The web industry, in turn, is fortunate to have people like Andy Clarke, Mark Boulton and Elliot Jay Stocks to inspire us to seek and achieve beauty in our designs.

All three are highly creative visual designers as well as engaging and articulate conference speakers and workshop leaders. They are also the authors of books that highlight not just their own work and philosophies but those of their peers.

I was quick to pre-order a copy of 8 faces, a new magazine project of Elliot’s, and it was just as well I did, as it soon sold out.

No wonder, with people like Jason Santamaria, Jos Buivenga and Erik Spiekermann on board in the first issue to talk about typography: fonts, lettering, type, foundries, faces, treatments, rendering … everything to do with the presentation of words on the web.

Elliot’s idea was to plumb the thoughts of eight key people who work with type on the web, along the way asking each to list the typefaces they would use if they could have only eight.

If you are at all interested in how text is, and can be, presented on web pages and rendered by various browsers on a range of screens – and if you’re a web designer, you should be – this is fascinating and inspiring stuff.

One of the things I like about what Elliot describes as a “niche subject”, is that people who are into typography on the web see themselves as part of a historical chain, the latest practitioners of a craft that goes back beyond books and magazines in print all the way to cuneiform and hieroglyphics, as well as sideways into posters, tickets, timetables and advertising hoardings, and now onward into the digital age.

From choosing and implementing fonts for style and purpose, understanding how different fonts work together, creating illustrative lettering and designing new typefaces, right through to exploring business models for making a living out of all this, 8 Faces is both a wonderful showcase and an instructional guide.

It’s an ambitious project. $22.50 (which is what £8 worked out to) is not cheap for a magazine, but this is not your supermarket checkout kind of magazine. Producing a 210mm square 76pp paperback spinebound magazine in full cover on quality paper stock will set you back a few quid.

It must indeed have been tempting to extend the initial print run of 1,000 when it became clear the demand was there, but Elliot has said that he will keep his word to print no more, although pdf versions are available. And he’ll make sure to print more for #2, before Christmas.

I’m looking forward to it.

WIPA is the Web Industry Professional Association, “an organisation that brings Australian Web professionals together to exchange ideas, participate in debate, advance education and promote ethical practice”.

More information will be made available shortly (ie as soon as I write the next newsletter) about WIPA’s upcoming national workshop tour, but I can tell you now that we have secured the services of Bruce Lawson and Steve Faulkner to hold masterclasses in HTML5 and WAI-ARIA with Australian developers and designers according to the following schedule:

• November 23: Sydney
• November 24: Canberra
• November 26: Melbourne
• November 29: Perth (co-hosted by AWIA)
• December 1: Brisbane

Venues and ticket prices are yet to be finalised. Each workshop will take about three and half hours long, divided into digestible sessions.

Bruce and Steve have also asked for opportunities to chat with the locals in less formal settings, perhaps not totally dissimilar to say, a pub. This will be a unique chance to chew the web fat with two global champions of standards, inclusion and the open web.

WIPA is currently working out how to merge with the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA) to create a single industry body. I’ve been a Vice President of WIPA for the past year, and was recently elected President.

Steven Bradbury is an Australian ice skater who won an Olympic speed skating gold medal by being the only one in the race not to fall over. My ascension to the WIPA Presidency could also be seen as a case of “last man standing”.

It’s quite a different kettle of code to Jeremy Keith’s HTML5 for Web Designers. That book explained how I could confidently starting using HTML5 with my existing and planned web projects.

This book, Introducing HTML5 by Bruce Lawson and Remy Sharp, goes into much greater detail about how much more I can do with HTML5.

Bruce Lawson is a UK web developer who works for Opera, with an impressive understanding of, and commitment to, the open web, standards and accessibility. Bruce is coming to Australia in November to hold a series of workshops on ARIA-HTML5 for WIPA, of which I am the newly elected President (did someone say ‘Steven Bradbury’?).

Remy Sharp is also a UK web developer with similar passions plus a particular facility with jQuery and JavaScript.

I haven’t even finished this book, but already I find myself extending my expectations of what I can do now and in the future with markup on a web page. That’s pretty exciting.

Significantly, Lawson & Sharp do not believe HTML5 is perfect. They simply focus on what HTML5 can do while noting its limitations, inconsistencies and logical discrepancies.

The examples they provide are clear, useful and relevant, and their language is positive. They inject enough humour and self-awareness to lighten the learning load.

I’m no dab hand with JavaScript but they make me feel I can handle this.

The book isn’t meant to be comprehensive, either in saying what HTML5 is and isn’t, or in defining what can be done with it. But the authors do walk through some of the more interesting APIs that become available.  OK, in the case of ‘canvas’ it’s more like ‘wade through’, but still.

I think what I like most about HTML5, at least as I’ve come to understand it so far via Keith, Lawson, Sharp and others, is that – particularly when used with CSS3 – it seems to greatly empower people like me who genuinely see themselves as designer, developer, information architect and all round web creator.

If there is a future edition of Introducing HTML5, I expect that some sections will be extended as the use of  HTML5 is refined.

In the meantime, this book will do nicely as a guide to practical application of the new markup.

Anyway, Lachlan made perfect sense of it all by explaining it logically and with the passion of someone who doesn’t just understand something but really gets it, and from a perspective close to my own and in a voice that resonated strongly with me.

That’s what this book is like. HTML5 for Web Designers is pitch perfect.

In providing a practical overview of what HTML5 is and how it will affect what web designers do, Jeremy Keith has delivered something that is part conference presentation, part interview and part geeks moving coasters around a pub table.

Common to all of those is the active voice, and this book is very much Jeremy talking to you. He knows the background, he knows the politics and he most especially knows that you, jobbing web designer, just want to know whether it means you have to go back and recode everything you’ve ever done. And then learn Javascript.

What’s also common to those is that they are of a moment: not necessarily perishable, but likely to be superceded sooner or later by the next model. In the meantime, this will be the practical handbook for working with HTML5 for some time to come.

Anyone who’s seen Jeremy presenting at a conference knows he’s funny. It’s a witty, informed and clever funny. And still grounded in practical application. That’s what this book is like.

Look, frankly, I love that this book assumes I already know what I’m doing. It’s for people who are working web designers. If that’s you, you should get it.

HTML5 for Web Designers is badged as No. 1 in the new imprint A Book Apart: “brief books for people who make websites”, and represents an extension of web magazine A List Apart – itself a re-incarnation of a late ’90s web design mailing list which has more recently also moved into the US conference circuit with An Event Apart.

All but the newest or most cloistered web designers will recognise the names of the people behind all this: Zeldman, Meyer, Santa Maria. We’re talking quality, here – standards-compliant, CSS-driven, beautiful, functional quality. Yes, Virginia, web design now has stars.

In his foreword to HTML5 for Web Designers, Zeldman says that the goal of this book – and others to follow in this catalogue – is to “shed clear light on a tricky subject, and do it fast, so you can get back to work.”

That’s what this book is like.

I assume you know that the Australian Government plans legislation that will require Australian ISPs to block web pages that contain material that has been “refused classification” under our existing censorship system.

Senator Stephen Conroy seems convinced that this is something the Australian population wants, even though no-one has actually told him that. In getting this wrong, he also seems unaware of the political damage he is doing.

So far, Sen. Conroy has dismissed every cogent and sensible argument put to him that explains what a bad idea the internet filter is.

He has gone on the record conceding the following points:

• It won’t stop people obtaining RC other than via websites.
• It won’t stop children stumbling on x-rated porn or violence.
• It will be easy to avoid.
• It is censorship at a level that is contrary to Australian public standards.
• It presents security concerns.
• It relies on a blacklist principle that is easily corrupted and abused.

And yet, just the other day:

”This is a policy that will be going ahead,” Senator Conroy said. ”We are still consulting on the final details of the scheme. But this policy has been approved by 85 per cent of Australian internet service providers, who have said they would welcome the filter, including Telstra, Optus, iPrimus and iinet.”

Well, iinet has since removed itself from Conroy’s club – and since when does 85% approval by commercial internet service providers carry any weight on this issue?

The funny thing is that Sen. Conroy has fallen into one of the great traps that the web holds for those not used to its digital nature.

Any web designer will tell you that this is not like graphic design, where you create one pixel-perfect copy of your masterpiece and then make endless copies rendered in perfect imitation of the original.

A “web page” (it’s not a page at all, but whatever …) will not only appear different according to browser type and version, connection speed, video card, screen dimensions and a dozen other factors beyond the designer’s control, it is also subject to change. A snapshot assessment of whether a screenful of web content merits classification under Australia’s censorship system – a system designed for old media – is simply inadequate. Who’s up for constant re-assessment of a few billion web pages, then?

Throw in the issue of how to apply classification to material linked to and the whole thing quickly descends into farce.

An expensive, ineffective, unpopular and unrealistic farce that – if it goes ahead – will come to haunt this Government.

There was a time that I had some respect  for Sen. Conroy thinking he really was doing the right thing. I don’t believe that any more and I have lost that respect. The evidence is overwhelming that this is a bad idea. It  increasingly appears that Sen. Conroy is stupid and dangerous, just another inept politician with a use-by stamped on his forehead.

These days, an important component of my biblio-diet is the technical book, in which I include both manuals (for new hardware, etc) and books that teach me things about the web.

The latter is dominated by titles from Sitepoint, Rosenfeld Media and New Riders, all of which continue to contribute directly to how I extend my web skills.

Today, they are joined by a title that I’m sure will be as valued, well into the future. The McFarlane Prize 2009 has been compiled by the Web Directions people as a record of the 48 entires shortlisted in that year for what has become one of the more meaningful awards for web design and development.

It is effectively a snapshot of some of the best Australian web design and development in 2009.

The range of projects among the nominees is terrific and conveys a real sense of what’s happening ‘out there’. I was moved to explore some of the websites and take a closer look. That many of the sites have evolved somewhat in the last years or so only adds to the interest for me.

Importantly, the book itself is beautiful. My enjoyment of a book is always enhanced when the publishers make it an inviting tactile and visually pleasing experience. This one ticks all the boxes, as it should, being a record of excellence.

I’d recommend this as a gift for a starting web designer to inspire them, to challenge them and to keep them aware of the beauty, the functionality and the value of books.

The website for Russell Vale Scouts is my latest effort, and a good example of a very local group working within a global organisational structure.

Or perhaps a better way of putting it is that Scouts is a global organisation requiring very localised web-based shop windows to inform current members and their families as well as attract new members.

It’s the perfect atmosphere for trying new things in just about all aspects of building a web presence, from the first discussions through the user group analysis, content decisions, back end & site management planning, layout & structure, functionality and visual design from paper through Photoshop to browser.

Just as my former experiments with a range of content management systems for dynamic sites resulted in my becoming a WordPress devotee, trying the different themes and plugins available has also pulled me towards a quite narrow range of options.

Currently, I seem to be able to meet all of my existing and new client needs by using Atahualpa or Thesis themes, both of which add a theme-specific set of modification tools that amount to a self-contained CMS within the greater WP framework.

With the RV Scouts site, I delibrately tried five or six different themes, but ended up using Atahualpa because it works so well.

Senator Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, wants to “address the range of issues and challenges faced by families when they are online“.

He has proposed legislation to “require all ISPs to block material rated Refused Classification that is hosted on overseas servers“.

What Senator Conroy has suggested goes well beyond any mechanism approved by the Australian public to limit their access to the web. The government has no mandate for anything other than opt-in filtering of the internet.

And there are good reasons for that.

We let individuals indulge in unhealthy, anti-social, expensive and increasingly unpopular habits like smoking cigarettes – even though we know this freedom comes at a terrible cost to the individual and the community. No-one gets arrested for smoking tobacco, unless they do it in the ‘wrong’ place. We all know neither tobacco product manufacturers nor smokers are held to account for what they cost the community, but we don’t want to impinge on the right to smoke.

We let people drink alcohol to excess – even though we know it creates and exacerbates vast and unmanageable problems in social and domestic violence, community and race relations, health and poverty. Not to mention the road toll. We don’t arrest people affected by alcohol until they have committed a crime. We all know that’s way too late, but we don’t want to impinge on the right to drink.

We let people gamble away all their money, repeatedly and over time – even though we know that the financial and social cost to the community far outweighs the money that governments gain by taxing gambling. We don’t arrest people for throwing away their money. We all know gambling is most prevalent among people least able to afford it, but we don’t want to impinge on the right to bet.

And Senator Conroy wants to arrest me for looking at a website that explains euthanasia? The pros and cons of helping a dying person shorten their agony? That’s just wrong.

Despite its honest and admirable aims, the internet filter proposed by Senator Conroy is out of step with Australian community standards. It makes choosing to view certain web content a crime in the interests of preventing a possible future crime that may or may not be committed. We don’t do that with tobacco, alcohol or gambling.

When this – or any – Australian government can get the nation as a whole to approve laws that make alcohol, tobacco and poker machines illegal because they sometimes might contribute directly to crime, THEN you can consider censoring the internet for the same reasons. You might also want to take out all the books in the public library that explain nuclear physics, how to change SIM cards in a phone and how to load a gun. Good luck selling that message to the Australian public.

All of this assumes, of course, that ISP-filtering will actually work – that it will prevent people from accessing material that is morally unacceptable or likely to lead to crime. And here’s where the argument against the filter becomes overwhelming. Because it won’t work.

At a technical level, Senator Conroy is kidding himself – and the community – if he thinks a filter is going to stop people accessing illegal material on the web. We can’t even come up with a way to stop 14 year olds hacking government-issue school laptops! We can’t stop people setting up Facebook pages that taunt the families of hate-crime victims. We still have no answer to cyber-bullying.

People who seek out child pornography or bomb-making procedures will not be inhibited by an ISP filter. All it will end up doing is limiting web access by people who aren’t looking for that stuff anyway. Access by people who do look for it on Google – because they are young, naive, misguided or corrupt – is better managed by individual filtering at the user end. But the real baddies won’t be Googling for open websites because that isn’t the most effective way for them to receive and distribute offensive material.

Personally, I don’t subscribe to the notion that all of this is just the Government playing politics, trying to gather support in the lead up to the next election by pulling out the “Don’t you want to stop child pornography”? card. I believe Stephen Conroy is genuine in his wish to help stop some of the most repugnant behaviour in our society. I also believe he is misguided, misinformed and has no hope of succeeding in his intention of impeding child sexual abuse or terrorist acts by imposing an ISP-based filter on internet access.

This government, and all governments, will have to take a bit more responsibility than that, in educating consumers and providing cost-effective means to control internet access at the individual level. In a world where we accept and endorse the right to a smoke, a drink and a bet – until the consequences become dire enough to be called a crime – it’s always going to be difficult controlling what people browse on the web.

It’s about the people, Senator Conroy, and for that reason you could do worse than talk to us. Because we’re the designers, developers, usability experts, information architects and content managers who built and continue to grow the web, who set up the access mechanisms and who load the content. It’s our job to analyse and understand how and why people use the web, and to do it better than anyone else you seemed to have consulted so far.

The reality is though, that none of this has much to do with the web, or the internet, or ISPs and filters. That people do seek out this material is a reflection on us, not on the web.

To achieve Senator Conroy’s aims, it will take education, information and – especially – honesty, particularly in facing up to the apparently ordinary people in our community who sustain the international market in material related to the worst aspects of human behaviour.

That, of course, is much tougher than censoring the internet.

A good example is Financial Education Professionals, which provides training to employees of financial institutions in meeting their legal compliance obligations.

Since FEP first accepted my 2003 proposal to build them a website, the company has grown in the number of staff, the number and scope of training programs it offers and the geographical  range of their customers.

During the same period browsers have improved, bandwidth has increased, coding and programming languages have evolved, screen sizes have increased, search engines have grown in scope and sophistication and people have become more adept, confident and discerning in how they use the web.

The FEP site has been through five major incarnations in those seven years, with the latest just completed having moved the site from a static HTML format to a dynamic format using WordPress for its content management system.

The neat thing about FEP as a model of how a website evolves is that it is both very simple and very complex.It’s one of those sites where content is not just king but holy emperor: it’s a site of text-based information about text-based services. The company made – and has stuck with – a conscious decision to eschew elaborate visual flourishes in favour of the best possible presentation of tightly honed, highly purposeful words.

“Best possible” in this context is judged by the ability of the site to bring in new business.The needs of potential FEP customers can be complicated and diverse, according to their understanding and application of legal requirements. The customers for the various training products have different needs, and the website must convey these differences while retaining an overall cohesiveness that will give customers confidence in the company.

It is naturally also an exercise in search engine optimisation. Given that professional SEO is still dominated by people who think it’s about manipulating search engine rankings in order to attract maximum traffic, it’s not really hard to look good simply by focusing on placing relevant, well-written, accurate, timely and actionable text on web pages that are easily indexed by search engines.

Even though financial training is a very competitive online market, it’s not hard to stand out by being clear, honest and empowering.

It doesn’t hurt to think things through (even if you get a high search engine ranking for a specific term, what will make someone click through to your website from a Google page rather than your competitors? And once they’re on your site, what will make them ‘buy’?), but I find there’s much to learn from successful actors who learn to “leave themselves alone” in order to do their best work.

In SEO terms, that means saying what you have to say well and letting it do its work. Allow potential customers to make a balanced and informed decision to come to you rather than trying to trick them. That will get you targeted, meaningful traffic with a higher likelihood of making a sale.

It doesn’t hurt that WordPress theme developers are increasingly offering convenient ways to use meta text to the best possible effect.

Another aspect of the FEP website is that the proprietors’ active focus on the site as a tool for bringing customers has made them very aware of their customers’ online habits. They know their market very well, and their online market even better. For example, potential FEP customers are not going to purchase a training program online at the click of a button. What they want from a website is enough information to make them comfortable contacting the vendor by email or telephone or downloading an application form to complete offline.

That may change – as ecommerce customers in all markets have changed radically in the last ten years – but right now FEP have a good handle on who will buy their services, why and how. The website is an extension and reflection of that know-how.

A key point is that it is a design task in itself to organise and present a basically text-only site in such a way that it looks and acts cutting edge. I’d like to think that in those terms the FEP has site has become better and better during the last seven years.

It’s actually really rewarding to think that my work on the FEP website has played some part in helping the company to reach its current level of success.

I look forward to the inevitable set of new challenges as the site continues to develop into the future.

That book based its approach to assessing and improving the usability of websites on the injunction in the title. If visitors to websites have to figure out what to do on a website, then the website is operating at a disadvantage.

Krug offered some very pertinent, uncomplicated advice on web usability, how to judge it and how to implement solutions to problems that are identified.

When updating that first book in 2005, Krug decided that Rocket Surgery Made Easy had become necessary: a handbook for putting usability principles into practice, focusing in particular on user testing.

The title refers to the phrase Krug coined (and trademarked) to summarise his view that all of this is just common sense: it’s not rocket science and it’s not brain surgery.

It also gives a clue that Krug, while determinedly practical and grounded in the day-to-day business of designing and building websites for paying clients, approaches the subject with considerable humour and playfulness. It’s apparent that this is partly out of a concern that usability might be a dry subject for some, but also because Krug is a very funny guy. I think we’d enjoy his workshops, if he ever brings them to Australia.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy is itself easy reading. Less than 160 pages, it is well laid out, charmingly illustrated by Mark Matcho and very, very well edited – big hat-tip to the people at New Riders.

The basis of the book is that it offers how-to advice on actually running user testing sessions. Krug is well aware that many designers and developers cannot afford the expansive, expensive and time-consuming approach to user testing that requires hiring rooms with two way mirrors and video equipment to observe and record user actions as they test a website under controlled conditions, so he has devised a budget approach based around the catchphrase of “A morning a month, that’s all we ask“. Catchy phrases are an identifiable part of the Krug approach.

Because it’s well-written, because Krug is witty, and because the subject material is based so much on common sense, it’s easy to whizz through the book. But how much will it change the way a web designer or developer works?

Frankly, while I agree with the need for it, and understand the benefits to be gained, user testing is unlikely to form a significant part of my day-to-day work scenario, at least while I remain a one man design band juggling a roster of new websites and long term clients. The logistical practicalities of even “a morning a month“, using three testers without a lot of complicated equipment, are prohibitive. I accept that this may give me and my clients headaches into the future.

However, Krug’s books – the first explaining why usability matters, the second explaining how to do it – do give me a platform for addressing usability issues. The way Krug explains stuff allows and encourages me to engage with usability issues. Walking through his approach to user testing tells me a great deal about how I think about usability and how I can improve it. This alone gives me a competitive edge over designers who don’t “get” usability

Perhaps both these books should be bundled under the collective title Make Web Designers Think! It’s what Krug does extremely well. He raises simple but devastatingly critical usability issues, explores his own way of thinking about them and then offers ways to deal with them.

Krug points out – and emphasises – that anyone can do this. But the fact is that many web designers do not give themselves over to critical thinking, and even when encouraged to do so, may not be sure how to analyse, document and translate their thoughts into design changes.

It is these people that will likely get the most out of Rocket Surgery Made Easy, but they may also be the last designers to actually buy it.

Still if it does anything to get even highly experienced web designers thinking about what they are doing in a critical, insightful and constructive way, it will help to shape a better web.