SitePoint

Use a Beta Test to Source User-Generated Content and Build Your Brand

Georgina Laidlaw — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 13:38:27 +0000

User-generated content is definitely one of the darlings of the web world right now.

Enmeshed in those three words is the hint of an idealistic utopia, where you never have to create content because your users are doing it all for you! What could be better than that!?

Of course, that ideal doesn’t account for the fact that (in my experience—this is not a researched figure) the majority of users generate sub-standard content. If you’re a brand, using user-generated content to promote yourself presents many, many challenges.

But for small scale, selective reuse, user-generated content can be a goldmine.

There. I said it: a goldmine.

Even for products in beta testing.

That’s right: you can use these approaches even if all you have is a handful of beta testers. So if you’re starting from scratch, writing marketing content as you beta-test the site, why not feed those testing results back into your brand communications themselves?

Let’s see just how creative we can get with our beta-user-generated content.

Testimonials

All brands want a testimonial on the homepage. Or a whole separate Testimonials page. There are plenty of ways to get testimonials, but if you don’t even have a single paying customer yet, you may think testimonials are a distant dream.

Think again. A good beta-testing process will involve your gaining feedback on your product or system from the beta testers. Whether it’s through a survey, a forum, an email, or an in-person conversation, you’ll be engaging somehow with beta users about what you’ve built.

Take a look at what they say. You’ll likely find these people will make a comment on your product overall before they start nitpicking its details. Take those broad statements, and see if you can’t work them back into your marketing pages with some big, fat quote marks—and due attribution!—around them.

Testimonials? Check!

Case examples

Your new product serves a particular need. Perhaps it’s a brand-spankin’-new product category that no-one in your target audience has ever heard of before.

Any marketer will tell you that a good way to explain the product is through a case example or two. While you may want to do that in a video, it’s just as likely (or more, if you’re on a tight budget) that you’ll want some text-base examples too.

Well, what have your beat testers been doing all this time if not trying out your product or system to solve real-world problems that they’re facing? Not only that, but since they’re (hopefully) in your target audience, those case scenarios are (hopefully) likely to be typical of those your broader, post-launch customer base will face.

So go forth and look into your database. What are people doing with your product? If they’re engaging with others through it, you may actually be able to pull the exact words they used out of your system and reformulate them as quotes within the examples or case studies on your marketing pages.

They’ll be conceptually relevant, because they’re actual cases. But they’ll also likely be emotionally relatable, because you’ll be able to use the actual language of your target users.

Yes! “Resonant”, real-world case examples: check.

Help articles

By this time, you’ll know who’s using your system for what. That beta test research will have pulled up bugs and areas for improvement—and that’s great.

But I’ll bet it also gave you an insight into functionality that needs explaining, user expectations that need setting, and information gaps that need filling.

Trawl through that research and use it to formulate (or refine and build) your first-cut FAQs. Again, you’ll be able to apply users’ actual language in formulating help article titles and responses, which will give you a massive head-start on building loyalty when you launch.

Oh, and you’ll also be able to anticipate the questions they will ask frequently. Not bad, eh?

FAQs! Done!

Beta-test besties

Your beta testers really are your best friends, professionally speaking.

Sure, they’re helping you find bugs and broken code, and making sure your devs have done their jobs. But beyond that, they can help you communicate your offering more clearly than you could have imagined. And if you’re about to launch, that input can reveal invaluable in-roads to target audience engagement.

Just make sure that—of course—you ask them for permission to use their words in each case.

Do you use beta test research to help hone your marketing and product support messages? Tell us how in the comments.

We Talked Content Strategy with Georgina Laidlaw – The Transcript

Sarah Hawk — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 23:16:42 +0000

My Wednesday is off to a confusing start as I find myself creating content about creating content. Recursive writing?

It is the result of a really interesting Talk with the Experts session this morning. The subject was Content Strategy and the expert, Georgina Laidlaw. It was an intimate session but the chat flowed steadily – I guess that’s what happens when you have a chatroom full of wordsmiths and content creators!

It wasn’t a session that turned up a lot of resources, but those that did come out of it are listed below.

Some of Georgina’s writing:
http://flippa.com/blog/native-advertising/
http://www.sitepoint.com/create-a-style-guide-for-your-brand/
http://www.sitepoint.com/seo-can-help-you-communicate/

Some Content Strategy resources:
Content Strategy Bootcamp
Content Audit Tool
Google+ Content Strategy Group
Content Strategy Group on LinkedIn

Next week I’ll be hosting a session on Photoshop with designer and Photoshop instructor Nuria Zuazo (or molona, to those of you that are familiar with the forum staff). You can catch that at 2:30pm PDT on Wed 14 Aug or find out what time it will be at your place.

If you missed the session today because you didn’t know it was on, you can sign up for email reminders of future sessions.

And for those of you that would like to know exactly what went down this morning (in my part of the world), here is the full transcript:
[21:33] For those of you that don’t know Georgina, she’s a Content Developer who has been blogging for SItePoint (among others) for a long time now

[21:34] To add to those accolades, she’s an all round good lady

[21:34] So thanks for your time today G

[21:34] Aw Thanks HAWK. And thanks for having me!

[21:35] Georgina – can you give us a brief rundown of exactly what ‘Content Strategy’ is??

[21:35] And why it’s important

[21:35] :) I had a feeling that might be a good place to start

[21:35] The saying is that Content is King, but in reality it gets treated more like a beggar—trying to find a place amid so much fancy technology like CSS, JavaScript and so on. Sometimes it’s hard to find the content amid all the other stuff. What are your thoughts on that, Georgina?

[21:36] Okay so I just wrote a post for Flippa that mentions that no one really knows what native advertising is (http://flippa.com/blog/native-advertising/ ) and I think it’s similar with content strategy.

[21:36] What kind of business should have a content strategy?

[21:36] Content strategy is your plan for uniting your brand with your users through content

[21:37] so that could be “static” content on your marketing pages, blog posts on your blog, blog posts on someone else’s blog, articles in a local print publication, etc.

[21:37] The strategy covers everything from what you’re doing and how you’re doing it to who’s doing it

[21:38] It’s important because without it, you’re likely to end up scattered and messy, fighting fires and chasing shiny objects rather than systematically engaging with your audiences through content.

[21:38] Great, that makes sense. Thanks.

[21:39] I’m actually more curious as to how Georgina can write and manage content for so many web properties and keep her head straight.

[21:39] So I guess that segues well into KevinYank’s question – what kind of business should have one?

[21:39] I was wondering if Georgina had any tips for doing a content audit. I have a site that is due for a complete overhaul and having trouble figuring out what to keep/change/get rid of.

[21:39] Good question TonyChung – I’ll queue it for Georgina

[21:41] You know, to be honest, I think any kind of business that’s publishing anything more than a few pages of marketing content on their website should be strategic about it. But when most people get all hale and hearty about content strategy, they’re talking massive organisation like universities and corporates that have a hundreds or thousands of pag

[21:41] es that need to be updated frequently (or at least kept current!).

[21:42] KevinYank does that answer your question, sir?

[21:42] In the meantime, to ralphm’s question about content being more like a beggar than a king.

[21:44] I do agree in some cases. Often you get the wrong people writing content, and doing a poor job of it since they’re not subject matter experts or trained writers. But particularly in technically focused organisations, content is very easily lost among all the exciting technical shenanignans.

[21:44] Thanks!

[21:45] This is the current question: The saying is that Content is King, but in reality it gets treated more like a beggar—trying to find a place amid so much fancy technology like CSS, JavaScript and so on. Sometimes it’s hard to find the content amid all the other stuff. What are your thoughts on that, Georgina?

[21:45] I think technology changes a lot and the tech world is so focused on the latest and greatest stuff. Content is seen as much easier than that, so it can be neglected. it’s the writer’s job (if the business owner isn’t prioritising it themselves) to prioritise content and push teh strategy barrow, as it were.

[21:45] I guess technical people aren’t always content producers, or don’t see themselves as such.

[21:45] As a working Content Strategist I’m amazed at the differences between practitioners globally. And I know a lot of global practitioners. ;-)

[21:45] And to be fair, they don’t need to be.

[21:46] ralphm, you agree?

[21:46] How do you deal with “renegades” (e.g. employees with Twitter access)? Does everyone need to be in the Content Strategy loop for it to work, or can a strategy assume other activity will be going on around it?

[21:46] Are you calling me a renegade, KevinYank? ;)

[21:46] lol

[21:46] ha :)

[21:47] Absolutely.

[21:47] Okay I’m gonna go to TonyChung’s question

[21:47] The rogue tweeter strikes again.

[21:47] Yes, I guess it comes down to that. Content *seems* like the easy bit (because we all wrote stuff at primary school, right?) but in fact it’s the crucial part.

[21:47] Yeah – that’s fair.

[21:47] Well first you say either “the intern did it!” or “our account was hacked, you guys!”

[21:48] Yep ralphm, agreed. People who can type think they can write content. But as KevinYank just pointed out, content strategy isn’t just about slamming stuff onto your website—it’s about managing a stack of moving parts.

[21:48] TonyChung – are you a content strategist for a single company?

[21:48] Okay, so TonyChung asked I’m actually more curious as to how Georgina can write and manage content for so many web properties and keep her head straight.

[21:48] :)

[21:48] There must be a challenge maintaining the sense of “corporate voice” while at the same time allowing for “personalability”

[21:49] Yep there is. So that’s a challenge, definitely. I love variety, though, which is why I don’t work for just one brand any more. So that helps.

[21:49] HAWK I work(ed) as a CS for a large government website. I operate independently as a web developer with an interest in content presentation systems.

[21:49] Cool

[21:50] I Googled Georgina before the chat and read a write up on Pen & Profit.

[21:50] She sounds busy.

[21:50] The other thing that makes it much easier is that if I’m with a brand for more than about five minutes, I usually make them (or: myself) a language style guide that captures their brand in a sort of language template. Then, when I’m thinking “wait, do these guys use contractions?” I can check the style guide.

[21:51] (Wrote a piece on style guides for sitepoint at http://www.sitepoint.com/create-a-style-guide-for-your-brand/ if you’re interested)

[21:51] I find the more I get into the weeds of the systems, I don’t write as much content.

[21:51] If I work for a company that sorely needs a content strategy, how do I convince my bosses, who might just hear “expensive buzzword” that it’s worth the investment?

[21:51] Also, the more you work with a brand, the more it gets into your blood, so it becomes easier to switch to a different mindset for each over time :)

[21:52] Is it hard to get the stuff out of your system after you stop working with a particular brand?

[21:52] TonyChung what do you mean by “weeds of the systems”?

[21:52] you mean CMSs?

[21:53] So johnlacey asks I was wondering if Georgina had any tips for doing a content audit. I have a site that is due for a complete overhaul and having trouble figuring out what to keep/change/get rid of.

[21:54] :) I just saw a pretty great content audit which listed each piece of content, how current it was, how popular it was, and who was responsible for it (among about 30 bajillion other things)

[21:55] But I think these are the keys. looking at how valuable each piece of content on a site is to your users is the first step to working out what to cull.

[21:55] Then, look at what is popular and needs updating.

[21:55] Would you look at traffic stats?

[21:55] Then, take that to the parties responsible for it and … ask them to take some responsibility by making some calls—especially in borderline cases ;)

[21:56] Yep HAWK, traffic stats are exactly the metric I’m talking about.

[21:56] Georgina because I started as a programmer I try to find and build systems to automate how content gets produced. I try to avoid repetition where possible.

[21:57] You can look at them over time if you want to, as well as for a given period, like a year or six months. In a recent client project, some of the most popular pages were for promotions that had ended long ago—so that made the culling easy.

[21:57] Am I allowed to promote some CS resources I learned about at a workshop last month?

[21:57] Yes, absolutely

[21:58] Thanks for checking in first :)

[21:58] TonyChung aaah interesting :) Automating content production sounds … difficult indeed.

[21:58] okay so KevinYank2 asked How do you deal with “renegades” (e.g. employees with Twitter access)? Does everyone need to be in the Content Strategy loop for it to work, or can a strategy assume other activity will be going on around it?

[21:59] My colleagues hosted a Content Strategy boot camp – website: http://contentstrategyworkshops.com – click “Slide Decks” in the menu for presentation slides

[21:59] I think organisations today should expect that their staff are using social media as individuals

[22:00] One of the presentations showcased a pretty unique content audit tool called “Content Insight” http://www.content-insight.com/ – full content audit, metrics (based on Google Analytics)

[22:00] A lot of content on the web looks like it was written more for an indexing robot than a real person—filled with bold text, overt keywords, link bait and so on. How do you deal with the pressure to make content SEO-friendly, Georgina? Do you get into fights? Do you just focus on clean, well written text and hold your ground?

[22:01] so the solution there is not to treat them as “renegades” ;) but as humans. One of my clients, which has a staff comprising some very conservative people, and a wide range of ages (with many in the 50+ category— it’s a professional services consultancy) recently produced an internal booklet that helped align staff’s social media usage with the over

[22:01] all brand strategy and, through that, the content strategy.

[22:01] But the strength is in the analysis of the information. Rather than accepting an audit at face value, treat it as a window that compares the site’s performance against what the business or organization is trying to do–are they reaching their target? Or missing the mark entirely?

[22:01] This kind of thing can be really helpful for managing staff expectations, drawing lines of responsibility, and setting the right behaviours.

[22:02] Who’s okay to talk about what in which channel, etc.

[22:02] Does that answer your question, KevinYank2?

[22:02] Georgina do you use special tools for tracking your projects, managing your time, and scheduling content produced by multiple writers?

[22:03] Thanks!

[22:03] Oh, you also asked the next question: If I work for a company that sorely needs a content strategy, how do I convince my bosses, who might just hear “expensive buzzword” that it’s worth the investment?

[22:04] I’d say that in my experience, this goes two ways. You have big companies that are suffocating under the weight of their mismanaged content, and love to hear about content strategy because it’s pretty clear off the bat that it can alleviate that problem.

[22:05] The other extreme is small companies that are all over the shop, and have one writer or content person on board. In those cases, the content person usually has a bit of autonomy, so they may well be able to formulate a content strategy under the radar, so to speak, then present it as a sort of well-formed proposal if they need buy-in from others.

[22:05] The main problems arise when your content strategy requires someone to change their behaviour. Eg You want the CEO to start tweeting :)

[22:05] Georgina that sounds like an ideal world

[22:06] Georgina so it sounds like your CS also considers random factors such as employee and/or user generated content?

[22:06] In those cases, you have to be reasonable in your own expectations. i’d pitch it, but I’d have a backup plan (or two) in case some of the people I needed buyin from wouldn’t get on board.

[22:07] KevinYank does that asnwer your q?

[22:07] Okay so ralphm asked A lot of content on the web looks like it was written more for an indexing robot than a real person—filled with bold text, overt keywords, link bait and so on. How do you deal with the pressure to make content SEO-friendly, Georgina? Do you get into fights? Do you just focus on clean, well written text and hold your ground?

[22:07] :) I’m always getting into fights!

[22:07] Just kidding ;)

[22:07] My friends wrote this book specifically to pitch to a business that they need CS http://thecontentstrategybook.com/

[22:08] Thanks for letting me promote. ;-) I’m just a learner too.

[22:08] Hehe …

[22:08] I actually wrote a post that sort of puts my position on SEO pretty clearly; http://www.sitepoint.com/seo-can-help-you-communicate/

[22:08] No worries TonyChung – these sessions are for networking and sharing as well as learning

[22:09] I think most of the content you’re talking about here ralphm is probably generated by software or low-paid churn-and-burn writers (of which I know one or two—they’re like article spinning software packaged up in human form)

[22:10] Thanks. Bookmarked. I sometimes carefully craft content for a client, then come back a while later to find it mangled by an SEO person. I find it really depressing.

[22:10] How do I click “Like” on Georgina’s comment “:) I’m always getting into fights!”

[22:10] Good, targeted content made for actual people doesn’t compete in that realm as far as I’m concerned. And a good website with decent SEO behind it won’t either, from what I’ve seen.

[22:10] haha TonyChung

[22:11] ralphm, hope that answers your question?

[22:11] Good content and good SEO should be good friends ;)

[22:11] Yes, thanks, it does. And I look forward to reading the article. :-)

[22:11] Cool :)

[22:12] TonyChung asks Georgina do you use special tools for tracking your projects, managing your time, and scheduling content produced by multiple writers?

[22:12] :) sort of

[22:12] I’ve found the most helpful discussion on the CS Google Group http://groups.google.com/group/contentstrategy and LinkedIn groups http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Content-Strategy-1879338

[22:13] For myself as a freelance writer, I use a calendar and a time-tracking tool call 1daylater to manage my own time.

[22:13] I can be a bit seat-of-the-pants about my time, and that’s freelance, you know: things can change quickly.

[22:14] But within the realm of each client’s content, I’m pretty strict about stuff.

[22:14] Further to Tony’s question, I was wondering if you have any favorite writing tools, such as Scrivenr, or perhaps Markdown?

[22:14] I develop a style guide and brand vocab early and give these to the writers i’m working with for that client asap.

[22:14] I’m a big Scrivener fan. Wish I had more excuses to use it!

[22:14] I schedule content religiously, usually no less than 2 weeks in advance.

[22:15] [Style guide] that leads me to another question: How do you share the style guide? I would hope it’s not as a Word doc?

[22:15] I try to develop pretty smooth editing and production flows so that the mechanics of content production work seamlessly, on their own, and I can focus on content ideas and delivery with writers.

[22:16] And on improving that connection between the brand and its audience by constantly improving on the content over time.

[22:16] Hope that answers your q, TonyChung?

[22:16] You won’t find Word around our office TonyChung!

[22:16] HAWK LOL.

[22:16] !

[22:17] Guys guys guys!

[22:17] What do you use instead of Word, Hawk?

[22:17] Word isn’t the devil’s work!

[22:17] Georgina can you recommend the tools you use for managing schedules?

[22:17] Well…. maybe it is ;)

[22:17] I’ve seen Asana, Basecamp, etc.

[22:17] No, I don’t use any special tools. most of my content I write in .txt

[22:17] And for the clients who can’t handle that, I use word

[22:18] You mean * gasp * you don’t write in WYSIWYG?

[22:18] Haha. We work in a 99.9% Mac office using as much open source SW as possible. Personally, I use Libre Office.

[22:18] I’ve never worked for a client that required me to use a writing tool, but I need to use tools they can work with too.

[22:18] Sorry – should have tagged you in that last response Jerry

[22:18] i’m always meeting the *thrilling* challenge of new CMSs, though.

[22:18] I love .txt … and have recently also fallen for Markdown, which complements it wonderfully (and makes converting to other formats so easy).

[22:18] You think you’ve seen on, you’ve seen em all, but … no

[22:18] ;)

[22:19] ralphm for managing schedules I use all kinds of tools, again, mainly depending on the client and how they want to work (and what sofware they can manage).

[22:19] TonyChung – I’ve used just about every one of those tools that there is and rate Basecamp as no 1

[22:20] I’d love to use Libre Office (or Open Office) — if they didn’t mangle document formatting so badly. Maybe that could be a topic for a session one of these days.

[22:20] So: excel and word or google docs, Trello, whiteboards, you name it.

[22:20] So we have 10 mins left in the session. I think I’ve caught and queued every question and we’re up to date. Jump in now if you have unanswered ones :)

[22:20] HAWK most people love Basecamp but it seems like too much overhead.

[22:20] Once client uses confluence

[22:20] etc. etc.

[22:21] Jerry – to be honest I don’t use it a lot, so it suits my purpose, but yes – I know what you mean

[22:21] WordPress’s scheduling tools

[22:21] I miss DEC Document :)

[22:21] the list goes on

[22:21] I don’t have a lot of call for using any kind of office package in my job

[22:21] “Whiteboards” … I haven’t heard of that app. :p

[22:21] haha

[22:21] ralphm here’s the latest: http://smarttech.com/smartboard

[22:21] ;-)

[22:22] This talk seems more oriented toward managing content than creating content that will have some desired effect on visitors. Can you suggest some good sources for creating compelling writing for websites?

[22:22] I think scheduling’s easy when one person controls it.

[22:22] As soon as you have other people are in the mix, things get crazy

[22:22] We have a good source for creating compelling content at SitePoint. We call it Georgina

[22:23] haha :)

[22:23] HAWK and here we have another “Like”

[22:23] I’ve seen some companies post seemingly off-topic content on their blogs. What’s the deal with that? Misguided SEO ?

[22:23] Well there’s no shortage of advice for writing well online. But “writing” is pretty varied. For blogging advice, you can’t go past problogger, copyblogger and Jon Morrow.

[22:23] So yeah, Georgina where do you find your ideas?

[22:24] But when it comes to writing good help content? Slim pickings. Copyblogger and Jon Morrow are good on marketing copy advice. No one seems to write about writing good social media updates, though.

[22:24] That’s a real lack, I think.

[22:25] And will KevinYank be in Vancouver anytime soon?

[22:25] KevinYank, off-topic content is usually part of a strategy to get viral

[22:25] “Help content—slim pickings”. O yes, that’s a real problem area.

[22:25] in the cases I’ve seen

[22:26] “If we write what people love, we’ll get our brand in front of as many people as possible”

[22:26] TonyChung: Speaking of off-topic content… ;)

[22:26] It’s a brand-building strategy, but in many people’s eyes, a strange one, since it often doesn’t tie the brand to any one topic or category or solution.

[22:26] We didn’t talk about effective ways to include audio, video, or other multimedia in our strategy

[22:27] Wait! You had a question on ideas

[22:27] :)

[22:27] The answer to that is: by talking to people

[22:27] Yes. I’m very focused on questioning now that I got into a flow.

[22:27] ;)

[22:28] Does anyone ever say, hey G, write about this?

[22:28] Yes, that’s my reaction too, G.

[22:28] I use a combination of reading, thinking about stuff, and talking with people (not in a directed way, just in a “what are you doing? What do you think of x?” way), and that usually connects dots for me.

[22:28] Yep, people say that all the time

[22:28] and often I say “meh”

[22:28] ;)

[22:28] ;-)

[22:28] If I’m not wildly excited about your idea, I’m probably not the best person to write it

[22:29] I might be able to DO it, but that’s probably not the best outcome for your brand

[22:29] Someone approached me about writing a beginner’s blogging ebook for them recently

[22:29] So it’s common to draw a line where you don’t think the idea is inspiring enough?

[22:29] and I asked them how it would be different from everything else on the topic. What was the point of difference that would make this content unique to their brand?

[22:29] silence ensued ;)

[22:30] I don’t want to write that stuff

[22:30] :)

[22:30] Yeah TonyChung I think so.

[22:30] So you asked questions to gauge “audience”, “expectation”, and “direction”?

[22:30] definitely

[22:30] should we talk audio etc, before we knock off?

[22:30] if nobody else has a question (like I gave them room)

[22:31] ha :)

[22:31] Wait, there are already ebooks about blogging???!!!

[22:31] LOL.

[22:31] It’s technically the end of the session, but if you’re happy to stick around and talk for a bit longer then it’s all good with me G.

[22:31] I think that stuff needs planning. So before you can fit multi media into your strategy you probably need to have the text stuff nailed down, because for most brands that’s the majority of their stuff (at the moment anyway) and the easiest content to produce.

[22:32] Ah cool :) Thanks HAWK

[22:32] Thanks.

[22:32] Hey KevinYank: https://learnable.com/topics/blogging LOL

[22:33] thanks, I’ll look up jon morrow

[22:33] Once you have a good process for the majority of your content production, then you will probably find it easier to build in content that’s more complex to create. Because you might have people you can delegate the everyday stuff to if you need extra time to shoot a video or record a podcast, or you’ll know who you can delegate that stuff to.

[22:33] But the other aspect is to consider how that multimedia fits into the overall content strategy—what need it’s meeting

[22:34] for your brand, but also for your audiences. Sure, you can use video for everything under the sun, if you have all the time and money in the world

[22:34] I’ve seen several articles and posts about how video helps sites to rank more highly. There’s a lot of expectation on making video and audio content available.

[22:34] But it sounds to me like it’s better to get your text stuff out the door and build video to support that.

[22:34] but if not, your content strategy should help you prioritise those content types.

[22:34] At least that ‘s what you said.

[22:35] Well, one of the reasons I’ve seen given for that whole video-as-seo argument is that Google owns YouTube

[22:35] I always focus on audiences first, users, rather than “SEO”

[22:35] Georgina – good point

[22:35] search is users

[22:36] I think the expectation for multimedia varies between audiences

[22:36] I find that intro videos can be very effective when I’m visiting a site—whether or not they are good for SEO.

[22:37] I also think that an audience that doesn’t expect audio or video may be easily delighted by the occasional surprise multimedia offering, so you don’t need to be hobbled by those expectations either

[22:37] ralphm – it’s kind of hard to plan for “intro” videos because any of your site pages could be a user’s page 1

[22:37] Yeah ralphm, I interviewed a video dude for an ebook the other day and really with video you need to look at the purpose

[22:38] is it conversion? sales? product demo? testimonial? viral funny haha content?

[22:38] help?

[22:38] I’m working with help videos at the moment

[22:38] So, just saying “video’s great!” is like saying “Ford pickups are great!”

[22:38] They are, but for certain purposes

[22:38] A stack of users never click play

[22:39] If I stumble on a product, and the content describing it is not easy to follow, I often head to the home page to see if there’s an intro video that gives a clearer overview. It’s often a breath of fresh air.

[22:39] Good CS would have the video link right off the product page you saw.

[22:39] I really look at video on a case-by-case basis. For a site like learnable, video’s obviously the go. For a site where you’re searching for cheap airfares, maybe not

[22:40] I find the Learnable CS really needing a bit more work

[22:40] ralphm Sure, product demo videos are pretty popular :) I’m doing a script for one today which should be pretty fun :)

[22:40] In what ways TonyChung?

[22:40] I just signed up for the year and find the same content in multiple places, even though I specifically asked for books, or courses, or…

[22:40] Indeed. I find them especially useful when I’m looking at new software. It’s usually much easier to understand what it’s for through seeing it in a video.

[22:41] Interesting. I’d love to hear some of that feedback in more detail if you have time to put it in an email TonyChung.

[22:41] Sounds good Sarah HAWK

[22:41] ralphm Definitely :) That said, sometimes video can whiz through things that need more explanation, so once I’ve watched it, I’ll have to read body text to really put the pieces togehter

[22:41] I actually find that with the 99designs video

[22:41] But maybe I’m just slow on the uptake ;)

[22:42] I really like how Michael Hyatt describes his podcasts. http://michaelhyatt.com/encore-episode-a-peek-inside-my-toolbox-podcast.html

[22:42] Certainly, the video can often generate more questions than it answers. I tend to find that if I don’t get a clear concept from the video, I’m even less likely to get much from the other content.

[22:42] ooh and HAWK asked a q on how to share a style guide :)

[22:42] You don’t have to listen to the whole thing to get the meat.

[22:43] Georgina That was me.

[22:43] Ah, sorry TonyChung

[22:43] Mr. Questionnaire extraordinaire.

[22:43] ;-)

[22:43] Usually, it’s in PDF format. But when I worked at sitepoint, we had a page of the site dedicated to styles (I think) which was accessible to writers. Same at ProBlogger

[22:44] It depends on what’s needed. If staff are internal, it could be in your wiki

[22:44] If it’s just me, it’s probably in a txt file :)

[22:44] I’m trying to convince a volunteer org to use a web page for the style guide… thinking of setting up a private wordpress site.

[22:44] The problem with wiki is that the markup is so… so… arcane.

[22:44] Woah, a separate site for the style guide?!?!?!

[22:44] Unless you pay for mindtouch or confluence

[22:44] Sounds extravagant ;)

[22:45] How many styles are you including in this thing?

[22:45] I just want the ease of editing, post revisions, upload etc.

[22:45] Well, it will also include best practices and documentation for the rest of the site.

[22:46] Yeah. I find with most clients, simpler is better, and more acceptable.

[22:46] Couldn’t you include all this in a Gogoel doc?

[22:46] it’s easily updateable etc.

[22:47] i’ll have to think about that. we have a shared evernote account for the admin stuff… but then we can’t lock specific pages out of peoples’ access.

[22:47] Ok all, I’m going to call it a wrap

[22:47] google doc could be ok

[22:47] I was going to suggest Google Drive (formerly Docs).

[22:47] Thanks Sarah… this was fun.

[22:47] Thanks heaps to all of you for taking part

The Web Designer’s Copyright Crash Course

John Tabita — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 13:30:52 +0000

The past two articles, I’ve written about how image copyrights work and the danger of using photos and graphics found on a Google search. But copyright laws apply to more than just imagery. Copying a design layout or written copy from another site can also land you on the wrong site of an infringement claim.

Copyrights, patents, and trademarks are all Intellectual Property, which is a work or invention that is the result of creativity. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, a copyright protects an original artistic or literary work, a patent protects an invention, and a trademark protects a brand name. In other words, patents protect ideas; copyrights protect the expression of an idea, such as a drawing, photograph, song, or written work; and a trademark protects a brand’s identity in order to distinguish its goods and services from another’s.

Since we’re primarily concerned with copyrights, let’s discuss how they function. Please note that I’m not an attorney, so nothing I say should be taken as legal advice. Also, since I’ll be discussing U.S. Copyright laws, some or all of what I’m about to say many not apply to other countries.

How U.S. Copyright Law Works

The moment a work is created in a tangible form, it immediately becomes the property of the author who created it. As soon as you draw that illustration, snap that photo, or write that article, it belongs to you. As owner of that work, you can license its use to another (and even restrict how it’s used), or transfer ownership entirely.

The exception to the above is “work for hire.” That’s when someone else hires you to take the photo or write the article; or when an employee creates a work within the scope of his or her employment. As a freelance designer or programmer, it’s important that your contract makes that distinction; otherwise, the work you perform could be deemed as “work for hire” in a court of law.

As an independent contractor, it’s also your responsibility to use only legally-obtained content, and to make sure you’re protected if your client provides you with content he “found” elsewhere online. It’s just as easy (and tempting) to copy and paste another’s content as it is to right click and “Same Image As…” with another’s photo. Both practices can land you in hot water.

If you steal someone’s content or images, your client’s site can be shut down by their ISP. According to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Internet service providers are legally obliged to remove infringing content hosted on their servers when the rightful owner submits a DMCA Takedown Notice. If you are their hosting provider (even if it’s a reseller hosting account), then you are legally obligated to shut the site down. Awkward.

Here are three best practices to protect yourself from copyright infringement.

Never, Ever Use Another’s Content without Permission

A persistent myth regarding copyrights is, if you change something 30 percent, it’s not infringement. (The same myth exists in the music industry as the 30-second rule.) If you’re not convinced this is something you should never do, read this thread.

Just because an item doesn’t have a © copyright symbol doesn’t mean it’s not protected. It’s not necessary to register or indicate your work is copyrighted; doing so just makes it easier to enforce.

Protect Yourself from Irresponsible or Ignorant Clients

Many people believe everything on the Internet is public domain. Some simply don’t care. We once had a client instruct us to take the design and content from a competitor’s site, claiming the competitor had originally copied his content. (We politely explained why we couldn’t.)

But what about images your client provides? You don’t want to be held liable in the advent your client provides questionable content he found online. Make sure your web design contract states the client warrants that he has the rights to use any content he provides, and will hold you blameless if not.

Be Careful What Rights You Assign

Unlike an illustration or photograph, I believe a website is a business tool that ought to belong to the client. That said, you ought to retain the copyright until the project is complete and you’ve been paid. At that point, ownership of the site can be transfered to the client.

The exception would be a custom application that has the potential to be resold. Suppose you developed an online pizza ordering system and transferred ownership to the client. Not only could your client resell the application, you would not be able to use it on any other client’s website.

The nuances of copyright law can be quite detailed, but if you follow these guidelines, you’ll keep both yourself and your client out of trouble.

Image credit

The HTML5 form Attribute

Craig Buckler — Mon, 05 Aug 2013 16:55:05 +0000

HTML4 and XHTML insisted that all form elements — including the submit button — were contained within a single

…

block. While this is rarely an issue, it can lead to design challenges and I certainly recall struggling with early versions of ASP.NET which enforced a single form on every page. In general, if you required an input field outside the form, you’d need JavaScript to import its value when the form was submitted.

One of the lesser-known HTML5 features is the form attribute. It allows you to reference a specific form by its ID on any orphaned field, e.g.


 name:
 
 email:

Interestingly, the form attribute allows you to place a field in one form that is submitted in another. Alternatively, you could change form attributes in JavaScript rather than importing values, e.g.

Browser Support

The form attribute is supported in all browsers — except any version of Internet Explorer. For that reason alone, it’s probably not worth using unless your orphaned fields are relatively unimportant and you’re happy to lose data.

But does this feel right? Perhaps it’s because I’ve been writing self-contained forms for many years, but I wouldn’t suggest using the form attribute unless there was no other option. At best, it’s a little inelegant. At worst, it’ll confuse you and your colleagues when you examine the code in a few months time. But it’s reassuring to know it’s there should you need it!

Browser Trends August 2013: The Summer Slowdown?

Craig Buckler — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 15:53:19 +0000

In last month’s analysis Internet Explorer dropped a massive 2.29%. The news is far less dramatic this month according to the latest figures from StatCounter…

Worldwide Browser Statistics June 2013 to July 2013

The following table shows browser usage movements during the past month.

Browser	June	July	change	relative
IE (all)	25.42%	24.52%	-0.90%	-3.50%
IE10+	9.88%	10.94%	+1.06%	+10.70%
IE9	6.79%	5.31%	-1.48%	-21.80%
IE8	8.04%	7.63%	-0.41%	-5.10%
IE7	0.49%	0.44%	-0.05%	-10.20%
IE6	0.22%	0.20%	-0.02%	-9.10%
Chrome	42.75%	43.14%	+0.39%	+0.90%
Firefox	20.01%	20.09%	+0.08%	+0.40%
Safari	8.37%	8.59%	+0.22%	+2.60%
Opera	1.02%	1.09%	+0.07%	+6.90%
Others	2.43%	2.57%	+0.14%	+5.80%

Worldwide Browser Statistics July 2012 to July 2013

The following table shows browser usage movements during the past twelve months:

Browser	July 2012	July 2013	change	relative
IE (all)	31.99%	24.52%	-7.47%	-23.40%
IE10+	0.00%	10.94%	+10.94%	n/a
IE9	16.93%	5.31%	-11.62%	-68.60%
IE8	13.26%	7.63%	-5.63%	-42.50%
IE7	1.28%	0.44%	-0.84%	-65.60%
IE6	0.52%	0.20%	-0.32%	-61.50%
Chrome	33.90%	43.14%	+9.24%	+27.30%
Firefox	23.76%	20.09%	-3.67%	-15.40%
Safari	7.13%	8.59%	+1.46%	+20.50%
Opera	1.71%	1.09%	-0.62%	-36.30%
Others	1.51%	2.57%	+1.06%	+70.20%

The tables show market share estimates for desktop browsers. The ‘change’ column is the absolute increase or decrease in market share. The ‘relative’ column indicates the proportional change, i.e. another 21.8% of IE9 users abandoned the browser last month. There are several caveats so I recommend you read How Browser Market Share is Calculated.

We’ve not seen the chart this stable for a while. Internet Explorer had a modest drop. IE10 made good gains at the expense of IE9 which is dying rapidly. However, it’s clear Windows XP usage remains high with IE8 retaining almost 8% of users.

All the competing browsers increased a little but even Chrome could only manage a 0.39% jump — significantly lower than it’s typical monthly 1%.

Toward the bottom of the chart, the newly released Opera 15 has 0.09% usage, which equates to 8% of Opera users upgrading. That’s reasonably impressive given the mostly negative reaction from existing users.

Safari’s figures are also interesting:

The iPad version of Safari accounts for 4.07% of the market. That’s impressive for a single device (or variations of a single device). But let’s not forget Safari is the only real browser available for the tablet.
The remaining 4.52% of Safari’s market share are Mac OSX users. StatCounter estimates Mac OSX usage at 8% of the desktop OS market, so we can jump to a rough conclusion that almost 60% of users retain Safari as their primary browser.

But is Safari’s future assured? Google has left the Webkit project, iOS has been overtaken by Android in the smartphone/tablet market, and it’s become impossible for web developers to test Safari unless they own an Apple device. I’m not convinced Safari can continue to grow unless Apple can address the situation.

Mobile Browser Usage

Mobile usage jumped considerably to 17.35% of all web activity during July 2013. Who wants to be stuck behind a PC when the sun is shining?

The primary mobile browsing applications:

Android — 28.64% (down 0.42%)
iPhone — 22.43% (down 0.34%)
Opera Mini/Mobile – 15.73% (down 0.33%)
UC Browser — 10.57% (up 0.68%)
Nokia browser — 7.14% (down 0.24%)

Like the desktop chart, there are no significant winners or losers this month. People may be using their mobile more but they’re not bothering to try new browsers!

Create a Style Guide for Your Brand

Georgina Laidlaw — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 04:06:54 +0000

Even the smallest, simplest web presence needs consistency. Consistency of design, sure. But also of language.

Consistency is reassuring. It shows control and care. And in an unpredictable place like the Wild Wild Web, it can be even more valuable than in other media.

Your style guide is your starting point for ensuring your online presence is consistent.

What is a style guide?

A style guide is a document that provides guidelines for the way your brand must be presented.

That might include visual styles—rules defining the way the brand will look—as well as language styles influencing the way the brand will sound or read. All the rules are intended to ensure the consistency of your presentation.

In some organisations, the style guide’s printed, kept in a ring binder, and laughingly referred to as the “brand bible”.

In others it’s a simple electronic document containing images of the logo, a brand vocabulary, and a reference to a popular style manual, like the Chicago Manual of Style, which is to be used in any cases the house style guide doesn’t cover.

What’s in a style guide?

The last style guide I put together for a digital client came to 20 pages, and contained these sections:

Mission, vision, and value proposition
Target audience description and persona
Brand attributes
Logo: colors, minimum size, clear space
Fonts
Service description and tagline
Language styles: tone, spelling and punctuation, numbers, capitalization, lists
Brand vocabulary

For a startup, this was a fairly detailed style guide, but larger, more established organizations working across more varied media often have much bigger style guides.

One corporate client I’m working with has a 139-page visual style guide and a 32-page editorial (or language) style guide. These guides cover every conceivable application of the brand—from physical display banners, reversed logos on transparent backgrounds, and print advertising look and feel, to how various publications are referenced within the organizaton’s writing.

For some organizations, more detail is better, but longer style guides can be overwhelming for many of the people who actually need to use them.

How can you develop a style guide for your brand?

I find the best way to start a style guide for writing is, well, to start writing.

For startups developing new products, styles that describe functionality usually start to be developed with the brand vocabulary, as part of the interface development process. They’re fleshed out more as you turn to writing system emails, and then marketing pages.

As your UX and visual teams design the product and pages, they and you will be making decisions about how things will look—preferred colors, fonts, locations, and so on. These will become your visual styles.

At the same time, your writer will be developing a voice for your brand, and hopefully using things like lists and punctuation and capitals consistently. These will become your language styles.

If you can get these professionals to take note of the rules they’re following as they develop the content, you’ll be developing the bones of your style guide as a natural part of your development and pre-launch processes.

If you’re doing it all yourself, make quick notes about each style as you go. Have a working document with sections set up for visual and language styles, and include any images you need to to show how things should appear.

Then, when it comes to writing your first media release, video script, or banner ad, you’ll have a document you can give your PR agency or creative team so that they can make sure whatever they develop is in line with your brand’s “style”. You might eventually develop styles for:

formatting text for on-page display
presenting content for certain purposes, such as in your help articles, or on your order tracking page
landing pages
email newsletters, print direct mail, and so on.

The styles you develop will depend entirely on what you do and who and how you target your audience. So I find an organic approach, like the one I’ve just explained, is usually best.

To me, it’s far better than looking at someone else’s style guide and thinking “Let’s do something like this for our business!” Some other brand’s style guide may well have details that aren’t relevant to your business. And undoubtedly, they’ll have omitted stuff you need to include.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to language styles. While it’s easy to rip someone else’s massive style guide and save yourself a truckload of work, you probably don’t need a massive set of styles in the first place. In my experience, the longer and more complicated a style guide is, the less it tends to be used. And those who must use it in their daily work only use the specific chunks that are relevant to them.

So it’s better to have a simple, straightforward style guide that covers what you need it to than to copy a behemoth of a style guide that no one can bear to crack open.

It’s also easier to maintain.

It’s done! Or is it?

Brand styles are always evolving.

While the brand agency might hit “Send” and settle back into their seats, satisfied they’ve done a good job developing a style guide for a client’s brand, the reality is that the people using that guide will undoubtedly find problems with it as they try to apply those styles in a multitude of previously unimagined situations and media.

Similarly, the small business or startup style guide really is a work in progress. See your first style guide as a starting point. As you find new opportunities to communicate with your audiences, you may well need to expand your style guide so that it covers the restrictions and potentialities of different media, channels, and messages.

But by slowing and continually evolving your styles, you’ll be able to maintain a clear sense of your brand among the public, and more specifically, within your audiences. Your loyal users don’t want to see your brand stagnate—they want to see it grow and change, as a living entity.

So be prepared to develop your styles as your brand develops. Add, remove, overwrite—but make sure you have the buy-in of the people who use those styles as much as possible. After all, they’re the ones working at the coalface of your brand’s continuity.

Do you have a style guide for your brand? Share your thoughts on using and developing style guides with us in the comments.

Rails 4 with Andy Hawthorne and Glenn Goodrich – The Transcript

Sarah Hawk — Thu, 01 Aug 2013 01:26:43 +0000

It’s that time of the week again – the time that I find myself fraternising with experts. Said experts this week were Andy Hawthorne – author of Jump Start Rails, and RubySource’s Glenn Goodrich. We were chatting about Rails – more specifically Rails 4. It was an interesting session; there were fewer participants than the average Talk with the Experts, but the chat was solid and some interesting tips came out of it.

I’ve put together a list of resources that came out of the hour, for those of you that don’t want to sift through the entire transcript.

Andy’s masterpieces:
Jump Start Rails
Build Your First Rails App

Some helpful RubySource articles:
Streaming with Rails 4
Get Your App Ready for Rails 4
PHP to Sinatra

Some other useful resources:
Upgrading to Rails 4
Fixing Slow Response Times on Heroku

If you missed the session this morning because you didn’t know about it, make sure you sign up for email notifications. Next week is Content Strategy with SitePoint blogger and all round content genius Georgina Laidlaw. That one will take place at 2:30pm PDT on Tue 6 August. You can find out what time it will be at your place here.

If you’d like to know exactly what went down today, here is the full transcript for your reading pleasure:

[21:26] RAILS ALL THE THINGS! :0

[21:27] So for anyone that doesn’t know, Glenn is our editor at RubySource, and Andy wrote JumpStart Rails https://learnable.com/books/jsrails1

[21:27] I think you have a course or two on Learnable as well, don’t you Andy?

[21:28] I have a Rails course on Learnable

[21:29] Build Your First Rails App: https://learnable.com/courses/build-your-first-rails-app-2784

[21:29] Welcome to those of you that have just joined

[21:30] @ Andy I am a beginner, i want to know the benefits of rails please

[21:31] joe that’s a big question. Are you a beginner with Rails, but you’ve developed for the web before?

[21:31] Good question to kick off with joe :)

[21:32] i am a beginner with web designing, i enrolled in on this site just 2 days back

[21:33] But i was curious to know how this section is, so i joined

[21:33] Sweet – welcome.

[21:33] but from your conversation, i am totally lost here

[21:33] that was why i asked that

[21:33] Is rails a good choice for a literary magazine project?

[21:35] @lj I am not sure what the requirements of a literary magazine project are, but Rails is good choice for just about anything that has a database on the back of it. What are your requirements?

[21:35] @ joe ok, well, we all have to start somewhere! Rails does have a bit of a learning curve. But it’s a good place to start because with a bit of effort you’ll be building web apps that are secure and robust

[21:35] Going along with @joe’s question – It seems like some of the JS frameworks are taking over the web app space. Any thoughts on when to choose Rails vs something more direct like Node?

[21:35] poems and images of art, a table of contents, a search, issues

[21:36] @lj, sure. Rails would do well with that.

[21:36] @lj sounds like a Rails project to me…

[21:36] Glenn what about realtime apps ?

[21:36] @Krenski, I am not sure I agree that Node is “more direct”, it’s just a different approach.

[21:37] would the course rails 4 help me get started with that? I have already built 2-3 simple rails projects

[21:37] Plus, you’d likely need a web framework in Node (like Express, which is good)

[21:37] @ Andy okay, so meaning rails is not integrated in web pages?

[21:38] joe Rails is a framework for developing web apps. It helps you create the web pages for your project in a structured and organised way.

[21:38] @Krenski, Rails, right now, is miles ahead on some of the conventions in just handles (CSRF, security, tons of gems) If you like Ruby, Rails is for you. If you are more of a JS person, I would look into Node, Express, etc.

[21:38] You mean rails plus node.js??or Express? I don’t know anything about those. I do know html and css and have worked with bootstrap sass and a grid

[21:39] @lj, I was talking to @Krenski….sorry

[21:39] oh ok…

[21:39] Ij, what are you trying to built?

[21:39] Hi! Does RoR have steep learning curve? Do I need to have an extensive background and knowledge about Ruby in order to succeed at RoR?

[21:40] A magazine with poems and art and about 10 issues Id need to convert from html

[21:40] Hey james – welcome. Good question.

[21:40] james it does have learning curve, but not so steep that you can’t get something up and running quickly

[21:40] @saqib Rails 4 does add some streaming/live capabilities, but they are young. We just had a post on Rubysource about it http://rubysource.com/streaming-with-rails-4/

[21:40] james yes you to know about ruby to start working in Rails..

[21:40] james you can learn Ruby while you learn Rails

[21:41] should*

[21:41] james I didn’t had idea of what Ruby was when I started with Rails, but now I’m thinking about it, my advice is: learn good and clean Ruby first

[21:41] @james I would ad that starting with Rails lets you learn “web stuff” while you are learning Ruby.

[21:41] Oh God, am lost here!!

[21:42] A learnable ruby course would be good…I’m a beginner with that

[21:42] It’s all good joe – hang around for a bit. FYI we often have less technical chats, and beginner sessions. :)

[21:42] @james, I started with Rails (not Ruby) and it was fine. Learning Ruby first won’t hurt, but it’s not a requirement.

[21:42] I see. I’m actually reading Learn Ruby the Hard Way, and I already finished the Try Ruby in 15 minutes by codeschool.

[21:42] But guys i believe before jumping into any framework we should have a little knowledge about programming language which framework is using

[21:42] Glenn +1

[21:42] joe – have you checked the schedule of upcoming sessions? Next week’s content one might be more up your alley if you’re a complete beginner.

[21:42] I don’t want to rush anything but I just thought that I might be wasting some time

[21:42] saqib that’s when the learning curve gets tricky

[21:43] To be honest, wtih so many frameworks out there and all of them are promoted as the next big thing, I find hard to see why I shoud choose RoR instead of any other (Ruby based or not)

[21:43] james take the course from codeacademy, the one from ruby, it’s a good way to start with that

[21:43] I would love to have some simple projects to build with Ruby to practice

[21:43] @james no, you won’t be wasting your time. It’s possible to get up and running with Rails quite quickly. Especially if you’ve sone some web dev stuff already

[21:43] james, you need to learn “the patience” sir

[21:43] But one thing which bothers me alot which is Rails magic

[21:44] @ Hawk, no i have not

[21:44] things are too much abstract ..

[21:44] @james *done some web dev

[21:44] I will be glad to join

[21:44] saqib that magic is for the regular user, but once you learn this “magic” ror has, it gets pretty fun

[21:44] joe – if you refresh this page and leave the session, you’ll see the schedule. :) Then you can rejoin.

[21:44] @molina, if you like Ruby and need a web app, Rails is a good choice. Sinatra is another. I do not believe Rails is the only game in town, it’s just a good one.

[21:45] kinduff if you want to change something .. it took a while to manipulate things according to need

[21:45] so when I can already say that I’m confident in the basic of Ruby, I could just jump into RoR 4?

[21:45] saqib Rails magic is good when you’re learning, I think.

[21:45] For those debating whether to start with Rails, I started with Sinatra projects first (for developing with Ruby) and it helped

[21:45] james Sure.

[21:46] I had a short time experience with PHP btw

[21:46] Well I played with Sinatra a bit and some RoR but with my level of knowledge (or should I say ignorance) it is hard to see the advantages of one over the other depending on the project.

[21:46] james have you tried Laravel 4 php framework?

[21:46] saqib Glenn it is, but It’s pretty hard once you want to think out of the box

[21:46] I think it’s important to point out that Rails is based on a “convention over configuration” If you like Rails conventions (routing, mvc, etc) then you can do great things with it.

[21:47] saqib Not yet. I’m still confused on my field right now actually.

[21:47] Glenn just nailed it.

[21:47] there you go

[21:47] @ Hawk i just did

[21:47] Cool :)

[21:47] Glenn kinduff what do you think about backward compatibility or Rails?

[21:47] @moina Sinatra is much closer to the metal. Rails has “more magic”

[21:48] Rails -> automagical

[21:48] Glenn – what are the main differences in Rails 4 (over the previous versions)?

[21:48] saqib Backward compatibility is a noble aim. However, in some cases it’s impossible or impractical. The jump to Rails 3 is a great example.

[21:49] @glenn with more magic, do you mean that development really faster (well, if you know it, of course) than if you use Sinatra?

[21:50] @molina Yes. You can get up and going much faster with your “standard” site

[21:50] HAWK We have a great article on Rubysource about that http://rubysource.com/get-your-app-ready-for-rails-4/

[21:52] Glenn – cheers, I’ll have a read

[21:53] I like the fact that I could build it modularly with Rails…and make global changes

[21:54] Andy – you wrote Jump Start Rails with no real previous experience of Rails, yeah? What was the hardest bit to get your head around?

[21:54] lj That leads to a great point that a good architecture is more important than what framework you choose. You can be modular with Rails, or you can write a ball of mud.

[21:54] since I am actually generating the pages each time I make changes?

[21:55] HAWK yes, that’s true. I guess all the “conventions” was the trickiest part.

[21:55] I heard jumping from Rails 2.3 to 3.0 was kinda hard, how is the jump from 3.0 to 4.0?

[21:56] HAWK coming from spending a long time developing with PHP, Rails frustrated me at first. It kept getting in the way…

[21:56] @kinduff, I don’t think it’s as bad. There is a great Railscast on it http://railscasts.com/episodes/415-upgrading-to-rails-4

[21:57] HAWK now I an say that working with PHP frameworks, it’s those that get in the way. Rails by comparison, is… there when you need it

[21:57] @andy Not sure that I understand what you mean

[21:57] Yeah, I’ve heard that from many people that make the jump, Andy

[21:57] kinduff you can grab gems to bridge the gap to rails 4 and fix code as you have time. Both the links I posted in this chat talk about that.

[21:58] Glenn thanks for the info, time to migrate some stuff

[21:58] kinduff No worries! Good luck!

[21:58] HAWK molona to be clear, when building a web app you are designing a solution to a problem. You want tools that help you do that, not ones that need a lot of attention to make them work…

[21:59] @andy that’s much clearer, thank you

[22:00] We have a gap. Does anyone have a question that hasn’t been answered yet?

[22:01] Is anyone currently working on a Rails app? Any pain points?

[22:02] Well, I wonder if there’s a type of project I should start with

[22:02] Is Heroku the best way to host the app?

[22:02] yeah and to add to that. What if I’m just learning Rails and don’t have any project. What can I do to practice the things I learn? I mean just do the usual way like blog, etc?

[22:03] lj Heroku is great, for sure. It has some constraints, though, so you need to understand what those are.

[22:03] lj I love Heroku but it’s not the best

[22:03] lj it’s a great place start with.

[22:03] It is slow though if the site doesnt get continual traffic to keep it awake

[22:04] james re-build your own site using Rails maybe?

[22:04] @lj I have a cron job on my personal hosting that just pings all my little apps every hour

[22:04] That way they all stay alive on the free teir :D

[22:04] @lj Pingdom can fix that problem

[22:04] james Pick a site and reproduce it in Rails. Find some good Ruby resources and go through their tuts/articles. I would like to suggest http://rubysource.com of course :)

[22:04] MalCurtis from Heroku?

[22:04] I have hosting with MediaTemple that allows me to set up cron jobs

[22:05] so I run ‘wget http://cspisawesome.com’ every hour

[22:05] that’s on of my heroku free apps

[22:05] I beleive the timeout is every hour

[22:05] But Glenn’s idea of Pingdom is just as good

[22:05] they test for your website being up

[22:05] so it will receive traffic

[22:05] lj I think if you sign up for the free version of the New Relic add-on, it will keep your site up.

[22:06] MalCurtis Pingdom credit goes to Andy :)

[22:06] I tried new relic that does this…not sure yet if its working

[22:06] Oops, sorry Andy

[22:06] Seeya kinduff – thanks for joining us

[22:07] With MT do you use rsync?

[22:07] @lj https://coderwall.com/p/u0x3nw

[22:07] comment was for MalCurtis

[22:08] wget

[22:09] it just retrieves the url I give it

[22:09] Good idea to try the magazine in rails…thanks for the inspiration and push

[22:09] MalCurtis but I mean just to upload your work from you r local machine…rsync?

[22:10] I would hate to have to make a change to 300 pages one at a time

[22:10] Oh, I put up a blog on my personal website years ago and haven’t really changed anything since

[22:10] I still ftp to it if I need to make changes, which I never do :D

[22:11] It’s wordpress so most content is dynamic

[22:11] so you arent blogging on it anymore?

[22:11] Oh ok so it isnt rails

[22:11] Yea

[22:11] I did it before I became a rails guy

[22:12] I tried an Octopress blog which have me a little ruby practice

[22:12] Nice, yea – if I were to do anything these days it would be managed with GIt

[22:13] I had trouble managing the github pages so I used rsync with my host Site5

[22:13] worked very well

[22:15] MalCurtis Did you ever build another one in RoR?

[22:15] A blog?

[22:15] yep

[22:15] Nope. Not really interested

[22:15] There’s so many great static site generators out there

[22:16] OK so then what would you use rails for?

[22:16] for example

[22:16] I wrote learnable.com

[22:16] Which is a rather large rails app

[22:16] in rails? right?

[22:16] yes great job

[22:16] Yea, initially it was PHP, Rails and some Python

[22:17] amazing

[22:17] now it’s just Rails

[22:17] I actually don’t work on it any more

[22:17] The Sitepoint devs take care of it

[22:17] but does it make sense to use it for a smaller project when as you say “there are so many…”

[22:17] Dynamic content = use rails

[22:17] Static content = maybe use rails if you want practice, but probably no need

[22:18] Does anyone have questions for our experts? Glenn and Andy are probably going to sleep? ;)

[22:18] If I have a static or nearly static content app, I like to start with Sinatra.

[22:18] When did you decide to make learnable an only Rails app

[22:19] It was a company wide decision to move away from PHP, and Learnable was already half written

[22:19] So as things needed updating, we rewrote them into rails

[22:19] Flippa have done the same thing

[22:19] Welcome to those of you that have just joined. If you have a question, please jump in

[22:19] as they make updates / add new features, they get written in Rails

[22:19] I think they’re nearly all Rails now

[22:19] I’ll post the full transcript up on SitePoint later today so you can see what you’ve missed

[22:19] Glenn I wonder how you would “start” the project with Sinatra…how you would proceed

[22:20] I know that’s a big question

[22:21] lj Well, Sinatra is really just a file if you use the inline views feature. Makes it nice to get going if I don’t need complicated auth, css/asset handling, etc.

[22:21] Suggestions for picking up Rails? I am coming from a strong PHP background.

[22:21] lj if the app starts to get too big and you’ve written your business logic in a somewhat modular way, crank up a Rails app and pull it over.

[22:22] eip56 build something using Rails. It sounds like a simple answer I know. But it is the best way.

[22:23] eip56 Andy’s book is aimed somewhat at people making the jump https://learnable.com/books/jump-start-rails

[22:23] Andy. Always a good way :-). We will follow up with a more specific way. What are your favorite resource books/ sites

[22:24] Awesome thank you

[22:24] andy I look forward to reading your book

[22:24] Aren’t there quite a few articles on RubySource on that subject as well Glenn?

[22:24] http://rubysource.com/ ;-)

[22:24] Hehe

[22:24] Ok everyone – there is 5 mins remaining in the session. Speak now or forever hold your peace.

[22:24] HAWK Why, yes, I do believe there are some Rails articles over there.

[22:25] eip56 cheers! It’ll get you started anyway.

[22:25] :p I meant specifically pertaining to making the switch from PHP, Glenn

[22:26] why would you favour Rails over, say, Python with Flask?

[22:26] oooooh…right. eip56 Here’s one on PHP to Sinatra http://rubysource.com/php-to-sinatra/

[22:26] In your view what does Rails have over PHP project wise I guess. What would make you choose one over the other?

[22:26] HAWK I found that in the end, it was best to forget all about PHP…

[22:27] @andy so either you program with Rails or with PHP but not with both? lol

[22:27] I’m yet to meet a ex-PHP dev that made the switch and DID look back, Andy

[22:27] jamesMccoy I would favor it b/c I don’t really know Python :P

[22:28] jamesMccoy But, at that point it’s more of a language preference issue, as opposed to a Rails vs Flask issue

[22:28] I’d have thought it was a performance issue,

[22:28] eip56 Rails does the full job when it comes to web apps. PHP was never originally intended to be stuffed into the MVC pattern…

[22:28] rails has a massive overhead in comparison to flask/python

[22:28] I was wondering if the rails experts could give some insight

[22:29] from their perspectives (I am a Python man, if you couldn’t tell…)

[22:29] Andy and Glenn ARE the Rails experts, jamesMccoy :)

[22:29] jamesMccoy I don’t know flask, sorry. Rails definitely has some overhead, it’s the price you pay for so much convention.

[22:29] Andy / Glenn, what commercial apps have you written in Ruby?

[22:29] specifically, rails?

[22:29] jamesMccoy flask/Python compares with Ruby/Sinatra. Rails is comparable with Django

[22:29] jamesMccoy if you like what those conventions give you, and I do, then it’s great.

[22:30] I spent much of the past year or so working on http://social.kyck.com

[22:31] hey that looks cool. and Andy?

[22:31] We are currently working on another large commercial Rails app, but its still cooking.

[22:31] Tease

[22:31] jamesMccoy I’m currently re-building a corporate intranet.

[22:31] Can you give an example of the conventions and what they give you?

[22:32] Anyway guys, that’s technically a wrap. Feel free to stick around for as long as you like, but I’m cutting our experts free when they’re ready.

[22:32] i think i am in the wrong chat

[22:32] And I’d like to say a HUGE thanks for them both for their time

[22:32] so where did you gain your experience for authoring your book, if not from engineering?

[22:32] @glenn, cool… I guess it uses Geotargetting because the page displayed in Spanish for me

[22:32] Hey the few minutes as always have been a pleasure @ HAWk Andy and Glenn

[22:32] What were you looking for redmuB?

[22:32] thanks to all!

[22:33] lj Sure. Real quick (it’s dinner time :)) Routing DSL, mapping of url to controller action to view, asset handling (js and css, minified, etc)

[22:33] Thanks to both :D

[22:33] jamesMccoy from building my own site: andyhawthorne.herokuapp.com, it’s what made me think about the book in the first place.

[22:33] Sounds good Glenn Thanks

[22:33] ActiveRecord gives a mapper to your RDMBS tables. Rails mitigates CSRF attacks. There’s loads more.

[22:34] That is my main problem now is routing..suppose I had to change all those routes in all those pages

[22:34] @molina, Rails has a cool i18n convention too :)

[22:34] @Glenn Cool. Thanks :)

[22:34] Soooo, gotta run folks. Thanks for dropping by. I hope it was fun/useful.

[22:35] don’t you ever feel with Rails that you’re not so much engineering as just sticking blocks together?

[22:35] genuine question — I have built a few apps using the platform, I didn’t feel like I was in control

[22:35] Glenn calls it convention, is it necessarily a good thing?

[22:35] Anyone need a taxi?

Advanced CSS3 Transition Effects

Craig Buckler — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 09:03:03 +0000

In the final part of this series about CSS3 transitions, we’ll examine a couple of more advanced transition topics.

Alternative Reversing Transitions

In our previous examples, we’ve applied a single transition property which is used when changing from the start to the end (hovered) state and reversing from the end to the start state, e.g.

p#animate
{
	color: #ff6;
	transition: all 3s ease-in-out 0.5s;
}
p#animate:hover
{
	color: #0f0;
	transform: scale(4);
}

(Note that -webkit prefixes are not shown but are currently required for transition and transform.)

In this example, when you hover over the element for at least 0.5 seconds, it will grow to 4x its size and change color over three seconds. When you move the cursor off the element, it will wait for another 0.5 seconds then return to its starting state over three seconds too.

But what if we wanted the element to snap back immediately? Fortunately, we can apply two differing transitions; one for the animation between the start and end state, and one for the reversing animation between the end and start state:

p#animate
{
	color: #ff6;
	transition: all 0.5s ease-in-out;
}
p#animate:hover
{
	color: #0f0;
	transform: scale(4);
	transition: all 3s ease-in-out 0.5s;
}

View the transition reversing demonstration page…

This illustrates an element which grows to the end state slowly but returns to the start state quickly. You should note that the transition property is applied to the state it’s moving toward. Therefore, our :hover (end) state has the three second duration, but the normal (start) state has a 0.5 second duration.

Multiple Transitions

Individual CSS properties can have differing transition effects applied. This is best illustrated with an example:

p#animate
{
	width: 10em;
	background-color: #F00;
	border-radius: 5px;
	transition-property: width, border-radius, background-color;
	transition-duration: 1s, 2s, 5s;
	transition-timing-function:  ease, ease-out, linear;
}
p#animate:hover
{
	width: 20em;
	background-color: #00F;
	border-radius: 50%;
}

View the multiple transition effects demonstration page…

In essence, we have defined three separate transitions when we hover over the element:

the width is doubled from 10em to 20em over 1 second using the ease timing function
the border-radius changes from 5px to 50% over 2 seconds using the ease-out timing function, and
the background-color changes from red to blue over 5 seconds using the linear timing function

You’ll notice that the background color continues to change at least three seconds after the other animations have completed.

Values loop if you omit them, e.g.

p#animate
{
	transition-property: width, border-radius, background-color;
	transition-duration: 1s, 2s;
	transition-timing-function:  ease;
}

the width animates over 1 second using the ease timing function
the border-radius animates over 2 seconds using the ease timing function, and
the background-color animates over 1 second using the ease timing function

If you’ve followed this series, you now know almost everything there is to know about CSS3 transitions. Hopefully, you’ll devise better examples than the ones I’ve shown here!

When Do Elements Take the Focus?

James Edwards — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 05:23:05 +0000

Do elements take the focus when you click them with the mouse? Do they show focus indication, like a dotted-border or focus-ring?

The answer always used to be yes — and in my view, it certainly should be — however browser behavior has changed in recent years, in both subtle and significant ways.

Now if you do a quick search for ways of suppressing focus outlines, you’ll get thousands of results. How do I get rid of that ugly dotted border that’s spoiling my beautiful design? comes the cry. The web industry has always overflowed with people who seem to think that’s okay — who think that their arbitrary aesthetics are more important than accessibility; who don’t just want to remove visual indication of the focus, but to prevent links and form-fields from taking the focus altogether.

A significant number of developers don’t even understand the difference, so I suppose I can be sympathetic with those who are sold solutions like this:

When all they really wanted was this:

a:focus { outline:none; }

Both of those are accessibility disasters, but the latter is understandable from a design perspective; or at least, it’s understandable where mouse-triggered focus is concerned. Let me be clear — you should never prevent elements from taking the focus, nor should you remove focus indication when the user Tabs to an element (unless of course you replace it with something else).

But even I’ve been tempted by solutions like this:

a:focus:not(:hover) { outline:none; }

So is it okay to prevent focus indication when the user clicks with the mouse? Browser vendors increasingly seem to think so, and many no longer add a native outline in that situation. In fact in some cases, they don’t focus the element at all.

To try to get some clarity on this, I’ve done a bunch of tests. Here are the headlines:

In Firefox, links don’t show a native focus outline when clicked with the mouse, unless you’ve already used the Tab key during the current page-view.
In Opera and IE10, links never show a native focus outline when clicked with the mouse.
In Chrome and Safari, links don’t take the focus at all when clicked with the mouse, unless they have tabindex.
In Firefox for Mac, Chrome and Safari, some types of form field don’t take the focus at all when clicked with the mouse; this behavior is limited to fields which have no typed input, such as radios, checkboxes, buttons, color-pickers and sliders.

There’s also something interesting to note with elements like , which are not normally focusable, but have been made so by the addition of tabindex. Remember that elements with tabindex="0" are added to the tab-order just like links and form-fields, whereas elements with tabindex="-1" can only be programatically focused.

Except, that isn’t true:

In all browsers, elements with negative tabindex can be focused by clicking them with the mouse, they’re just not in the tab-order.

I find that the most curious anomaly of them all — keyboard-accesible elements can’t be focused with the mouse, yet mouse-focused elements aren’t accessible to the keyboard!

So what to make of all this? Well frankly, it’s hard to be sure. These behaviors are not exactly new, but they are fairly recent. For example, if we go back to Firefox 3.6 we find that none of the noted caveats apply — all focusable elements take the focus when you click them with the mouse, and all show native focus indication.

Perhaps we can put this into some kind of context if we look at platform conventions. In Mac dialogs for example, text-boxes and menus take the focus when you click them with the mouse, however buttons, radios and sliders do not. This corresponds with behavior we noted earlier, in Firefox for Mac, Chrome and Safari. We didn’t see that behavior in Firefox for Windows, and indeed, all dialog widgets in Windows do take the focus when you click them. Yet in Chrome for Windows we get the same behavior as for Mac, so Chrome can’t claim to be honoring platform conventions, as Firefox can.

But how important are platform conventions to web applications anyway? The web has its own conventions, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to force platform conventions onto it. It’s hard enough to get developers to care about accessibility, without having to think about it in platform-specific terms!

Personally, I don’t think any of this is a good thing. I think all focusable elements should take the focus by any means of interaction, and should always show a native focus outline when they do (except for elements with tabindex="-1" which should not be user-focusable at all, because that’s what it’s for). But I’m not naive to designers’ wishes either, and I do have a certain sympathy for how focus can jar with a design.

Nevertheless, the most important thing is users’ needs, and users’ accessibility needs rank highest of all. Have any of us, ever, had complaints from users, saying they don’t like those dotted lines or bright-blue rings? Users aren’t precious about this stuff like we are, they just want it to work.

The Definitive Guide to (Mostly) Free Images

John Tabita — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:30:37 +0000

They say nothing on the Internet is truly “free.” Even services like Gmail and Facebook come with a price—namely, your privacy (free with a string attached would be more accurate). It’s the same with “free” images from sites like Flickr and and Stock.XCHNG. Here’s what you need to know about free and mostly free images on the web.

Creative Commons: A Non-Traditional Copyright Model

Creative Commons is a creative (pun intended) twist on the traditional copyright model I wrote about last week. “Some Rights Reserved” rather than “All Rights Reserved” is how Creative Commons licensing works.

Creative Commons licenses come in six flavors:

Attribution
Attribution-NonCommercial
Attribution-NoDerivs
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs
Attribution-ShareAlike
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

Attribution simply means you must credit the photographer in the manner he or she specifies. As you can see, all six Creative Commons require attribution. This is the “price” you pay in exchange for not having to shell out cold, hard cash to use the image. From there, the license restrictions differ in whether or not you can use it for commercial purposes or alter it in any way (i.e., create a derivative).

NonCommercial means you cannot use the image for commercial purposes. And while a charity or non-profit might seem to fit this category, bear in might that, if the organization is attempting to coax money out of its audience (as in the case of charity fund-raising), it may not qualify as “non-commercial.”

NoDerivs is short for No Derivatives, meaning you cannot alter the image in any way—including cropping.

ShareAlike means you can make a derivative of the image, so long as you license the new creation under the same Creative Commons license. So if the original image you altered was licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike, you’d have to do the same with your version.

As you can see, each license is a combination of two or more of these terms. So Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs means the image must be attributed and cannot be used for commercial purposes or altered in any way. Make sense?

Which is Best: Creative Commons or Royalty Free/Right Managed?

Whether to use a Creative Commons image or not depends on context. The biggest drawback to using them on a business or professional website is the attribution requirement. Using free images on pages intended to sell a product or service sends the wrong message. It tells me you want my money, but you’re too cheap to spend yours for some real marketing.

Blog articles are the exception. Even when on a business website, blog articles offer free information or advice. Oftentimes, bloggers are writing to establish themselves as professionals in their industry. So there’s a naturally symbiotic relationship between those authors and the photographers who are trying to do the same by offering their images in return for an attribution. Even sites like Techcrunch and Mashable use Flickr and other Creative Commons images in their articles.

Another disadvantage to free images is photographic quality. While you’ll certainly find a few gems, you’ll spend a lot of time scrolling past mediocre or downright awful images to find a good one. Clearly, there’s a difference between amateur and professional photography—which is why established professionals rarely offer their images for free. As one person put it, people steal stock photography images because they’re good.

Public Domain Images

Works in the public domain are those where intellectual property rights have expired or are ineligible for copyright protection. In plain English, that means they are completely free to use, no strings attached.

Images in the public domain have their use for blogging, or for historical or editorial content, but I wouldn’t necessarily use one on a business website, unless it happened to fit the topic.

As I stated in last week’s article, using random images from a Google search puts both you and your client at risk. Stock image companies won’t be satisfied with a “cease and desist”. Even if you remove the image immediately (which you should), they also insist on punitive damages over and above the original licensing fee. While the blogosphere’s full of questionable advice on how to handle an infringement claim, it’s best to avoid the situation in the first place. The best protection against copyright infringement is to assume everything is copyrighted unless stated otherwise.

So the next time you’re tempted to right-click and “Save Image As…” keep in mind that the better the image looks, the more likely it is to be a copyrighted stock photo.

Image credit

CSS3 Transitions: Bezier Timing Functions

Craig Buckler — Mon, 29 Jul 2013 08:50:36 +0000

In the second part of this series we looked at the CSS3 transition-timing-function property which controls how an animation varies in speed throughout the duration of the transition. This accepts keyword values such as ease, ease-in and linear which are normally enough for the most demanding CSS developer.

However, you can define your own timing functions using a cubic-bezier value. It sounds and looks complicated but can be explained with some simple diagrams.

The diagram above plots the percentage of the animation complete against time. The line is linear so, in effect, the proportion of the animation completed matches the time, e.g. 50% of the animation is complete half-way through the duration.

This diagram shows the ease-in-out curve:

It starts slowly; approximately 12% of the animation is completed in the first 25% of time.
It ends slowly; the last 12% of the animation occurs in the last 25% of time.
Therefore, the middle 76% of the animation must occur during 50% of the time; it’ll be faster.

In essence, the steeper the curve tangent, the faster the animation will occur at that time. If the line was vertical, the animation would be instantaneous at that point. This is demonstrated in the following diagram:

Half-way through the duration, the animation will jump from approximately 30% complete to 70% complete.

We can imagine that all transition animations start at point 0,0; the animation is 0% complete (in its start state) after zero time. Similarly, they will end at point 1,1; the animation is 100% complete (in its end state) at the end of the duration.

Therefore, we can define a bézier curve between 0,0 and 1,1.

What’s a Bézier Curve?

You’ll have seen bézier curves used in graphics packages. Given the start point (P₀) and end point (P₃) of a line, a bézier curve defines two control points for each end (P₁ and P₂). I won’t even begin to explain the mathematics but, if you’re interested, head over to Wikipedia or WolframMathWorld for the stomach-turning equations.

Luckily, we don’t need to worry about the complexities. Since our animation line starts at 0,0 and ends at 1,1, we just need to define points P₁ and P₂ in the cubic-bezier value, e.g.

/* cubic-bezier(p1x, p1y, p2x, p2y) */
/* identical to linear */
transition-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.25,0.25,0.75,0.75);
/* identical to ease-in-out */
transition-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.420, 0.000, 0.580, 1.000);

Note that the the x co-ordinates of P₁ and P₂ denote time and must be between 0 and 1 (inclusive). You couldn’t set a negative value since it would start earlier than it was triggered! Similarly, you couldn’t set a value greater than one since time cannot proceed to, say, 120% then reverse back to 100% (unless you have a TARDIS or flux capacitor to hand).

However, the y co-ordinates denote the animation completed and can be any value less than zero or greater than one, e.g.

transition-timing-function: cubic-bezier(0.5, -0.5, 0.5, 1.5);

At approximately 15% of the duration, the animation is -10% complete! Therefore, if we were moving an element from 0px to 100px, it would be at -10px at that time. In other words, we have a bounce effect; head over to cubic-bezier.com and click GO to see it in action.

Let the Tools do the Work

Defining bézier curves can involve trail and error to achieve the effect you want. Fortunately, there are a number of great tools to help you experiment and produce the correct code:

In the final part of this series, we’ll look at a couple of advanced transition techniques.

Danger Clients #43: Those With Secret Ideas

Craig Buckler — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 15:35:36 +0000

All my clients are great. Yours probably are too. But once in a while, you’ll be approached by someone with an idea which is so revolutionary, they can’t possibly reveal the details. They fear you’ll steal their concept … but they still expect a quote! And then start haggling.

My advice: run away. Quickly.

Perhaps you’ve just rejected working for the next Google, but the chances the client will make millions are infinitesimally small. The reasons…

1. Their idea won’t be good or original
Neither Facebook or Twitter were particularly pioneering, but they took existing concepts, added a few twists, implemented them well and generated publicity. A secret idea usually means zero market research and no pre-launch marketing.

Besides, dig a little deeper and you’ll discover it’s yet another social network or auction system. Or a social network with an auction facility.

2. They’re not an expert
The client may be an expert in their field but they’re approaching you for your development knowledge. They may have considered the overall concept and how amazing it’ll be for their customers, but it’s a long, long way from implementation. They cannot build it themselves yet only they can explain it. If they’re unable or unwilling to do that, the system won’t ever be completed.

3. They have trust issues
I don’t mind signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement, but a client who doesn’t trust you at the start won’t suddenly change their attitude. They’ll never trust you; you’ll never trust them. It’s not a basis for a profitable relationship.

4. Money is not your motivating factor
I don’t know a single software engineer who’s in it for the money. Most of us learned the techniques — unpaid — because we were interested in the subject and created our own projects. We’re passionate about programming; not ripping off client ideas.

That said, the client shouldn’t expect you to work for free because…

5. Your ideas are better than theirs
The best developers are full of great ideas. You may not have the time or inclination to complete them all, but your project has a far greater chance of success than someone who doesn’t understand the industry. It’s always more rewarding to work on something you truly believe in.

But Don’t…

…be tempted to do work on a project out of curiosity — unless they’re willing to pay for every minute of consultancy time.

The worst clients will instantly offer you a partnership or share options. They don’t know you and are not willing to share their idea — but are happy to give away part of their company? Ultimately, it means they’ll do the fluffy thinking while you the hard work translating their unworkable ideas into reality.

What’s the worst client approach you’ve ever received?

Create a Killer Mobile App Development Spec

Viktor Bogdanov — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 14:38:04 +0000

Do you know what many visionary tech entrepreneurs have in common, besides business acumen, persistence, commitment and confidence in their own tech genius?

An inability to properly and clearly formulate their project idea or concept to those who’ll actually be working on bringing them to life!

Of course there are exceptions, just as in anything, but based on my seven plus years of experience working in IT, most of our future mobile product creators fail to create clear and well-structured mobile app development specifications. Otherwise we at Intersog wouldn’t receive so many chaotic app specs, sometimes resembling an essay by a college fresher (though some app owners are indeed college freshers) or notes from an insane asylum rather than a set of technical requirements.

You may object that all idea hamsters are creative by nature and creativity doesn’t always equate with an orderly approach. The problem is that a poorly written app development spec is likely to prevent you from getting your mobile product on time, on budget and matching your initial vision, and from correlating your actual expenditures with a development budget and creating an environment of a shared product vision with your development partner or team.

The technical specification generally defines requirements needed to fulfill the development contract, so when you’re unable to supply your future app development provider with a clear vision of the product and how it will interact with users and systems, be ready to face overheads and delivery issues at post-release stages.

Service providers literally hate getting specs that lack important details, such as the app’s target audience or the server collaboration or the proof of concept. Translating the messy, fragmented or cumbersome narratives into the technical documents requires additional efforts and time and both are very expensive these days, as you know. My former employer was so pissed off at receiving raw and unclear specs that it launched a series of workshops to teach companies how to create proper and well-structured mobile development specs. And believe me – those workshops were in a very high demand and came to be a great source of additional revenue!

But making a killer mobile app development spec is not so difficult at all, so why waste money on them? Just stick to the suggested sequence below while writing your next big hit app’s spec and you’ll be able to properly envelope your ideas and vision for your service provider’s sake.

Introduction

First off, explain all definitions, acronyms and abbreviations to be used in the document (this can be done as a last step when writing a spec, but should always be placed on top of the document)
Describe your app’s goal
Describe your app’s target audience
List and prioritize all mobile platforms your app is intended for
List and prioritize all devices and OS versions your app is intended for
List all technologies that should be used for building your app (I suggest you always make your own research before getting provider’s response and asking for suggestions)
List major milestones (from analysis, prototyping, and pre-release to app store placement), their due dates and/or desired timeframe for proof of concept/delivery
Specify your project’s budget

Functional requirements

Usability (screens, view modes, menus, etc) and UI
Social media integration (list all social media channels you want your mobile app to interact with)
App’s collaboration with the server, including detailed description of the app-server interaction mechanism, protocols and likewise data
Data caching for offline work if required
In-app purchasing if applicable (specify what type of content will be sold to users inside the app)
Geo-location services and push notifications
Printing functionality
Compatibility / sync with e-commerce engines, internal CMS and other systems

Design

Here you should specify who will do the graphics design part – your in-house designers, freelancers, a subcontractor or a development provider. In any case, a design specification should be created separately and integrated into the app development requirements document.

Additional information

Provide your market research details and links to / description of all rival / similar apps
Express your concerns, limitations and special wishes for the service provider to have a complete picture of your future app and its role in the marketplace
List all points of contact within your organization and briefly describe your vision of how communication between your company and your app developer should be handled throughout the project

Also remember that a killer mobile app development spec should be truthful, unambiguous, consistent, verifiable, modifiable and traceable. Try to stay away from generic requirements such as “the app should never crash” or “the app should respond quickly to a user query” and provide quantitative requirements instead such as “each button push should provide a response within 100 ms”.

Be sharp, crisp and up to the point and you’ll gain maximum value from providers’ responses to your RFP!

Debugging Mobile with jsconsole

Adrien Tchuya Payong — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 13:21:59 +0000

Web development for mobile devices has several major limitations.

There are strongly divergent screen resolutions (from iPad to the first generation of Blackberry), multiple browsers (webkit but also IEMobile, Firefox, Opera mini and mobile, etc.) and multiple operating systems (Windows Phone, Android, iOS, Palm, Blackberry). Each device has its own constraints and performance.

When it comes time to debug all this, the task is not easy because there are only few tools permitting it – and because of the size of the screen, even then we are not out of the woods.

Dragonfly for Opera already offers a native solution for remote debugging, but this technique is quite limited, especially when one has to take into account other mobile / browsers. Several phone manufacturers also offer emulators, but they don’t compare to the use of a real device offering ”feel and touch” – especially on the side of the web-client programming, and especially JavaScript.

It is to help us in this perilous task that jsconsole was created.

A JavaScript Console for Mobile

Go to the following address: http://jsconsole.com.

Jsconsole will allow you to debug a JavaScript application remotely through a console located on your desktop, which will be used to debug directly on your phone. To make an analogy, it is as if you were using the Firebug JS console remotely.

On the one hand, the tool will retrieve every call to console.log from your mobile and will display it on your desktop.

On the other hand, jsconsole will allow you to inject JavaScript code directly into your pages.

Understand that this tool is normally used only in the development phase or debugging and should always be removed prior to the production start of your website.

Initialize jsconsole

The first step is to create the link between your site and jsconsole. To do this, enter the first command in the console:

:listen

This command will return an identifier and a tag