[seen.to]

Originally Posted by freelancr

Please don't pretend you give a fuck about standards. Well done on getting the award, but as it was for the content, why are you so happy to take the credit for a job badly done? The articles pages I just looked at had over 200 errors and has been done in tables. If the BBC managed to revamp their site, considering they have millions of pages, I'm pretty sure anyone can.

Don't take this rant to heart as it isn't really aimed at you, afterall you can't be soley responsible for this entire site. It is aimed at the retards giving out awards to this kinda failboat code.

Web standards is having a hell of a time being adopted by developers, and fuckers like these webby cunts aren't really helping by not taking it into account. This only leads to piss poor browsers, years of waiting to play around with the latest css standard, and having your hourly rate for quality work compared to some WYSIWYG monkey who couldnt give a fuck so long as it works in Internet Explorer.

Don't imagine that you know what the fuck you are talking about. I do give a fuck about standards and everything I've done in the last three or four years (freelance and personal) has been fully standards compliant as well as being semantically marked up in an accessible way. I've had heated meetings with my employers on a regular basis pushing towards w3c and 508 compliance - two things that they hadn't even considered before I started there. Fuck, if I didn't give a shit about standards and didn't have regular difficult meetings about them I wouldn't give a toss about your comments.

We don't have the budget of the BBC and as a not-for-profit have to jump through a multitude of hoops to get anything done. We've finally got a budget allowance for a new CMS and design but that is spread over the next three years.

If you look at the HTML of the actual article content you'll see that it is semantically coded and standards compliant. When I first arrived the articles were full of some of the nastiest code you're ever likely to see from MSWord proprietary tags from who knows how many versions of Word, badly nested tags that were a mixture of uppercase and lowercase, a huge mass of empty tags, tags and definitions that don't even exist and other crap that I've since blocked out. Getting a new HTML editor implemented and customized to fit our CMS and the functionality involved took over a year in itself. It took long enough to convince the editors and hundreds of doctors that write and review our articles to stop using Word (there is no truly reliable way to automatically clean Word tags).

I'm fully aware of the errors in the pages and the fact that everything is wrapped in a multitude of tables (bare in mind that the site launched in 1995 though) makes my job a real pain-in-the-arse but it's not an overnight task to fix for reasons that I already mentioned.

When I first started IE6 was the only browser supported. Everything is now required to go through testing in IE6, IE7, Safari (MAC) and of course FireFox (MAC & PC).

Anyways I'm bored with this now, just don't be so stupid as to say that I don't give a fuck about standards when you haven't got a clue what you are talking about and without an understanding of what is actually involved.

As far as the Webby's are concerned I agree and disagree. Let's not forget that the Web is an information medium and a poorly coded site which helps over 150 million parents, kids and teens a year is a hugely more valuable resource than a well coded site that contains shit content and does nothing for anybody. (and it will be better still when it's well coded).

Can't comment on your own adherance to or knowledge of standards as it appears that all you have to show is a single page of text linking to myspace and the like. Well done.

[hawken]

Congratulations! An accolade indeed to be picked from the probable billions of entries. I hope it gives you that warm funny feeling.

There's no such thing as web standards, passing the w3c test means nothing compared to a site with loads of traffic and good, useful content. They are guidelines only, and the judging isn't based on that, it's based on usefulness to the general public. That's why the BBC can win best music website and not a well coded Justin Timberlake site, etc.


freelancr, welcome to my ignore list.

[niksy]

Congrats!

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by seen.to

Can't comment on your own adherance to or knowledge of standards as it appears that all you have to show is a single page of text linking to myspace and the like. Well done.

I have little time to do my own sites as I have been busy as of late, and that page is merely there to get indexed in google before the actual site launches. If you keep an eye on showcase you might see when it is launched and when my portfolio is re-created, should be some time either this or next month.

Hi Hawken. (bet you clicked the display this message link to read that, didn't you?)

[Anxious]

Congratulations! Is there an award ceremony you get to go to?

[MikeMackay]

Congratulations to you, well done.

We were nominated for an award ourselves (Music - NowPlayIt), but we didn't win. Hopefully next year then.

With regards to Standards, we've recently recoded the front-end on Now Play It to be more semantic and accessible. Something I believe should be done more and more yet I fully understand that when you're working with external data it's incredibly hard to fully validate; especially when you have no control over the content.

- Mike

[seen.to]

@Zygote76: Thanks There's about 30 of us that work there full-time.
@herkalees: Thanks. Hopefully they'll wait 3 years for that and give us time to get things straightened up
@wheedwacker: Thanks
@hawken: Thanks dude It sure is nice to have the organization recognized for all we do.
@niksy: Thanks
@Anxious: Thanks. There is an award ceremony, rather posh it looks too. Unfortunately we can only run to 5 seats so other than the founder/ceo we're not sure who's going to get to go yet - here's hoping I'm one of them You can see last years ceremony on YouTube here: YouTube - The Webby Awards - 11th Annual Gala Event
@MikeMackay: Thanks And congrats on being a nominee which is still a big thing to make the top 5 out of the hundreds and thousands of people that submit entries.

[emil]

Geeks ( )

[Do Gooder]

i don't actually know what a webby is.. but well done!! ... Geek.

Been working on a site that has to be truly accessible to kids with a wide range of impairments (the site even has flash BSL videos of the text content!) - it was the decent real-world testing that dictated how we delt with the main of the accessibility issues. The resulting site wont win any awards for it's aesthetics and only passes basic w3c but is in on budget, actually works for it's purpose and is used... that is what matters to the client far far above any ticking any boxes.

being an old print hack working on the site has opened my eyes a bit to all this stuff.

imo w3c are guidelines... and good ones at that.. but not the rule and not infallible. Following them blindly without taking account for the real-word use of the site doesn't always work.

[Dusteh]

The web standards one it would seem if that fucking thing won.

haha, that did make me chuckle.

[Zygote76]

Originally Posted by pgo

I'm not recognized - I didn't work on anything that won. Just my employer.

I suspect it is only a matter of time

[adras]

I always wanted a webby. Congrats seen.to.

[weldo]

Originally Posted by adras

I always wanted a webby.

I'll sell you one ....

[hawken]

you do have to pay to get a webby. Entry fees start at $125, and most categories are more than double that price.

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by hawken

you do have to pay to get a webby. Entry fees start at $125, and most categories are more than double that price.

for fucks sake!

[steveb]

Congratulations!

If it really takes two years to make a site W3C compliant, it's time to ignore the bastards and post sites which simply appear on peoples' browsers.

I've nothing against standards compliancy, but the standards should be logical and easily implemented. Something like the good old BASIC language where if there was a logical error, a program simply wouldn't run. Interpolating that into web standards, if something is too irregular or convoluted, it wouldn't show up.

[canfiratgocmen]

what is webby? it is a girl?

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by steveb

If it really takes two years to make a site W3C compliant, it's time to ignore the bastards and post sites which simply appear on peoples' browsers.

If they have a staff of 30, and been online for 13 years, and its still not valid? They must be scratching their arses playing computer games and smoking pot instead.

Originally Posted by steveb

I've nothing against standards compliancy, but the standards should be logical and easily implemented.

It is. XHTML and CSS are about the easiest languages to learn. They are so basic that some do not even consider them a "real" programming language.

Originally Posted by steveb

Something like the good old BASIC language where if there was a logical error, a program simply wouldn't run. Interpolating that into web standards, if something is too irregular or convoluted, it wouldn't show up.

You can get a web server to stream the content-type as application/xhtml+xml, but surprise surprise, this fucks up on Internet Explorer. If there is an error, and it is delivered as this content-type, the browser will just show an error.

[freelancr]

Originally Posted by canfiratgocmen

what is webby? it is a girl?

Its like a really expensive raffle, that if you are lucky enough to win, your name appears on a website!

[adras]

Originally Posted by weldo

I'll sell you one ....

How much?