03/10/06 Important Messege
Due to a technical error with the company I use to host my site http://ngsolutions.110mb.com is currently unavailable, here I have restored an old back up of the web site for use while I wait to rectify the problem with the usual location for this site. Sorry for any inconvenience and normal service will be resumed shortly.
09/08/06 All Change...
Well it's all change here, I have spent so long trying to find an affordable host that supports PHP scripting and never finding some thing that I'm happy with. But now that has all changed as I have found a free web host that supports PHP and so I can give myself the site that "I want". So the new site will be residing at NGsolutions and once I've tested it with a basic page I will then get to work on the development of a dynamic web site that I can tweak and learn from.
So sorry about there not being updates for the past few weeks but I have been very busy and I just haven't had time to commit to this site and with the future projects on the horizon I may not get to update this site till I am ready to move. I also apologise for not writing the article I had planned but due to workload some things have to be put on hold till things settle again. Also this site is going to change name as the initials for Dfrag Web Projects is DWP and if you live in the UK that is also the initials for the Department of Work and Pensions
This also means that I can now launch the LETS help web site but more on that later.
27/07/06 Too Hot, Too Bothered...
Today I'm going to take a break from the site for a few days and will update some time next week, but that doesn't mean I won't be working on the site at all. It just means you wont see the result of it till some time next week.
I have been thinking about a article but I need to do some more research into it before I open that can'o'worms but if any one would like to give me they're opinion on it, the subject is going to be "Over pricing on off the shelf computer packages", messages can be left in my guest book which is in my contact page or e-mail me from the e-mail on the same page as the guest book.Or if you would like to contact me about anything at all then please feel free to do so, weather its to tell me off about being inaccurate about something I've said or if it's to suggest something for the site or a rant then you can.
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and take care.
26/07/06 Thank you very much Geocities...
After all the time I have spent
coding these web pages and the trouble I took to make sure that the
code was valid, I find out that the adverts that yahoo automatically
put into my pages has made them invalid. It is disgusting that a
internet icon such as yahoo cannot write code properly and as a result
I and anyone else who has to use geocities for theyer web hosting has
to pay the price for geocities lack of care and attention.
Some thing has to change and fast.
Also while on this subject I decided to take a look around at some other sites that are made by a company called Flair4design.co.uk
a lot of the sites that they list in they’re portfolio that I
looked at contained over 40 errors and they were all simple things that
could be sorted with a carefully constructed find and replace. Another
site was aquatics-online.co.uk
with 107 errors on the page and a question of accessibility comes into
play on the latter site as the buttons and headings do not resize at
all and they are images with no “ALT” attributes so when
some one uses a screen reader for that site there would be nothing
about the heading they are reading under nor would they have access to
the navigation.
The point is these sites are trying
to sell to the public and just like geocities they have failed to
follow the guidelines that are there for a reason. Accessibility is
also compromised on some of these sites so they are basically
discriminating against disabled users.
I am not a accessibility expert and
I’m not even a professional designer but professional sites
should set an example to other businesses, sites and the people who
designed theses sites should show more due care and attention to the
field.
Here are 5 sites selected at random:
- 1 - Wikipedia home page - Valid
- 2 - Blender 3D home page - One error
- 3 - Job Centre Plus home page - Three errors
- 4 - PC World home page - 386 errors
- 5 - Dixons home page - 845 errors (Shocked and amazed)
Check them out your self at http://validator.w3.org/ and a lot of the errors on these pages are very simple fixes.
24/07/06 Visual Improvement update.
HTML
is now valid and the
text has been made a little larger, the CSS rule that made the first
letter of every paragraph larger has now been removed. the
rest of the visual improvements will take place tonight at 5 or 6 pm
(GMT).
Will update tomorrow on the sites progress as some other work has come
up.
Change list:
- Font size changed from 10px to 12px for
the main content
- CSS rule "
p:first-letter"
removed
- Document type has been changed from HTML
4.01 Transitional to XHTML 1.0 Transitional
- "id"
attributes have been changed to "class"
attributes
24/07/06 Visual Improvement.
Today I thought I might do
some
visual improvement over the colours of
these pages as I'm starting to find the gray tones are rather flat and
boring.
Another thing I might do is add some texture
to the logo maybe some water or perhaps sand and then base the rest of
the sites colour scheme around the colours I use in the logo. Another
thought would be to perhaps use something with more of a view to it
like the image I used in this post because there is a lot more scope
for colour variation within the image.
But once thats done I will need to find a
workaround for the invalid parts of my HTML so I can pass the
validation and then work on getting my CSS valid too making the site a
little more accessible next step after that is to make the site table
free but I will need to look a little deeper into that when the time
comes.
Another thing that I'm gonna fix right now
is font sizes as I think the fonts are a bit on the small side, this
should be another step to becoming more accessible and I hope will
improve the readability of the site and while I'm at it I will also
remove the CSS rule that make's the first letter of each paragraph
larger than the rest of the paragraph.
22/07/06 Improvements to site. Continued.
The
improvements to the site have
been a success on the whole but there
is one thing, the HTML is valid aside from the fact that the HTML
validator on the w3c website does not like "multiple ID selectors"
in one
page so aside for those it's valid, will check on the CSS file for
validity when I have more time.
21/07/06 Improvements to site
Today I have made some improvements to this
site because it was kind of embarrassing to come here and show people
some of my work. Mainly because it STILL had a “under
construction” header that had been there for the past 4 or 5
years, mainly because I had never done more than a quick update to some
links. Another major thing that used to bother me about this site was
the fact I had navigation there but the link’s never actually
linked anywhere.
But starting today I plan on devoting more
time to this site and to start with I’m finally going to fix
the things that used to bug me the most about it. To start with
I’m going to fix the navigation so the links actually work,
moving on to moving information around so as to layout the content in a
more friendly way.
So here goes!
Change list:
- Navigation fixed, menu item's changed and
menu bar moved to top of page.
- Content sorted amongst relevant pages.
- HTML is now valid again.
- Logo changed.
This Web Site
This web site I have created and maintained
myself for several years, eventually I plan on up dating it with a
fully dynamic site but until then it will remain as is excluding the
odd content update
