Today sees the launch of the my ‘new look’ Australian Radio Online website. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here!
Australian Radio Online is a unique website that provides a one-stop point for people who want to listen to Aussie radio stations over the net. The portal was started in 2001, and has grown to be the most popular part of my website. Every day, thousands of people pay a visit, so it gives me great satisfaction to provide a service that people will appreciate.
Aside from a sleeker presentation, the new-look website has some exciting features including a new jQuery-dependent dynamic table system that allows visitors to sort radio stations on any criterion they desire. In addition, new interactive features such as a Twitter feed have been incorporated.
On a technical level, the new design represents two small milestones for me.
Firstly, Australian Radio Online is the first of my websites to abandon table-based design in favour of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Website designs based on CCS are quicker to load, easier to adjust and the CSS system provides a lot more design flexibility and consistency. I have been using CSS as a support for tables-based designs for years, but have never built an entire website with CSS-based design before. Building a site from scratch using CSS has been very hard work, but I have learned a great deal and am confident that I can use those skills for updating other parts of my website as the need arises.
The second milestone is that the entire website is 100% compliant with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional web standard. Standards compliance ensures that websites will render correctly in as many browsers and under as many operating systems as possible. Standards compliance also ensures that visually impaired website visitors who use screen readers will be able to enjoy the website as much as everyone else.
As of Tuesday 3 August 2010, my websites will no longer support Internet Explorer 6 compatibility. That includes The Grapevine.
If you’re viewing this web page through the Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) browser, you will see an advisory at the top asking you to update. You are strongly urged to do so.
IE6 was released in 2001 and has since been superseded by two newer versions. The latest version is Internet Explorer 8, which you can download for free here.
IE6 has several key problems:
1.IE6 doesn’t support many common web standards, such as key aspects of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which are integral to most modern websites (including this one).
2. IE6 is extremely susceptible to virus attacks, because of its poor security suite.
3. Microsoft is phasing out support for IE6.
Designing websites that render in all browsers is challenging enough as it is. Designing a website for a decade-old browser is almost impossible! In recent times Google, Facebook and YouTube have all stopped supporting IE6, and as of 3 August 2010, so have I. According to my web stats, 8% of readers are using IE6 or IE5.
Internet Explorer is free, and will takes less than 5 minutes to update. Of course there are many other great free browsers, such as Firefox, Safari and Opera that you can use as an alternative.
If you’re behind a corporate firewall, please ask your employer to allow you to upgrade.
Recently, Google announced an additional feature to their popular Google Maps service: Google Maps Earth View. The new feature brings together the software-based Google Earth with the website-based Google Maps. I quite like the potential that this feature offers.
Google Maps Earth View requires the installation of a small plugin to enable it to function on individual computers. Once installed, a person can ‘fly’ around a city, looking at a landscape of buildings and hills that is rendered in 3D in varying degrees of accuracy.
Render of Sydney, NSW, Australia, showing the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.
Google Maps Earth View is a fun website to use, but the difficult directions control panel makes navigation a challenge sometimes. In the window above, you can watch a 5-minute video presentation that I have created, demonstrating some of the features and problems.
Because it is in its infancy, the amount of rendering is minimal, But in time, it will be possible to travel around Australia and the world, looking at the various sites.
On an international level, particular detail can be seen in the renders of Tokyo (Japan), Washington D.C. (USA), Paris (France) and London (UK). One of the funniest renders is of the Kim Il-sung monument in Pyongyang, North Korea, which is very reminiscent of Flat Stanley!
About six months ago, I became a late convert to Facebook. I had long resisted the call to join, but eventually I decided that I should try it and see what it’s like. I reasoned that perhaps I might be surprised and my preconceptions would be proven false. So I joined.
Now I wonder if it was worth the bother? The sad truth is that Facebook is a very shallow pool in which to wade.
When I first joined, Facebook was mildly interesting. I bumped into a few people that I’d not seen for a while, so it wasgood to see what they were up to. I was also able to enjoy the photos, personal observations, and other contributions of my work colleagues, friends and family that I’d previously been excluded from. Those were also good.
But there was a lot about Facebook that wasn’t good.
Signing up on Day 1 was easy, but adjusting all the default privacy settings to a level that actually respected my privacy was very time-consuming.
In terms of coding and functionality, there’s no way to embed image thumbnails nor hyperlinks on Facebook within comments. More incredibly, there’s no way of editing posts. In cases where typographic mistakes are identified or errors-of-fact emerge, the only choice is to delete and re-post a comment. If that is done after someone has commented, their contribution is deleted too.
What surprised me more was the very shallow nature of the enterprise (more than I expected). People who would never talk to me in real life suddenly and inexplicably wanted to become a “friend” on Facebook.
I have run my own website since 1998, so I probably come from the “old school” of the internet where people hosted personal websites and interacted via forums and blogs. Blogs have really taken off in the “Web 2.0” era, and this has been a blessing. There’s nothing I like more on the internet than to read informed, thoughtful and heartfelt opinion on topics, even those for which I have opposing views. I also enjoy the discussion that follows.
Sadly, Facebook seems geared entirely to discourage this sort of depth and texture. Actual discussion is rare.Instead, it favours triviality and superficiality. The online quiz results, spam advertising (in the form of “liking” something), “gifts” or stupid status updates just become tiring after a while. The pointless bra colour meme was especially notable in this regard.
I won’t suspend my account just yet, although as the New York Times reports, this is an increasing trend. But I will definitely pull-back on the posts and see how it pans out. Basically, I am just losing interest.
Facebook always did seem over-hyped. As it turns out, it is.
After 18 months, I decided that my website and blog were in need of a new design. After several long nights, I am proud to launch the latest incarnation of my website Adam Dimech Online. Over the past 11 years, the website has had many appearances and this would constitute the sixth major design change.
Why bother, you might ask?
The previous design was starting to look cluttered and was not adapting well to expansion in the website. Whilst considering the new look for the website, I had a few aims:
1. I wanted a design that was unique, modern, but also personal.
2. I wanted to preserve the “floral grunge” style of the previous design, but without it being so messy. (Does that make sense?!)
3. I wanted to unify the design of my blog with my general website. (Previously, the two didn’t unify).
4. I wanted to get the designing and implementation done in as shorter time as possible. (There are plenty of other things I’d rather do with my time!)
My task over the last few weeks has been to conceptualise the layout and site architecture, design the graphic elements, code the HTML and CSS, implement the PHP-includes and scripts, then test it all out to make sure it worked well in both Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Despite the intense workload, all of that was relatively easy. What wasn’t easy for me was to design a WordPress theme from scratch. Whilst the WordPress theme codex was useful, I gained as much from pulling the old theme apart to see how it all worked. I am pleased with the new look, and have learnt a lot from working on it. And best of all, my blog now has a completely unique appearance.
There are just few small loose ends that need to be tied-up, but basically the job is done. I hope this design lasts a little longer than the previous one!
