Growing up is optional

Despite making the eGovernment web guidelines compulsory, the State Services Commission’s new Treaty of Waitangi website does not measure up to their own standards.

Personally, I understand how this can happen, having worked in the real world and government. However, although we have not yet seen the big stick of guideline compliance weilded by the EGU I think that they would be critical of any other agency that produced a new site like this.

It will be interesting to see the fallout over the next few days.

This:

Full caption information of ATL images available by holding mouse over the image.

works well in IE, but not in Mozilla. As is often said by them: not everyone has the latest technology or standard setup.

Cell phones are both a blessing and a curse. My current employer provides me with one which is good when I need to be contacted and I’m away from my desk (for work purposes). It also has the added advantage that my wife can get hold of me when she needs to.

I wont have one in my new job, which is the cause of some mixed feelings. I like being contactable. However, I don’t like being hassled.

Cell phones have caused a major change in my telephone habits: I call people, not locations. It was only a few years ago that if I wanted to contact someone I thought about where they were most likely to be, and then rang that place (eliminating locations until I found them or decided to stop trying). Cell phones have changed that and now I ring a person.

I guess that this is analogous with sending email and snail-mail.

Following Keith’s coining of the term ‘Web Craftsman‘ I thought I’d chip in with a few of my own points and some discussion of my thoughts. This is always going to be a work in progress so if you think that there are any holes please let me know. Also, if you disagree let me know too (and why: see #3)

1. Web design is web design.

   That has already been covered.

2. Specialists and generalists need each other.

   The generalists such as myself need the specialists. They are a great source on information and knowledge. Learn what you can from them. However, the specialists also need the generalists to keep them in the real world.

3. You can change your mind.

   How many times have you looked back at your work and thought “What the hell was I thinking when I did that?” or “If only I’d known about… …back then.”? I know I’ve done it. If you can’t admit that to yourself then you either know everything, or have stopped learning.

   It’s OK for you to change your point of view when you learn something.

4. Work out of your comfort zone: You’ll learn new things

   This applies equally to specialists and generalists.

5. Read widely

   Start with my links. Most of them are specialists, some are generalists.

6. The degree to which you are a specialist (or not) is measured by your audience

   I consider myself a generalist. The team I work with (Librarians, i.e. Information Specialists) consider me a “Web Technology Specialist”. Our IT department consider me a “HTML, CSS and Standards Specialist”, others an “Information Specialist”. The communications team considers me one of them.

7. It’s about compromise (added 12 May 2004)

   There is a balancing act that needs to be done. There is often debate about design vs. accessibility. They need not be mutually exclusive, but when time and money are added to the equation the focus tends to swing one way or the other.

With all of the talk about vertical communities on the net I thought that I better weigh in with my observations of a legislatively created vertical community.

An intersesting story relayed to me by a salesman for my former employer was that of a visiting middle-eastern man. He was surprised at the number of prostitutes that we have in New Zealand. Who he was refering to were not prostitutes, but the people that stand around outside building on the footpath with cigarettes in their hands.

When New Zealand outlawed smoking in public buildings it drove the smokers onto the streets it created hundreds of small communities with an addiction in common.

Along with the obvious negative side-effects, there are some positive things. Perhaps the most positive is the conversations that it generates. Great friendship and alliances can be made between senior managers and those in the engine room of an organisation. It is where our HR manager meets with out IT staff and Lawyers talk to Librarians.

I’ve decided to sell one of my websites. I don’t have time to look after them all.

Mark Pilgrim has done a review of Google’s Gmail from a accessibility viewpoint. It appears that Google have tried to be a bit too clever.

It should be OK for the able majority, provided they are willing to have cookies and JavaScript enabled. However, anyone else will have problems.

The great p2p debate rages on with many fronts. The record companies try to convince us that we are depriving the artists of income, while p2p advocates claim that sharing promotes sales. My main question is what are you actually buying for when you pay for a CD?

Do you get:

• A piece of plastic laminated aluminium to do with as you please (i.e. a purely tangible piece of property),
• The same piece of aluminium in plastic with rights to use the information it contains (i.e. The tangible product gives rights of use of the intelectual property to its owner) or
• The right to access the information only as the record company authorises (i.e. an intellectual product that is bound to its tangible medium)

A lot of people I know treat it like the first: do as they please. The record companies try to convince us that the last is the correct interpretation. Thank goodness someone in the New Zealand public sector has some common sense. The format shifting rule is a winner in my books.

They’ve been buzzed and b-linked by some well respected guys in the web standards world. We must be doing something right.