Over the past few months Amazon have been tweaking their existing site to improve the design and user experience. They have done a good job, but I couldn’t help but notice that they have only gone half the way to using Web standards in their redesign efforts. Here’s a little (non-exhaustive) summary of what they are missing:

• The HTML isn’t really that semantic, if you remove the style sheet the content doesn’t really flow that well - a(ccessibility barrier to non-graphical browsers)
• No DOCTYPE to inform browsers of what version of HTML they are using
• A huge amount of page specific CSS and JavaScript, could this have been moved into an external file to be reused elsewhere?
• They are STILL using tables for content and page layout - very inflexible, non-semantic and harder to update, increases code to content ratio (lowers SEO - although Amazon are all over SEO)
• Page design doesn’t scale well when you increase the font size
• No use of access keys or tab indexes so a user can’t tab logically through the navigation
• No use of skip to content or skip navigation links

Amazon still provides a great online shopping experience, but you have thought that if they had gone to the trouble of redesigning their site they would have taken a few lessons out of Yahoo’s book and gone down the full Web standards route.

Beej and I had a great time down in Newquay for a few days surf. The weather on Tuesday was amazing: sunny skies, light offshore breezes and a decent 3 ft wave to glide along.

I spent 3 hours solid in the water (overdoing it as usual) and then got out absolutely exhausted (I had got up at 4.45a.m and driven 6 hours to Cornwall). In the evening we chilled with a few bows and some fish and chips and then checked out the sun setting over Fistral beach.

The next day started off sunny, but then progressively clouded over. We hit the water in the morning and although the swell had dropped off and the water was a little cooler we still got a few rides. We then chilled out on the beach for a while and then hit the water again in the evening for another couple of hours. By this time the swell had dropped off again, but we still had a good time.

That evening we hit up the Indian Summer and got stuck into a hearty meal and a few beers to reward ourselves for our efforts. The rest of the evening was spent watching about 10 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark, before passing out for a well-earned rest.

We returned on Thursday and faced a mammoth 6 hour drive, which went relatively smoothly, until we hit the M25 and got stuck as per usual.

All in all, it was a good mini break, although I would have liked the waves to be a little bigger and more consistent, but good times all the same. There are a couple of snaps below from the trip.

Am back in the office in London after a few days in Newquay surfing and now freelancing as an IA at a company called The Grand Union. I am supposed to be here initially for about a month. Am settling in, head down (being the new guy and all that) and I guess we’ll see how things progress next week. Only downside again is being given a PC to work on, am sure I will end up getting just as pissed off here using Visio as I did at Dare, maybe I will be able to get a Mac, we’ll see!

So Beej and I are heading off to the South West tomorrow for a couple of days mid-week surfing in and around the Newquay area. The weather is immaculate at the moment, with pristine blue skies, warm sunshine and a light easterly breeze (offshore for the South West). The surf report says approximately 3-5ft @ 10 seconds which (to non-surfers) that means probably knee to waist high waves. Nothing to write home about but there should be a fun, clean wave to be had all the same.

I spent the best part of Sunday getting my quiver in order. Dings have been fixed, fins and leashes have been cleaned and everything is ready to go. The next task will be deciding on which boards to take: 8′2, 6′8, 6′4 or 6′0 (plus Beej’s 6′2 UB fish), decisions decisions.

We are camping it, nothing confirmed yet, just a bit of see what turns up really, plenty of options and the weather will hopefully be on our side.

I was sitting on the train this morning getting excited and smiling (in a carriage full of grey commuters) as I started to visualise the feeling of being out in the surf again: the water, the smell and taste of the sea, the sunshine, the rhythm of the ocean, altogether making for a stoke-filled experience.

Early start tomorrow, leaving Essex for 5.30am, hoping to avoid London traffic and arrive for a lunch time surf, fingers crossed!

More news and pics/video soon…

For the past 2 weeks I have been freelancing as an Information Architect over at Dare Digital in central London (the last time I was here was 2 years ago as a Web Developer).

I’ve been working on some interesting projects for Vodafone, Sony UK and Barclaycard. It is a nice break from a year of working pretty much solely on BT. I would say the only frustrating thing is I have had to work on a PC, which has felt clunky, unprofessional and at times rather retarded. But on the upside I have learned how to use MS Visio and can now add that to my CV.

It’s been quite strange working as part of a new team as opposed to being full time back at Crayon (where I used to walk around acting like I owned the place with my 1.5 hour gym lunches). You have to tone down your personality for the first few days, as not to walk in and end up offending people or acting too over confident (it is a fine balance). But they are a nice bunch and I have had a good time seeing how a different agency (much bigger than my previous one) works and “does” IA.

This weekend I have earned some much needed down time and hopefully the good weather will continue. The next few weeks look potentially busy with possible work offers on the table from: Dare, Grand Union, Sapient and the Glass Partnership. Just need to balance that with getting some decent surf time in and its all good!

So after a few week’s of blood, sweat and tears I have finally got the 8th incarnation of my website: www.hungrybrowser.co.uk live. This time around it wasn’t so much a case of going for a new look and feel but more an exercise in content consolidation. Before I redeveloped this site I had a site for photos, one for work and one for blogging. I’ve managed to now get everything in one place, choosing WordPress as my publishing platform (although I had to do a lot of hacking the templates to get them to where I wanted).

As a side point I thought it might be interesting to have a look at some of the old versions of HB, so I’ve dusted down the source code and taken a few screen shots of the site as it has evolved over the past 7 years from 2001 to the present day.

I proactively created a set of Crayon-branded IA templates for use within the agency. The aim was to standardise our approach and ensure that each client experienced the same level of service and professionalism from Crayon.