T-Log

It is true that it is disappointed when my site was shortlisted but not granted the prize for the eXtreme Web Design Award. I admit I overlook a detail confirmation testing step. I tested the site with Webxact, it shows no error for the Accessibility test in the first page (only warning, not error), but it shows an error in the detail page…..partly being faked, partly being of my careless.

However, attending the lecture listening the sharing from students who receive the awards teach me almost nothing but many myths exist.

1) Don’t emphasize the advantage of using Google webmasters tool for allowing Google indexing the site. Google crawls the WWW occasionally but not base on how long you register the site to that tool. The tool only allow you to have more control in managing how Google crawl the site, and have a more detail look to the searching statistic.

2) Submitting allows search engine to know your site easier, the sitemap stands for a road guider where robots/ spider can go, this helps shorten the time for them to crawl the site, but it does not mean it help raising the ranking.. In fact, when more thing are disclosed to spider, they may find your site not good enough even though some part of your web is very SEO and well in content, this is so-call dilution effect.

3)Tags like “changefreq” are not useless in the sitemap structure, they in-cooperate with “lastmod” and search engine old site update record to help search engine judging whether the site update frequency is true or not.

4)When the site grows large, “priority” is useful in guiding search engine where they should visit and crawl more, which part should visit fewer. This help lowering the loading to your web server due to the crawling action.

The most naive point one of the student shared that one of the competitor site: http://cityu-web-hacker-turtle.shing.cc has high ranking because it was newly built, and he even said because of this the site should have an old cache file date as search engine will not frequently update sites that are newly registered. But the truth is that, the author of http://cityu-web-hacker-turtle.shing.cc/ built their site at the beginning of October and keep enriching the site content. That’s why search engine also keep updating their cache file towards http://cityu-web-hacker-turtle.shing.cc/. Hence when the student showed his confusion when he saw the cache file date is so recently.  But I don’t think most student realize this point.

I feel a little ridiculous as long as I listen to the students who share their SEO. Some of them can show some good points, but many of them can be seen that they won that just by luck without detail understanding of some detail parts of SEO and simply said those features are useless.

I think the PIC of this award should has the responsibility and obligation in correcting those myths instead of just let students said something partly or completely wrong to the majority.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/10/real_sharing_vs.html

“What Web 2.0 is in fact?” I think this is the question that many “web 2.0 learner” came up when they first come across with web 2.0, or have general knowledge of Web 2.0. But I agree with what Lessig suggested and Tim O’Reilly commented on what Lessig said: Some site look like or perform like Web 2.0 but they may not necessily really Web 2.0.

On the lecture, some classmate mentioned YouTube is Web 2.0 site while Lessig raise our mind that, is it really web 2.0? According the definition, Web 2.0 empharizes content sharing, but from Lessig’s point of view, the sharing provided by YouTube is not “truly sharing”. Youtube user provides space for video uploading, but user cannot retrieve their original video file. And the video shared among the public thorugh a provided embed HTML tag using table. People just able to load the video through the site but hardly to load the original file. It seems to be a “no so truly sharing” platform in stead of a truly sharing one.

O’Reilly states it is actually depend on how people look at “true sharing”:

Even “fake sharing” is better than no sharing, which is what we had before.
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2006/10/real_sharing_vs.html

He continues states Google Book Search as he example of how so-called Web 2.0 proider may not necessary, but onwardly he stats that people are also trying their ever hard to purpose the true sharing.

To arguing whether a site is web 2.0 or to say a site supposed to be web 2.0 not a web 2.0 one is meaning less. For sure that there are still many ways to interpret a site that is Web 2.0, by all mean to make a site to enhance end-user experience is already what Web 2.0 suppose the web to be.

I don’t know how lecturer and tutor comment on this, I wish to see anyone comment on this issue.

http://24ways.org/

Making website to be attractive is important, catching web site visitors at their first glance can ensure visitor stays longer period of time in your site. And this web page mentioned about what you can do to make a webpage that impress other.

Here is the 24 ways that may help web author making web page that may impress other:

1. Gravity-Defying Page Corners
2. Cheating Color
3. Photographic Palettes
4. Scripting Carol
5. Intricate Fluid Layouts in Three Easy Steps
6. The Mobile Web, Simplified
7. Boost Your Hyperlink Power
8. Knockout Type - Thin Is Always In
9. Fast and Simple Usability Testing
10. A Message To You, Rudy - CSS Production Notes
11. Styling hCards with CSS
12. Revealing Relationships Can Be Good Form
13. Compose to a Vertical Rhythm
14. Showing Good Form
15. Writing Responsible JavaScript
16. Marking Up a Tag Cloud
17. Random Lines Made With Mesh
18. Making XML Beautiful Again: Introducing Client-Side XSL
19. Hide And Seek in The Head
20. Accessible Dynamic Links
21. Rounded Corner Boxes the CSS3 Way
22. Flickr Photos On Demand with getFlickr
23. Faster Development with CSS Constants
24. Tasty Text Trimmer

Some of the suggestions like “Tasty Text Trimmer” teach you how to make a simple JavaScript  component in making some fancy application, adding this kind of application may make people think you are so professional in making something in the web modifiable.

“Flickr Photos On Demand with getFlickr” teaches people how to make use of Flickr’s API in doing some Ajax based features. This give us an insight that for Web 2.0, we usually do not do everything of a web page by oneself, but to employ some API given by other service provider in creating new stuffs.

“Compose to a Vertical Rhythm”shos how to make use of CSS in controlling the page content to be more readable., such as making page with diary theme.

“A Message To You, Rudy - CSS Production Notes” further develop a smallweb memo using CSS with detail step by step explanation.

The site does not particularly mentioning much about web usability or accessibility, only few suggestion talk about this. “Fast and Simple Usability Testing” mentions about how to perform usability testing in a fast and simple way. Although the mentioned method does not look fast for me, it still show a guideline how you can perform such test in a more casual way without losing the point of having such test in improving you website.

And the site also mentioning the importance of following web standard to build site. “The Mobile Web, Simplified” dras the picture of how mobile device will stand for in the future. Which means how many majority people will use mobile device in accessing the Internet. And using web standard is necessary in ensuring your webpage can be shown in different mobile platform. The passage mentioned about WAP 2.0 which is based on XML syntax rule, but concentrating supporting mobile device. As mobile device has limited computing power (even though there are large improvement when comparing with the past), mobile device are now capable to render web page correctly if webpage is built according to web standard. Making webpage that can be loaded perfectly on mobile device will impress other also.

A point to be noted that not all the suggestion works fine for different platform, such as “Rounded Corner Boxes the CSS3 Way”, even though it is simple to apply and look fancy, it works for FireFox but not in Microsoft I.E.Although effect cannot be rendered by I.E. (CSS3.0 is not yet fully published), it shows how backward compatible run if web page is written following web standard (in this case, it shows CSS backward compatibility).

The site has 2 version of 24 ways for impressing your friends, the 2005 and the 2006 version, it is good for web authoring beginner to have a deep look so as to build a better web page with fancy stuffs meanwhile paying focus on web standard guideline.

Usually web 2.0 web page gives people a sense of interactive, dynamic in contents, but a web site which is dynamic in nature is not necessarily a web 2.0 web page.

Dynamic web page refers to web pages that is made of web programming language or the web page consists some client-side scripting. ASP, CGI, JSP, PHP are the common dynamic web page programming languages, these programming language, in addition with database at the back in advance, can allow web page to show dynamic contents. Newsgroup, forum, search engine, guestbook, all the stuffs are powered by one of these programming. Javascript, or HTTP request enriched Javascrip - Ajax which are client-side scripting that allow web page to have a certain extend of dynamic features. You will see there is approximity search drop list when you go to Yahoo! search, you can drag and drop to modify the layout of iGoogle, you can employ Google Maps API in making some elegant web goodies, or in simple seeing some flowers or snows flow from the top of the browsers, they are powered by client-side scripting. In a much simple way, putting some JAVA and Action-script written Flash movie also enriching the ste will some interactive effect.

Meanwhile, Web 2.0 empharizes a suggestion of s a new version of the World Wide Web, for which it is a Web-as-participation-platform that is driven by data, and collaboration resulted by participation/contribution. Usually Web 2.0 is mostly featured by some famous web site like Wikipedia, Google Maps, Flickr, which provide a platform for gathering data, in form of text, image or video, meanwhile these contents are totally owned by public without any hidden.

As you see that dynamic web page and web 2.0 have 2 distinctive prospective definition, we can by then understand that why forum is not a web 2.0 site in general even they provide a platform but usually contents not owned by the public (membership is required, or not all data can be retrieved.)

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200511/web_20_and_accessibility/

Even dynamic web page or web 2.0 eb site, they have to follow usability and accessibility guildline in constructing the web site. The above web site mentioned about the accessibility concern on Web 2.0 web site as web 2.0 website aim at “Ajaxify” their site. Usually Web 2.0 website has lower accessibility and usability, it is because most of them employ Ajax in generating dynamic result, while some specially designed browsers which are for certain disables cannot load the contents that generated by these client-side scripting. For dynamic web site that is programmed by ASP, JSP, CGI, PHP, etc., as the content usually change, it is also have difficulity in ensuring the whole site stable accessibility. Some dynamic contents may be generated with consisting some tags that break the page code structure. Some web 2.0 website may pay much effort in making their site’s layout elegant but pay less concern on accessibility.

So, when someday that you develop a web site, no matter it is dynamic or static, web 2.0 or even upper version-number alluded, effort should also be paid on web accessibility and usability.

More discussion about Web 2.0 accessibility and usability:
Web 2.0 a glimps
Communicating web 2.0 through design