During the Easter term I completed the report in which I review and give recommendations on SalaamShalom.org.uk.

I researched the site in depth and contacted the website designer/manager Sam Downie.

The areas I researched and included in the report are:

• Site Overview (Purpose, Audience, Scope, Structure, Technology, Technical challenges)
• Conformance to standard and guidelines (Web Accesability guidelines)
• Governance structures and processes
• Web 2.0 technologies (How they can be implemented to improve the site)

I enjoyed reviewing the site and giving it a thorough analysis. I will be forwarding my findings to Sam Downie and hope that these can help him to improve the site.

I found some good web accesability evaluation tools including:

• TAW (Tool for analysis of Websites based on the W3C Web content accesability guidelines)
• ATRC (A tool to validate URLs against a different section of guidelines)
• Vischeck (Shows you what a website would like to someone who is color blind)
• WAVE (Shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessability of that page)
• Browser Shots (Take screenshots of the site in different browsers/resolutions)

My goals and objectives for the up and comin weeks are to prepare for the exam. I will be researching the subjects posted on the Wiki by my tutor. This includes Web 2.0 technologies and Web standards which is useful as I already gainied an in depth insight into them when writing this report as well as throughout the module.

Week 28

My tutor was absent this week so there was no lecture. During this time I researched and collected information on how to review websites in preperation for the next assignment. I also looked at sites I would be interested in using for the review and recomendations assignment.

Week 29

The assignment was handed out this week. We discussed site ideas we had and came up with some more: NHS, DVLA, Bristol City Council…etc… I made the choice to review the site http://salaamshalom.org.uk. It is a cultural friendly local radio station. I opted for this choice as a friend of mine has good connections with the owner of the station so an interview should be easy to arrange. I also like what the site promotes.

We also discussed the assignement and I took notes about what to include within the report. I plan to go through my research I collected last week and create a report structure. I will then analyse the different areas of the site against a set of review/recomendation principles and write my report.

These weeks we have watched videos relating to web 2.0 and how it has affected the Internet and its users. We watched an interesting video of a  TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) presentation. It was very interesting, showing how the idea of the Internet was first created and how it evolved.

The attendance of classes has been poor the past few weeks perhaps due to commitments on assignements.

We discussed the coursework which will be a review of a web site including how it could be improved. I was pleased with this and have a few sites in mind that I will report back to my tutor with tomorrow.

I have begun reading “Get Real” and I am currently half way through. I have found it an interesting read thus far. It has given me some good advice I wish I had before I begun developing my fantasy football website at the turn of the year. I will surely refer back to it in the future befir and during other projects.

Here are a few notes on it so far:

GET REAL: The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web app.

• Focus on what the customers are going t osee & use, keeping it simple.
• Must be passionate about a project for it to succeed. The less a chore an app is to build the better it will be.
• Solve your own problems
• Use cash only on neccessaties
• Constraints drive innovation. They also force you to get your idea out into the wild sooner rather than later.
• Keep sign up as short as possible. Ask only what you need.
• If a customer wants to use an app it should be a painless process. BIG SIGN UP SIGN on every page.
• Demo of app without paying
• Whenyou cancel an account you should be able to take your data with you (ie export as XML). Should be able to do with it what you want. Giving control of data creates trust.
• Prioritize: only include what is important for the next release.
• Flexible: dont leave everything fixed, allow room for change.
• Have an enemy–>An app that you will be completely different from (google vs microsoft project)
• Stay lean so changes are easy and cheap.
• Talented people do not need endless resources: they thrive on a challenge (keep as small a team as possible)
• Educationa can be used as a promotional technique

This week we looked at agile development and extreme programming. I found SCRUM interesting. It focuses on the organisation of a backlog of product features into iterative cycles known as “SPRINTS”. Sprints involve working on specific areas of backlog. All features of the sprint are to be completed by the deadline assigned to them. A burnout chart displays a day by day measure of work left to do in sprint to see if the team is on the right track. Bugs should be identified during sprint and fixed before it is completed. SCRUM MASTER is another term for project manager. THey must ask questions including:

• What did you achieve yesterday?
• What do you plan to achieve today?
• What objects are in your way?

For next week I plan to read the “GET REAL” book and pick out 5 key points that I find interesting and would apply to my next web project.

This week the members of the group (myself included) gave feedback regarding our findings on our tutors web site and its standards. The browsershots web site was a popular hit. We then had a discussion about the various ways the site could be marketed and other issues such as getting it copy protected (patented). The coursework was delayed until before easter which suites me fine as I have a huge amount of work to get on with.

This week we discussed web standards. Looked into the particular standards that UWE have in place. We considered:

• Policies
• Mangement
• Accessability
• Disablility
• Compliance
• Development
• Process
• Web Standards
• Budgetary Constraints
• Legal Framework
• Technical Constraints
• Skills and Training
• ethical vs legal (dicrimination through technology)

We also had a look at a site our tutor is building: http://www.cems.uwe.ac.uk/xmlwiki/ER/index.xq?tag=ER
It is a website with data modelling worksheets you can work through in an interactive tutorial like manner. Your entries are compared to a possible set of entries to determine if they are correct or not along with some other interesting features.

I wass assigned the job of looking at possible browser compatability and screen resolution issues.
I found a very cool site: http://www.browsershots.org. You can enter a URL here and it will show how the web page will display in different browsers across all platforms. An image of each display is uploaded and you can view them online or download them in a zip file. This site is open source so it is free to use. It allows you to choose the brosers you want to see the display in and platform with optional extras such as:

• Screen size (640 to 1680 px wide)
• Color depth (8bits per px to 32 bits)
• Javascript (enabled/disabled/version)
• Java (enabled/disabled/version)
• Flash (enabled/disabled/version)

Here are some of the results:

firefox-31-windows-xp

opera-963-windows-xp

seamonkey-20-windows-xp

Due to the fact the site has had little styling applied at this stage the variations between browsers and screen resolutions are very minimal if not non existant. Once style in form such as divs with set widths (percentages or pixels) is added then more consideration on cross browser compatability will be needed. As for now the site is sound in this departement. However when adding style I would stick with a width of 960px for the complete screen as this is the most commonly used and will display well on all screen resolutions above it.

This week was are first lesson back and we looked at badly designed data model. We got into groups and did an improved version of the table that showed users and notices. The tables had to show if users had read notices. Notices had to have dates and be deleted after they had been read.

We shared our views on the different solutions and discussed how the company could have helped the original designer to produce a better database.