captured sparks

The first thing is the security question. I can’t remember ever telling Aviva the name of the first street I lived on but will assume for these purposes that I did. The street name consisted of 7 letters and then 5 letters: let’s say Putting Green.

The first problem is of course encountered when entering the 13th letter. To make it work, the space needs to be included. This then presents the second problem; the 8th letter would be the space. It is easy enough to remove the space when creating the security question but no security question should allow the user to enter a string with spaces when you’re asking for specific letters.

The second issue is that the statement, “Not sure of your answer>>”, which one assumes to be a link, is not a link.

I was viewing this in Safari 4, so I’m not sure what they are doing with the password hint box. Perhaps it works fine in IE.

Finally, and it is not demonstrated on the screenshot, the cursor retains its default setting when hovering over the continue and back links. It should of course change to pointer so that user expectations are met when hovering a link.

As a result of this, my account ended up being locked. Despite an online request for somebody to contact me to fix it, I’ve had no response. I gave up waiting in their phone queue after 15 minutes.

One would hope that large companies could avoid such basic errors, particularly when the service is marketed as an online service. Access to all policy documents is via the online portal so it is a fundamental part of their service.

I’ve spent the weekend creating my first gem release, version 0.0.1 of which is now available.

The purpose of the gem is to provide a wrapper around the tr.im api. At the moment, it only supports the ability to trim a larger url down to size. I found this to be a good introduction to working with an API as no authentication is required for this basic functionality. Over time, I intend to add in the other functionality supported by the API.

Following Github’s decision to not support the creation of new gems, the gem is stored at Gemcutter. To install, you will need to do the following:

gem sources -a http://gemcutter.org/
gem install trim-api

I hope it is of use.

When redesigning captured sparks, I made the conscious decision to design for the latest browsers. This was for 2 reasons: Firstly, it reduced the amount of time I needed to spend testing the site – an entirely selfish reason, I accept. Secondly, the only way to drive a reduction in the number of users with older browsers, is for more developers and designers to design sites using the latest technology.

I accept, of course, that a significant number of users in corporate environments may have no control over their browser of choice. For this, I do plan on offering a simple version of captured sparks.

In light of this, I have not had regard to compatibility with older browsers such as Internet Explorer 6. The main feature, unsupported by older browsers, that this site makes use of is the @font-face construct. Headings on the site use the Contra font, with degradation to Georgia etc.

I also make liberal use of some other CSS3 properties:

border-radius: 5px;
box-shadow: 2px 2px 10px #222;

I’m also using a Safari only property to handle the fades on the “Work”:http://capturedsparks.com/jobs page:

-webkit-transition: opacity 0.7s linear;

Given that I use this site to try and secure work, it may not be the best illustration of how I can make a site cross-browser compatible. However, in these circumstances, I hope potential clients will look at my other work and see that for paid work, cross-browser compatibility is something I do strive for.

So, I’m back. And with a refresh.

In the 8 months since my last posting, I’ve worked on another site and done a lot of work at my day job.

I have a couple of posts lined up web design on bits and pieces that I’ve noticed recently and I’m considering doing a beginner’s series on Ruby on Rails but want to make sure I have a plan for it first.

Good to be back.