my.blogs.lincoln

I’ve spent most of today bug fixing and enhancing the CWD 3.0 mobile styling. The list below are mobile browsers which I’ve tested on and got working nicely: iPhone/iPod Touch Safari iPad Safari Android default browser Blackberry 5 browser Blackberry 6 browser Nokia 5800 browser Internet Explorer Mobile 5.5 Opera Mobile (latest version) …[Read more]

In February 2010, BBC Online sumbitted it’s response to the BBC Strategy (read: budget) Review, announced the summer before. Along with committing to reducing it’s budget by 25% by 2013, they’ve committed to halving the number of top-level directories# (i.e. anything that falls after http://bbc.co.uk/, such as /eastenders or /drwho). The BBC curre…[Read more]

Following on from my post about the URI structure in our existing corporate website I’m now taking a brief look at a number of other websites and web applications that we have at the University, WordPress, Blackboard (blackboard.lincoln.ac.uk), SharePoint 2003 (internal – portal.lincoln.ac.uk, external – visit.lincoln.ac.uk) and Posters at Lincoln …[Read more]

Almost a year ago we introduced the Common Web Design v2.0 (it was actually version 1.0 but we realised that a number already sites, developed before Nick and I started, we using a similar design). A year later 30 sites and applications are using it, as well as over 50 blogs. [...]

Over the past ten years, the University of Lincoln’s home page has evolved into a monolithic repository of course descriptions, staff profiles, news items, policy statements, information for staff, students, parents, the media, and anyone else who may stumble across the site. Using an online sitemap generator I…[Read more]

Building on our experience from developing the Common Web Design ( CWD), we present the CWDx 1.0, designed specifically for awesome web based applications. CWDx is 100% HTML5 and CSS3, includes extensive WIA-ARIA mark-up for accessibility, is Ajax driven and is wonderfully minimalistic. The application is build using the …[Read more]

This has been a big month for Total ReCal. We’ve now perfected our event importers for Blackboard assignments and academic timetables, and we’ve started working on the main web application (screenshots too). We’ve also launched a beta registration page for interested staff and students to sign up for early access. Finally, our Talis Keystone…[Read more]

Over the past week we’ve worked tirelessly to perfect our timetable import code and we’ve now got a system that is working with real data. A select few students have now been given access to iCal feeds for both their timetables and their Blackboard assignments and the Library is hoping to have their Talis Keystone system [...]

Now that we’ve got live data being produced from Blackboard and CEMIS we can start writing scheduled jobs to insert this data into the Total ReCal database however in the case of CEMIS we’re having a few problems. Everyday a CSV file is created of all of the timetable events for each student. This file is (currently) [...]

So after much messing around we’ve finally got a semi-decent mobile stylesheet for CWD web sites. For the moment we’ve only worked on getting mobile Safari to look right however now we’ve got a platform on which we can hack in support for other popular mobile browsers such as Opera Mobile. Here are a few examples:

One of the benefits of having a single sign on system is that we can now very easily add personalisation into our online services including the common web design. You can now set some accessibility preferences for the CWD that will will be enabled whenever you visit a CWD enabled website. To do so, go [...]

The CWD is now implemented on more than 50 University of Lincoln websites and blogs (see http://lost.lincoln.ac.uk/cwd/2.2/logs/) and after many hours debugging and testing it’s finally ready for prime time. Proudly introducing http://cwd.online.lincoln.ac.uk/ From tomorrow (17th August ’10) we’ll begin the process of updating sites to point at…[Read more]

A specific problem that the university faces is the aggregation, integration and publishing of ‘space-time data’; that is, data relating to the use of space (i.e. room bookings, geo-spatial location data) and time (i.e. timetables, event schedules, library book returns). This project will address this problem by developing plugins for existing…[Read more]

I’ve just pushed through some new code into the 2.3 branch which will make development a little easier. Currently to add padding to the base grid you need to add an extra div element with a class called ‘box’ which adds 10px of padding:

<div class=”span-12″> <div class=”box”> <p> Lorem ipsum dolor… </p> </div> </div>

Now though you can…[Read more]

I’ve just pushed some new code into the upcoming 2.3 (Dallas Dhu) release that is going to make the CWD a lot friendly on netbooks and other devices with smaller screens. Currently if you’re running a browser that supports the border-image CSS3 property then you will get the sexy shadow around the main content container however on [...]

Back in March, the Department for Business Innovation and Skills completed an accessibility audit of the Digress.it plugin for us. UK law states that all public service websites should be accessible which means that the website should be implemented in ways that users of a website who have a visual impairment, hearing disabilities, or those who [...]

The current version of the new wireless access network (shown below) is running a very early version of the CWD (version 2.0 Aberlour to be specific):

The new version shown below is running the bleeding edge trunk version of the CWD (2.2 Caperdonich). Hopefully you can see the improvements!

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Caperdonich is approaching and there are a few structural changes that are needed. CWD 2.1 will be retired two weeks after 2.2 is released so existing sites will not work. We have setup an SVN repository and a Mantis account to track CWD progress. SVN http://lincoln.svn.beanstalkapp.com/cwd/ Mantis http://mantis.ll.tn-uk.net/ Updates to <head> …[Read more]

This evening I started work on an active record inspired library for interacting with MongoDB via a CodeIgniter library. So far I’ve got searching and inserting working. Updating and deleting are going to take more time because they’re a bit trickier. What this means is you can easily work with a database collection like so:…[Read more]