The Return of Educational Radio

For this week's blog entry, I listened to one of the weekly podcast episodes on Boag World, the website of Paul Boag, a self described web designer and usability/accessibilty expert. I tuned in to his 47th episode, titled The Moblie Web.

I hadn't listened to a podcast before, and when I was assigned to listen to one on web design for class, I'll admit I groaned a little inwardly. However when I tuned in to Paul's podcast, I was very impressed, and more importantly, very entertained.

As far as I could initially tell, the reason that people want to tune into podcasts in the first place is to be informed and entertained (in addition to the portability of a podcast, of course). Paul's podcast was certainly very entertaining. His podcast, insofar as I can tell, is recorded in his living room (proven by his crying child in the background) with his buddy Mark, who he banters back and forth with over the course of the hour-long program.

Over the course of the program, I became increasingly aware of the interactivity that podcasts provide. Because of the online forum that the podcast is set up in, it is easy for listeners to go to links that the podcaster discusses, or to stop it and start it at their leisure. It is the most flexible media that a content producer can release nowadays.

As for the content of the podcast, I found that the podcaster kept me interested, despite the fact I wouldn't normally sit and listen to an hour of web design (although I'll admit, an hour was still a very long time to sit and listen for someone who has grown so accustomed to watching visuals alongside the audio, too). The discussion of mobile phones and web browsing, while not necessarily directly relevant to my web design class, brought up a lot of interesting points about accessibility and usability. He discussed the use of style sheets, in particular relation to mobile devices, but it made good points about how widely accessible a website must be for a variety of browsers. For example, Paul pointed out that there are actually 40 different browsers available for mobile devices, with over 160 different devices to use them on.

One aspect he discussed that we are yet to really touch on in class is the cost of making your website usable by all browsers. The time and money it takes to test your web page on various platforms, browsers, and devices can become costly, and web designers must analyze how necessary it is for their website to be accessible by anyone and everyone.

All in all, the podcast was informative and entertaining (although a little long), which is everything a podcast is expected to be. Next time, though, I still think I'd rather listen to streaming internet radio, instead.

Designing for the Blind

When I first read Adam Greenfield's musings on website design titled The Bathing Ape, I was not blown away. For the most part, he seems to be remarkably interested in what he has to say about everything, and not a great deal of concern for how his audience is receiving it.

A poorly designed essay, if I do say so myself.

But once you get past Greenfield being self-involved, he does make some good points. His big problem with some designers is that, well, they aren't really designers. They are more what he deems stylists: people who play with the artistic merits of the website, without really considering the functionality of it.

His point was truly illustrated when I began to think back to my MySpace experiences. Stumbling across some friend of a friend's home page, only to be harassed by a blinking, falling star background in every colour of the rainbow, killing any chance I have of reading any of the text on their page. Although really, if they've opted for the falling star background, I probably don't have much of an inclination to be friends with them, anyway.

There are, however, some shining examples of web design out there. All is not lost! In fact, MySpace competitor Facebook should be commended for one reason and one reason alone: they don't let people customize their HTML. This way, someone browsing through the website always knows where to look on any other person's page for information. Want to know what school they're from? Sure! It's the same as on your home page? Listening to music on your computer already? Well no fear! It won't be interrupted by yet another clip of Save Your Scissors by City and Color! The lines are clean, the colours are neutral and appealing, and there is a definite logic to how all of their links go together.

Facebook has recognized the one very important fact that Greenfield sees, but MySpace clearly doesn't: not everyone can be a designer.

Changing my ways for the Tao Te Ching

In order to better understand how to create a web page and spruce up my blog, I recently read an article by John Allsopp title The Dao of Web Design. For the most part, Allsopp made some good points about how to make web pages accessible to anyone. By using style sheets instead of HTML for all style elements, you create a much more accessible web page, because any person on any computer can go in and edit the page as they best see fit.

Now, some of this was a little shocking to me. As a long-time HTML user, the world of CSS is a very scary one to me. I like to use HTML to emphasize my point. See? And I am also part of that old school of web designers that Allsopp speaks of that believe the website is thought of like the printed page, wherein the designer expects their hard work to look identical on every browser. I am one of those people who will spend ages browsing over a Colour Codes sheet, picking exactly which shade of fuchsia I wish to inflict on visitors to my website.

Allsopp argued that this is no longer the case. He believes that a web design should be flexible and adaptable, in order to meet the needs of all of its visitors. By using style sheets, he says, you can control fonts using relative formulas rather than absolute values, or allow people to change their colours, based on what they are best able to view. While I would typically reply with, "No! There's no way! This is MY website and I'll edit it until everyone sees it MY WAY!", I am beginning to understand why the web does not work like that. With such a large audience, it is unreasonable to assume that my vision of my web page is the only acceptable one. Once I begin to better understand how to create CSS, I can further my education as to why I'm not always right. A shocking revelation, I know, albeit a necessary one if I want people to read my web page and actually enjoy reading it. Oops, that was more HTML , wasn't it? I'm going to have to get out of the habit of doing that...