Published in L’Express on the 27th of November 2008

Michael Anseline, 24 ans, est chef d’entreprise. Il est un des fondateurs de la firme Fantasmédia qui est dans la création de site web, l’événementiel ou encore la modération.

«La création d’un site web peut prendre une semaine à trois mois. Notre rôle est de proposer des solutions aux clients», explique-t-il. Ses clients sont des français. «Ils se rendent compte que Maurice est une destination pas chère et de qualité en ce qu’il s’agit d’informatique», dit-il.

Avec le boum des BPO, les gens pense que c’est la seule filière liée à l’informatique, mais la programmation est également une avenue intéressante pour le jeune chef d’entreprise. Comme Michael, les autres intervenants pensent que le secteur informatique peut connaître un développement majeur à Maurice, que ce soit pour la création de sites web ou pour la programmation pure.

Once again, quite a lot of bragging about Mauritian web design. For me, the first thing to do when you have to get close to a web design company is to visit their website. Why? Because if they have a great website, standards compliant, flexible with optimised and really interesting content they are convincing the prospective client that they’ll be selling the same type of website to them. Others will base themselves on highly graphical elements just to sell the eye-candy and skip everything else. The eveything being the essence of the web: standards, css and content.

So let’s have a look at Fantas Média‘s “high quality” website. Ok, they haven’t really got one, but the one online for the time being tells quite a lot. Ok, first things first. Say “Hi!” to Mr.Flash Page. Bad idea: no indexation, non standards-compliant, bandwidth gobbler (remember we’re in Mauritius guys), difficult to update, and these are just examples. Along with that is that annoying music loop! Here are some great articles to learn about UX (user experience), standards and quality

• How to Convince a Client (and maybe yourself) their Site Doesn’t Need Music?
• Forget the Flash splash.

Ok, let’s have a look at the code now.

What do we have then? Beautiful example of keyword spamming. An advice: try a Google search on basic SEO techniques, it’ll help, I guarantee. It might even incite you to remove the “référencement” keyword from your business model.

In page CSS, true enough, the animation is already killing the bandwidth so why bother about an external CSS file. Using upper case HTML, ok no standards then and the code confirms it. Wonderful onClick="window.open(this.href); return false;". You’re a user without Javascript activated and you don’t have Flash installed, too bad, looks like Fantas Média is telling you that you’re SCREWED!

We might give Fantas Média the benefit of doubt, their portfolio is not online. Yes but Google is. Here’s a sample of their work, or might it be a part of their new website. Their previous portfolio itself is a huge flash animation. So no alternative for accessible browsers, no alternative for standards compliant browsers and no way to get this indexed in search engines because of the keyword spamming added to the horrible use of English and French. Even the keyword spamming is incorrectly done as the portfolio shows (supposed) English text while the keywords are in French.

Dear Fantas Média, please employ a copywriter who’ll tell you that “multimedia” doesn’t have and accent in English, “massif” is a geology term and cannot be used in a phrase like “massif image resizing” or “positivism” is a scientific knowledge theory where you might have used “positivity”. Just like “concept” is a “concept” and not a “conception”!

Here is an example of how standards are completely absent in Mauritius and the quality of the work really poor. This is what Mauritian web designers should not be doing as it reduces the value of Mauritian web design. The same persons will be saying that they are doing quality work while being completely oblivious of the core concepts of web design. Their new site should be online soon, I’m really waiting for it and hope that they’ll prove me wrong.

Remember that the word “sex” claimed to be the most searched word on the web for a long time? Well, times have changed and Web 2.0 have tanned its hide. I’ve been hanging around on Google Trends these days and just thought about how things could have changed around the world with the advent of the Internet, the use of search engines and the popularity of some major new age applications. One thing we’ll notice in this analysis is that the search for the word “sex” is pretty constant with minor fluctuations.

Obama stronger than sex itself.

Barack Obama’s election is a pure example of buzz. On the night prior to his election, search engine searches on his name have seen a major boost overwhelming “sex” by a good 100%! Ok, it was the American election etc. but the stats are based on world searches. However, after that day, the buzz just died down. Here’s the Google Trends chart based on “obama” and “sex” searches.

MySpace, the first contender.

The birth of MySpace was a huge leap for social networking and Web 2.0 (in its real social, Internet user buzz definition). People around the world started opening MySpace pages to keep in touch and build new relationship networks. Even Guns and Roses put their 15 years brewed 20 million dollars “Chinese Democracy” online to 76 millions of tracks listened since Friday last (21/11/2008). MySpace had such an impact that it nearly became the number one searched keyword while becoming, for some time, the number one social media. Here’s the Google Trends chart for “MySpace” and “sex” searches. Wow, that was a close call!

Ladies and Gents, Mr B.I.G, the Masta!: Facebook

Call it the buzzword killer, the ultimate social media tool, the world class Web 2.0 application. Facebook turns out to have a constant increase in users and above that a steady use. This gives you the following chart, where Facebook started out by the end of the first term of 2004 and just kept on becoming more popular. Along with that you can also see that, according to Google, references to the application were not that much during that time.

There you have it then, Facebook is now the most searched keyword on the net and “sex” has been thrown back to the second place. What will the future be then ? Will it be “oil prices”, “water”, “crisis”, “work”, “job” or another webapp like Twitter? Here’s what we’ve got for Twitter for now :

Marshall Kirkpatrick covers the flaws of Google’s new toy. Searchwiki is bold but cranky and is already filled up with spam comments and what not. Is it a good idea then?

There’s a lot of talk over the advent of the Internet in Mauritius and l’Express even had an article on the new practices over the Internet especially concerning on line purchases, Internet banking or job seeking (though I doubt that it is a good thing to compare online shops in Mauritius with business models such as amazon or ebay). Internet is slowly getting into people’s lives and is getting importance in terms of transactions. More and more of them are secured online.

Most of the sites presented have good motives to be online and try to get things going but some important concepts have been ditched. Web standards, usability and content. This might explain the difficulties some of them have to be profit making sites. In this series of articles, a thorough analysis of standards and usability will be done trying to explain where the cogwheel gets stuck. Please bear in mind that the analysis isn’t here to bring down the site but to show that “professional” companies are not following standards and are selling low-end applications to customers. Let’s not forget that Mauritius is budding in the Internet field and that bandwidth still has to be enhanced. People need fast and usable solutions!

Why standards?

First things first. I am a stickler to standards. They are good practices to keep your site running and allow it to survive all major browser changes. This also ensures that the website looks the same (thus, ensures return on investment) in all browsers and you don’t have to give instructions to your visitors to have them changing their resolutions or browsers. One of the worse examples on the concept is the Government of Mauritius website’s disclaimer

This site is best viewed at 800 x 600 resolution with Internet Explorer 5.5 (SP2)

What do standards bring you then? And why code a site according to these?

Page Weight

Using CSS in a separate and XHTML allow the distinction of markup from the presentational layers of the pages. This reduces the page weight of the document. Using CSS in a separate file which will only be imported when necessary reduces the number of times the presentational layers will be copied yielding into a general lightweight site. The CSS file being cached just on the first page, it is not downloaded again when a new page is loaded thus calling only the light page. Major websites save quite a lot of bandwidth through this as smaller ones have faster loading pages? Once again, the Mauritian Government website shows the discrepancies of not using standards and the impact on page load time.

Ease of maintenance

Let me tell you a secret word: semantic. A semantically correct code is self documented and is easily understood when it comes to maintenance. A div is a division block, a h2 a heading and a ul an unordered list. Building web pages on this good assumption makes that the code is meaningful. Thus, any developer can jump into the code and correctly and easily do the necessary maintenance.

SEO and Accessibility

Using semantic code is also beneficial for your online reputation. Search engine robots are standards compliant machines. Using a h for a heading or a title gives them the information that the content in this particular tag is important (hence keywords in there will have more weight). With reduced page weight, hence code waddling, the robot will not have to choke on your in-line styling and try to differentiate what is code and what is content. It will just gather the information and index it.

In the same way as robots have to analyse clean code, visually impaired persons navigating do not need presentational layers and just need clean semantic code. Many of you will tell me, Internet is not enough into people’s lives in Mauritius for this. Answer: so what? The country will be evolving and Internet services also. Let’s just imagine that a visually impaired person gets the Internet and uses the Lynx browser to buy his vegetables online at tantebazar.com will end up seeing a nonsense page like this one. While this site might be offering useful services and might also get a niche market by proposing to visually impaired persons to have their goods delivered at home, its coding is hindering it. Ok, let’s admit it, Compnet, the webdesign company which built the site doesn’t state the use of standards in its TOS.

Extensibility

Need to redesign, to add up new content, to make a printable version of your web page? A well structured and semantic website is optimised for this. You can do amazing things with such usage. CSS Zen Garden shows how you can change the whole design of a website without ever having to modify its markup.

Can’t do it?

Now, if you’re a Web Design company coming round and your client asks you for a great standards driven and accessible website and your answer is “can’t do it”, you just have to leave the business. Moreover, if you are thinking about telling your client that you can’t have great looks and good markup you’re wrong once again. Here view source for an inspiring glimpse of how semantic and accessible even a grid-based, image-intensive, pixel-perfect site can be. The only limit must be your inspiration and not your web designing and coding skills.

Conclusion

Not only do web standards help you as the developer, they also help your clients, and their audience. By conforming to today’s standards and accessibility guidelines, you can ensure that the content is available to all users, regardless of the device they use to access it. Combine this with bandwidth savings, ease of maintenance, and extensibility. In this time of evolution of the web in Mauritius, the designers taking the step towards standards will be those getting ahead of the others. When clients will start requiring standards, you’ll be prepared for this.

Yahoo! is releasing a new version of search engine retrieving a mix of available media results such as web results, sponsored links (nothing new here), videos, online radios, images, blog search, news, all of which are aggregated on one page. This new baby is called Glue.

While still being in Beta version, it does display relevant results and companies interested in seeing their websites scanned and quoted on the Glue can contact the Yahoo! team. The product has been on test-run since May in India and prioritized pages relevant to India. A particular aspect of the app is that it also sends results from Google Blogsearch or Tube.

Talent is precious. So precious that it can get wasted. Mauritian web designers are talented people but nobody has actually taken hold of these talents in different fields and exploited them. A major of part of these qualities are used by foreign agencies working a lot in outsourcing and the Mauritian brains and talents are just tools used like any other employee in the company elsewhere.

Few Mauritians have set out to go freelance but we are not in the Neanderthal age. Many are highly qualified in one field but lack major qualities in others. Good graphic designers might not be good CSS integrators for example. Great PHP coders might not be good SEO engineers. This is where one might crop up with a great business model or at least a great NEW job.

Influential blogger Seth Godin has simply titled it: Manager of Freelancers. Why freelancers? Answer: marketplace Darwinism. The word “world recession” is the new buzz-word and medium and small sized structures will be gaining more flexibility and encouragement than large creative agencies. Andy Rutledge, in his article on Web 0.2, states the advent of small companies:

Small businesses have had certain advantages ever since the advent of the Web, but I believe we’re entering primetime for agile and opportunistic squirrels, as the larger beasts lumber and sputter along. I think the coming years will in many ways be a return to the early days and wide-open frontier of Web design and development business. Web 0.2. This situation favors free agents[...]

He hits the bullseye. This is where the business is heading and he incites freelancers to learn how to manage a business and prepare for an increase in freelancing demand. This is where the manager of freelancers gets in the picture. Why not hire the freelancers you need to build up a project and reduce their management problems and drive the whole project along? A new type of job in a changing world?

This has its lot of consistency in a country like Mauritius where the market is not saturated and Web Design companies are lugging back building dinosaur aged websites regardless of standards, compatibility, SEO, site management and accessibility. Using freelancers, all experts in their fields, guarantees customer satisfaction as well as freelancers’. So why not go for it?

This might really be the new black!

I’ve seen around the web that quite a lot of Mauritian HSC students are frustrated about this “leakage” problem. Most of them are getting into huge discussions concerning this issue and how this will be solved. However none has had a real space for expression. This post is therefore open for any one of you wishing to give your view on the subject.

THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION! JUST AN OPEN SPACE!
Rules:

1. You can post only once.
2. You must give your opinion on the subject and only on this subject.
3. No reply to other comments, just your point of view else post will be deleted.
4. No foul language, post will be deleted.
5. Use English please.
6. Forget the SMS lingo, you are HSC students, show that you master your language.

Please make the best use of this space to give your feelings on the subject and SAY what you feel!

The cat was out of the box. The Mauritian government will be approaching Facebook to ask for temporary country filtering during exams period or might even try to ban Facebook from Mauritian networks.

How did this happen? The most important exams in Mauritius are the HSC (Higher School Certificate-evaluating the end of high school studies) exams directed by the University of Cambridge, UK. The University of Cambridge deals with the same exams in many countries over the world namely Pakistan, Singapore or Malaysia. The exam papers are pretty much the same but the University of Cambridge has not been prepared enough to see the implication of social networking in exam paper leakage.

This ended up in having the same exam papers sent to different countries with different time zones. The 12 hour difference between Mauritius and Malaysia has been exploited over the Internet where students having done their examination in Malaysia have posted their exam questions and the answers on Facebook via the blackpapers.info portal and Facebook group.

Mauritian authorities don’t know how to deal with the situation and are proposing either that students sit for a new version of the exams and have also emitted the idea of banning the incriminated sites, provided they can be held guilty for this.

This has lead to a huge upheaval in the Mauritian Web community and bloggers are uniting for or against this government proposal. Some examples here (in Mauritius English, French and Creole are the main languages/dialect, so you might see a mixture of them on these blogs):

[DISCLAIMER: there might be some use of inappropriate language on some of these. Not my reponsibility.]

Island Crisis
The Media Guru
Shah – Wacko Geek
S4ndeep

My point of view is the following. I understand the frustration and the overall absurdity of the situation but this will not be done for certain because:

1/ Facebook is one of the most used social networks in the world and as many big companies, does not give a damn about being controlled by any world government. Do you think they will set their developers to spend their time building filters for Mauritius while they might be getting more money off new apps?

2/ One term: Cyberisland! Mauritian government has been bragging about this for the past years. Making an internet filter on Facebook in Mauritius is like putting a bullet in the government’s own foot! Will Mauritius stay in the new media, web 2.0, connectivity with an action like this? The simple act of citing this has already thrown years of work down the drain.

3/ Welcome to China! Try censorship. People have been fighting to speak freely and banning any site or building any filter will send the country back in the non-respect of human rights!

4/ All in all, if there are leaks, its Cambridge’s problem. There are many solutions available such a preprinted and student numbered answer booklets and the student has to give it back to have his/her copy corrected. Instead of investing in crap filters and site banishing which will cost millions they might as well use less money to get better results.

Great analysis of one of the new trends in the web design world by Gopal at Productive Dreams: the “Price Tag”. Really cool insight of what is going on in web designing. Love the twitter bird at the bottom of Gopal’s site!

The Web 2.0 Summit is now over. We will not get back into the stale debate of “what is Web 2.0″. One thing for sure is the implication of new media and social media in the web world and especially the way information is driven into these media. This is where the summit reached a stepping stone.

Content is King! One of Web 2.0′s pillars was this content. Anybody, anyhow, anyway could put content online. Be it verified or not. In Mauritius for example, Defi Media Group’s online newspaper is becoming one of the most hated scandal magazine while driving a lot of traffic through the buzz it is generating. Info is given by non-reporters and this is absorbed by the search robots and re-digested by other social media tools.

People are now bloating on an over consumption of content as well as an overwhelming amount of information. Information overdrive is becoming a problem because there is too much of it. Unverified data carries on living over the web which is quite democratic in the sense that anybody can put anykind of information online. The other drawback is the high frequency at which the data is renewed or updated.

The major inconvenience of the web, participants admitted, is the excess of unnecessary information. Ways to filter this information are practically non-existent. David Marks stated that information sources will evolve and will themselves get interactive instead of only having media sending out new information on the fly.

Will it really be, as someone humourously said during the conference, that Web 3.0 will be the cleaning of all the mess left around by Web 2.0? This might be a new niche to explore.

A major part of the world is rejoicing over the new American President’s victory leading to a rendez-vous with American and World history. The first downside of all this is the other part of the world that is even more rejoicing over this victory is the hacker/spammer/malware provider world as the interest in Obama is a blessed source for phishing.

Asher Moses explains how the “Obama” spam email campaign was launched even before the new president had made his victory speech. Messages came round inviting people either to check indepth results, follow speeches or adviser meetings and even “Obama sex tapes“. Variations of such attacks will surely be seen in coming days and we are to expect that new versions of such emails will come round in huge quantities.

My opinion is that, in the coming months, the whole world will be having tens of thousands of Obama spam mails until the official nomination in January. Anyways, this is a real huge and well orchestrated attack surfing on the buzz of Obama’s election.

More:
MXLogic’s blog post on the subject.
Info on Malware, Virus and Phishing.

You might be acquainted to the major type foundries such as Linotype. What about the unknown ones. Designer Daily has published a list of 16 Type Foundries you might have never heard of.

For those of you webdesigners having difficulties managing your CSS code, here is a Windows only free tool allowing you to code, format, beautify and compress your code. Free CSS Toolbox is a freeware allowing you to enhance your code while keeping you on the validation track. If you are no text-based tool addict, this one is a real helper and helps you manage your designing smoothly. Its got quite a lot of advanced features such as auto-completion and code highlighting.

Check it out over at Blumentals.