Usability goes all the way. It starts right at the database design. Or actually even at the design of the programming language. Most people, working on system that can use a grain of usability, tend to think that usability is only and merely a magical trade of arranging elements on an interface. But, if the database architecture is wrong, the code will be wrong. If the code is wrong, the behaviour is wrong. And if the behaviour is wrong, then no javascript can ever solve the real problem.

- Bèr Kessels

A friend just pointed me towards this fantastically boneheaded statement:

Optimising for search engines such as Google is notoriously difficult when your content is database driven. Although the Televisual Asset TVT pages are crawled and ingested by all common search engines such as Google, this is of little use for searchable archives as they do not have a hyperlinked hierarchy of static pages.

Have they never heard that “URIs shouldn't change”? How about the idea that you should always separate the content layer from the presentation layer?

Someone please tell me how companies like this are still in business?

Sorry things have been so quiet round here recently, but Heather and myself have been busting ourselves stupid trying to get the new version of Scarleteen finished (more on that when it launches). We're not quite done yet but at least the end is in site.

Anyhow, the reason for this post (apart from the apology) is to point out a fantastic article on Matt Haughey's new site, Fortuitous, Some Community Tips for 2007 - Seven tips on how to run a successful community.

Every year or so I write a long post or do a presentation at a conference on the subject of community. Each time I approach the subject, I take what I've already written and add to it with recent things I've learned or learned long before and only recently realized. To prepare for an upcoming presentation, I decided to write down stuff I've learned/realized in the last 12 months. I suspect I'll be revisiting this topic many times on this blog but I wanted to kick off this first foray into community with a list of stuff I've been thinking about recently, but haven't written much about yet.

Matt is the founder of Metafilter (amongst other things) so when he offers up tips about running an online community, you'd better make sure you're taking notes.

Dieter Rams' principles of good design:

• Good design is innovative.
• Good design makes a product useful.
• Good design is aesthetic.
• Good design helps us to understand a product.
• Good design is unobtrusive.
• Good design is honest.
• Good design is durable.
• Good design is consequent to the last detail.
• Good design is concerned with the environment.
• Good design is as little design as possible.
• Back to purity, back to simplicity.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves of these things.

Ben Henick has a new article over on ALA: 12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards. There are some great tips and hints here for those of you starting in web development, or those who are trying to break some bad habits gained over the years.

This one struck a particular chord with me, as it's something I've been trying to explain to clients for a while now:

Lesson No. 2: It’s not going to look exactly the same everywhere unless you’re willing to face some grief... and possibly not even then There are an awful lot of differences between rendering engines, and the W3C specs sanction those differences. You can adjust, tweak, hack, and waive, but if you want to preserve your social life, you will learn to let go of the small differences—and convince the stakeholders in your projects to do the same.

Amen to that!

Found this stuck inside a wardrobe in the new flat.

I'm not sure if the previous tenants put it there to remind themselves, or they had some weird form of precognition and left it for me.

Maybe they had some kick ass parties in the wardrobe. Hmm... maybe it's the gateway to the alternate Narnia, the one C.S. Lewis didn't write about. You remember, Aslan was knocking back the martinis while the White Witch got tanked on white russians.

As an experiment I'm taking a bottle of wine into the wardrobe, I'll let you know what happens...