Just a quickie to note that Microsoft have released Internet Explorer 7 for Windows XP. Get it while it’s hot!

This will be pushed out via Windows Update in the next few weeks, though it’ll be a non-crititcal as a high-priority update for now. IE7 will not install without asking first. More information on the IE Blog.

[Thanks to Andrew Disley for the tip-off]

Matt’s not the only one who’s had their credit card used fraudulently recently.

I had a phone-call from Barclaycard this morning to inform me that my card had been used for some bizarre transactions over the past few days and ask if it was me. I’ve not used it for ages, so it came as something of a surprise.

They started out by buying a bus ticket over the internet. When that went through, they tried for a few big purchases. Big red lights flashed and klaxons sounded at the Barclaycard Fraud Investigation Department bunker (I guess because I rarely use the card) and thankfully, they declined most of it.

They’ve cancelled the card and are sending me some forms to fill in. It’s a good job they phoned me, or I probably wouldn’t have noticed until the next statement came through in about a month’s time.

So keep an eye on your card statements. You never know who else might be buying things on your behalf…

I’m a bit late to the party here, but what the hell.

Inspired by Phu, Anton and Matthew, I’ve turned this site ever so subtly Pink for October (you might need to hit refresh), in support of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Mmm, garish.

Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards.

I didn’t understand it at first. I just couldn’t see the point. I wasn’t thinking outside the box. It took a kick up the backside from Jeremy Keith and co to figure it out.

You see, most web-sites contain some form of useful data: Contact information, reviews, events and so on. Sometimes, it’s not even obviously structured data. Take my “About the author” snippet for example:

Olly Hodgson is a Web Designer dude from Cheltenham, England.

It tells you who I am, what I do, where I’m from and includes a link where you can find out more about me. There’s almost enough for a business card.

The thing is, no two coders will mark-up their contact information, reviews and events in quite the same way, so it’s not exactly simple to extract it and use it elsewhere. Microformats aim to change that.

Here comes the science bit

Let’s take a closer look at that snippet:

<p class="vcard">
<a href="https://thinkdrastic.net/about/" class="fn url">Olly Hodgson</a> is a <span class="title">Web Designer</span> dude from <span class="adr"><span class="locality">Cheltenham</span>, <span class="country-name">England</span></span>.
</p>

You see those class-names wrapped around the important bits of data? That’s the hCard microformat in action. Basically, it’s an HTML version of vCard, which is the industry-standard electronic business card format. In there we’ve got a name (class=”fn”), a web address (class=”url”), a job-title (class=”title”) and so on.

Run this page through Technorati’s hCard to vCard converter and hey presto! A vCard you can open in your address book software.

The real beauty is that you don’t have to change the look-and-feel of your web-site in the slightest. Just add the magical class-names to your existing mark-up and you’re done.

So what’s next?

Microformats are obviously still in their infancy, but their potential is endless. Where hCard opens up contact information, hCalendar does the same for events. hReview has the potential to completely shake up the way products are rated in the online shopping world. XOXO could enable a web-browser to offer an outline-view of your site similar to the one offered in Microsoft Word. The list goes on and on.

What’s more, while microformats offer a standardised way of extracting data from HTML, they don’t in any way lock you into writing it in a specific way. Your HTML code can look how you want it to really, as long as it includes those magical class attributes.

Go on, get out there and implement them. You know you want to.

Man, I’ve missed this. Today was my first ride since the broken hand incident. I saw a dead snake and what I think are some Crias (baby Llamas). I’d not seen a snake in the wild since the adder we found in the woods at school. Exciting huh?

Obviously most of my strength, fitness, confidence and stamina had evaporated (although bizarrely my legs seem as strong as ever). They’ll come back though, given time and effort. My hand was absolutely fine throughout. Winner!

Great fun. Glad to be back.

There’s been an interesting discussion going down on the SitePoint forums, about the recent design trend towards so called “Fat Footers”. As per usual in there, you’ve got zealots on either side of the argument and then those who take a measured approach and get lost in the noise.

Anyway, Derek Powazek first popularised the idea last year with his Embrace your bottom! piece. The idea is that the footer on your site can be more than the plain old boilerplate legalese.

The theory goes thus: A reader arrives at a page on your site and gets drawn in by whatever fantastic piece of content you have top and centre. They read down the page and assuming you’ve done your job right, they reach the bottom wanting more. So you use your footer to give it to them, with links to related articles and other interesting content on your site.

Sounds great, so why the argument?

Now, I’m a great fan of these things. I really couldn’t see people’s problem with them at all.

Then, whilst exploring the resources on Webcredible’s site, I found a very interesting article: Usability for older web users. One of the things I took away from it is that older users are much less likely to scroll down a page to find what they need, probably because it’s a concept novel to computer technology.

This doesn’t really change my opinion of the fat footer. It’s still a novel way of presenting related / secondary / meta-data without distracting the user from the primary content — another useful tool in the box. It simply means you need to take your target audience into account. If you’re designing for the “silver surfer” generation (and with an ageing population in the UK, you really ought to be considering them), you need to be aware that they’re less likely to use any navigation that sits “below the fold”.

Sorry Anton, I couldn’t resist ‘shopping it. Here’s the original and here’s the Flickr group with a whole lot more…

I’ve been using Google’s Analytics package for a little while now and the statistics make interesting¹ reading. I’ve been quite impressed with it really. The interface is a little ugly (hey, it’s Google), but it gets the job done nicely.

So what do they tell me?

Firstly, you lot need to buck your ideas up. Over half of you are still using Internet Explorer, you crazy fools! There’s plenty of better alternatives out there — and they’re free! Firefox and Opera are the obvious ones.

One of you is still using Internet Explorer 5. Whoever you are, you really need to upgrade.

You lot don’t like Sony, do you?

It’s no surprise to find that a lot of you have trouble with the Sony SonicStage and Connect software that came with your Walkman. The most popular search phrases are about those two, and my rants about them get by far the most traffic. Those of you still looking for an answer, might like to try the ml_sony plugin for Winamp.

Of course I won’t be writing much about them anymore, because they simply don’t work on this shiny new Mac. That’s good in some ways, but it also means that I’m left with a Walkman full of music that I can’t update. If anybody fancies writing a Mac OS-X driver…

Ahem…

Second most popular search term? “Cumfest”. Nicely done folks. I bet you’re not looking for pictures of mountain bikers in the snow either, are you?

Speaking of which, the rest of you are into your bikes. Unfortunately those of you looking for Hope Technology and 24Seven bikes aren’t going find much more than my rants about their awful web-sites.

Hmm, ranting is becoming something of a recurring theme here isn’t it? I’m quite happy-go-lucky in real life…

1. But only if you’re me.