Island Web Works

We’ve written about the upcoming EU’s European e-Privacy directive regarding HTTP cookies once before (http://blog.island-webworks.net/2011/03/the-way-the-cookie-crumbles), and we didn’t exactly come down on the positive side of this upcoming legislation. However, the law is passed and will come into effect later this month, so we thought we’d better find a way to comply without reducing the usability of our web sites.

The challenge set by the e-Privacy directive is that any web site operating within the EU will have to clearly state what cookies they want to set and how they’re to be used. Only after getting explicit consent by the user would a web site be allowed to set any cookies¹ on the users machine.

So, in order to use cookies you now really need to set another cookie to store the user’s preferences, which ironically means that if the user denies the use of cookies, you have no legal way of storing that user preference in a cookie and will have to keep nagging those users every time they visit your web site.

Unobtrusive nagging

Taking the above into account, it was clear that an unobtrusive method of alerting the user was required – something that could be displayed on every page without impacting on the user experience. After some thinking we decided to use a discreet info bar appearing at the bottom of the web page.

An info bar appearing at the bottom of the page to highlight that cookies might be used.

The info bar would state that we wish to set some cookies and ask if the user would be ok with that. By clicking the ‘Tell me more’ link an information window would appear.

On clicking the information bar's 'Tell me more'-link, a window with detailed information appears and gives the user the option of accepting or denying the use of cookies.

This information window is where the user either accept or deny the use of cookies for this site. The bottom paragraph also points out that if the user don’t accept cookies, we would have to ask them every time they visit.

Since this is a procedure the user will probably only want to go through once, the system is designed to be easily ignored. The info bar can be closed without further ado by clicking the close button, or it can be ignored completely without affecting the usability of the site.

However, the main problem with the new legislation remains: only a very few visitors will ever explicitly approve the use of cookies, which essentially means that the use of tracking technologies like Google Analytics is going to become more or less obsolete in the Eurpoean Union. That’s quite a blow to any organisation trying to improve their web sites to better suit their visitors’ needs!

1) The term “cookies” refer to any kind of file stored on a users computer in order to track that user. As such, this also includes so called Flash cookies.

Andreas Web Site Development Cookies, e-Privacy directive, EU

Microsoft have steadily been losing browser market shares ever since Mozilla introduced its Firefox browser, dropping from an impressive 91% in 2004 to a humbling 56% in January 2011. Microsoft’s release of IE7 in 2006 and IE8 in 2009 didn’t do much to stop this decline, especially with Google Chrome entering the arena in 2008, but with their latest browser Internet Explorer 9 they hope to turn the trend. So what can we expect from this new browser?

Pin a web site to the taskbar to access a jump list of links to key areas of the site.

Well, with version 9 IE is much more compliant with web standards (95/100 in Acid3, up from 21/100 for IE8), which means web designers hopefully won’t need to implement IE specific code to get their web sites to display correctly in IE9. It also supports the latest versions of style sheet and markup languages (CSS3 and HTML5), so it should be fairly future proof. In addition, IE9 is much quicker to render web pages and it sports a new font rendering engine which makes text appear nice and smooth. The user interface has also been overhauled, with a slimmer and more streamlined appearance and some nice new features like pinning sites to your taskbar for additional functionality (Windows 7 only).

This all sound good, and most IE users will probably upgrade, especially as it will be part of Windows Updates later this month. However, a problem arises for users of IE6. Since IE9 is only available for Windows Vista/7, and all IE6 users are on Windows XP or older, they are stuck and can’t upgrade. This is particularly annoying since Microsoft have launched their ‘The Internet Explorer 6 Countdown’-campaign urging people to move away from IE6 and upgrade, but the only version on offer is the already 3 year old IE8.

Education - not dictation

We at Island Web Works are all for putting an end to the usage of IE6, but we won’t be putting Microsoft’s ‘Upgrade your browser now’-banners on any of the sites we produce. Getting IE6 users to upgrade to IE8 is not a solution, as they would still be stuck with an obsolete browser. Instead, we would rather educate people about the benefits of upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7, something that is already happening in the private sector as people replace old PCs with new ones.

In the corporate sector however the situation is slightly different. Apart from the cost of upgrading multiple workstations, there might be legacy applications in use that only work in Windows XP/IE6. Luckily there is a solution available. Windows 7’s XP-mode allows you to run legacy software in a pre-installed virtual PC application, which comes complete with a licensed version of Windows XP. This makes running legacy applications a doddle, and should allow businesses to take the plunge and upgrade to Windows 7/IE9.

XP mode - old and new in perfect harmony

So, the signs for the IE9 are encouraging, and with more than 40 million downloads so far it has stopped the downwards trend of IE. It is still early days, but Microsoft seem to have created a modern and solid browser, which hopefully will replace the older IE versions as soon as possible and allow the web to become standardised.

Andreas Web Site Development Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 9

In the beginning of the World Wide Web, developers discovered that in order to get web shops to work properly they needed to store little pieces of user information. To solve this problem, they invented the HTTP cookie – small text files sent from the web site to the browser, stored on the users local machine, and available to be retrieved by the web site.

This soon caused controversy with users panicking about their personal information being accessible to malicious web sites to track their browsing activities. In response, browsers had settings added to them allowing users to not store any cookies, or only cookies they trusted. The dust settled, the web matured and today many sites (including Google, Facebook and YouTube to mention just a few) use cookies to allow users to login to their personal web site accounts, or to enhance the user experience.

However, this is soon to change: the EU’s European e-Privacy directive that comes into effect on 25 May this year states that the use of cookies and similar technologies will need explicit permission from the web site visitor. This means that web site owners can no longer rely on the user’s browser settings to see if they will accept cookies.

What consequences will this legislation have? Well, firstly, owners of web sites operating within the European Union will have to make sure that their web sites provide clear and comprehensive information regarding the use of cookies. This includes stating why cookies are used and how the information is processed. The web site also need to give the user the option of opting out, and making sure no cookies are then dropped on the users machine.

Secondly, the web browsing experience for the user will become more complicated and cumbersome, where the user will have to actively approve the use of cookies whenever he/she arrive at a site. Expect to see a dramatic increase in popups and mandatory checkboxes all over the web. Also, if users make the “wrong” decision and block cookies by mistake, they can expect only a subset of the features on the web site to be available due to technical and/or financial limitations.

And thirdly, the only sites not affected by this are the ones who deliberately ignore regulations anyway in order to spread 3rd party tracking cookies to collect as much data as possible. Ironically, they will be the sites that are the simplest to use, potentially tricking users to believe that they are browsing on a safe site, which I don’t believe was the original purpose of the directive.

Additionally, any extended development requirements could result in extended development time, which in turn would increase project costs. A way to avoid this would be to use technologies such as ASP.NET in cookie-less operation mode. Luckily, this is the default language in use by us in Island Web Works.

Sites hosted outside the European Union are not affected by these regulations, but similar proposals are being supported by the US Federal Trade Commission, so it might only be a matter of time before this applies to most web sites. This could well be the beginning of the end for the humble HTTP cookie.

Andreas Web Site Development Cookies, e-Privacy directive, EU

You’ve all seen them. As you’re browsing a web site you want to register/submit feedback/post a comment, so you start to fill in the form. Then, just as you’re completing the final required fields you are presented with a string of obscure characters that you need to decipher in order to continue. It’s called a CAPTCHA and it doesn’t believe you’re real.

Come on! That's too easy!

CAPTCHA stands for Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart, and it is used to prevent web bots from using the form. If you own/manage a web site with a web form you are probably aware of the problem of spam - non-valid posts that range from annoying to damaging. Since spam posts are generated automatically by web bots it can easily outnumber the valid posts and drown out any useful information. In extreme cases over 90% of all the posts from a web form can consist of spam. This makes managing the responses from your web form very demanding, so different methods have been used to filter out non-human responses.

A study in spam

Recently, we hit that particular problem with our own web site. We have a ‘call to action’-form where the visitors can request further information about the services we offer. As expected, without any kind of filtering mechanism we got a huge number of spam posts, so we decided on adding a CAPTCHA to the web form.

First, we wanted to try a more transparent version, with no obvious CAPTCHA visible to the user. Method one consisted of a invisible input field which – if filled in – would invalidate the form post. The logic behind this was that web bots would see the invisible field as just another form field, and since they usually fill in all fields in a form to make sure they covered the required ones they would inadvertently expose themselves as bots. This worked to a degree, but we still got too many spam posts through.

The next solution was based on a time delay filter. Even the fastest human being would not be able to fill in and submit our web form in less than 5 seconds. By contrast, a web bot would typically complete this task in a fraction of that time, so by filtering out posts generated in less than 3 seconds we should get rid of most spam. Again, this did reduce the amount of spam, but not enough to bring it down to acceptable levels. We’re guessing that web bots might be using a delay of their own before submitting the form in order to mimic a human response.

Final CAPTCHA

In the end, we resorted to implementing a classic text-based CAPTCHA. However, in order to avoid frustrating our users we’ve made it as simple as possible, with only a few characters and very little background noise. Interestingly, even such a basic CAPTCHA has stopped 100% of all spam so far!

How long is a piece of string?

Even if the results of our little test speak for themselves, we are not suggesting that the only good CAPTCHA is a text-based CAPTCHA. It is more a matter of what works for each particular site. What’s more, there are compliance issues with text-based CAPTCHAS where screen readers could potentially struggle to help the user submit the form. Adding an audio code function which reads out the CAPTHCA code would help, but it’s not an ideal solution.

Another method which we want to test in the future is image-based CAPTCHAs: the user would be presented with a collection of images, and then asked to click on a particular image. This could prove to be the least frustrating CAPTCHA for the user, but it requires a huge database of pre-vetted pictures which might make it unsuitable for smaller projects.

In the end, any type of CAPTCHA will make the submission of your web form more difficult, so it is important to strike a balance between acceptable levels of spam and sufficient levels of human form submissions. We’ll keep testing different approaches and post the results, so watch this space!

Andreas Web Site Development CAPTCHA, spam, Turing

As you might have noticed, we’ve made some changes to the Island Web Works web site lately.  Apart from redesigning the look and feel (more on this below), we have moved the Business intelligence section containing CRM, BPR and consultancy to its own web site under the name of Circle².  The reason for this is to allow the Island Web Works site to focus on its primary function: offering web design services.

Redesigning the Island Web Works site

When we started discussing the requirements for the new Island Web Works site, we quickly agreed that the new site needed a new look.  The old site had been online for quite a while and had started to look a little dated.  We wanted to make the new site feel more open, which meant abandoning the old layout with a centered column down the middle of the page.  Instead we opted for a design that spanned the whole width of the page, although we kept the content to the center part to give the site some white space in the margins.

Another issue was the Island Web Works logo.  As you can see at the bottom of this post, it consists of a yellow band with the company name in blue on top.  Whilst the logo is eye-caching and has served us well, its colour scheme limits how it can be placed in a design.  Our solution was simply to reverse the logo and remove the band, which made it possible to place it in the carbon-fibre textured header.  The colours were instead represented by a yellow line running through the header and the blue in the cloudscape below the header.

We also made the decision to get rid of the Flash animation and replace it with standard Javascript.  The reason for this are the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) limitations of Flash and - more importantly the meteoric rise in the use of smart-phones for browsing the web.  Even though some phones support Flash, many - such as the Apple devices do not. Additionally, by using Javascript instead we wouldn’t require a special mobile site.

Designing the Circle² web site

The new Circle²site use a similar layout, but has been designed in a more corporate style to fit its main purpose - promoting our business intelligence services and products.  Since the Circle² logo is in black and orange (or white and orange when inverted), we chose to balance these energetic colours by using a calm dark blue backdrop for the header and footer sections.  And, again, we opted to not use Flash animations to maintain smart-phone and SEO compatibility.

Connexions™ Content Management

Both sites are built using our new Connexions™ Social Content Management solution, which offers full control over all content.  Also, as a matter of course, we made sure that the sites work in all major browsers, including Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8 and 9, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.

Visit Island Web Works

Visit Circle2

Andreas Web Site Development Browser compatibility, Circle2, Flash, Island Web Works

There are never-ending arguments raging in our offices regarding the potential future in the field of technology.  One of us might state that Apple is on it’s way out, or that cars will be auto-piloted in a few years.  This immediately triggers the other colleagues to retort in the strongest possible manner.

To settle these arguments once and for all we got the idea to publish our predictions for the technological future in a blog post, allowing you to comment and perhaps ultimately decide which version is the most plausible.

	Nathan’s predictions	Charles’ predictions	Andreas’ predictions
	Battery powered electric cars competing with regular cars with similar price/performance. (Con/Lib Transport policy will implement national charging network, Jet engine for Electric cars) Microsoft buys Yahoo outright after share price slump Apple lose market shares in mobile market to Google who will have bought HTC and terminated their Windows Mobile development	Price and performance of battery powered electric cars will be similar to regular cars Governments will legislate to limit performance of petrol cars.	Fuel cell electric cars competing with regular cars with similar price/performance Microsoft Bing disappears as a search engine Satellite phone functionality integrated into most mobile phones Electronic glasses available for mobile phones and netbooks which will project a 3D virtual screen
	Fuel cell electric cars competing with regular cars with similar price/performance Self-modifying line of business applications that adapt to usage in real-time	Holographic television becomes available There will be another World War probably over oil and gas resources	Petrol stations no longer allowed to sell petrol or diesel fuels Battery powered electric cars cease to exist Auto-piloted cars available NASA’s space program terminated permanently Batteries replaced by nano-engines
	Organic chips replace silicon computing chips “Table-top” fusion personal power plants available	Depends who wins!	Illegal to drive cars manually without a (very expensive) professional licence Hot fusion replace fission nuclear plants Quantum/light computer chips appears on the market

So there you have it.  The future according to Island Web Works.  Which version do you think is most likely to be correct?  Or perhaps you have your own predictions?  Let us know!

Andreas Articles Technology, The future

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

Early on in the MIGTurbo CRM 2 development we asked ourselves if the current graphical user interface (GUI) was in fact the best one, or if we should consider taking another approach.  We had numerous discussions where we batted around different ideas, and ended up trying out several prototypes before committing to the final GUI.

Taskbar interface

In our first approach, we wanted to link back to the familiarity of Windows by making the interface taskbar-centric.

A main menu button would trigger a start menu, from where you could select different modules to be displayed in separate windows.  Each module window would have a button in the taskbar, from where it could be restored if it had been minimized or obscured by other windows.

Whilst it had obvious benefits in being very flexible and working a lot like the Windows GUI, several problems soon arose.  The main one was the confusion of having a second taskbar in addition to the Windows taskbar.  Another problem was clarity - with multiple windows active at any one time, potentially overlapping or obscuring each other, it would be difficult to get a quick overview of what information you have available.

Accordion interface

To address the problems with the taskbar interface we came up with a GUI with expandable/collapsible panels in the style of an accordion interface. 

Vertical lists of panels could be expanded by collapsing other panels in the same vertical ‘lane’.  Multiple tabs could also be combined to form tabbed panel areas.  This way we could utilise as much of the screen real estate as possible without making the interface too cluttered.

This approach worked to a degree, but turned out to offer less flexibility than we’d anticipated.  It was, after all, just a fixed layout of panels.  Also, the idea of having to constantly hide panels to display others felt counter-intuitive and cumbersome.

Docking interface

Our third approach was a docking interface, where panels could be docked to form tabbed panel areas, tucked away as pop-out tabs or left as floating window panels.  This gave us a high degree of flexibility - recreating the classic layout of MIGTurbo 1 series was a piece of cake, for instance.  At the same time, this approach really maximised the use of available space.  Different layouts could also be saved for instant recall, allowing the operator to open an ‘end-of-month’ view for the monthly summary, or a marketing view when sending out email shots.

From prototype to final GUI

Once we tested the third prototype, it was quite clear we had a winner.  Ease-of-use combined with flexibility and clarity put the docking interface way ahead of the others.  That it could be made to look like the MIGTurbo 1 series GUI was a nice bonus, as it would reduce the learning curve for our existing user base.  So, as it turned out, we did have a good interface in the older versions of MIGTurbo, but the new docking functionality will bring it to a whole new level of usability.  Exciting times indeed!

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

Andreas MIGTurbo, MIGTurbo CRM 2

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

With the development of version 2 of MIGTurbo, we soon realised that we needed to revitalise the MIGTurbo branding to reflect both the major leap in technology and the potential present in the new version.  After all, this is our first full version upgrade with a completely new code base (we’re not using a single line of code from the previous 1.x versions).

The first thing we needed to address was the MIGTurbo logo itself.  The logo had undergone a slow and gradual evolution over the years, but essentially stayed the same square white and blue badge as it was in our first release in 2002.  For the new version we wanted to illustrate the solidity and adaptability of the software, but at the same time hint at how easy MIGTurbo is to use.  After much discussion we agreed on replacing the badge with a glassy sphere.  The shape of a sphere is simple, smooth and efficient, and making it look like glass gives it an impression of being heavy and solid whilst at the same time being transparent and clear.  The name MIGTurbo was also moved out of the logo and placed alongside to make it easier to read.  In addition, the abbreviation ‘CRM’ was added to clarify the purpose of the product.

With the logo now in place, we moved on to the supporting branding.  For the last couple of years we’ve been using our ‘Blue sky’ concept together with the tag line ‘Simply a better way…’ which has served us well.  This would not work with our new logo however; a different concept was needed.  The fact that MIGTurbo is business critical for many of our clients gave the idea that MIGTurbo is like the DNA of a business; a centra-lised carrier of  information necessary for everyday operation.  That resulted in the tag line ‘MIGTurbo - The DNA of your business’.  That, in turn, gave us the concept of DNA strands and we tried out several different backdrops based on that idea until we finally settled on a multi strand swoosh sprinkled with bubbles representing DNA base pairs.

The end result is a brand that feels modern and fresh but still distinctly business-like.  We are rather pleased with it.  What do you think?

We are planning to integrate the new branding on our Twitter channel and our MIGTurbo web site.

This post is part of a MIGTurbo CRM 2 series that will highlight the key improvements and features in the new product that we’ll be running over the next few months. You can also follow our Twitter account @migturbo for regular updates on progress.

Andreas MIGTurbo, MIGTurbo CRM 2 Branding, Logo, MIGTurbo 2.0

Google Latitude: I know it looks like I'm traveling on Quarterbridge Road, I'm actually at work in Circular Road. Honest!

The other day one of my colleagues misplaced his mobile phone.  He went through the same procedure we all go through: checking his pockets, his desk, his car and his home, dialing his mobile number to see if he could hear it ringing.  He also tried to backtrack were he’d been that day to figure out where he could have left it.  In the end it turned up safely, tucked behind a sofa cushion, but it got me thinking: isn’t there an application that would be able to track where your phone is?  And display it on a map on a web page for you to see?

Last year, Google released Latitude - part of the Google maps for your phone. Although I’ve had Google maps on my Nokia for some time now, I’ve never gotten around to try out the Latitude service, but the incident with my colleagues phone triggered a revisit.

Said and done. I fired up Google Maps on my Nokia phone and activated the Latitude feature, and was greeted by a login prompt.  Obviously, you’ll need to have an Google account to use their Latitude service, so I tried to log in using my account details.  Several failed attempts later my account had been locked.  I double checked my login details by logging in on my desktop PC, which oddly enough worked flawlessly.  45 frustrating minutes later  (which included trying to set up a new account and then realising I already had a gmail account from years back) I was up and running.

Now, my phone is equipped with a GPS sat-nav chip so it will try to connect with outer space to verify my position, but even if it doesn’t (or the reception is poor) Google Maps and Latitude will use the mobile phone signal to triangulate your approximate position.  And sure enough, after a few minutes I could track my phone’s position on the Google Latitude map in my desktop browser.

So, does it work?  Yes, in so far as your phone will be tracked and shown on a map - both in your desktop browser and on your phone itself.  It also has the added feature of adding friends to be able to track their whereabouts in relation to your own.  A history list of locations is also stored for you to review.

But, at least for me, it doesn’t work particulary reliably. It’s constantly showing my phone to be several miles from where it actually is, or just as ‘Somewhere in the Douglas area’.  That’s not going to help me find my phone!  In the end, I opted to disable Latitude for the simple reason that it was constantly connecting to the network with annoying inteference noises in any closeby speakers or headphones. Also, it was running my battery to the ground.

For now, I’ll just have to rely on the old proven methods mentioned earlier to find my lost phone - the future is getting closer, but it’s not quite here yet.

Andreas Uncategorized Geo tagging, Google Latitude, Mobile phone

With the new user interface in MIGTurbo 2 coming together, we were faced with the daunting task of replacing the existing set of icons.  In older versions of MIGTurbo we have been using pixel-based 16×16px icons, just like the ones you find in older versions of Windows (pre-XP).  Whilst they’ve been serving us well, we thought a new set of vector-based icons would suit the new Graphical User Interface (GUI) better.

So, considering we’re currently using more than 350 icons in MIGTurbo, how to go about getting a replacement set?

First we looked at commercially available icon libraries, but we soon hit a couple of problems. To start with, existing libraries are subject to a range of complicated licence schemes, where you might or might not be able to use the purchased icons in distributable software products (whilst it’s true that MIGTurbo is a web based solution, it’s not after all a single hosted web site).  Secondly, finding a set of icons in a suitable style catering for our rather specific needs proved to be difficult.

In the end we found it more convenient to create the replacement set ourselves.  This gave us full control to add and/or modify icons to suit our needs, and obviously licencing wouldn’t be an issue either! Also, it was quite rewarding to get an opportunity to work in Illustrator again.

So, what at first seemed to be a daunting prospect turned out to be the easiest solution - with the added bonus of getting a unique one-of-the-kind icon set!

Below you can view a small subset of the new icons - I think they turned out quite well!

Andreas MIGTurbo Graphical User Interface (GUI), GUI, icons, MIGTurbo, MIGTurbo 2.0, User Experience (UX)