CFC Website - Contractors Q & A

[Fred McKim]

While we are waiting for Chris to set Brendan up with a working account, so he can post himself, I'll post his comments:

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Hello Everyone,


I caught this forum and wanted to introduce myself and my team who will be building the new website. I'm hoping to answer any questions you might have about the new site build and gather any suggestions or comments about things you like on the web and things you don't. You all need to know we value your input and are definitely going to keep member input an integral part of the build process. Below are some Q/A style notes that hopefully should address some of the posts I've read.




Some basic technical details about your project:


- As per the CFC's requirements for using an open source CMS, we're going to use Drupal. Drupal 7 was just released this week and we've selected it as our version of choice.


- The front end will target HTML 5 and I can assure you it will validate baring possible exceptions to meet a basic level of accessibility requirments as per the more important WCAG (javascript graceful degradation etc)




Addressing noted concerns:


- The site won't have loads of flash will it?
No, this project will not make use of flash in general interface components. We do have plans however to use a flash based video player (similar to YouTube, Vimeo, TED) for video playback. This approach is pretty standard.




- Will the site focus on flashy graphics over usability and readability?
Our aim with every project is to find a balance between solid visual appeal and good usability and accessibility. This all depends on the target audience.




- We have concerns about our web site being like 'project x' in your porfolio.


It's important to note that we treat every client and their visitors as individuals all of which digest information differently. As a result, we make well thought out decisions to use the most appropriate technology and interface where suitable. Clients have a lot of input too and even post some restrictions. Some of our projects are ad-oriented 'virtual tours' targeting teens that are entirely flash video driven, others are government sites with information accessibility as the focus to older users. The new chess site will certainly recieve a well throught out approach to delivering content in the most appropriate way possible. And no worries, if things like text legibility are a concern we'll be sure to focus on high contrast delivery in our composites.


- 'project x' doesn't validate, I have concerns about code quality with ResIM, do these guys know what they're doing?!


All of our projects will have validated at launch time and all go through a 20 point code quality checklist that is peer audited. Because clients often take control of content after we hand a project over, on older projects sometimes clients (despite training) will put in their own code that doesn't necessarially validate. Also, in many cases, 'silent notices' (not errors) are intended behind the scenes in a browser as the result of new CSS3 stylings which gracefully degrade on older browsers. This is a pretty standard practice.


- What standards will this be developed to?
We are targeting a WCAG Level 2 compliance and proper HTML 5 which will use the W3C's specification. Because we are using Drupal, there is a chance a 3rd party module or two might not meet these standards 100% but we will do our best to ensure solid compliance where it's possible to make modifications without breaking future upgrade paths.


If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them here and I'll do my best to respond quickly. We're all looking forward to working with you. Thanks!

Brendan Farr-Gaynor
Partner/Creative & Technical
Resolution Interactive Media

[Ed Seedhouse]

- The front end will target HTML 5 and I can assure you it will validate baring possible exceptions to meet a basic level of accessibility requirments as per the more important

Ugh. HTML5 is not even a standard and does not even officially exist. If you have said you were useing html 4.01 I would have bad some hope, perhaps. Use of "HTML 5" is an abdication of standards and a very very serious issue, suggesting that you are incompenant to handle such a project.

Sorry to be negative, but html 5 is just a disaster, and if you have fallen for it you will produce a disaster. sigh...

[Kerry Liles]

Ugh. HTML5 is not even a standard and does not even officially exist. If you have said you were useing html 4.01 I would have bad some hope, perhaps. Use of "HTML 5" is an abdication of standards and a very very serious issue, suggesting that you are incompenant to handle such a project.

Sorry to be negative, but html 5 is just a disaster, and if you have fallen for it you will produce a disaster. sigh...

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from...

Reading between the lines (somewhat) I got the impression that they were likely to test the html code against common browsers (eg current versions of: IE, FireFox, Chrome and Safari at least) and make sure it works... That alone would be impressive enough; my son goes to U of Guelph - their web page(s) barely work at all in almost every browser I tried ...

Using Drupal indicates these people are heading the right direction - waving your hands and gnashing your teeth is not helping the situation is it?

I would also expect (from his comments) that there will be (several?) opportunities to test drive preliminary versions or perhaps even mock-ups and then it might be useful to have specific issues raised.

[roger patterson]

While we are waiting for Chris to set Brendan up with a working account, so he can post himself, I'll post his comments:

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Hello Everyone,

We do have plans however to use a flash based video player (similar to YouTube, Vimeo, TED) for video playback. This approach is pretty standard.

So, this type of content will not be viewable on my iPad?

[Brendan Farr-Gaynor]

Ugh. HTML5 is not even a standard and does not even officially exist. If you have said you were useing html 4.01 I would have bad some hope, perhaps. Use of "HTML 5" is an abdication of standards and a very very serious issue, suggesting that you are incompenant to handle such a project.

Sorry to be negative, but html 5 is just a disaster, and if you have fallen for it you will produce a disaster. sigh...

No worries, Ed. They key component here is the focus on separation of content, structure, and style layers. Which this will have. (http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/Overview.html) That was the whole idea behind XHTML was that it would be a transition layer for developers to make the full move toward XML with XSLT. The unfortunate part is that XSLT parsers haven't been fully realized and are just well, slow. So having your raw data served in XML isn't happening yet. That's being saved for server side actions. It's bitter sweet as I preached to my college students that serving XML was the future and that structure could be served independent of content, but it's just not there yet. In step with the rest of the industry, one of our internal development mandates for the new year was to start the move to HTML5 from our regular XHTML Trans/Strict approaches. The code standards are the same, with a few new objects with the same restrictions as XHTML.

[Brendan Farr-Gaynor]

So, this type of content will not be viewable on my iPad?

It will be viewable if the content is provided in a Quicktime (m4v) supported format. This will depend on CFC's content creators, and we will certainly provide them with some guidance on how to convert files. You should see a similar experience on your iPad/iPhone/iPod when viewing an embedded YouTube, Vimeo, TED video now.

[Brendan Farr-Gaynor]

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from...

Reading between the lines (somewhat) I got the impression that they were likely to test the html code against common browsers (eg current versions of: IE, FireFox, Chrome and Safari at least) and make sure it works... That alone would be impressive enough; my son goes to U of Guelph - their web page(s) barely work at all in almost every browser I tried ...

Using Drupal indicates these people are heading the right direction - waving your hands and gnashing your teeth is not helping the situation is it?

I would also expect (from his comments) that there will be (several?) opportunities to test drive preliminary versions or perhaps even mock-ups and then it might be useful to have specific issues raised.

Yes, we will be testing in numerous browsers. This project is targeting specifically:
Internet Explorer 7+ / Firefox 3+ / Safari 4+ / Chrome 5+

We develop on OS X, so you can be sure we're seeing the site in non-IE browsers regularly and can appreciate the frustration of not having a site work in a particular variant.

Part of the project requirements from the CFC was that it be developed on a 3rd party open source CMS. We decided to go with the popular Drupal CMS based on the back end requirements for the project which has tie-ins to numerous external components.

Regarding previews, we do have pre-determined milestones at which point we will be providing our CFC contacts with things like design composites and alpha versions for feedback. We're going to leave it to their discretion on who sees what after that.

I hope that answers all of your questions!

[Ed Seedhouse]

No worries, Ed. They key component here is the focus on separation of content, structure, and style layers.

Which is all hightly desireable and I'd love it if that's what you produce, but it can all be nicely and much more easily done with html 4.01, the last real verstion. XHTML - what a disaster that was, and is. And XSLT failed for an excellent reasong, namely that it was a bad idea in the first place.

And as for the admitted intention to use flash, well words simply fail.

[Bob Gillanders]

Brendan,

It is wonderful of you to come on our discussion board and setup this Q & A session. As you can see, we have many inquiring minds.

Thank you! It is very much appreciated.

[Brendan Farr-Gaynor]

And as for the admitted intention to use flash, well words simply fail.

Just a note concerning flash. Our intended use here is just to provide a standard approach to video delivery. It won't be used anywhere else. Honestly, there is no better approach to video out there that will work on all platforms. Flashplayer has a 97% penetration rate and is the standard of choice for every video site out there with a single exception for DivX.

We're not about pushing flash though, which is part of the rationale for HTML5. Our thinking is that we would serve mpeg4 with HTML 5 vid tags (which would allow native playback in mobile devices like iPad/iPhone) this would drop back to a flash player if the HTML approach wasn't supported by that browser.