The Las Vegas Section of the IES (Illuminating Engineering Society) invited me to speak at their November General Meeting. The topic I presented was LEED and I summarized the program while emphasizing a few credits that pertain to lighting and electrical disciplines.
Visit the portal page by clicking here and viewing the presentation in your web browser.
A friend asked me if I had a good resource to all of the local lighting codes and ordinances for the San Diego area. Yes, I do - the Palomar Observatory light pollution page.
About half-way down the page you will find a listing of links to lighting codes and ordinance for San Diego and portions of Riverside Counties.
The only exception I would provide for this list is the link to San Diego County’s Light Pollution Ordinance. Due to the method at which the information is delivered by the county and the way Palomar chose to reference the link, you will have to hunt for the information.
GE Lighting has a nice feature on their website, gelighting.com, that provides a good method of comparison for source color temperature. The color booth website (click here) provides various images that can be viewed side-by-side, and display scenes lighted with different color temperature sources.
Keep in mind when viewing these images, the actual color that would be perceived by the eye is very difficult to capture with a camera. Additionally, the color settings of the monitor or printer used to view these images may not be calibrated. The comparison method should be used to get an idea of differences between sources, not to actually measure how well a source may render a particular color.
Following are ten of the most common mistakes I have found on lighting industry websites. Many of these issues certainly slow down my ability to specify products. Some items, such as the first one listed, have forced me to encourage a boycott against the manufacturer responsible for the site.
Many manufacturers are requiring users to either subscribe and/or login to their websites to download information. I speculate the rationale behind this is protection of their investment - ie: a manufacturer does not want their competition receiving this information for fear the product may be copied. In my opinion, the only people a manufacturer is preventing from viewing these items are the very people who need it - specifiers. A competitive manufacturer already has a copy of these crucial documents. The fast track nature of todays projects means time is money. Specifiers who experience resistance while collecting information will not hesitate to find another source for products.
Gone are the days of the .exe executable zip file. Most operating systems are capable of uncompressing these files on their own. Furthermore, the cost and availability of bandwidth these days has made the .zip file for photometry obsolete, let alone any software that assists in downloading. With todays technological capabilities, users are able to quickly download and view .ies files without the complexity of decompression. Additionally, users are looking for single photometry files on an as needed basis. This means the latest files are typically used and updates are easily found. However, a new problem may be created - see my note on url longevity.
Increased availability to photometry and product specification sheets have allowed users to rely less on storage of files within their server and more on direct requests to the manufacturer. If more and more people are relying on the storage of the manufacturers network, then the manufacturer has a responsibility to maintain this consistent location. Care should be taken to maintain consistency of the url or website address used to access photometry or spec sheet files to ensure they are easy to find in the future.
To date, the website may not have completely replaced the need for hardcopy catalogs, but websites use continues to grow. A manufacturer’s website is now the face of the companie’s marketing strategy and should be treated as such. When developing a website, manufacturers should be using the same resources, if not more, as they use to develop their catalogs.
When a user enters a manufacturers’ website, they are approaching with one of three perspectives. Visiting users are looking for a product or information based on:
If a specifier is given a model number by a client for implementation, the specifier may use the manufacturer’s site to collect information about the product. If that same site is organized by categories, the specifier may not know which category the product belongs and will be lucky to stumble on the item through trial and error. If the specifier came across a product in the manufacturer’s catalog, the specifier should know the category and might use the website to gain more information or images. Similarly, a search for a product based on a style, category or characteristic might be the end goal of the specifier. None of this information can be obtained simply by viewing a product’s code or part number, without further information.
The important thing to consider as a manufacturer; is your website equipped to handle the different perspectives of your audience?
No, manufacturers can’t predict exactly what users will search for on their site, but they can analyze the results after a search has occurred. By logging the activity of a search function, web developers can answer some of the common questions posed by users of the site. Additionally, the search results should be easy to scan and relevant to the search posed. Users which cannot quickly find the desired results are likely to abandon the search process, and perhaps the site altogether.
The World Wide Web is so 1990’s - webaddress.com is the new way to url. People (sadly) don’t have the time to input the www in a url anymore. If the hosting plan used to serve up a website for a manufacturer does not allow www. omission, find another hosting plan. Hosting plans are “a dime a dozen” and features such as www. omission are easy to find.
Many manufacturers create a unique application by implementing a web experience rather than pages of information. These experiences, though thoughtful and well designed, may limit some functionalities, such as url extraction. One of the wonders of .pdf cutsheets is the inherent ability to send them to clients with a simple web address. However, if the address is not easily found or hidden by the web interface, it is difficult to extract the url. Additionally, features such as javascript also mask the ability to easily isolate the sheets for transfer. If a user has javascript disabled or not featured in a browser, the access of this information may be completely denied. See the post And the Inaugural ‘Electric Floor’ Award goes to… hosted at sitepoint.com for more information about relying on javascript within a website.
Authors note: Another pet peeve is the resizing of a browser window through the use of javascript and/or flash. Many users are very particular about the size and placement of their windows and really don’t like web pages messing with their desktop layout. Avoid the temptation to modify the browser window, including the disabling of buttons or controls.
The current trend in website development is a url or web address that uses common language and is easy to remember. Current web servers have the ability to take this common language and redirect the user to the desired page. The servers can also receive these terms much in the same way as a search input word. Examples may include www.manufacturer.com/specsheets/product_number or www.manufacturer.com/wallsconces.
According to w3schools.com, Internet Explorer is still the most used browser on the internet. However, Firefox owns over 35% of the market (up almost 10% from a year ago). Most web developers worthy of their reputation, are designing for a variety of browsers. Any manufacturer who provides a site geared only toward IE is asking for trouble. Make sure the web developers are up to par and knowledgeable about cross browser compatibility.