Policy my a**e 28 June 2009

My deep-seated aversion to bureaucracy and BS was put to the test this week when I was asked to provide proof of having an Equality and Diversity Policy as well as an Environmental Policy for my business.  As you know, I am a sole trader who works from a home office. But even one-woman bands like me are now being asked to provide written policies codifying how we conduct ourselves in our own homes.  Sadly, it seems to be a growing trend.

One of the reasons I went into business for myself was to get away from the paperwork nonsense demanded by people trying to create jobs for themselves.  There can be no other explanation for why someone wants to know what environmental policies I apply to my “staff” under my own roof, which at the moment include “crayons aren’t for eating” and “gonnae open a windae when ye dae that!”  My work is not, and will never be, a box ticking exercise, and it begs the question of why I wasted my time trying to curry favour with the sort of people who view it as something to benefit their targets and not my bottom line.

So without giving the fun away, I spent half an hour yesterday writing a quick Equality and Diversity Policy and an Environmental Policy to keep the powers that be happy.  And I’ve completely taken the piss with them – after all, the request was a piss take in the first place.  I’ve codified my right to heave insults at Man United supporters and to drop clients who ask me if my husband is on the level.  I’ve codified “putting the toys away in the toy box” in my “Environmental Policy”.  I’ve also added a few aspects which I’m sure will pose a challenge to the recipients when they find out exactly what my idea of “equality and diversity” really means.  I’m sure they will never have seen anything like it; assuming they read these things at all after ticking the box to confirm that they exist.

Feelin’ the colour love 20 June 2009

Last year I posted about my appreciation for Colourlovers, a resource which monitors colour trends.  The site’s members create patterns, palettes, and new colours purely for the love of the art.

I’m posting about it again out of sheer appreciation of the ability to go to the site to find a colour palette for a project, which you do by entering one or two of your ideal hues or colours.  You are given dozens of choices, all member-generated, and when you find the one you want, you can either download the palette directly to your choice of graphic design program (membership required) or download a simple “palette badge” to use manually (no membership required.)

If you’re a visual person like me, or if you were a kid like me who used to steal paint chips from the hardware store, spending some time on Colourlovers causes a bit of an endorphin release.  The members who make these palettes “just get it”, and you’ll feel in very good company.

I used this palette earlier this year in a project, with great results.

I’m trying to make this one work on a current project.   I do love a challenge…

Fixing the PNG bug in IE7 17 June 2009

Yesterday while testing a simple hand-coded site locally I came up against the notorious error of PNGs not appearing in IE7 for Vista.  A site check which should have taken a few seconds turned into another afternoon lost to a browser bug.

What’s that, you say?  IE7 fixed the disappearing PNG error from IE6?  IE7 enabled PNG functionality?  Oh no it did-n’t, girlfriend.  In IE7, PNGs can occasionally fail to appear not due to markup errors or CSS conflicts, but botched registry entries.  Read on.

First, I tried two basic fixes specific to Vista:

1. Disabling User Access Control (UAC), which you don’t need at all if you are the only person who uses your Vista machine.  This didn’t fix it.
2. Right clicking on IE and running as Administrator (although I already am Administrator) – this didn’t fix it either.

I then found this page which explained how the issue was a known problem caused by the registry.  Some other software installation (it could have been anything) altered the file class and MIME settings for the PNG file type, which causes them to disappear in IE7, but not in anything else, of course. The author of that page provided an easy .reg merge file which would reset the settings for .PNGs, hopefully solving the problem.  Based on the comments left on his page, it looks like it worked for a lot of people.

But not for me.  When I tried to merge his registry file, I got the error message stating that “Not all data was successfully written to the registry. Some keys are open by the system or other processes.”   Someone on his page suggested breaking the merged .reg file into fifteen individual .reg files, merging them individually, and then researching fixing the ownership issues with the ones that were causing open keys…the mere thought of that had me losing the will to live, so I had to find another solution.

Another suggested solution was to run regsvr32 %WinDir%\system32\pngfilt.dll in the command prompt.  This promised to re-set the png functionality from Vista’s source files, and as with the fix described above, it seems to work for some.  But when I tried this, I got yet another error message: “The module C:\Windows\system32\pngfilt.dll was loaded but the entry-point dllregisterserver was not found. Make sure that C:\Windows\system32\pngfilt.dll is a valid DLL or OCX file and then try again.”  A colleague suggested using the System File Checker to repair that file from the Vista DVD.  Which would have been great if I had gotten a Vista DVD with this laptop.  But mine only came with the option to create a recovery or restoration CD, which would not fix that corrupt file.

So on to trying to change the file associations on the surface.  One suggestion which does seem to work for some people experiencing this problem was to right click on a PNG file, select Open With –> Choose Default Program –> Windows Photo Gallery.  Works for some, but not for me.

Finally, someone on LinkedIn pointed me to a discussion on Apple’s forums which provided the fix that worked.  The culprit seemed to be Quicktime, of all things.  Some suggested removing Quicktime altogether, but then iTunes wouldn’t work, and I’d break out in hives and start twitching.  So barring a full uninstall of Quicktime, according to that discussion on Apple’s forums, here is the solution to the PNG bug:

1. In Quicktime, open and edit both QuickTime and Players preferences (edit, preferences) and disable everything you possibly can.
2. Right click on a PNG file, Open With –> Choose Default Program –> Internet Explorer.
3. Close IE, then load a PNG from the web via Internet Explorer.  It’s there?  Good.  Close IE.
4. Right click on a PNG file, Open With –> Choose Default Program –> Windows Photo Gallery.

Sorted!  PNGs appear in IE7 again.

It’s hard to believe that this far along in the web design journey, we still have to re-train our browsers to recognise basic file types.  It’s harder still to believe that the fix to this problem almost involved de-merging registry files, digging out a nonexistent install DVD, and re-writing system-generated registry users.  All this hassle to get a tiny handful of graphics to appear on a simple site.  And they wonder why most of us would rather drink cold decaf coffee than give up Firefox?

Given how frequently Quicktime is refreshed, I have no doubt that this problem will reappear down the road.  At least I know how to fix it now – but that’s because I was aware of the problem and knew what I was looking for.  What about average web users who don’t know what a PNG is and will only be seeing a blank space where a graphic should be?  Could they navigate through the steps above?  No, and they shouldn’t have to, and to that end Microsoft needs to patch this error as soon as possible.

New addition: Eurotactics 14 June 2009

http://www.eurotactics.com

A recent addition to my portfolio is a revamped site for Eurotactics, a business development consultancy which brokers trade development between Scotland and the EU.

I met the managing director, Ian Traill, at a networking event last autumn.  His existing site was designed for 800×600 resolution, was heavily reliant on images for information and navigation, and had no CMS.  He had no SEO or site analytics either.  A full upgrade was well due, so we set to work revamping it onto WordPress.

Ian’s use of the very bright EU colours for his corporate branding means that the colours almost act as the site’s design on their own, so it was down to us to select a few descriptive images from iStockphoto.  We found an absolutely perfect conceptual picture of business networking across Europe, which we’ve used on his home page, and a few similar photos to use on inner pages.  For the page where he describes the political changes that have made his business possible, Ian asked me to colour-code a map of Europe divided into the original EU countries, the “new Europe”, the likely accession countries, and the potential accession countries.  (I had to chuckle as that four year university degree in international politics was finally put to good use Gimping a map.)

To position the site as a business resource, I used Feedwordpress to add an RSS feed of the latest EU-themed business news, as well as a facility for Ian to add events such as conferences and seminars which may be of interest to his business partners.   And finally, for SEO, we ran a keyword analysis on similar businesses and government agencies, with some amusing results (amusing in the sense that it proved that SEO is not hard nor is it brain surgery; it simply has to be done correctly, and done at all, which is more than can be said for some nationwide competitors.)

We actually launched the new Eurotactics site last month, but I did not want to show it off until this week, when we put the final touches on it: translations of the home page in three target market languages.  I used the “Shelly Method” (it’s a Wise-Women thing) to simply store each translation in its own category, rather than installing actual multilingual functionality.  Same result with no extra work.

Ian’s now very comfortable updating and maintaining his web site on his own, and finds his weekly Google Analytics reports fascinating.  He’s learned that having a good business web site behind you boosts your confidence as you set yourself out to potential clients and customers, which is the main goal I set for all of my web site projects.

Hotlinking is bad, mkay. 10 June 2009

This screen grab is creating coffee-spluttered monitors all over the web development community today.

http://imgur.com/aWXqj.gif

If you think this guy is being perfectly reasonable, here’s a tutorial on hotlinking and bandwidth theft.

(Hat-tip and thanks for the laugh: Daisy)

Why you need a good contract 27 May 2009

(Please read my post, “What Goes Into A Good Web Design Contract“, so that you don’t end up as the butt of a joke too.)