than a sort of slang that has seeped down from politicians to everyday language use. He expounds that we shouldn't be accepting it. We should fight it off - on the beaches and off - and question its use.

accessible language
This led me to thinking about the accessibility of common language. By using this twaddle aren't we actually disadvantaging our readers? If it becomes harder to understand the written or spoken word, is it not making our content less accessible? Of course!

This quote as stated in the book is from the Human Rights Commission:

Language is a key issue of access for people from a non-English speaking culture. It affects the individual's ability to access and use services and their knowledge of services.

From my experience, I would extend this to all individuals, especially when you are trying to teach something; clinging to some expectation that the bigger, more corporate-sounding a sentence is the better, only results in muddled meanings.

the language of cliche
Here's an example from Don's book:

Given the within year and budget time flexibility accorded to the science agencies in the determination of resource allocation from within their global budget, a multi-parameter approach to maintaining the agencies budgets in real terms is not appropriate.

Hmm. Yes. I see... And another for good measure:

Teamwork is critical to effective continuous improvement and standardization. Individuals can support the team by taking responsibility for the successes of the team following through on commitments, contributing to discussions, actively listening to others, getting your message across clearly, giving useful feedback, accepting feedback easily.

It's the language of cliche and doesn't really say a whole lot, does it?

Let's factor in plain speaking and clarity of meaning when we talk about accessibility, and not just Web Standards and validation, alright mate?

bagging dreamweaver - just don't

Nice article by Eric Meyer that explains the mysteries of collapsing margins in CSS.

Now, on to today's rant. I get a bit miffed when people bag Dreamweaver as though it was beneath them to even touch such a heinous beast; as though it was a badge of honour to handcode. Yeah, verily though shalt write the code and all of the code. All I can think is that these people have way too much time on their hands or only manage a site or two at a time.

I am completely all for handcoding and in fact that's what I started doing before WYSIWYG editors came up to scratch, and haven't really stopped since. If you don't know the code you can't fiddle with it successfully and heck, often it is faster to delve in and sort it out rather than selecting from menus. Don't just rely on your editor, whichever one you may use.

What I don't get it is there is a lack of understanding about how DW works. You actually get a choice of viewing your stuff in Design View or Code View, and hey, guess what? You can view and edit in both at the same time! Amazing. So, for beginners, Design View might get them started but for hardcore handcoders, it speeds up your development time being able to jump in and out of both views with nary a fuss.

It's extra cheese when you manage huge sites of more than 100 pages, or multiple sites.

In my case, I develop online learning modules which I've set up in a hierarchical structure - each new module links up the tree to common images and styles, while having it's own img directory. DW's site management features make maintaining these a breeze - hundreds of pages that I can update at the touch of button with no databases or backend in sight.

In the past, CSS was a bit of bugbear with DW in that it did not render it correctly in Design View but in MX with DesignTime stylesheets this was alleviated somewhat. With MX 2004 the problems are much fewer. I tend to write my CSS by hand but still within the DW environment - mainly because I like doing it and I don't lose the skills.

Other benefits of using DW can be seen when you have to convert existing stuff to XHTML and Standards compliance. DW does the chunky conversion part for you, and then you can clean up missing alt tags etc by using the W3C validator. It's a relatively easy process and one I just did for a module with over 100 pages. Using DWs advanced Search and Replace functionality made it a cinch to catch all the little errors and mass update them in one fell swoop.

Time is of the essence and another nifty feature that keeps you rolling along is the fact that you can edit images and Flash content directly from DW. Select an image and click Edit with Fireworks and the original PNG opens before your very eyes; do your thang and click Done and the image is updated in DW; the same applies for Flash objects. You probably wouldn't think such a thing would reduce working time by much, but it does - truly!

So I guess you can tell I love Dreamweaver. I pretty much love all my Macromedia products and with increased support for Accessibility and Standards in each new version, things can only get better.

My advice to any newbie is to learn the code as this gives you the ability to use the full throttle power of the beast that is... Dreamweaver!