Within this category
- Movable Type (22)
- UTF8, MySQL, Perl and PHP
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In my previous post I mentioned that Haddock Blogs was finally almost free of the character encoding errors that have plagued it for years.
In the interest of helping anyone else doing similar work in the future but also, more selfishly, in the hope peopl spot things I could do better, here’s a summary of what I’m now doing to keep things UTF8 from start to finish.
In Web Development on 25 April 2008. Add a comment. Permalink
- The new BBC homepage
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I previously mentioned that over the summer I spent some time at the BBC thinking about the direction their homepage could take in the future. So I also feel bound to clarify that we were looking at the page’s long term future, rather than the urgently needed
“lipstick on a pig”“lick of paint” quick fix which is currently in beta.In Web Development on 19 December 2007. Add a comment. Permalink
- A homepage, the power of design, and “consulting”
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Before I played a tiny part in the gentle launch of the BBC Programmes website I spent the first few weeks of my summer break from college on another project for the BBC. Myself and Alan Connor were charged with the task of thinking about the direction the bbc.co.uk homepage should take in a year or two’s time.
In Personal, Web Development on 4 November 2007. Add a comment. Permalink
- Net::Delicious errors
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I don’t like apologising for a post right at the start, but I must admit that this will probably be of no interest to most of you. But I’m a bit stuck with some perl and if nothing else, finding a solution might help someone else who Googles for the error messages, something I’ve had little luck with.
In Web Development on 24 October 2007. 2 comments. Permalink
- BBC Programmes
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Amid all of yesterday’s gloomy news from the BBC was hidden one cause for hoorays. The project I’ve been involved with for the past couple of months, BBC Programmes, launched. No, not much consolation to people worried about losing their jobs, but definitely a very good thing for the BBC.
In Web Development on 19 October 2007. 2 comments. Permalink
- PMOG design
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I’ve been slack about writing this up, but better late than never… One web project I’ve worked on while not prancing around at college has been Justin Hall’s Passively Multiplayer Online Game (PMOG) in association with the BBC. The gist is that Justin and Duncan Gough have been looking for ways to turn browsing the web into a game, with the added bonus of educating new users about the internet and its culture.
In Web Development on 14 May 2007. Add a comment. Permalink
- Times Online's bizarre CSS revisited
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A Chris posted a comment on my original post about the Times’ odd use of CSS on their new website. “I’m not a nutbag,” he says, “and this is a perfectly legit way of using CSS.” OK, so it is technically correct, but there’s no way anyone with common sense would do this.
In Web Development on 18 February 2007. 5 comments. Permalink
- Times Online's bizarre CSS
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One for HTML/CSS geeks now. The Times relaunched its site yesterday. Today it seems to work. But look behind the scenes and you’ll find some of the most bizarre class names I’ve ever seen…
In Web Development on 6 February 2007. 6 comments. Permalink
- Quick Twitter
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As I’ve mentioned, I’m enjoying Twitter a lot. The only problem is that it rarely works for me as it should — I’ve only had text updates to my phone for a day or two over the past couple of weeks, and I can no longer get updates via IM either.
In Web Development on 2 December 2006. 7 comments. Permalink
- The Time When updates
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It’s been a while since I posted anything about The Time When so I thought I’d write a quick update about what’s newish over there.
In Web Development on 20 November 2006. Add a comment. Permalink
- Panopticon
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When using Twitter I love the trickle of updates from friends about what they’re up to. Each update is rarely earth-shattering in itself but I enjoy the cosy ambient feeling of being more in touch with what everyone’s doing. This reminds me that a few weeks ago I was wishing there was a piece of software that made exactly this kind of keeping tabs on friends easier. I shall call this vapourware Panopticon.
In Web Development on 19 November 2006. 4 comments. Permalink
- Your single social network
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I’ve been enjoying twittering over on Twitter recently (here I am). If you hate blogs because you think they’re full of people rambling about pointless details of their mundane lives you’ll hate Twitter, which makes it as easy as possible to post snippets to the web (and your friends’ phones and instant messengers) letting everyone know exactly what you’re doing RIGHT NOW. I’m not sure how much I’ll use it when the novelty wears off but it reminded me of a couple of ideas I had recently. Here’s the first, with the second to come later…
In Web Development on 19 November 2006. 9 comments. Permalink
- A lick of paint
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Having lived with the austere black and white look for a while I felt ready for a little brightening up. Not a lot, but a little. The new colours are shamelessly extracted from Sight & Sound (the print version rather than the website). Apart from an ugly couple of years from 2000 it’s been a beautifully, but simply, designed magazine since I began reading it in the early 90s.
In Web Development on 30 August 2006. 4 comments. Permalink
- Server move autopsy
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It was only early 2005 that I last moved servers and that was such a laborious process that I hoped I’d never have to do it again. But the difficulties of running Movable Type and PHP5 at Pair.com combined with an offer at TextDrive pushed me over the edge and I took the plunge. Result: one long day spent moving everything followed by 2-3 days of clearing up the ensuing mess. Really, this is the last time.
In Web Development on 17 August 2006. 1 comment. Permalink
- 40,000 RSS feeds
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For anyone who’s keeping track of such things, The Time When now has a load of RSS feeds, all with satisfyingly tidy URLs. To be accurate there are getting on for 40,000 RSS feeds, but practically this boils down to:
In Web Development on 1 August 2006. 1 comment. Permalink
- The Time When
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Three months ago the BBC announced ‘Creative Future,’ an “editorial blueprint” for the next six years. One item on the corporate to-do list was “Pilot a Knowledge Building online project called Eyewitness — History enabling people to record and share their memories and experiences of any day over the last 100 years.” I’ve been working on a prototype of this and a couple of weeks ago The Time When (as it’s now known) went quietly live.
Rather than leap straight in to building a huge and complex solution, the BBC decided to create this quick and simple prototype, to see what works and what doesn’t. You add your memories of a particular day in history and everyone’s memories are aggregated together by date and mixed with contextual information about what else was happening in the world that day, eg, 29 July 1981 or 11 Sep 2001.
In Web Development on 17 July 2006. 1 comment. Permalink
- My new Whit Stillman website
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For several years I've been maintaining a page dedicated to the film director Whit Stillman, who has probably escaped having other sites created about him because his most recent film, The Last Days of Disco, was in 1998. I filled the gap, quite enjoying something as simple an un-techy as a fan site. But the old page was getting a little unwieldy, and if he does get another film off the ground Mr Stillman would deserve something better.
In Web Development on 8 July 2006. 1 comment. Permalink
- Ningbar
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Last year I did quite a bit of work creating HTML/CSS templates for Ning.com. They're moving so quickly that most (if not all) of that work is no longer visible, but I've been doing a smidgen more work recently and part of that has just been released: The Ningbar. It's a bar across the top of the screen (for example, here) with lots of constant tools and mini-pages ready to be revealed from it. You can read more about it at and via Diego's post.
In Web Development on 26 June 2006. 1 comment. Permalink
- BBC Innovation Labs website
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Over recent months I haven't produced much work that has been visible in public. The HTML/CSS I did for Ning has been pretty much the only example you could see, and much of that has already been re-worked. It's hard to keep up. But last week my new website for BBC Innovation Labs went live.
In Movable Type, Web Development on 17 March 2006. 1 comment. Permalink
- My new site
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Better late than never, I always say. Always. In case you haven't noticed, I've re-designed my site. Entirely re-built it in fact. This has been an exercise in how not to tackle a web project, an exercise in which I utterly flouted all the sensible rules of thumb I stick to on any work project. With no deadline, no budget, and a client (me) who kept throwing in features it's a wonder the site's finished. I'm trying hard not to be sick of the whole thing already.
In Personal, Web Development on 16 March 2006. 5 comments. Permalink
- Moving photos
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Over the past few weeks I've been laboriously moving around 500 photos I used to have on this site over to Flickr. Even though I love Flickr, I was still wary about putting all my photos on an external site. Despite the fact I have copies of all the pitcures, it feels a bit like giving someone precious objects to look after. But as all my new photos go there anyway, it seemed strange to only have the older ones here. Also, images that aren't in Flickr simply don't seem as useful and connected to other people. I can now easily view all my snaps of Yoz for example. Should the need arise.
In Web Development on 16 July 2005. 3 comments. Permalink
- Working on evnt
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I've been meaning to point at this for a while. Some time ago I did a bit of IA/design work on evnt and the results became visible a month ago.
In Web Development on 30 June 2005. Add a comment. Permalink
- Royal Society of Chemistry's new website
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The Royal Society of Chemistry recently re-launched their website with tasty XHTML/CSS templates constructed by me. As with a previous project, Wood Mackenzie, design was by Wilson Fletcher and the turning of the static templates into a functioning website was done in-house.
In Personal, Web Development on 31 May 2005. Add a comment. Permalink
- Combining RSS feeds into one feed and page
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I've finally got round to finishing my script for combinging all my various fragments of web output into one beautiful stream. At Gyford.com I have a weblog of my writing, which this entry is part of, and a weblog of notes. I also have my links at del.icio.us which I now automatically aggregate daily and post to a local weblog. Finally, I have all the photos I post at Flickr.
In Web Development on 31 December 2004. 3 comments. Permalink
- Combining things into one RSS feed
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Update: I realised my mistake. The mysterious items had empty <content:encoded> elements and NetNewsWire was understandably displaying their emptiness. I'd still be interested in hearing thoughts on how much text/HTML should be in a <description> though…
Recently I've been working on combining all my writing, notes, links and photos into a single RSS feed. I've been using perl and the XML::RSS module, and it's been fun (well, as fun as my attempts at perl get).
In Web Development on 24 December 2004. Add a comment. Permalink
- Goodbye frames, hello CSS
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This piece has been re-written at the request of a third party. 7 April 2004.
Live After Dark, a site I developed at Poke around the New Year, went live last week and despite the design's flouting of many of today's best web design practices, I'm proud of certain aspects of its construction.
In Web Development on 26 March 2004. Add a comment. Permalink
- Sensible RSS feeds for “link logs”
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A few days ago I set myself up with another weblog just for storing links to pages (RSS feed is here). Sometimes it's enough to point people at a site without discussing it. And sometimes I just want to store a link in case I need it again.
In Web Development on 28 September 2003. Add a comment. Permalink
- Awesome commercial use of XHTML/CSS
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Ryan Carver has built a site for Lee Jeans and describes how its CSS and XHTML 1.0 Strict are achieved.
In Web Development on 17 September 2003. 1 comment. Permalink
- Colours
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I'm no good with colours, as you can tell, but here are two simple yet handy things that I'll forget how to find unless I link to them here:
In Web Development on 29 August 2003. 3 comments. Permalink
- HTML is for grown ups
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Creating HTML professionally is an odd thing, because many people assume it's not difficult. This isn't, perhaps, surprising when most peoples' oldest relatives could knock out an HTML page with a few minutes of coaching, even without a friendly WYSIWYG editor. Which is, obviously, a splendid and wondrous fact, and one of the things that makes the Web a miraculous place.
In Web Development on 17 July 2003. 3 comments. Permalink
- Revamped Haddock Directory
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I've just launched a completely redesigned Haddock Directory. I was bored of the old low contrast design which had been around since 1999 so I decided to rewrite the dreadful old code from the ground up. And, the biggest relief, I've finally eradicated HTML tables from all my sites in favour of CSS. It feels like I've “finished” everything, or come as close as one ever does.
In Web Development on 20 June 2003. 1 comment. Permalink
- Cartographic Congress Show and Tell
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Here's my brief notes from the Cartographic Congress Collaborative Mapping Week Show and Tell. Apologies if I have any names or other details wrong… My thoughts are in square brackets.
In Web Development on 13 May 2003. 2 comments. Permalink
- Geo-encoding UpMyStreet
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UpMyStreet is already geo-encoded in a way of course, as almost every page contains specific information about the user's postcode. However we've now linked things together using latitude and longitude in three ways:
In Web Development on 3 April 2003. 1 comment. Permalink
- Do as Cal says
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Cal has a great article about writing robust PHP. Specifically, making it less vulnerable to malicious or dumb users, less erratic on different PHP set-ups, and generally much betterer. PHP is so forgiving that coders tend to get extremely sloppy. I know I do; becoming re-acquainted with Perl's rigour after months of PHP was a shock to my system recently. Perhaps
error_reporting(E_ALL);should be the first thing PHP coders type, the equivalent of Perl'suse strict;?In Web Development on 25 March 2003. Add a comment. Permalink
- Internet Explorer's font size strangeness
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Last week I asked readers to help me work out why some people found the fonts on this site too small to read. In some, if not all, of the cases where this happened, Internet Explorer was set with the Text Size (under the View menu) set to Small. This reduced the text to an unreadable level when the CSS specified sizes in ems, but only reduced it slightly when specified as percentages.
In Web Development on 10 March 2003. 9 comments. Permalink
- Testing font sizes
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Update, 10 March 2003: You can ignore this now as I've since changed how font sizes are specified.
A few people have complained recently that the fonts on this site are too small to read without resizing them in their browser. This has puzzled me as I've been unable to replicate the problem on any browser I've tried. So, if you have a moment, please help with my little font size experiment…
In Web Development on 6 March 2003. 5 comments. Permalink
- BBCi's accessibility report
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BBCi, which I assume is all the web and maybe digital TV bits of the BBC, have published their Accessibility study of BBCi (1.7Mb PDF). It makes for good reading if you're remotely interested in this stuff, which anyone who has ever built a website should be. Full of useful tips and insights. However, any confidence you'd have in the findings making a difference is destroyed by the fact it's a PDF, a format criticised within the report!
In Web Development on 28 February 2003. Add a comment. Permalink
- My x and my y
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I've geo-encoded this site, which weirdly does actually make me think of it as a bit less floaty, to actually have some location in the real world. Anyway, if you look at the HTML source of the front page you'll see these lines…
In Web Development on 24 January 2003. 1 comment. Permalink
- Validation tools
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So, there is of course the great W3C Markup Validation Service for checking the HTML of your pages. I recently came across Checky, a very handy plug-in for Mozilla that lets you instantly access a whole host of different validators and checkers from a contextual menu. And if that's too much work, just pressing F10 can open a new tab with the current page ruthlessly judged in your validator of choice. I've only tried it on Windows, but it makes life just that little bit easier.
Also, I recently, and belatedly, came across Amaya, the web browser the W3C use “to demonstrate and test many of the new developments in Web protocols and formats.” Yes, it has all sorts of Berners-Lee type things like a built-in page editor and collaboration tools. But for the purposes of this post, it also provides some kind of validation — open a page and if there are “Parsing Errors” it tells you what's up. Well, it does for the XHTML pages I've tried anyway. Clicking from page to page and having each tested in some way is nice and easy. Not a substitute for the proper validator, but handy nonetheless.
In Web Development on 17 January 2003. Add a comment. Permalink
- Six degrees for geeks
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Stewart Butterfield has an interesting piece wondering whether it's possible to automate the creation of groups from a network of 1-to-1 relationships. He seems to think (or maybe it's just my own conclusion) that an automated system could suggest some kind of groups but these would be more crude than real-life groups whose boundaries are not on/off, but fade out. If real-life group boundaries were distinct one would never be in the situation of deciding where to draw the line when inviting a group of friends to a dinner, party, etc.; it would be obvious where the social grouping ended.
Anyway, this has prompted me to get round to writing up the making of my friend-of-a-friend file…
In Web Development on 13 December 2002. 2 comments. Permalink
- The same but different
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This site's new server isn't the only change here. While the site looks much the same almost everything behind the scenes has been rewritten. Inspired by the redesign of Wired News and by the need to make my old code more flexible I ripped everything apart and started from scratch…
In Web Development on 11 November 2002. Add a comment. Permalink
