Here in the UK a General Election is upon us. The different parties are fighting for your vote and to promote themselves online most of the parties have launched brand new websites. Here is an analysis of the different technologies used to see who is the HTML5 of British Government.

The Labour Party

Notable technologies used:

• jQuery 1.3.2 + jQuery UI 1.7.2
• Prototype 1.6.1.0
• Scriptaculous 1.8.3
• Tiny MCE
• CSS3 (or at least what’s possible using 2.1)
• XHTML 1.0 Transitional

How does it stack up against web standards?

XHTML 1.0 Transitional with 301 Errors, 45 warnings (oh no Labour, thats bad!)

The Labour Party’s website is well laid out with a solid grid system organising content well. It has a great use of colour clearly defining the brand of Labour (Red). Overall a nice design worthy of any Government site. The use of jQuery seems to be a no brainer in modern websites and so it should be, it works so well.

Liberal Democrats

Notable technologies used:

• jQuery 1.3.2
• XHTML 1.0 Strict

The Lib Dems don’t really use a lot of next generation technologies. It pushes the boat out with jQuery, and that’s only used for the rotating banner.

How does it stack up against web standards?

XHTML 1.0 Strict with 1 Error (such a shame! It was only a target="_blank" too, never heard of window.open?)

The Lib Dems website is pretty horrible really. It’s untidy, poorly organised and their use of colour is pretty much horiffic. First impressions of the Lib Dems site is “Mothercare”, as they use the old Mothercare green their brand was originally built on.

Conservative Party

Notable technologies used:

• jQuery 1.2.6 + jQuery UI 1.8
• jQuery 1.4.2 (yes they really do include two versions, and ones not even Minified :-O )
• Dreamweaver Flash AC_RunActiveContent.js (why in gods name? swfobject anyone?)

How does it stack up against web standards?

XHTML 1.0 Transitional with a pass! Huzzah! (With 2 warnings)

Well after that win for Tory (pass) their design doesn’t do too badly either. With a great use of colour and clear use of typography and layout the Conservatives website is a joy to look at and play with (Homepage). It’s just a shame this is a front for an actually poor site overall. The design completely changes when visiting alternative pages, which is a shame indeed. But at least it passed validation!

Additional Information

Lets compare their Twitter followers:

Let’s be honest though this is a bit of fun, vote for who you like, not how popular they are online, but I know who I voted for!

© Martin Heigan – http://www.flickr.com/photos/martin_heigan/1518652806/

© rawhead – http://www.flickr.com/photos/rawhead/3084435035/

© gadl – http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/376352180/

© gadl – http://www.flickr.com/photos/gadl/360929190/

© heiwa4126 – http://www.flickr.com/photos/heiwa4126/3022320352/

© heiwa4126 – http://www.flickr.com/photos/heiwa4126/2932811133/

© Irargerich – http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrargerich/3294891585/

© Irargerich – http://www.flickr.com/photos/lrargerich/2889652675/

© vitroid – http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitroids/2613654706/

© vitroid – http://www.flickr.com/photos/vitroids/3914674473/

I go on holiday in 5 days and it’s going to be an experience! Theres a group of us going (with about 7 cameras, 4 iPhones, a laptop, a motorhome and 1200 driving miles through Europe) Because there are four creatives on board we decided to build a website documenting our travels.

The outcome is http://drve.co.uk/ so make sure you check it out. You can also follow our tweets @drve09.

Update 6th Nov 09: My panoramic wembley photo has been used in Main Event Magazine (Thanks Ky for sorting this)
Update 12th Oct 09: This photo is now part of the Wikipedia page on Wembley Stadium as the header image

The game was full of controversy, foul play, substitutions and of course, goals. Chelsea finished up beating the Champions 4-1 on penalties and I took along my trusty SLR to photograph some of the action and I got some pretty good shots! Note: all the photos are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales licence which means they are free to use along with attribution to this site! Enjoy!

Apple have played it clever. They brought out an amazing phone and missed out a lot of the basics. The annoying thing though is the fact that Apple is shouting about simple things such as “Read and write texts, emails and picture messaging holding your iPhone sideways.“. Wow! “Cut Copy Paste, Move text, numbers, email addresses between apps“. Honest to god these are not major selling points for the new iPhone software so why flaunt them? To say these are only 2 of the most flaunted updates how good can the other 98 be? Thank god Apple have updated the website today to show the other top features such as the search function, stereo bluetooth and the new language support.

Overall I’m happy with the new update and look forward to installing it next Wednesday (June 17th) but I can’t help but feel Apple have been deliberately holding this off for 2 years just to drum up a bit of cash/publicity. Classic Apple/Jobs, and to be honest, it’s worked on me, as ashamed as I am to say it, I’ll probably be on the phone to o2 next week about upgrading to the 3G S (which is a crap name by the way). :-D

Inspirational? Or damn good fun?

I’ll let you choose :D

It’s not far off release date! (well within a week hopefully!)

Features of the theme:

1. Clean fluent design based on the 960 grid system
2. Beautifully selected colour tones
3. FamFamFam silk icons (as they are very pretty)
4. Various stylesheets (colours)
5. Widget ready, as all new themes usually come
6. Other neat little features!

Check out the image of the design above and leave us some feedback and request for features!
We will post the download right here next week and will also submit it to the WordPress Gallery.

Check back soon!

Starting off in digital photography can be a very unrewarding and unsatisfactory time.

Many beginners try photographing normal subjects without actually playing with the settings on their camera. We hope to quash any questions you may have with what your settings mean and what you can do with them as a beginner.

For this article we will be using light trails as a starting point as you can produce beautiful looking images while at the same time working out what each setting does. Please also note that each image used in this article will also display the settings used. Every image is taken using a Canon EOS 400D (aka Rebel  XTi). Please also note this is an article for digital beginners.

1. Shutter Speed
   This is simply the length of time the shutter stays open for. It is quite often the reason behind blurry or under lit photos. The faster the shutter opens and closes, the less light enters the lens and there is also a smaller chance of blurry photos. This can have a massive impact when taking photos of moving objects as the results can mean a dramatic difference.
   If you set a faster shutter speed (for example, photographing a formula one car) you will capture a sharper image with little light. This is when you need to change your ISO setting and your f-stop/aperture (see below) to let in more light to the lens.
2. F Number/Aperture
   This area of the camera quite often confuses people the most due to its name. Many different terms and phrases are used throughout each camera but usually it is denoted with an F in front of a small number (often decimal).
   Basically, the higher the number, the more detail your camera will capture. For instance, if your photographing a close object the background maybe blurry with a small f-number.
   However, by upping the f-number you lose light in the photo, so to counter-act this we need to raise the ISO-Speed and/or the shutter speed to bring more light into the photo.
   
   
3. ISO/ASA Setting/Film Speed
   An ISO/ASA setting can have undesirable effects. This needs to remain a low number  in order to produce a clearer picture. Quite often you may find yourself in a low lit area with no flash and an unsteady hand. This means your shutter speed will be slow (to let in more light) your aperture will have a small number (to also let in extra light) but you will be shooting something moving or will be getting regular blurred shots. This is where ISO/ASA may come in handy. It simply makes the camera more sensitive to light when the photograph is taken.
   It can be a big help, but in digital photography it will cause your image quality to degrade significantly. You will see a lot of noise in the image due to the sensitivity. The higher the ISO/ASA, the more light you will see but then more noise you will capture as a consequence.

These are the three main setting we will need when photographing our light trails. You will need a tripod (or a flat surface where your camera can sit) and some sort of moving light source, such as a motorway/highway/road or a small torch.

First of all we need to decide how long we want to capture the image. For this example we are using a busy motorway. We are setting our camera up for a 20 second shutter speed (which means 20 seconds worth of light and cars will be captured) and will set our ISO as low as possible (ISO-100 is good enough). We also need to ensure our Aperture is also a low number (around F-5) as we are not photographing a close subject and need more light.

Once we are setup we take the photo. Ideally we need to have a remote control to stop the camera moving or even setting the camera to the self timer mode (counts down 10 seconds and takes the photo itself).
Once all this is done bask at the glory which is your light trail!

Get playing and see what you can create with a bit of imagination!