Republic Radio: a great radio station with a bad website

There is a Greek radio producer, N. Komninos, whose shows are truly fascinating because of the great music he plays. By the time I ‘ve heard he was going to manage his own radio station I was excited. I can’t say the same about the website of the station which offers much less than it promises. The poor content is the main problem. There are also some more issues which make the whole experience even worse.

Design issues

Well I can see why there ‘s so much yellow everywhere. It’s part of the concept and I accept that. However, it is problematic when you stay at the page more than than a minute or so.

Navigating in this page is a problem too, not because of the shape or style of the icons but because you need to guess their meaning. So we have beautiful but not usable icons. What’s more important? You guess.

There is also this Flash thing. Actually, only the navigation system takes advantage of Flash capabilities. At the same time the website remains inaccessible, there are certain SEO issues, the website is difficult to be updated etc. So here it comes the usual question: did they really need Flash?

Content issues

All of the above could (?) be ignored if there was some content in this website. Because there isn’t. The only real info you can take is the program of the radio and the online radio link. Except for it affords only Windows users. I definitely don’t care about this silly ping pong game. If I wanted to play ping pong online, I would have visited a relevant, not a radio station, website.

In other words it is obvious that real content has been replaced by not important content. A wallpaper is a good gig, nothing more. There can’t be as important as the news of the radio station. Dj picks (a list of songs picked by each producer) could be shown beside each name at the program list. There is no reason to occupy a place of something more important in the menu.

All in all we come back to the same old thing: content is the king and without content there can’t be a king. Yes, the designer of the website approached it a way I wouldn’t. He could have done more (or less - it depends on the side of the coin you choose). However, people who thought and decided the content of this website made the real mistake. I wonder how often they visit it or how eager they are to visit it.

A book with no pages

The polished front page hides a book with no pages. I am pretty sure that if someone had made a simple usability test all of the previously mentioned problems would have been revealed. I can’t see why a user could stay there more than 30”.

It is not hard to think how easily this website could become more useful for its visitors. It ‘s a petty such a good radio station does not have a website it deserves, that’s all.

Waiting for Leopard

There is no question about that, I will definitely upgrade to Leopard. Apple has convinced me everything will go just fine.

Of course this is just what I want believe. I think it will take me a backup, patience and some attention to the details. I don’t even want to remember the Windows ages when I ‘d have to upgrade the drivers, the antivirus etc.

The price won’t be a matter. As Jobs said:

Leopard will cost $129 just like our previous operating systems. The Basic edition will cost $129, the Premium edition $129, the Business edition $129, the Enterprize edition $129 and the Ultimate edition $129.

He he… does it remind you anyone?

Until then… let’s wait…

*The image was taken from The Joy of Tech

Back to writing

This post is definitely not a guide to success for a weblog, it is about something I neglected: write well and write when you want to. It doesn’t matter whether a text is technical or not, it doesn’t matter whether you have a big audience or not and it doesn’t matter whether you write long or short texts. If you write well, it will be appreciated by your audience. Quality requires great style of writing as well.

It’s true you can’t easily concentrate to writing when there are so many things spinning around you. For this website things are somewhat a bit more tricky since it’s bilingual. When I started with it I used to write first the English version of each post and the Greek one came second. By time I saw, since English isn’t my mother language, I got constrained. So now I begin with the Greek text and I kind of translate it in English.

Obviously when you write in a foreign language you have to cross check your syndax and grammar and this takes time and energy. I can’t say I am a good writer but I try to. The strange thing is that in English is easier for me to convert the messages into words and keep up with my style.

The mystery was solved between cooking and cleaning the house. I discovered I started to lose my appetite for good writing. By the time I realized it I started caring once more. I now have accepted that coming back to writing takes time and training and I am pretty eager to make some good efforts towards it.

So I start with re-writing the main areas of this website. I ‘ll do it when I feel to. At the same time I ‘ll try to write better posts as well. I may start with a few stumble steps but I will make it in the end.

Web accessibility: people, problems and solutions

It is not very difficult to realize how many people can’t access the Web the way we do. It only takes a look around. It is selfish to believe, even without saying so, that these people need the Web less than we, healthy people, do.

Handicapped people have to overcome some terrible difficulties in their every day life e.g. cross the city on a wheelchair. In most cases a better life for these people means that the state needs to do certain things e.g. provide them such a wheelchair. Beaurocracy, time and money bump procedures.

When it comes to the Web things are less complicated because a website is made by experts and for experts is certainly easier to work with best practices. It may be not simple but it is certainly easier than buying wheelchairs for handicapped people.

People who have accessibility problems are a few, no?

Not exactly. The list below shows groups of people who can’t access the Web the way we do. It also shows how they access it. No, they are not a few.

• Blind users Web users who have no sight at all may utilize a screen reader, which reads the content of the web page, or rather the HTML, back to them. This software, which sits between the user and the browser, sifts through the HTML markup and the technology deciphers what needs to be read aloud and what should be ignored.
• Partial or poor sight People who wear glasses might land in this category. To take full advantage of the Internet, users with partial or poor sight need to be able to enlarge the text on web pages.
• Color blind users It is estimated that one in 12 men and one in 200 women have some form of color blindness. Enough contrast is one of the various ways to help them view a page without difficulties.
• Deaf users Deaf users are able to access the Internet in much the same way as non-deaf people with one key exception — audio content. If it’s a key function of your website for people to be able to hear a message, then be sure to provide written transcripts at the very least.
• Keyboard users Some of your site users don’t have access to a mouse when browsing the Internet. Try putting yourself in their position by navigating your website using only tab, shift-tab, and the return keys.

The list goes on but I won’t go further.

How we can help

So what does it take to help such people? How Wed designers, developers, webmasters etc. can be involved? We can do several things actually:

• Understand handicapped people. Put ourselves into their shoes for a moment and try to act like they have to.
• Learn about WAI. WAI is a part of W3C which works around accessibility. It is a great movement for a great cause. We need to support the group. The less we can do is to apply the guidelines provided by it.
• Learn about WaSP, Web Standards and the use of standards. WaSP is a group of Web experts, works for standards and evangelize them in order to help all people around the globe to have access to an equitable Web. You can read even in this website about Web standards.
• Become better by taking accessibility into account. Write accessible code. It takes study and time but it is rewarding. It is equally important to realize that using better practices isn’t a matter of trend but a real need.
• Talk about accessibility. We blog, we write in forums, we chat. Why not for accessibility too? We should also help our customers learn about it and explain them why is important for them to provide their customers great services.
• Be helped by the government or private sectors, depending on for whom we work. It was great to see a while ago a lawsuit over web site accessibility for the blind which became class action. I hope this is a clear message for all people who avoid work towards accessibility

What else does it take?

Accessibility goes beyond technical actions. It is strongly attached to semantics as well. A website might pass validation tests. This doesn’t make it fully understandable though. Web semantics talk about writing code a way which conveys meaning to people who can’t read the words at a web page.

Let’s see an example: a list of fruits might be written in HTML as a paragraph. Each fruit is separated from the previous and the next one by a line break. The same list could be supported by the relevant list tags in order to let a blind user understand what is about. Obviously, the latter is the proper one.

So it is important not only to look accessible but to feel too. Using semantics is great help for blind people and developers. A great article around Web semantics, Semantics — Why Bother?, is a good place to start from, in case you haven’t heard the term before.

Can all websites be accessible?

Yes, but it is not always simple. There are certain levels of accessibility. Each level includes a list of criteria which must be fulfilled in order to be a website accessible. The first level is simpler than the second and the third one. On the other hand each level affords users with different disabilities.

Every website can be accessible but not all websites are the same. The larger the site the more difficult to sustain it clean. The more people they contribute to it the easier to destroy accessibility. But don’t forget that a popular site attracts more people, among them handicapped too.

OK, I own a website which sells products or provides services. Why should I pay more to have it accessible?

The cynical view: business is business. Everyone who sells needs to increase his potential buyers. If you keep your website accessible, more they will see it, so you increase the possibility to sell you stuff.

The humanistic view: It all has to do with ourselves. We need to offer people the same opportunities to do things. I certainly can’t write a manifesto about the good and the bad things in life and I am pretty sure that nobody would read it. In such cases I call to my mind the, not so rare, scenario of being myself someone who can’t see. You can do it too from time to time. The more we do it the better for all of us.

Focus on the important aspects

Web designers often think: “My website passes all validation tests. So I did the best for my visitors. Right?”.

I agree, but why you don’t take one more step? Take the most of accessibility by making it an everyday practice. Think of it before the beginning of a new website. Change the way you approach your work, the Web and your clients.

It is better to focus on what is really important, not on a validation error. Important aspects could be:

• Can someone read your content when your CSS is disabled?
 
• When your JavaScript is disabled?
 
• Does your Flash website come with a second one built in plain HTML for handicapped users?

And the list goes on.

Welcome to the accessibility world.

Before I go off there is a thing needs to be clarified. Accessible websites don’t mean ugly, dull, un-sexy websites. Web standards are here to help us keep our well crafted websites accessible.

There is a myth around this issue which springs from designers who don’t take the time or don’t have the guts to evolve. Do not miss an outstanding message from A. Rutledge around this myth: Web Misunderstandards.

What is already said could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship… or a boring theory about helping hands in the Web. It is up to us to make it accessible too.

[The list of groups of handicapped people was borrowed from: A List Apart - What Is Web Accessibility?]

Another boring post about the environment

People learn to treat everyday things as given. Our homes, our companions, our stuff, the air we breathe, the water we drink. It is difficult to realize that there are people who don’t have these things given. And it is even harder to think that we don’t face the same difficulties just by chance.

I can’t be more precise when it comes to so general issues. I can only have some random thoughts:

• Al Gore never made it to become the big boss of the planet. Instead he was awarded with a Nobel prize for his efforts to save it. I wonder which is better.
• I many times think of what would happen if instead of clean water we had to drink poisoned water like million people have to. How would we cope with that? Some people know and run for water.
• This summer we burned everything in Greece. Many people died, other lost their animals, their home, everything. Do we still remember them? Do we realize it was a matter of luck we were not there? Are we going to do anything about them? Or have we totally forgotten?
• For me nature represents innocence and wisdom. Even the most extreme natural phenomena don’t make me be afraid of it. I have learnt some good lessons though. We, people, must be too corrupted and too stupid not to respect nature.
• I see the same innocence and the same wisdom in kids and animals. I don’t have kids. I grew up with animals and now I have Roxanne. All animals have helped me learn a lot about myself. I respect them and I believe they are just one of the numerous children of nature. We should be too. Sometimes I think we are not anymore.
• I become aware of nature by many different ways. During fall and spring nature is music for me too.

(Bad) job opportunities

A Web designer announcement

The candidate should perfectly know Dreamweaver, Flash, CSS, AJAX, Photoshop, Illustrator, 3D Modeling.

He should also know very well PHP, MySQL, ASP.

He should be able to work under pressure and cooperate with colleagues.

He should be no more than 35 years old.

We offer good salary.

Does it look familiar to you?

I picked an average announcement around my activities to show what’s wrong with it. It is actually a bad job position though it doesn’t look like. Obviously the one who wrote it has no idea about Web design and he also needs to refresh his grammar skills. The words “perfectly” and “very well” can’t reveal what’s on his mind.

First of all, this announcement covers at least two different positions. To come up to the expectations a candidate should have abandoned sleeping by the day he became 20. Since then he should try to prepare such a salad of requirements.

Why? Because the perfect usage of Photoshop for example is something that very few people can do. If someone is a Photoshop guru and he also is a Flash expert then we are talking about a phenomenon. How much he should gain per month? €3000? Sounds like a good salary indeed. So if you find this employee don’t worry about pressure and cooperation.

Two more things: What 3D Modeling has to do Web design? I don’t know. Furthermore, Dreamweaver is just a tool. There are dozens of tools which do the same. So if you find someone who has no idea of Dreamweaver but he knows HTML would you reject him?

Beyond what is required, such an announcement suffers from what it doesn’t require. If someone really wants a good Web designer, he should also care about Information design, Usability, Accessibility, SEO, Web Standards and Semantics. Unless he really cares for an Indiana Jones of IT.

Last but not least, a job position includes more than technical abilities. How about judgement, rationale, logic, organization etc? How about opportunities for personal development via certain ways e.g. conferences?

I won’t try to reveal what is hidden behind such announcements, about the people who compose them or their companies. And I won’t talk about what is really meant behind the “We offer good salary” context. I ‘d rather see the clumsy and funny side of such “opportunities” which certainly prevails over the serious one.

Recent acquirements: Coda & OmniWeb

Since the very first days I got my Mac I downloaded Coda and OmniWeb. I made some hard tests on them and by the moment the limited license was about to expire I decided to buy them both.

Coda

Coda is an HTML, CSS, PHP etc. editor but this description is not accurate. Coda does a whole lot of more things.

As an editor, it works perfectly well, but there are a number of equally good editors, for example Textmate. The thing is Coda includes a very handy panel from where you can edit your files both locally and on the server.

Ever better news: Coda lets you update and synchronize both the local and the remote files with one click because it includes an FTP as well! No more pain whether a file has not been uplodaed to the server.

Coda comes with some reference books (HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP) which can save you when in hurry. It also includes a Terminal for the absolute geeks.

Buying coda was a piece of cake and secure as well. It costs less than €50.

OmniWeb

I almost hear you: “How can you spend money for a browser?”

I can when it is about such a good browser. OmniWeb is so good I nearly don’t need Firefox anymore.

It is very stable, secure, fast and customizable. The most noticable feature is the vertical alignment of tabs but there are a lot of features which make it great such as the advanced security settings, the Web development tools, the highly customizable layouts etc.

Omniweb is a very beautiful browser. Only Shiira is equally slick. Unfortunately, Shiira suffers from stability problems, at least this is what I saw in it.

Buying OmniWeb costed me less than €15 and like Coda everything regarding the buying procedure went very smoothly.

Lifestream

Lifestream idea is an effort to scan the daily activities of the owner of a website. If he writes something in his blog, the particular activity is recorder and displayed at the Lifestream page. If he uploads a photo in Flickr, the Lifestream page can present it too. And so on.

So we are actually talking about an aggregator which works just for one. The aggreagator collects data and displays them at the relevant page. Sounds simple. No? Anyway, the idea behind lifestreams is quite interesting. I think that it could work not only for people but for companies as well.

I first heard about lifestreams at the website of J. Keith. Since then I made some efforts to create my own but I didn’t make it until today. So here it is my own stream. (It has been added to the menu as well.) Right now I collect information from this website (posts and comments), Ma.gnolia (my bookmarks), Flickr (my pictures) and Last.fm (my music). I am thinking of adding more services by time.

The specific page is a bit heavy, because I wanted to style it a different way than the rest website. It is an experiment anyway.

[UPDATE 08 Oct.] There is an enhancement in my LifeStream. An RSS Feed so you can spy my activities without having to visit this site.

You can grab it from the Homepage or the LifeStream page.

Lifestream

4 songs for this fall (2007)

This is the second part of what started the previous fall.

• Intervention - The Arcade Fire I liked this song for a while now because of its rythm. What I most like is an inner heat which becomes prominent by the end of it. It is always my favorite from Neon Bible. When I read the lyrics I adored it.
• Heartattack in a layby - Porcupine Tree That’s a diamond. I can’t listen to it any other season but fall. A man drives his car, he pulls off, lights a cigarette and contemplates. He knows he doesn’t go along with his spouse. He believes everything is going to go well in the end. Or maybe not.
• Closing Time - Leonard Cohen This song winks and smiles you. When I listen to it I think of nights of falls where I am going to be in that bar and take the place of Cohen at the video clip.

  Ah we’re drinking and we’re dancing and the band is really happening and the Johnnie Walker wisdom running high And my very sweet companion she’s the Angel of Compassion she’s rubbing half the world against her thigh

• One of these mornings - Moby & Patti Labelle This song reminds me the scene in Miami Vice, the movie, where C. Farrell takes Gong Li from Miami to Havana just for a Mojito. The ones who have seen the movie get my point. Moby made a great song. The voice of Labelle makes it dark enough to fit the season.