Steven Gardner Blog :: stevengardner.net

BBC Dimensions?

Posted by Steven | Filed under Web

Reading the BBC Research & Development blog earlier and saw the entry for BBC Dimensions and have been trying to get my head round what the point is? The premise is that you can overlay important events and places over your own current location, examples being overlaying the Gulf oil slick or the area of the Moon landings over your own geographical area so that you understand the scale of the event/place based on your familiarity with your own geographical location. I get it, it allows me to see how big the gulf oil slick was in relation to my own surrounding (see below for overlay on Edinburgh, it covers all of Edinburgh and some of Glasgow!).

So is the only purpose of the tool to help people understand scale? If so, the goal has been achieved! While that’s cool I guess, don’t you lose the context of the original event/place? As interesting as it is to see the overlay of the Gulf Oil slick over Edinburgh, I don’t see the point overlaying the route of the first moon walk on Edinburgh! Surely it’s more interesting to see the route in it’s original context rather than see Neil Armstrong walking over the Bank of Scotland headquarters! Maybe I’m just underwhelmed!

Tags: BBC, Dimensions

Read more | Comments off | August 19th, 2010

SharePoint Conference 2009 Keynote

Posted by Steven | Filed under Microsoft, Sharepoint

Well the keynote is over and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with what is coming in SharePoint 2010. The big announcement of a SharePoint release date didn’t materialise, instead Steve Balmer announced that SharePoint 2010 Beta 1 will be available next month.

The big themes that came out of the keynote for me were:

Social Networking in SharePoint
Search improvements
Taxonomy and Governance
Business Intelligence
Ease of use and user interface overhaul, the office ribbon comes to SharePoint

Here’s my session plan for today, I’ll hopefully post more later…

Microsoft Business Intelligence Vision & Strategy
ECM for the Masses – How SharePoint 2010 delivers on the promise
Web Content Management in SharePoint 2010

Tags: SharePoint Conference 2009

Read more | Comments (0) | October 20th, 2009

SharePoint Conference 2009

Posted by Steven | Filed under Microsoft, Sharepoint

Just a quick post to say I’ll be attending the SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas next week (19th-22nd October). Really looking forward to visiting Vegas and hopefully getting some big announcements about SharePoint 2010. I’ll be blogging all week…watch this space!

Tags: SharePoint Conference 2009

Read more | Comments (0) | October 12th, 2009

Google Chrome Frame

Posted by Steven | Filed under Microsoft, Web Standards

The path to resolving the “how do we move on from IE6″ debate has taken yet another twist this month with Google launching Google Chrome Frame, a simple to install plugin which replaces the rendering engine of IE with the engine from Google Chrome. This solution isn’t just for IE6 but works in all versions of IE from 6 up to 8, to take advantage of it all the web developer has to do is add a simple tag to their website:

Here’s the video from Google announcement here which goes into more detail:

Great I hear you all say, no more having to cope with IE6/7/8 rendering issues, we can just develop for Chrome (webkit engine) and the Firefox engine which are far less problematic than IE! Yeah, in a utopian world that might be the case but as we know, that’s not how the world works, here’s the issues:

- Large corporates with locked down desktops are very unlikely to install Google Chrome Frame, after all most haven’t even upgraded from IE6 yet
- Home users or less experienced users are very unlikely to understand why they’d want to do this, again they are still using IE6 for a reason, it works for them! This user group has had the free choice to upgrade to two newer versions of IE and a multitude of other browsers and still haven’t, so why would they install Google Chrome Frame?

From a technological standpoint, Google Chrome Frame is brilliant! I just don’t see how it’s going to change the status quo, we’ve still got the same problems to overcome and like it or not IE6 is still going to be around for a time to come. In my opinion the best solution to the ongoing IE6 issue is to continue getting the message out to people that IE6 is passed its use by date and far better and more functional options available for free! Through Windows Update we should hopefully move the home user market onto IE7/8…eventually! As for the larger corporates, with the advent of Windows 7 we should hopefully see a substantial number of corporates upgrading from Windows XP and with it a further reduction of IE6.

While I admire Google for their ingenuity in coming up with this solution I just don’t think it really is a solution, anyone installing the plugin would be better off just installing Chrome or Firefox instead! It seems to me this is part of a larger attempt by Google to continue their assault on reducing IE market share.

Tags: Google Chrome, Internet Explorer

Read more | Comments (0) | September 24th, 2009

Silverlight – The New WebForms?

Posted by Steven | Filed under Silverlight, Web Standards

I was reading through my RSS feeds the other day and came across a post by Dave Ward aka Encosia entitled “Is Silverlight the new WebForms” which pretty much covered all of my thinking on Silverlight so far. Rather than rehash everything Dave has said why don’t you go read his post.

With my accessibility hat on I worry about the widespread adoption of Silverlight as a replacement for ASP.net WebForms or standard HTML/CSS/Javascript. With all the positive progress the web standards community has made in driving forward the “accessible web”, adopting Silverlight as a direct replacement could be heading down the Flash inaccessibility path again. Don’t get my wrong, Silverlight is a great technology and the ability to utilise the .net framework in the browser is just fantastic but as a replacement for WebForms, I think it’s misguided.

Read more | Comments (0) | September 18th, 2009

SharePoint Accessibility

Posted by Steven | Filed under Accessibility, Microsoft, Sharepoint, Web Standards

Accessibility of SharePoint has long been a topic of discussion and one of the primary reasons why SharePoint has been overlooked for internet facing websites. Company Net, my employer, have recently completed the redevelopment of our own website using SharePoint paying particularly close attention to Web Standards and Accessibility, the end result being a site that passes W3C validation and validates as AA accessible.

To debunk the myth that SharePoint can’t be accessible even further I’ve recently completed a white paper on Accessibility & Compliance for SharePoint 2007 where I go into great detail on the current issues with SharePoint and how these can be addressed to use SharePoint as an accessible web content management system.

If you’re looking for a SharePoint partner then why not get in contact with Company Net?

Read more | Comments (0) | September 18th, 2009

Ben Macdui and Cairngorm

Posted by Steven | Filed under Hill Walking

Just got back from a week long holiday in our favourite scottish holiday destiantion Aviemore. The place just keeps getting better and better each year and has certainly recovered from it’s decline in the 80′s. Anyway, as part of our week away, Robert and I did our yearly long distance walk, this year we tackled two munros Ben Macdui and Cairngorm.

Here’s a map of our route and some cold hard facts for you:

Route: Coire Cas, Ben Macdui (1,309m/4,296ft), Loch Etchachan, Shelter Stone, Loch Avon, Cairngorm (1,245m/4,084ft), Ptarmigan
Distance: 15-16 miles
Highest Point: 1,309m/4,296ft
Total Ascent: 4,000ft approx.
Time: 8.5 hours

We got pretty lucky with the weather to be honest, was a bit windy (bordering on gale force) up on the Ben Macdui plateau but once down to Loch Etchachan the wind died down and the sun came out, you would almost think it was summer!