Following on from my earlier blog post about universities not teaching relevant web design skills, Opera and Yahoo apparently feel the same, and have come together to launch the Web Standards Curriculum.

It’s an entire standards-based web design course - free online to anyone, and covers HTML, CSS, Javascript and more. 

Well done to those concerned for taking the time to develop what is a great starting point for not only students (who can supplement their “formal” education, and teach themselves the right skills), but also teachers and businesses as well - able to use the resource to improve their current methods etc.  Let’s hope the universities and schools catch up quickly.

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It was an honour for NSDesign to represent the Scottish Web Community at last week’s Best Practice Challenge held at London’s Science Museum, and while we didn’t come home with an award, it was a very proud night all the same.

“The judges commended NSDesign as a great example of a UK enterprise that has taken the drive for continuous improvement to heart”

Personally, I think it was the kilts that did it….

Check out the photos here.

All in all, it was a great night, and just to mingle among the “big guns” of the industry was worthwhile, not to mention chewing the ear off Nick Horne - former UK ambassador to the United Nations (and all round nice guy!), and Emily Taylor (Nominet’s Director or Legal and Policy)…  Just so they remember who NSDesign are for next year !!

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I write this while stranded in the Glasgow Airport BMI Business Lounge, waitng with Martin and Paul for our flight to London (now delayed by 2 hours).  We’re going down to attend the Nominet Best Practice Challenge Awards, where NSDesign are shortlisted for the “Raising Industry Standards“. 

The awards themselves are essentially about making the internet a better more accessible place, and so it’s a great pleasure for us simply being shortlisted among other giants within the industry.  Accessibility has always been at the forefront of what we do at NSDesign, so to gain some recognition for this (and other initiatives we get involved in) is fantastic.

Talking of accessibility - the European Union has just published a public survey on accessiblity, which aims to gauge the current situation with regard accessible websites, the costs/efforts associated with building them, and the affects (and improvements) they give to disabled users.  The research will all be used to determine if a broader EU law on accessibility (rather than a country by country implementation of different laws) is a better approach to take than what we currently have.  Pretty interesting stuff, and I’d encourage everyone to complete it.  It’s just a shame their own survey doesn’t meet accessibility guidelines!

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Last week ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) announced significant changes in the way web domains will begin appear. In addition to the most common web suffixes such as .com and location specific domains like .co.uk, domain names can now be based on any string of letters, allowing the registration of thousands of new domain names. Businesses will now be allowed to apply for a far wider range of domains including more specific locations like .london and .scotland and suffixes relevant to particular industries such as .bank, .flight, .entertainment or .gamble. The existing system categorises web addresses under 260 geographic and general names. The new domain names will begin to appear next year.

There has been concern among the web community as the changes will surely make the web a more complex and expensive place for small businesses and home users, while affecting web security and opening up more opportunities for fraudsters and cybersquatters. Small companies will find it more expensive to maintain their web presence as they be will be forced to buy a lot more domains. The pricing of the new domains will also vary more.

One of the biggest concerns is that the changes could lead the way to a huge online red light district where all adult sites would carry the .xxx or similar suffixes. ICANN had cleared this type of domain then later withdrew it. The process of clearing a new suffix involves the the applicant going through an initial review where anyone can raise concerns on aspects such as racism or trademark issues though if no objection is raised approval will be very quick.

Other changes in consideration include the use of non-English characters in web addresses which would allow Chinese or Arabic letters to appear. The demand for these type of names has been increasing due to the fact that the the internet expands to non English speakers and those who cannot easily type English characters. This particular type of change would definitely be positive for web accessibility.

Links

BBC News Article on the subject: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7475986.stm

BBC Video Report: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7474203.stm

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Anybody watching Wimbledon last night can’t help but admire Andy Murray, and his epic performance against the French number 1 - it really was one of the superb comebacks of the sporting world.

With no “Home Nations” in the football this year (and even Martin’s Italy didn’t have the best campaign), it’s great to see Andy doing the Scot’s proud - lets face it - on the sporting front, we don’t often have much to cheer about (with the exception of me winning the EURO2008 office sweepstake)…  Plus, it gives us a great excuse to mention the website we did for Andy’s Main Sponsor - Highland Spring.

Go Wiild with Andy Murray is a competition “microsite” developed for Highland Spring giving users a chance to win a Nintendo Wii, as well as play tennis with Andy Murray himself…  Although based on last nights performance, best of luck to you!!

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Would you pay money to a Random Electricity Company that sent you a letter saying your bill was overdue?…  Would you hand over your credit card to a Mobile phone company you’d never heard of, simply because they sent you an official looking invoice for your Vodafone account?  I’d hope not…  So WHY are so many people still getting scammed by the Domain Registry of America (DROA) when it comes to Domain renewals.

We first reported on this outfit back in early 2004, and again just recently, but they are just as active today (if not moreso), and still conning people into transferring their domain names into their control, simply down to their official looking letters.  Check out Nominet’s site for details of other current domain scams.

Do not be fooled, and if in doubt - contact NSDesign for any advise or questions before signing a cheque to a company tht you’ve never heard of!

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On Saturday, NSDesign took Clyde 1 DJ Colin Kelly to the Bon Jovi gig at Hampden in Glasgow.  Kind of….  Check out our dedicated site - www.ColinKellyatBonJoviwithNSDesign.com which explains all (and has the photos to prove it).

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I have to say that I am a proud and happy user of Firefox, I keep it open all the time while I’m at work developing web sites, at home I never betray it with other when surfing the net, and I never miss the occasion to advice a friend to download it and start to use it.

Today, after one year and a half from the last mayor version,  Firefox 3 has been released promising substantial improvements.

Memory Leak issue
Probably the most well known negative aspect of Firefox is that after a while that the browser is running, it starts using excessively memory, this is know as memory leak. Fortunately in this new release the way how Firefox manages the memory has been improved and now it’s noticeable a huge difference in terms of overall speed.

User interface
A lot of work has been also done to improve the user experience adding new functionalities. It is more easy to access the bookmarks thanks to a new system of star rating, tagging and search functionality. The address bar is now a lot more flexible allowing users to use it not only to type in URLs but also to search websites already visited or search for bookmarks. The zoom re-sizes all elements of a viewed website (not only the text as it was in previous versions) this improves user experience for those with particular accessibility needs as it renders, scaled up or down, pixel perfectly, all websites independently from how they are developed.

Offline web applications
Switching Firefox 3 to “work offline” it is possible to use web applications without connection, data will be saved on the computer to be later synchronized on the server once an Internet connection has been detected. This is a new way how to use web applications and it is still in process of standardization within HTML 5 specifications.

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A major factor in achieving high search rankings is of course relevant inbound linking. Google analyses not only the quantity but the quality and relevance of the inbound links to your site to determine how important a result it is. This method, alongside keyword optimisation techniques has improved the relevance of search results greatly. Though as is the case with many aspects of the web, this system has in recent times been abused.

There are many websites which buy and sell inbound links to sites which disregard link quality and pass page rank, which has allowed the search results to be manipulated. However in 2007 Google made significant efforts to stamp down on this paid linking practice, enforcing penalties in terms of search ranking and page rank passing ability to the sites carrying it out. The result of this ongoing campaign by Google will be felt in 2008 as the websites who have worked to optimise their sites and legitimately gain quality, relevant links will begin to rise in the ranking and the sites which relied on paid links will begin to slip.

Quick Linking Tips

1. A good way to gain relevant links to your site is to get registered in appropriate online directories which are related to your business. Many of these directories request much the same information although have different limits on the number of characters available etc and registering can be a tedious process. An idea is to create a basic “submission kit” text file with brief promotional copy for your site in a few different formats including a one sentence description and 25, 30 and 70 word descriptions containing your keywords aswell as contact details and prewritten hyper links which can be pasted in quickly. A good directory to be on is Google’s Business Listings: http://www.google.com/local/add
2. Try writing informative and interesting articles which relate to your field of expertise and submit them regularly online. There are several quality article and blog sites where you can submit free articles. Be sure to include your necessary keywords in the article and make use of the hyperlinks the sites allow you to put in at the bottom. Use your keywords here aswell to link back to your site. Articles are especially useful for new sites looking to get spidered quickly. A good article submission site is : http://www.ezinearticles.com
3. Yahoo offers a reliable service which analyses which sites are providing inbound links to other sites. To look at this type “link:domain” into Yahoo’s search engine to get an idea who your competitors are being linked to by. This should provide ideas on where to look for acquiring quality inbound links which are relevant to your business. Yahoo’s version of this tool is more accurate than Google’s.

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When AJAX started to become popular, more and more people started to provide great usable websites improving the user experience, and even applications based on the web started to appear.   Javascript frameworks allow developers to create great applications providing them with complete libraries, unfortunately these frameworks are a quite heavy component of the website.  And here comes the news of today.

Google has just launched a new service, Google Ajax Libraries API, basically some of the main frameworks are hosted on Google servers and available with the intention to reduce the amount of data that the users browser has to download every time it is visiting a different website that uses an AJAX framework.

Clearly the advantages are not only for the users but also for those who own a website using this service, by saving the server bandwidth, offering visitors a faster website, and not having to worry about staying up to date with the framework updates.

The frameworks available at the moment are jQuery, prototype, script.aculo.us, MooTools and dojo.

Sometimes I ask myself what Google still hasn’t invented yet?

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