Chris Wiegman

Archive for June, 2009

As a web developer it is absolutely necessary that I work to keep up with the trends around me. To do so requires more than just browsing through sites looking for the results of a Google search, it requires dissecting what makes great sites great and bad sites bad. As such I’m going to review a site I find as often as I can get around to doing so (ideally once a day).

Southern Illinois University Carbondale (SIUC)

SIUC has had a long history on the web dating back about 20 years. The current version of the site does it’s best to help users navigate with links targeted to the demographic of the visitor. As a whole the site does a descent job at getting users where they need to be, however with a decentralized web structure in which each campus department, unit, etc is tasked with the development and maintenance of its own site it tends to confuse users as they browse for various academic programs and other information most students would need. It does so by not providing any central summary of programs, but instead directly links users to various departmental sites which often bear little or no resemblance to the main SIUC site.

Other than the decentralized nature, the site does do an excellent job of trying to make navigation as simple as possible as no department is more than 2-3 clicks away. In addition, although not quite in school colors, the main page has a pleasant design and color scheme that avoids both being overly harsh or overly generic, a problem seen on far too many sites today.

Overall, SIUC has an excellent long-standing web presence limited only by it’s decentralized nature.

Changing direction on a long-term project is never easy. Not only do we need to learn new things, but just switching a long held mindset can often be anything by easy.

This is where I stand right now with our primary website at work (http://www.aviation.siu.edu). I have been actively developing this site on my own for about 10 years with some very basic concepts. First, there was no direction from anyone in the department. This means that in everything from features to server configuration and more I had free control over it all. Heck, I couldn’t even get a critique if I begged for it. I know to some this might not seem like a problem, and for years it hasn’t been to me. What is a problem is that with only one person working unguided on a site of 1000’s of pages it can lead to numerous unused features and an administration that is slow to react with trends in online marketing. Second, I’ve been designing and redesigning a custom content management system for the site since the beginning. This also has never really been a problem, but combined with no direction it has lead to a system with little documentation and virtually no connection to other common systems users our familiar with such as Wordpress and others.

Now things are changing. The administration in our department has realized that putting all its advertising money into magazine ads isn’t the most efficient use of their budget. Consequently they are turning their sites to the web. Although I haven’t been officially asked to do anything (and still find very little guidance as to their vision) I recognize this shift in ideology and know that I need to work to making the most use of our advertising budget and at the same time work to redesign not only our site, but much of our entire marketing strategy.

So where do I start? First I realize that I cannot do everything by myself if for no other reason that a second person can see things I cannot. Consequently I am getting help from a small team I’ve put together. Although beneficial, at the airport this is quite a change in philosophy and like any such change requires a little getting used to (I must say that of everything that’s changing, a team is the most positive change for both me and the department as I like working in teams normally). Second, although the CMS I have used is nice, there is a lot of good open-source products on the market now that provide the features we need as well as excellent documentation and other features making it easy to incorporate information from more sources.

Putting this all together has left me with quite a headache. Stepping back from 10 years of one direction and refocusing on a new one has not been easy at all. The good thing however is that I realize when it’s done we will have a better product for the entire SIU Aviation community (even though it might take a little longer than I originally hoped).

So after realizing I didn’t need wiggsfly.com as a separate site I’ve integrated the few posts that were on it into this page. Hopefully it will give me even more of a reason to update more often.

I won’t go back to Windows with the newest version.

To be fair actually I won’t go back to it on my personal machines either at work or at home. Instead I’ll stick with the latest incarnations of OSX and Mac respectively. I have tried Windows 7 and am in fact running it on a test machine for the department, but I find it to be little more than a major service pack for Vista.

After testing Win 7 for the last month I have run into numerous problems with general stability as well as many of the same compatibility issues that have plagued MS since it gave up it’s DOS kernel with XP. In the case of 7 the XP legacy mode is helpful, but runs apps slower than they would natively run in XP and seems to me to be more of a band-aid than a true feature to support older software. In addition, many of the speed problems and other issues that I simply adjusted my work flow for in the past are still present. Load time is improved but far slower than Ubuntu or OSX, UAC is still a nuisance, and I continue to find it necessary to run more apps for system maintenance than I do for the actual work to be done on the computer. From virus and malware scanners to disk and registry cleaners and disk defragmenters there is still too much overhead required to keep the machine running well.

So what will it take to bring me back to Microsoft with my own machines? The first thing will be an abandonment of the Windows Registry and a return to file-based configuration information as is done with all modern *nix systems. I can’t even count the number of issues I’ve encountered over the years with corrupt or otherwise problematic registries and although some of the problems can be fixed, far too many have necessitated the complete rebuild of the computer’s software. Second would be the need for a more advanced file system capable of handling file fragmentation in a much more efficient manner, and finally, a user permission system that allows for true multi-user operation in which individual files and processes can be more effectively isolated to individual user accounts.

When (if) this list was ever completed then I would look back to Windows as my primary OS. Until then however I’ll stick with OSX and Mac as they just work for me rather than making me work for them.

I’ve gone through a lot of printers at my home over the years. Until about 2 years ago I would get the cheap inkjets and wait for them to die (usually about 6 months) and then get another one. They were OK for general printing but had sub-par print quality and the lifespan of a gnat.

When I moved back to Illinois in 2007 I bought my first small laser, an HP 1020. This was a huge step up for me. It’s print quality and general performance went far beyond anything I had owed up until that point and with the exception of no color it was a great little printer for a while. After I ditched my desktop and Windows is when it showed it’s limitations. It simply wouldn’t work with my Mac, and even with my Linux desktop it was annoying to have to go in to another room and hook up a USB cable to print. I know I could have picked up a USB print server, but it just didn’t seem realistic for a printer that wouldn’t work on my primary computer anyway.

Enter the Brother 2170w. I saw this one on sale at Staples a couple of months ago and figured it was worth a shot. For $80 I had the promise of wireless connectivity and Mac compatibility which was quite a step up from where I was. Not only did it perform these tasks but it also had wired ethernet compatibility as well as instant Ubuntu compatibility. Wow!

All in all these features, combined with the longevity of a laser printer have made this the best printer I’ve ever owned. Not only can I print from anywhere on any computer, but I don’t even have to worry about the ink cartridge going dry anymore. Nice.