Development XL, Accessible Web Design and Bespoke Development

the journal

Our views on cyberspace, jammed-packed with articles relating to web development and web design as well as a variety of other useful fact-nuggets.

• Straight from the horse's mouth

  February 2008 by Andrew Senter

  I Googled something today, the result? .. about 4,050,000 for search engine optimisation. Make that 4,050,001. With over four million opinions spread across the web, search engine optimisation is a subject that has been thoroughly debated and often misrepresented. So what do we think? Who cares! The king of all search engines has a wealth of information on the subject. Read on ...

• The dawn of a new pillow emboss

  February 2008 by Mick Horler

  Forgive me for getting a little emotional but I'm about to talk about my darling and yours, the Internet. Ever since 1998 I've been what is technically known as 'arsing about' with our most beloved series of tubes, and here I attempt to write a brief history of website design, general Internet fact-nuggetry and a variety of other tech-based anecdotes from both this and last century. Read on ...

• WAMPing it up the old fashioned way

  February 2008 by Andrew Senter

  I've never been much of a fan of pre-bundled WAMP installers. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather not have to compile Apache and PHP at assembly level, but I can't help but feel WAMP installation packages are a level of abstraction too far. If you're going to delve into the world of web development, it seems like a good idea that you get to know your tools up close and personal.

• Accessibility and dvxl.com

  January 2008 by Andrew Senter

  I'm rather obsessive about accessibility. The thought of someone browsing one of my sites using a screen-reader and not having as thrilling an experience (haha) as the rest of us keeps me up at night. All it takes are a few simple steps to give any site the widest possible audience. Oh yeah, it also means you can pop one of those little accessibility badges on your site, keep Cynthia happy and be the envy of all your friends.