blog | CreateSean Web Design

IE6 equation

Monday December 08 2008

Jeremy Keith wrote an interesting article titled The IE6 Equation over at 24ways. Here’s the bit on the equation:

Let’s say that t represents the total development time. Let t6 represent the portion of that time you spend developing for IE6. If your total audience is a, then a6 is the portion of your audience using IE6. With some algebraic help from our mathematically minded co-worker Cennydd Bowles, Natalie and I came up with the following equation to calculate the percentage likelihood that you should be using Dean’s IE7 script:

p = 50 [ log ( at6 / ta6 ) + 1 ]

Andy Clark left the first comment, with permission to steal for use in client contracts. I’ll be adding this to my contract when I get home later today.

As you mentioned client contracts, here is what I say about the issue in my standard Stuff and Nonsense client contract. (Feel free to steal, change and reuse.)

“If the project includes XHTML or HTML markup and CSS templates, we will develop these using valid XHTML 1.0 Strict markup and CSS2.1 + 3 for styling.

We will test all our markup and CSS in current versions of all major browsers including those made by Apple, Microsoft, Mozilla and Opera. We will also test to ensure that pages will display visually in a ‘similar’, albeit not necessarily an identical way, in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 for Windows as this browser is now past it’s sell-by date.

We will not test these templates in old or abandoned browsers, for example Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 or 5.5 for Windows or Mac, previous versions of Apple’s Safari, Mozilla Firefox or Opera unless otherwise specified. If you need visitors using these older browsers to see the same or similar visual design, we will charge you at the daily rate set out in our original estimate for testing and any necessary additional code.”

Sean inscribed these words of wisdom on Monday Dec 8, 2008 at 11:17 AM
Clients | CSS |

| tags: clients, contracts, css, internet explorer, |

jQuery Kungfu

Sunday October 19 2008

Not really kung fu - but considering that I’m just getting into jQuery I’m pretty happy. I’ve set up a FAQ on my clients site where each answer will be displayed after clicking and click again to hide. I also set up a show/hide all switch which is working nicely. *pats self on back*

However there is one area that I’m stuck on. If some answers are open and some are closed, clicking show/hide all closes open answers and opens closed answers rather than moving all answers into a single state. ideas?

Sean inscribed these words of wisdom on Sunday Oct 19, 2008 at 05:34 PM
Clients | Javascript |

| tags: jquery, |

Sick & Behind & outsourcing

Thursday October 16 2008

I’ve been sick for the past 10 days or so and it looks like it’s finally starting to clear up. However this illness has led to me falling behind in all areas of my life. I’m currently in the middle of giving and grading mid-term exams at the university where I work on my day job. I’ve also barely been able to do any work on my current clients site. Fortunately, this client is also a close friend and he’s very understanding. Additionally he has a somewhat soft deadline.

Another thing I’m behind on is the reading I need to do. I’ve been asked to write a review on a book about Moodle 1.9 from packt publishing. Anyhow the plan is to finish the reading tomorrow and get started writing the review to be placed on my teaching blog as well as amazon & slashdot.

In the meantime, I’ve secured some other work styling an ExpressionEngine forum for another firm. I’m excited to be doing some outsourcing for another firm and hopefully it will lead to further work. Once I’ve finished the work, I’ll see about publishing their name here. First I want to be sure that I’ve done a good job and second I also want to be sure that the firm is okay with letting it be known that they have outsourced part of their contract.

This is my first time doing this so I’m not sure if I bid too low, just right or too high. Actually it wasn’t so much of a bid as I was asked via twitter if I would be available. I think I may have bid a little on the low side. I guess the only way to find out is to see how long it takes to get the project complete. It’s about to start any time now, I’m just waiting to get the source files.

Sean inscribed these words of wisdom on Thursday Oct 16, 2008 at 01:21 PM
Clients | code | General |

| tags: expressionengine, clients, me, moodle, |

Site Handed Off to Client

Saturday October 04 2008

Yesterday I completed the publishing guide for my first client. it’s 10 pages long with screenshots and took much longer than I expected it would to write. The client now has access to their site to change and update content. It feels good to have successfully completed my first site and recieve the final payment.

The actual “design” of the site is a commercial theme that the client wanted. I took it and converted it to Expression Engine.

The site is a language school for children in Korea - ILE 외국어 학원. The client wanted a site to provide information for current and potential customers (parents) as well as showcase childrens progress. Student work is showcased via embedded video and mp3s.

A forum has been installed but not styled yet. That’s the second stage of development after the live launch of the site. Right now the forums are set up and can be used by students, parents, & staff. I’ll be working on fitting the forums to the rest of the site look shortly. This is not something I’m looking forward to as I remember styling forums for my teaching blog ages ago and it was a major pain in the butt.

I’m also very pleased to have recieved an email from my client suggesting that he would like to add further enhancements and features to his site in early 2009. Repeat work is always a good thing.

What’s Next

I’ve got to prepare mid-term exams for my students, but I’ve also got another client, also going to use ExpressionEngine. that I will be starting on while at the same time working on the forums for ILE.

Read the rest of this post

Sean inscribed these words of wisdom on Saturday Oct 4, 2008 at 06:36 AM
Clients |

| tags: expressionengine, clients, development, |

hand off to client

Tuesday September 30 2008

Tomorrow I’ll be preparing to hand off my first client site. Everything is basically ready. I had the client take a look at the site and send a list of corrections which I will take of tomorrow morning as well as change one icon I am not happy with. - I found it on a free icon pack somewhere, but later found it it was an iphone icon. Even though the iphone will not be coming to Korea (clients target audience is 100% Korean) I didn’t want to use it.

In order to ensure that I covered every aspect of preparing the site for the client I posted a question on the EE forums and recieved some good information. The best info I got was the screencast from train-ee.com on just this issue.

I forked over my $10 and watched it. It’s mostly common sense, but did point out a few things I hadn’t considered before. This is not suprising since I’m new to the web development game. More importantly it also confirmed that I was on the right track for a lot of other things. If you’re new to web development and/or EE in general then I would definitely recommend this as a resource worth watching.