BudgetAus News

If you are using BudgetAus this week please be aware that it is in beta and that it does not contain all the Portfolios in the budget. As of lunchtime 1/09, included Porfolios are:

Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry;
Attorney-General;
Broadband, Communications & the Digital Economy;
Climate Change & Energy Efficiency;
Education, Employment & Workplace Relations;
Defence;
Families, Housing, Community Services & Indigenous Affairs;
Health & Ageing Immigration & Citizenship;
Industry Innovation, Science, Research & Tertiary Education;
Treasury & Related Departments

BudgetAus Soft Launch!

I've been learning PHP since my son's last birthday- June 18 so I was surprised to realise that in a fortnight that will make it 3 months since I began reading my first PHP text book Learning PHP, MySQL and Javascript! I also started JavaScript as per the text book instructions somewhere along the way. While I finished the book some time ago, I can't quite say that I took on board all it had to offer beginning as it did with PHP data types and ending with AJAX httpRequests.

However, I have managed to produce BudgetAus my first major project, inspired by The Open Budget which was produced during the 2012 GovHack event earlier this year. Given that I was learning to create and script for MySQL databases, I required the use of data which was extensive enough to warrant the use of a database so I went nosing around the internet looking for data that I could use without getting into mischief (technical or otherwise).

As it turns out I seem to be learning to code at a time where the Australian government is beginning to come to the party with open sourcing it's data which is very fortuitous for me because I like dealing with good data. At this point it is worth mentioning that the Australian Capital Territory government has just launched it's beta site DataACT which everyone in the world of open data is quite excited about.

While I really liked The Open Budget app, the data was not in any way complete and there were lots of things I wanted to get from the data which I could not using their interface. I also noticed that other people who visited it were equally engaged as I was by wanting to know more about our budget.

This began what has become a very intimate relationship of mine with the finances of The Australian Commonwealth. I have added several additional Portfolios to the existing data set, added Program numbers and Objectives where none were given and basically gone over the Program totals in each Portfolio Budget Statement with a fine toothed comb (or at least a tired but dogged determination!).

Accessibility Update

After reading Luke's excellent book The Truth About HTML5 I should update my previous statements about responsibility for web site accessibility.

As it turns out, Internet Explorer has finally come to the party when it comes to browser standardization and the latest versions are more consistent in terms of how they deal with code which makes it easier for the typical front-end developer to meet accessibility standards. I didn't know this when I wrote my previous comments but it is undoubtedly a good thing for all!

Luke's advice on how to improve web site accessibility using ARIA landmarks is, I think extremely important and I look forward to using it to improve the accessibility of my new web sites once I am finished creating the data and scripts that form their basis.

I've also shifted somewhat on all the hoopla about responsive design which advises to build sites for mobile first. I actually ended up using this approach with my newest site, BudgetAus because I thought it was something that people with Smartphones might find worth a visit and I wanted them to have a good experience.

I used to think that with the way Smartphones are designed to render pages not built for mobile use using their own means was good enough but I've been turned on to the benefits of not having to scroll unnecessarily and built the basic layout around this principle. Unfortunately competing against this is the number of results that the form scripts generate which are desperately in need of pagination so I'm working on that and giving users maximum control over the results. The forms probably need to have both their accessibility and usability for mobile users improved too so these will be my upcoming tasks.