I found that implementing the big landmark elements was OK. I’ve included the new “header”,”nav”, “aside” and “footer” elements without any real issues however headers and footers as children of “articles” are problematic going forward when it comes to CSS hooks.

I found generally that the new elements still need supporting mark-up (container divs etc) as it’s not possible to use them as hooks with backward compatibility to the older browsers like IE6. The result is that the mark-up is bloated and unnecessarily verbose with an overall reduction in flexibility and human readability. This combined with the addition of WAI-ARIA landmark roles makes for a confusing and difficult to read document at the code level.

For example I have an area of my document that has an element of header with and identity of “branding” and a ARIA role of “banner”. It would have been nice if WC3 consulted internally before forking the semantics to two different words i.e. Header and Banner. It’s just unnecessary.

Other really useful things like forms 2.0 are currently not properly support going backwards and probably won’t be for a while until IE6 dies off in the wild.

It’s one to watch for now. Comments are most welcome.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

Igoshi 使你无需懂他国语言就能涵盖住宿，交通，通讯，医疗各方面的日常交流，并且还有专门针对儿童，素食者和露营的章节。

Igoshi 能显示物品的数量，例如你需要10张火车票。Igoshi也可以显示在食物中避免猪肉。 Igoshi可你帮助你在任何国家买100瓶啤酒。

Igoshi可以从以下地点选购 苹果专卖.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

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Please be aware they only work in the United States of America but if you use one please leave a comment - thanks.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

Hybrid applications

Igoshi is a stateless application using web standards technology in an Objective-C wrapper. It’s an example of what’s being called a hybrid iPhone application. Igoshi uses HTML 5, CSS and jQuery and sits in an Objective-C UIWebview. The design and development process is rather similar to normal web development with the real advantage of only being targeted at one quality browser rendering engine – webkit. Consequently it’s possible to take advantage of some natty CSS like -webkit-border-radius and -webkit-transform. jQuery takes care of the simple logic.

Simplicity

I’m not a fan of complexity and we purposely steered away from the temptation to over-engineer Igoshi. It was easy to come with whizzy things we could do and the really difficult part was paring down any complexity for the wider benefit. For example we avoided any language dependencies common in the iPhone UI elements such as UIButtons. And although we thought about using location awareness as a nice touch, we rejected it because the app was for travel and roaming charges would apply for users. These things and others would have added to the cost of development and use by the end user. Best keep it simple we thought.

Localization on a budget

We do want non-English speakers to buy Igoshi. To that end we have initiated a simple multilingual website. Currently we have French, German and English available with plans to add other main languages as we go. We have a team of very kind translators helping us with our 100 word marketing campaign. We are also adding extra languages to the iTunes Appstore page in iTunes to make the application searchable in other languages apart from English. A friend, who has experience in localization projects for Flash, warned us about in-app multilingual support and we listened.

Igoshi for sale

iPhone users can try Igoshi out from today. We think people will like the ability to order multiple beers and pizza in any locale from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe without struggling to find the right words. It’s a nice thing to have in your back pocket when you’re off having adventures. Or you could just take it on holiday.

Igoshi is available to buy from Itunes. Let us know what you think.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

We simply placed the open app in front of several people and asked them to play with it. We didn’t tell them what it was, what it was for or how to use it. It was brilliant to watch their faces when the moment of realization came. Everyone worked out very quickly it was for ordering “stuff” when your language skills just aren’t up to it. Really quite good fun!

For anyone who missed it here’s the Igoshi demo on Youtube and thanks to all those who helped out.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

The brief

Researching the platform and sales of applications made us aware that whatever we decided to build should be simple and have a wide reach. We fully expect that sales will be very modest but we’ve given ourselves the widest reach by taking a language neutral stance. Igoshi is a pictogram application and the bundle doesn’t contain any language profiles. So theoretically it could be as popular in Japan or Taiwan as it is in Turkey or the USA. The important message is that it’s not locked into a market limited by the cost of multi-lingual support.

Development

The bulk of the application leverages our existing knowledge of web standards programming. To this end the concept design and build were familiar. The big hurdles were getting enough knowledge of the development environment and its quirks.

We found we had most issues getting the appropriate certificates for development and distribution to work correctly. I like the general Apple approach to technology: it’s very simple. But the hoop jumping required to make sure that your application has the correct certificates on the test machine and for the distribution binary was really difficult. I tweeted my frustrations but we got there in the end.

Release

Igoshi is currently being reviewed by Apple. All being well it should be released in the next few weeks and will go on sale in the Appstore. We’ve written the application in such a way we should be able to port the concept to other platforms as other proposed stores come into operation by other manufacturers and networks.

In the meantime here’s a demo at Youtube.

Can you make me an iPhone app?

Well maybe. We might be able to offer this as service to our clients and we’re always open to suggestions. Our friends at Graphico have taken this route for a recent Bacardi promotion so there may be demand. We’ll have to wait and see.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

We want brave customers

All our customers are brave. I think that everyone over the last year has taken a chance by hiring Standard Ease because we don’t tend to work in their offices. We aren’t working under any supervision just to an agreed plan. It takes a leap of faith on the part of our customers to trust us to meet them on the other side. But with realistic expectations and planning it can and does work. We’ve just finished a large project with one of our clients to skin multiple national magazines over several months. It was on budget and on time and their forward-thinking attitude was a factor in getting it done.

Don’t lead on price

We have never tried to lead on price for anything we’ve quoted for. It’s tempting to cut a quoted price just to get work but ultimately it is going to cost someone something. Sometimes this means we decline work. There is no shame or disservice in this and we’re getting better at saying, “no thank you but thank you for thinking of us“. Remarkably, the party surprised at the true cost of a project is usually us. Our clients tend to already expect it.

Listen to the forecast

We have a simple cash flow forecast that is pinned to our notice board. We can see that date when the company goes bust and our only task is to push that date as far into the future as we can. That’s as complicated as it gets and the forecast keeps everyone sane. It tells us when to relax and when to work hard and the little forecast is king. We love it.

Reward

These 3 simple things have helped us over the last year and we’re looking forward to moving ahead. I am now going to reward myself by watching the Italian Job before the board meeting tonight.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

Cameron Moll inspired us with his article Farewell to freelancing: Final lessons learned in which he suggests that not getting office space within a year of launch is a mistake. Several of my associates are confused as to why we need space when most of what we achieve could be accomplished in front of the wood stove at home. But ask yourself this: would you be keen to collaborate if you had to do it in someone’s spare room? I don’t think I would - it’s not a neutral space.

Although the business is modest by agency standards, the decision to take an office has the benefit of separating work and home life. Further, the addition of a few desks and some appropriate insurances gives us a little more scope for staffing, accommodating contractors, meeting with our clients and expanding our modest venture. I am pleased to say there’s work on the books and more in the pipe, so an office is asset rather than millstone. What’s more - I get to meet with former colleagues for lunch whenever I like and a measure of sanity is re-established.

Drop by anytime you like – the door is open and the coffee is on.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

The new Web Content Accessibility (WCAG 2.0) Guidelines are out and have coverage on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website.

Guidelines article

Happy holidays.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640

A lack of remote version control for the Microsoft environment would require a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or a paid-for VSS clone that would work over the internet. I know that Microsoft have gone on to develop the Team System but it looks complicated for basic needs. I really dislike complicated things so went looking for an easy, cheap alternative of versioning with Visual Studio integration that works over Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

I am now experimenting with a new versioning strategy: using Subversion in a free remotely hosted repository at Slik SVN and the Ankhsvn add-in for Visual Studio 2008. It seems to work reliably and is uncomplicated.

The repository at Slik is free for up to 10mb. The free account allows for remote versioning with anywhere access but is limited to one user. It is possible to add multiple projects to a single Subversion repository.

The Ankhsvn add-in for Visual Studio 2008 has a similar user experience to VSS. It has iconic references (the checkmarks in solution explorer), repository browsing, check-in and out, and labelling. There may be more stuff in there but the basics are covered off quite simply.

I can’t see too many reasons to keep using VSS right now. I’m hoping to upgrade to a multi-user Slik account and try this out on a live client project later this year.  I think it’ll be great.

NEW - Igoshi for iPhone now available form the AppStore.

Standard Ease is a consultancy of Web Accessibility and Best-Practice specialists based in the United Kingdom.

The High House, 37 Oxford Street, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 1JG, United Kingdom.
+44 (0) 1635 40640