What are Saas?

Saas means Software As A Service. It might seem obscure and you but you might also be using saas equivalents without noticing it. The other question is also, why Saas on a web design site? Simply because it might trigger ideas and change your way of seeing the services or solutions you are building for each client. As far as I know, Saas solutions are not actually offered by Mauritian companies.

Saas concept.

The idea behind Saas is simple. It is a full blown application that is hosted on a remote server and which is accessed through the Internet meaning that the user has access to the service only and is not hindered by the issues of upgrades, server versioning, OS compatibility or all the minor glitches that might crop up when dealing with a desktop software.

Saas example.

A simple real life example of Saas is “free” web based email offered on the Internet such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail or Microsoft Hotmail/Live. Each system follows a same scheme, the application is developed, maintained, managed and hosted by the vendor and the user subscribes to the service via the Internet. The software is thus maintained by the vendor and the service it offers is the only thing the user has access to.

On a much much simpler basis, an extranet can be considered as a Saas. Thus Saas can be used either by end users such as free web based email users, facebook users or blog platform (blogger or wordpress for example) users in the same way as companies can do it. For example, Campaign Monitor is an email marketing service built on the Saas concept.

How does it work and the advantages?

Contrary to traditional softwares, the Saas work on a subscription basis (free or paid, free being supported by advertising) compared to the one-time fee offered. The software is not the property of the user and s/he does bit have to download and install a software. This results in:

• Lower costs for the user.
• Smaller storage requirements.
• Fewer personnel to handle and maintain.

The vendor also gains from this as it can rely on a continous stream of income which might be more than traditional licensing. Piracy and unlicensed use of the software are also reduced and, in some cases, cleared resulting in the reduction in losses associated to these.

Interested?

Saas is getting important and more companies are adhering to it. It seems to be the future of web based services and softwares. Below are 3 articles that might help you see how Saas works in real life and what are the pros and cons of such solutions.

• Is Saas right for your practice?
• Are Saas and recession killing perpetual software licenses ?
• L’usage des Saas va progresser en entreprise.
• Saas: Reste à convaincre les late adopters.

There has been a large number of website publications in Mauritius these last weeks along with disastrous concepts such as the L’Express website (discussed over here). One of the major problems that seem to be quite difficult to get over is copywriting.

As stated in my last post on Fantasmédia and in the discussion over the new L’Express website, the use of language, be it French or English, is always biased in terms of quality and consistency. Many a Managing Director thinks that a post or a description of an online activity is either a transcription of what is written on their printed ads or just a way of trying either some black hat seo or a stupid challenge of putting the largest number of adjectives in one go.

Web users actually don’t care. They want concise yet informative texts. They do not want to read lengths of “how we are a great company and will conquer the world for you as all our employees are Supermen disguised in Batman with Spider-Man’s super powers.” What they need is “show us the needs and what solution you have and what do I gain in using it.”

Using good copywriting techniques will not only deliver a quick and insightful message but also help your SEO because one thing companies usually forget, the person looking for information will be using just plain everyday {insert language here} to find the product, so cut the grass under your challenger’s feet with this.

Want to know how to do this? Check out this old but still up-to-date article on A List Apart by Erin Kissane, learn the techniques and spice up your website with the simple yet to the point advice.

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.

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.

How can one help one’s company take the turn of accessibility. Its usually difficult to explain accessibility and its uses and issues to fellow workers, let alone those who do not work in the technical field. Accessibility can be a huge support when answering an offer. Bruce Lawson gives you his experience of how to get accessibility into the higher spheres.

Giromon analyses DCL‘s corporate rebranding. A great example of failure with text ripped off the Unysis website along with wonderful examples of bad design and coding. Great article by Giromon on this. Mauritian web designers: this is what you should never do!

Popular designer Andy Rutledge takes arms against son bad layout conventions usually accepted as popular and well designed. His analysis and proposals are to the point and a good read for any designer wishing to optimise user experience.

I was reading Anthony Zinni’s post on aliasing in design comps. This might seem to be a minor issue to many a mauritian, especially budding, designer but experience has proved that there is more to it. The main problem is that,as a designer replying to an offer, you don’t know what type of web/graphics habits and gear your client might have.

In the case of MS Windows users, some use the “cleartype” option while others don’t. This means that the client will have the habit of either seing aliased or anti-aliased type. Those using Apple gear are used to having Helvetica and all with sharp anti-aliasing. So what is aliasing choice to make when setting up a comp?

For me the answer is simple as I have experienced client anger due to non 100% comp copy site integration namely when it comes to fonts and gradients (as I wasn’t the person having done the comps). Many clients do not understand the issues related to using images nor do they understand everything about standards or CSS. You can’t blame them, its not their field. If you have time to explain in details that the website will not be a 100% copy of the comp, good for you, but be sure to have the right arguments for this. So if you show heavy anti-aliased fonts in your comp, be sure to explain that fonts will not be the same.

For me, the best solution is to leave aliased text as it is and let the client have either a good surprise when seeing the site with cleartype activated, else no surprise but you’ll still be on the right track transforming your comp into HTML/CSS.

Experienced webdesigners tend to forget that beginning in webdesigning, especially in css, is really hard. This is also the case when one has to make the jump from the deprecated way of designing and HTML coding to the use of divisions and CSS.

Basically, using standards in coding and CSS is the act of separating content from structure while managing the latter to allow it to hold the former in place. In this case, the code is the holder and works for the profit of content and not the way round. Now, if you want to get started in CSS or change your designing approach you HAVE to learn. The big question remains: where and how ?

A quick search in any search engine will show that you have more CSS tutorial websites than you can shake a stick at. I have nothing against tutorials but these, however, won’t get you in full swing without the knowledge of basic concepts. Many webdesigners have started CSS the hard way tinkering some code here and there and wading through the neverending fog of browser testing, code hacking and DOM inspecting. CSS being the standard way of doing things now, what was supposed to happen did happen: hundreds of books! There too you have your numerous bookstore shelf but the “for dummies” thing won’t get your backside out of the fire.

Which one then? For me, the question is simple and easy and the answer is short: Jeffrey Zeldman.

In 1998, Jeffrey co-founded—and from 1999 to 2002 he directed—The Web Standards Project, a grassroots coalition that helped bring standards to our browsers. Once browser makers got with the program, Jeffrey and his cohorts persuaded designers and developers to change the way they created websites—an effort to which A List Apart also greatly contributed.

My opinion is that Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman is the eye-opener any webdesigner must read at least once in his/her life. My own personal experience is based on this book, read some 5 years ago. The power of this book is the way in which it presents web standards and css without actually being a dumb step by step tutorial book. This is the one book to read in the first place as it is written for technical and non-technical persons. Once this is done, you’ll be ready to read any other CSS oriented book or tutorial site fully understanding them and why you’re doing it.

Back in the 90s, the web was an anarchy concerning the way browsers worked or the way websites were coded. CSS barely had any value and Flash was believed to be the ultimate webdesign experience. Then ergonomics came into the picture. A person’s attention had to be captured in 7 seconds. The underlying idea was to give out an interesting and fully loaded page in 7 seconds. At the time we were all using 56k/s modems and 7 seconds were believed to be short. We now have DSL lines and 7 seconds seem to be ages to wait for a page to load compared to the milliseconds a page like Google’s home takes.

The problem got partly solved when web standards got introduced. Why web standards and how ?

Most webdesigners, myself included, have a graphic arts background. Let’s make things clear right here. IT lectures do exist and arts and design lectures also. However, the bridging between the two is inexistant. Webdesigners think in pictures and not in code. This is where the first webdesign attempts went wrong. Having nothing to hold the pictures together, webdesigners had to turn towards the next best solution available: TABLE.

The benefit of TABLE was that it allowed the arranging of boxes themselves holding images. It was “tight”. Our strictly visual mentality was satisfied about it and we would be boasting about our (visual) achievements while throwing semantics, accessibility and all the other issues out of the window without solving them. This is where web standards get into the picture.

The web standards, called “recommendations” by the World Wide Web Consortium, is the general term used to define the formal (and accepted) technical best practices of designing and developing websites. The methods provided and recommended by the Consortium cover all aspects of webdesigning going from the most basic HTML elements to Javascripting and CSS. HTML and CSS are no longer pariahs in the IT world as the standards guide them and they are not just a means to an end without grasping their nature and their use. All in all, web standards stand at the limit of separating content from style and presentation from structure.

Today, most modern browsers support a vast majority of those standards. Standards give designers the possibility of controlling every visual element on a page without having to hack the core nature of the code (which was the case for TABLE). This is the beginning of semantics. CSS coupled to the right use of HTML tags create better structure, respecting headers for example is important, and, most of all, cuts down the use of custom style tags and selectors in the code (this is the case with table cells for example). This lightens up the whole thing and accelerates page loading time.

TABLE is widely used in the Mauritian context. When analysing most of the mauritian major companies’ corporate websites we can see that TABLE is still used and nearly none is compliant. This practice hinders web evolution and weighs a lot on the Mauritian DSL offer. For those not aware of this: bandwidth is usally sold packed to a website. The problem of heavy websites is that if the packaged bandwidth is consumed, two solutions are offered: the drastic site shutdown by the host or surplus bandwidth charges which are usually very expensive.

Welcome to the Web Design Bureau of Mauritius, which might be called the wdbm. This is in no way a self -centered blog nor anything close to that. The aim of this blog is to give you tools and guidance to webdesigning or better/smarter webdesigning in the Mauritian context. Let me introduce and explain.

I am Sachin Brojmohun, experienced webdesigner and CSS integrator of Mauritian origin living in France. I have worked and acquired experience in this field over the past 8 years. Patriot and curious over the evolution of the Internet in Mauritius (thing that had not even budded when I was a student back in Mauritius) I tried to find what was being done in terms of webdesign in the country. I was surprised to find so many webdesigners and some really talented persons working in the field in Mauritius. The main trouble remained technique, standards and norms. Accessibility is practically unknown and bandwidth saving nearly not taken into consideration.

I am no messiah nor teacher. I want to share my experience and make things move forward a bit for our country. There’s so much potential and we need to drive it, taking into consideration the limits of what is offered in terms of bandwidth, hosting and guidance to our webdesigners. Hopefully, this site will turn out to be a place where Mauritian webdesigners can meet, share and show what they can do to the whole world.