I love the discussions at *Asterisk. The dicussion about Font Resizing Widgets generated some good debate, particularly the post by Thomas Baekdal. I understand the point that Thomas is making but don’t see what benefits it would create.
A related article raises the issue of where accessibility has to be built into websites, and where the user must take some responsibility.
I guess it’s like deciding if a building has to provide wheelchair access (which is a legal requirement usually) or do they go as far as to provided the wheelchair too?
A Simple Request
“Hey Joe, can you add a link to the decisions page from the Welcome page?”
“No problem, anything can be done given enough time.” I reply.
“We need it next week.”
I’m sure that most web developers have all had this conversation at some stage. And I’m sure that most web developers have had to ‘fix’ another developer or designers earlier work.
This is the dilemma:
- Make the changes to the old page or
- Start from scratch and build the whole thing again
The Maori Land Court Website was developed in 2001 by a design firm. Like most sites of yesteryear it had things like Splash pages and welcome screens before you actually got into the site. Another common practice was that of creating a web page by taking the designer’s image and slicing it into table that is a mess of precisely sized cells and spacer images.
Then there are the mouseovers; the original spec wanted text on the welcome page in English, but it was to change to Maori when the user hovered over the link. Any changes that I made to the page had to retain this functionality, and as far as practical, look just like the current page.
One of my pet hates are web pages that use images of text, instead of text (I’m sure Nielsen agrees), but that was how the original designers had developed the site. No doubt there are designers around that don’t want their typography ruined by a substituted font but I think most users don’t really care (after all, the site is for the users).
The Decision
Standards zealots our there would not have a tough decision, but did I really have time to spend all day rebuilding one page? I was sure that I could hack another cell into the table, create the images for the text and put it all together in half a day. But, I decided to give the table-free version a go, just to challenge myself and see if it could be done. I also had to adhere to the New Zealand eGovernment web guidelines, which recommend that tables should be avoided for layout purposes. A large number of our audience are rural and have to contend with 9600 b/s dial-up speeds down shared phone lines that go under electric fences.
Inventory
I had a page with 15kB of HTML, a 1kB stylesheet and 46 images (54.7kB) for a total of 70.8kB. The original page consisted of a picture of a whakairo (carving), made up of several of slices, with the navigation text to its left, each with its associated translation image, an animated GIF of the words “Maori Land Court” and its Maori Translation – “Te Kooti Whenua Maori”, and a small icon.
The Method
The images
I went into my toolkit and pulled out my trusty Photoshop and proceeded to reassemble the slices of the whakairo. (As an afterthought, I should have just used a screen dump.) Luckily, the background was one image on its own not part of the slicing, so that was easy to use as was the animated text GIF. The icon on the original page was rotated a different amount for each menu item. I decided that it was better just to use one image for the icon. The original designer may disagree but as I have stated, the site is for the users.
The HTML
The basic structure of the document was simple: it had 8 links and some images for decoration, so that’s how I built the HTML; one <div> for pictures, one for navigation links and one for accesskeys.
Pages: 1 2
It’s my last week of work for the Ministry of Justice. I start on May 10th at ERMA New Zealand as their ‘Web Coordinator’, which is a much more accurate title and less of a mouthful than ‘Information Resources Advisor’ at Justice.
I’m looking forward to the change. Working at Justice (formerly Department for Courts) has been very interesting, particularly as the law is outside my field of expertise. It’s been a great learning experience. Going to ERMA New Zealand feels like going back to my roots: I’m a chemist by training (Chemistry, not Pharmacy) so now I get to do a job I love, in a field that I know.
There are a lot of colour (or color if you prefer) tools on the web, but the latest offering from Cameron Adams (aka The Man in Blue) is the best that I have found. I have played with ColorSchemer and Web Whirlers wizard which are also very good.
There are two people that I would particularly like to thank this ANZAC Day:
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Duncan Cherry, my maternal grandfather was an armourer in the RNZAF and fought in the pacific. He tells great stories about good times and commeradery.
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Sholto Lindsay, my paternal grandfather was in both the New Zealand Army and later the Navy. He served on Motor Torpedo Boats in the English Channel.
I am lucky to still have them around and grateful for the efforts of them and all of the allied forces.
I hope that my children are as lucky as I to not see war on this scale.
Simple, practical, descriptive…
What more could you need?