June 2004 Archives

Previously on Sean rants about his job:

"I feel I've come head-on to a crossroads in my professional life, and I need to start making some tough choices."

Shortly after writing this, a storm unlike any seen in ten years during June, rolled into Denver. It sat over the town, casting everything in a luminescent pall that reminds me of pictures I've seen of Seattle, and it rained. It rained for days on end.

And wouldn't you know it, during this shower feeding the drought starved land where I live, I also received nourishment I so desperately needed. Suddenly there might be life left in a dead-end job.

My sustenance came in the form of recognition. No awards, no meaningless certificates, just real, tangible, recognition that someone who needed to, sees contribution and value in my work and agrees that my role should be expanded to better reflect what I actually do. No grandiose gestures, no ticker tape, just recognition.

(deep breath, then release)

The clouds lifted a little. The sun began to peek through, and there was life again.

While working out the particulars of how I want to design this site I came against a problem that's become pretty common for me in the age of standards-based design—should the top heading element (H1) be used for the website's header or the page's headline? When I look through other sites/blogs I'm seeing a couple of different trends.

H1 as Masthead

A common theme is for sites to markup the sites Header as an H1, identifying the sites name or masthead as the most important heading on the page (e.g. <h1><a href="siteurl.com">Site Name</a></h1>). Quite a few websites do this today:

• zeldman.com
• Asterisk*
• Superflous Banter
• molly.com
• meyerweb.com

That works well for the homepage, but what about when you get into content pages? Even though it is convenient for coding and includes, is this method really semantically correct for all of the pages in your site?

H1 as Blog Entry Title

With this method, the title for your entry is also your top-most heading (e.g. <h1>Entry Title</h1>). This practice seems to get a lot closer because it gives good indication (depending on how well the title is written) to the content on that page and also has many subscribers:

• SimpleBits
• Airbag
• Whitespace
• Mezzoblue
• Cameron Moll

It seems like a good method for providing meaning to individual archive pages that have only one entry title on them, but what about indexes an homepages? Those can end up with 2-umpteen H1 headings, which effectively flattens the hierarchy of those pages, with no heading taking prominence. Honestly, I'm not sold on this method either.

Adding Meaning to the Page

So far, option B seems to be the best alternative, but is there an option C? I think there is.

Most every HTML page that is displayed on a computer screen has a singular identity, whether it be the site's homepage, site map, contact page, whatever. I think that identity is what should be conveyed in the top-most heading for each HTML page. If you are on a category index page of your webblog, the category index title should be the H1, not the many blog entry titles scrolling down the page (and thanks to the beauty of templates, we can mark up these titles according to there proper place in each page's hierarchy). Same goes for the Homepage, or any other page on the site. The H1 heading should set the expectation for what kind of content can be found on that page. There is a great discussion over this topic in SimpleBits "SimpleQuiz Site and Page Titles", and some solid conclusions in the end.

Search Engine Optimization

For bonus points, you can strategically use your heading tags to gain better page rank. According to Shari Thurow's Search Engine Visibility you can, and should, use the heading tags to promote keyword prominence. But most importantly, the page's heading should "accurately describe the contents of that page". This is recommended practice in tandem with the page title in the head of the HTML document. This method addresses usability issues with the headings as well, especially with mobile devices.

Conclusion

My decision is to use the H1 as Blog Entry Title for all of my individual archive pages in the weblog portion of my site, but think harder about the title I put in the H1 tag for pages on the rest of the site. I'll just have to use my best judgment to clearly indicate what content is on that page, and what users should expect to find there.

I'm in a quandary.

I love to strategize about web products and solutions, and am encouraged to do so by my employer. However, in the past two and a half years of providing this I haven't seen it actually benefit my position within the company or improve my career opportunities within it.

I feel I've come head-on to a crossroads in my professional life, and I need to start making some tough choices. Do I blaze a trail within the company to force a new definition and understanding of the value web (intranet and internet) provides to the company while building the structure to support it myself with the rag tag fleet of web professionals currently in the company (numbering less than 10).

Or…

Do I venture outside the blue-gray walls of corporate America and find my own way. I have business ideas. Hell, I think I've got one particularly good idea, but its a big chance to take while being the stable provider within my household.

(sigh)

Maybe I'll do both.

The community for web design in Denver is so scattered and isolated (and probably very small) that until last year, I had never met another true web designer in this town. That's when I went to my first Web Design Meetup.

One day while casually surfing I stumbled across an article talking about meetup.com. It was this new site that organized informal, local "meetups" around certain topics. I was intrigued so I clicked through their site to see what they had in Denver, and sure enough there was a meetup for web design! For a long time I had been trying to find other designers in Denver that were passionate about web, so I signed up.

The process is really simple. Sign up, then vote from a list of preselected venues for the meetup. Not too long after that, a mail shows up in your inbox confirming you will attend, and if you and two other people confirm, the meetup is on.

Meetups are scheduled on the same day and hour every month (ours is the second Thursday at 7pm) and people just show up. Its kind of like a live chat room. No agenda, no sponsor, no schmoozing, just talk. And it has been fantastic.

I've been going regularly for over a year now, and the meetup is never the same. While there are a few regulars, new people show up every month and we discuss a wide array of topics, often talking about web standards, business practices, or just looking over someone's Javascript they are having trouble with. And with a variety of expertise, newcomers and hobbyists to practiced professionals, its always a great discussion.

That discussion has me very excited because within it a community is growing. We've setup a private email list so we can continue to share and collaborate between meetups, and we are discussing organizing something similar to Andy Budd's SkillSwap, because so many of us have expertise in fields that can be shared with others and would be valuable to all. Mostly, we have a place to go rant, rave, question, and share our thoughts and opinions on web design with like minded people.

So if you are a web designer in Denver, or just play one on TV and want to crawl out from behind your computer to talk about it, sign up and join the conversation!

Before I get too far in I need to tell you that I'm a huge Harry Potter fan. I've read every book and was at the 12:01am showing in Denver's largest movie theater (the Continental) with 800 other anxious fans when I saw the third movie adapted from J.K. Rowling's fantastic stories about Harry Potter. Disclamier done, on with the review.

Having watched the previous two movies, I can say that Alfonso Cuarón has injected vitality into the Harry Potter franchise when it needed it most. While Chris Colombus' previous versions brought the wizard world to the big screen for the rest of us muggles, his style was (and always has been) akin to "Film by Numbers". I felt that his films were too slow, obvious, and stifled, missing the energy and excitement that the books convey. With the third adaptation of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Cuarón opens the windows and lets some air in.

Akin to the novel, not everything is as nice and controlled as the first two films. The trio is older, angrier and beginning to lash out. The story is darker, and for the first time in the movies you get a real feeling of danger at Hogwarts. All of the sudden, the wizard world looked very much like the real world. Our world.

Much of this is due to the direction of the actors, and the style of the film. The dialogue was shot tight in the frame with a steadicam, engaging the audience more as the third person by making them a part of the conversation instead of a bystander. The special effects are inlaid seamlessly with the pacing and the story, not pulling away from the characters but enhancing the plot points. And they finally pulled the story outside of the castle. The establishing shots open up much more of world around Hogwart's, bringing it much more life while sprinkling in extra elements of humor with the Whomping Willow.

Most of all, the main trio (David Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint) really turned it up a notch. The focus was much more on the main characters in this movie, and only once did I think the dialogue was superfluous and unnecessary (I'd tell you, but that would be a spoiler!). Cuarón's ability to pull great performances out of the main three really sets this movie apart from the others, and makes it shine. Also, a side note, I really liked Michael Gambon's Dumbledore. The energy he exudes is well suited for his character which becomes more involved in upcoming films.

Harry Potter fanatics will notice that the story is not adapted perfectly, but I don't think its any worse for it. According to an interview in Entertainment Weekly, Cuarón was focused on the storyline of Harry's passage from childhood to adolescence and that didn't leave much room for anything else. As a result we don't get proper explanations of the Marauders Map, and some elements are moved around in the film. This was the first of the larger books, and its just a fact that few people will sit through a 4 hour movie, so inevitably elements are always lost. All in all, I still think the adaptation was excellent.

Inspired Rating: Engrossed. I was riveted to my seat, giddily waiting for the next revelation of Cuarón's imagination. Anyone who loves the Harry Potter series, or just loves a good movie, should spend the money to see this in a theater this summer.

Elegantly, the movies grow up the same way the books do. The danger is more real, the people are more real, and life at Hogwarts isn't so different from our own anymore. As if it wasn't going to be challenging enough, Mike Newell (Mona Lisa Smile) has a higher bar to hurdle now when he makes The Goblet of Fire.