New Zealand Net Standards

Work done on one website, utility components and common configuration patterns can now be distributed and shared to other sites. The methodology is called "Features" (which is a little bit too basic when talking about it in conversation ... but it is at least descriptive).

My job for more than the last decade has been making websites - mostly for New Zealand Government departments. And I'm always working on ways to make that job easier. Or better.

In years of servicing government departments, it's tedious and professionally frustrating to see so many similar-but-not-the-same sites built to order for different agencies. The RFP process especially seems to waste a lot of time on both ends as the client (Government Dept etc) tries to re-state their requirements, throw in feature requests, and the Web agency then tries to invent a new solution for them.

It seems that not a lot of government departments are aware, but several years ago, the e-Government Interoperability Framework Programme (e-GIF) produced some mandatory requirements, rules that legally must be followed by departments publishing data on the web.

Thanks to THE CHIVE for todays giggle.

RFPs, Requirements documents and even Project specifications occasionally come into my inbox with loaded phrases that always cause me concern."Easy-to-use", and "Intuitive" are warning signs, and I always try to rephrase them down into something more specific.I *know* what the writer is asking for.

I often get asked if I make triple-A (AAA) compliant websites.

I say no. I scribble that off the RFP.

My project manager looks sad and says that I should and we'll lose the pitch or something if it's not WCAG2.0-AAA rated.

I want to explain why AAA is a myth. Just because we can and should be trying for AA ratings, and just because the concept of AAA exists doesn't mean we can begin to promise to live up to that.

To very roughly sum up,

http://robynmiller.posterous.com/interface-design-18

Any webmaster worth their title already knows about the W3C Markup Validation service. They may even occassionally use the CSS validation also (though the results from that can be depressing).

The new tool on the scene is Unicorn - a tool that incorporates all the relevant W3C test tools into one report. It was announced in July 2010

The LogValidator is a free, open administrator utility you can run on your own site.

It's written in Perl and distributed by CPAN, this means it can be placed on pretty much any platform. Installation instructions for Log Validator are straightforward for any Sysadmin.

Instead of a one-off site scan, this tool is set to run scheduled, regular tests of your sites health, and notify you of problems as they are created, as reports, or by email.