Web Stuff

TextMate: new HTML editor for Mac

2006-07-16T11:39:00.000-05:00

When a major web developer shares that he has switched from BBEdit to another editor, I take notice – and try out a demo of the product. Roger Johnassen switched to TextMate, and I have too found it to have too many efficient features to continue using BBEdit. It takes some getting used to, but it definitely is a much stronger editor. Rather that repeating all of the features, just visit the site and download a free 30 day version to try it out.

JavaScript 2.0/ECMAScript Edition 4

2006-02-20T23:56:00.000-06:00

If you have not read about JavaScript 2.0 (ECMAScript Edition 4) you may want to Google it and get in touch with the major changes that will be forthcoming. It will become a much more robust language it seems, and should give web developers more options. One good article is from Waldemar Horwat: JavaScript 2.0: Evolving a Language for Evolving Systems. A pdf version is available at: http://www.mozilla.org/js/language/evolvingJS.pdf
Another article is located at the Lambda Programmers site: http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/782

More on this developing information at a later date.

Interesting new browser

2006-02-20T23:22:00.000-06:00

Flock, is a new browser that is an attempt at a social networking browser, with connections to del.icio.us, Flickr, and RSS subscriptions among other things. I don't usually bother with new browsers, especially when they are admittedly still very rough and in beta, but this one was interesting enough to check out. I was impressed with the direction they are taking it, and it truly seems to be a social networking tool. It is worth suggesting that you check it out to see the type of things that can and will be happening to browsers.

Through its pages, I found an "AJAX Desktop" application called "Pageflakes" that was also very interesting. It is designed to offer a personal start-up page with multiple tabs for different types of resources. You could build you own, but its interesting to see how it works and the types of resources that are available. Give it a look at http://pageflakes.com

Ajax: A good introduction

2006-02-16T22:17:00.000-06:00

If you have not yet heard of AJAX (combination of HTML, JavaScript, DHTML, and DOM) or if you have but have not gotten started working with it, this is an excellent series to get you in the know, as well as begin to get started with it if you are ready for the next big thing in interactive development. This is the most important new direction in developing web applications and it has already proven to be very positive for the industry. Even if you are not attracted to the scripting side of development, you need to read about AJAX and understand the possibilities it offers the developer. Thanks to Stephen Downes for referencing the articles!

Mastering Ajax, Part 1: Introduction to Ajax
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro1.html

Mastering Ajax, Part 2: Make asynchronous requests with JavaScript and Ajax
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro2/

Mastering Ajax, Part 3: Advanced requests and responses in Ajax
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/web/library/wa-ajaxintro3/?ca=dgr-lnxw01MasterAJAX3

Understanding The CSS Difference

2006-01-08T16:41:00.000-06:00

My good friend Esther commented today that it is helpful for our students to see something really different and unusual that they can do with CSS and other web technologies. Molly Holzschlag has provided a piece of that picture with her article "Thinking Outside the Grid" published recently at Jeffrey Zeldman's A List Apart.

She describes one of the most significant capabilities of CSS based design and its ability to go beyond the basic tables-based grid design. She uses interesting examples of aerial views of two cities, Tucson and London, as an example of a rigid rectangle based grid system of design (Tucson) and a contrasting grid in London's spirals, tangents, and circles. CSS allows us to design beyond the rigid structures and create all types of layouts to suit our needs. Holzschlag also provides a link to Mark Boulton's "grid-system articles" as another place to get some ideas about altering the basic grid. The illustrations in Holzschlag's article are great for providing the perspective she is referring to. I highly recommend this article for designers wanting to figure out what CSS adds to the design process.

FireFox 1.5 Update Required for Web Classes

2006-01-08T16:07:00.000-06:00

If you have not upgraded to FireFox 1.5, please do so for all AID web scripting classes. This is a significant upgrade and a number of new CSS features have been added including: css3 multi-column layout, only-child pseudo-class, overflow-x and overflow-y, the cursor property, JavaScript 1.6 new features and ECMAScript EX4, xml-events, and svi (scalable vector graphics). These are not browser specific enhancements but simply Firefox adding to the Web Standards that already exist and beginning to move toward the full compliment of CSS 3 specification. To try out these new features we have only read about, you will need to be using FireFox 1.5.

A word of caution. I had problems installing the new version of Web Developers Tools which is a must for any web designer/developer. It is necessary to uninstall the current version after you update to 1.5, and then install the new version of developers tools. Hopefully, this has been modified and works better now, but it was a problem when the 1.5 version first appeared a few weeks ago.

New Weblog for Students

2005-11-14T13:37:00.000-06:00

I have been getting a good bit of spam from this blogger site and have been wanting to move my classes over to WordPress but there was not a free web-based server providing it, until now! James Farmer, an Educational Technologist from Australia has complimented edublogs.org for educators with learnerblogs.org for students. To open a free, hosted WordPress weblog, just log in at http://learnerblogs.org and get started.

Web Based Applications

2005-11-14T13:32:00.000-06:00

I do a lot of research on web-based applications that help people accomplish things and there is a new site that lists about 200 such applications that I think is worth a look for students, instructors, and anyone trying to get more accomplished.
"I Want To:" is the name of the site, as it is set up to tell what you want to do and then it gives you a group of links that are suggestions for applications that can accomplish that
http://www.philb.com/iwantto.htm
If you find something you like and use, add a comment here and tell others!

Data transfer record

2005-10-28T16:40:00.000-05:00

Could we please have about 1/100th of this for our network????

A Japanese company has developed technology to transmit a 2 hour movie in 1/2 second, which is the world's fastest speed to be achieved with fibre-optic cables.

Kansai Electric used fibre-optic cables on power-transmitting steel towers to achieve the speed of one terabit per second, which is more than 100 times faster than inter-city data transmissions currently in use, a spokesman says.

The company, Japan's second-largest power supplier, has not decided when to put the technology into practical use but says it is possible that it would come in 2010 or later.

from ABC NewsOnline: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1492314.htm

Search Engine Ranking Factors

2005-10-03T19:42:00.000-05:00

Roger Johansson of 456 Berea St. recommended Sean Fraser's excellent resource about search engine ranking of web sites. This important aspect of web design, especially when you are doing a commercial site, has changed dramatically in the past few years and will continue to change as the major search engines alter their techniques. I found the article very well organized and valuable for understanding the current issues involved and how to design the search engine ranking information. Most designers are not aware that a lot of the rankings have to do with content, and not special metatags. A good read.

www.seomoz.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php

IE 7 Beta has arrived

2005-07-29T22:45:00.000-05:00

That is, if you are a MSDN subscriber! So far the reports are not showing any major fixes to CSS support. Hopefully this will improve before the final release to the public. At least there is progress and a new beginning for IE on Windows.

For more information read Dave Shea's article at www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/07/28/ie7_css_upda/index.php

JavaScript Revolution?

2005-06-21T07:31:00.000-05:00

Quirksmode author, Peter-Paul Kock describes the @media conference in the UK in two articles: "You should've been @media - part 1" and "You should've been @media - part 2" which further describes the changes going on related to JavaScript, standards, AJAX and more. A good read and introduction to what all the changes are about and how to keep up with it. Quirksmode is a well known blog if you haven't visited it before - lots of great stuff related to web development, and very well written.
While you are at Quirksmode, look for his article "AJAX promise or Hype" in his recent articles. There are additional AJAX articles referenced in case you want even more info about the "new" AJAX concepts.

New Site for Tutorials

2005-06-21T07:24:00.000-05:00

Christian Hellmann has a good idea to collect good, up-to-date web design tutorials and replace old ones on the web. His site "Obsoletely Famous" is his offer of beginning this process and several well known developers have joined his efforts. Review the sites and files at his blog and either link to it or subscribe by RSS. There are a lot of very good sites to learn from listed already, and the site should grow.

Stylin' with CSS: A Designer's Guide

2005-06-16T22:58:00.000-05:00

A new book by Charles Wyke-Smith was brought to me by our Pearson Publisher Representative Angie Smajstria last week, and it turns out to be a jewel. Even Jeffrey Zeldman praised the book in this weeks post! There have been a lot of new books on CSS and many are much better than previous books that were either too technical, or simply did not provide practical experiences with CSS. Two recent books that are very useful to learners and more experienced designers are Dan Cederholm's "Web Standards Solutions: The Markup and Style Handbook", and Dave Shea and Molly Holzschylag's "The Zen of CSS design".

Stylin' is written for designers and covers the basics of CSS very well, but also deals with more difficult areas of page layout, including two and three column layouts, use of float and clear and the various methods of applying those properties, creating full-length columns, working with backgrounds in layouts and an excellent section on understanding the various options for creating CSS based menus. The choices are getting much stronger, and there are still several new titles that will be out soon, including another one from Dan Cederholm.

AJAX - What's New in Web Development

2005-06-16T20:36:00.000-05:00

AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript + XML is a collection of existing technologies (standards based XHTML and CSS; the Document Object Model (DOM); XML/XSLT; XMLHttpRequest; and JavaScript) that adds more powerful interactivity to web based documents. It promises to change the way we develop as well as use the web. The primary distinction of AJAX over more traditional concepts such as DHTML is the interactivity with server technology, and basically, avoiding a lot of waiting while the application goes out to the server to retrieve something requested. When a web page loads, the browser actually loads an "AJAX engine" created in JavaScript. The engine becomes responsible for rendering the interface as well as communication with the server. This makes the user experience more interactive asynchronously and independent of communication with the server. Jesse James Garrett's article tells the story best, as do the links provided below to add to your reading.

This is a major shift in web development, and Google and Adaptive Path have been the lead developers with their new applications referenced in the Garrett article. Google suggest is an excellent example of how it functions.

AJAX: A New Approach to Web Applications (Adaptive Path)
AJAX Patterns - Stylish Scripting: The DHTML & CSS Blog

AJAX Patterns Wiki
The Strange Zen of JavaScript - Scott Andrew
What Kind of Language is XSLT?
Very Dynamic Web Interfaces - The XMLHttpRequest Object
XMLHttpRequest Usability Guidelines
Principles for a Usability-Oriented Pattern Language
Pattern language is a concept from software engineering as well as architecture that is beginning to be reflected in all design disciplines. William Gibson's recent novel "Pattern Recognition" (2003) reflects this direction. This article will get you introduced to the concepts if you don't know about it.

Software As She's Developed: Podcast+Text: The AJAX Web Architecture

And there are two books that relate, both deal with the "new concepts" of using JavaScript/CSS/XHTML. I have asked the library to special order these as they are relatively new, and the only books on the subject that come close to our needs.

Professional JavaScript for Web Developers, by Nicholas C. Zakas, 2005, Wrox, ISBN: 0764579088

DHTML Utopia: Modern Web Design Using JavaScript and Dom, by Stuart Langridge, Sitepoint, ISBN 0-9579218-9-6 .

Reference Sites for Web Development

2005-04-19T23:37:00.000-05:00

These are not exciting sites as such, but they contain a lot of current information about the main technologies we use as web developers, and I highly recommend readers learn what they cover and how to get to them when you need them.

Two of the sites are rather lengthly, detailed references for working with web development issues and because they are current information they are worth knowing about. "Web browser standards support" is a lengthy listing of support for standard web technologies by popular web browsers (IE6, Firefox 1.0, & Opera 8). The technologies include: HTML, CSS, DOM, & Miscellaneous technologies (Atom, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, SOAP 1.2, XFORMS 1.0, XHTML 1.0, 1.1, etc.)
Web browser Standards Support (http://nanobox.chipx86.com/browser_support.php#otherbrowsers).

A much different type of guide with current information about web development technologies and their relation to cross browser coding tips; DHTML - DOM differences, JavaScript differences, CSS, Events; Rich Text Editing, XML, Quirks vs Standard Modes, and some additional links and reading. (A 20 page document from IBM).
Internet Explorer to Mozilla Migration Guide
(http://nexgenmedia.net/evang/iemozguide/)

And this chart covers all of CSS1 and CSS2 properties and tags with compatibility info that covers 20 different browser versions, and is from the CORECSS book series. Handy in that it allows you to select just one browser and see its complete compatability list by itself. Too bad it is not expanded to CSS2.1 and future CSS3.0 projected additions to CSS.
Full Css Property Compatibility Chart
(http://www.corecss.com/properties/full-chart.php)

Sources for Photos: free

2005-04-12T08:11:00.000-05:00

Robin Good has provided some excellent resources about "Where to find Great Free Photographs And Visuals for Your Own Online Articles". I previewed about ten of the sites and found them to be mostly very well organized with a lot of categories to choose from. Most photos were very high quality.

It would be interesting to see how many of you have additional resources for imagery that you have used or discovered in this same genre - free, high quality, etc. Add the comments of this article or email me.

Ourmedia, new place for showing your works

2005-04-04T17:42:00.000-05:00

The web gets more holistic all the time with open source software, many great online applications, and now, a place to showcase your media projects, free for life! Ourmedia's list of project team and advisory board members is a who's who of what is good about the web development movement. Ourmedia's mission statement includes the following:

"Create. Share. Get noticed. That's what Ourmedia is about.

Ourmedia is a global community and learning center where you can gain visibility for your works of personal media. We'll host your media forever — for free.

Video blogs, photo albums, home movies, podcasting, digital art, documentary journalism, home-brew political ads, music videos, audio interviews, digital storytelling, children's tales, Flash animations, student films, mash-ups — all kinds of digital works have begun to flourish as the Internet rises up alongside big media as a place where we’ll gather to inform, entertain and astound each other".

Go see for yourself: http://www.ourmedia.org

The importance of blogging, rss, etc...

2005-04-02T10:59:00.000-06:00

As a participant in several email newsletters (Listservs) I am discovering that they are not very efficient, and only sometimes provide me with anything I am truly interested in. I spend most of my time trashing entrys, waiting for something of interest. But the Weblogs I subscribe to in my aggregator have so much rich content that I always find new and interesting information that I need. Surfing the web is not an option, the aggrator does that for me. The one exception to the listserv concept is Stephen Downes OLDaily, which is primarily his review of the best of the blogs related to instructional technology with an annotated description about each. So Stephen is actually a higher level aggregator using a listserv to distribute his research!

How does this affect web development? RSS is becoming mainstream with browsers and email programs (Mozilla's) already offering RSS as part of their fuction. Social networking applications like del.icio.us and flickr offer bookmarks and pictures respectively, shared by anyone, anywhere. With these tools available who is going to search your site for new information by using your carefully designed navigation? Why would anyone read a static page that doesn't even say when it was last updated, when they can subscribe to exactly the type of information they need and find fresh data daily by taking advantage of RSS?

I see the integration of RSS and accompanying technologies as vital to web design. Whether you add RSS to your web sites or mix weblogs and static pages together, there will be a challenge to make web sites more current and interactive than ever before. And what of target audiences? What does RSS and social networking say about who the users are? Perhaps new types of users are now challenging our design skills.

Web design and development will always been in transition. We are used to new technologies, new standards, new browsers, and new users. So too must we confront the issues of this transition and find creative responses. Our lives as designers may depend on it!

Designing with CSS

2005-04-01T22:56:00.000-06:00

"Designing with CSS is sometimes like barreling down a crumbling
mountain road at 90 miles per hour secure in the knowledge that
repairs are scheduled for next Tuesday".

Al Sparber
PVII
http://www.projectseven.com

Lists and Hypertext Links in CSS

2005-02-06T22:41:00.000-06:00

A great resource for learning how to create a wide variety of CSS based menu systems is the well known Listomatic demonstrations of CSS and Links, which has been updated since I last visited. There are many authors who contribute to the various menu systems on Listomatic. Russ Weakley author of the site was challenged by an email from a user to create a mock-up of a tv remote control using an unordered list for the construction. His detailed response goes beyond the request and adds to the repertoire of solutions for links, as well as opens up one's thinking about just how far you can go with a little creativity!
In case you have not yet discovered some interesting companion sites to Listomatic, try the automated version at Accessify.com and Dan Burn's Layout-o-matic site. Hopefully, students will use these sites for learning and not being lazy!

CSS and Browser Bugs

2005-02-06T22:16:00.000-06:00

Any time I mention to a former student about going deeper into CSS, I get the old response that they don't want to deal with all the browser issues. Unfortunately the way the world is working these days there will probably always be "browser issues" for web developers. My attitude is that I want to use XHTML, CSS, XML, and JavaScript the way it is intended to be used, irregardless of some manufacturer who has decided otherwise, or simply can't get their act together. Many developers are quite comfortable getting around the various bugs and still manage to produce outstanding web sites that are well formed and validitated for CSS, XHTML, and Accessibility.
So where do you turn to find out how to manage the problems. To begin with, always design your sites in the most compliant browsers, which at this time include Firefox/Mozilla, Safari 1.1, and Opera. Then when something doesn't work correctly in IE or other browsers, find out who has solved that problem and what the work around is.
Peter-Paul Koch has released Bug Report, a welcome and great resource for finding solutions to the problems you experience with specific browsers. The report is updated by professional developers and your participation will be welcome.
Additional sites that also provide solutions and reports of bugs include:
Position is Everything, CSS Bugs in IE5.x from Mac Edition, and the resourceful css-discuss wiki, the online part of the css-discussion listserv.
Dealing with browser bugs is not the most exciting part of the job, but creating web sites without CSS/XHTML is a much worse situation!

Proper use of the "alt" attribute

2005-02-06T22:00:00.000-06:00

Sometimes we need to fine tune our understanding of XHTML concepts. The proper use of the "alt" attribute and the "title" attribute are both one of those fuzzy areas that could use more attention. In my classes I always emphasize the importance of the "alt" attribute with images to assist those users of your site who cannnot see the graphics on your site for a variety of reasons including users using screenreaders to "see" the screen. Roger Johansson, of 456 Berea Street, has written a brief discussion of this feature which points out when to use "alt" text and when it is not appropriate also. He suggests not using alt text when you actually want a tool tip (small pop up text as used with the "title" attribute). He goes on to discuss the use of the "title" attribute, of which there is little literature as to the semantic use of it in our documents. Additional references to this discussion from Simon Willison's Writing good ALT text and Ian Hickson's Mini FAQ About the Alternate Text of Images.

More on JavaScript as Behavior

2005-02-02T17:53:00.000-06:00

I have reported a new direction in the use of JavaScript in the past, and a new article by Peter-Paul Koch reminds me to review the sources of information and share with students and faculty. Koch's newest article, JavaScript Triggers, is located in Zeldman's A-List-Apart: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/scripttriggers/. He discusses the strict separation of structure, presentation, and behavior in semantic web site development, and gives examples of how he suggests using the "id" attribute as a JavaScript trigger, rather than dumping loads of JavaScript into the structure of an XHTML document. I am also adding a list of articles that discuss this direction in the use of JavaScript now that CSS has taken over some of the functioning of JavaScript. The direction is to use JavaScript to manipulate CSS objects, among other behavioral functions. These articles are the only references I have found that speak to these issues. I would appreciate anyone adding to this list if you have read of this type of application and it is not listed here.

Separating behavior and structure, by Peter-Paul Kock http://www.digital-web.com/columns/keepitsimple/
separating_behavior_and_structure.shtml

Separating Behavior and Presentation, by Peter-Paul Koch
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/
separating_behavior_and_presentation/

The Behavior Layer, Peter-Paul Koch
http://digital-web.com/columns/keepitsimple/
keepitsimple_2004-01.shtml

Enhancing Structural Markup with JavaScript, Simon Willison
http://www.sitepoint.com/print/structural-markup-javascript

Presentational JavaScript, Bobby Vandersluis
http://www.bobbyvandersluis.com/articles/presentationaljavascript.php

JavaScript navigation - cleaner, not meaner, codepo8 (evolt)
http://www.evolt.org/article/Javascript_navigation_cleaner_not_meaner/
17/60273/index.html?format=print

Introduction to Events, Peter-Paul Koch
http://www.quirksmode.org/js/introevents.html

Some Additional Articles related to JavaScript issues:

For other articles about JavaScript from Peter-Paul Koch, go to his site and select the link to JavaScript
http://www.quirksmode.org

Validating a Custom DTD, by J. David Eisenberg
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/customdtd/

JavaScript: How Did We Get Here?, by Steve Champeon
http://www.hesketh.com/publications/javascript_history.html

JavaScript: Why You Don't Know More About It, by Steve Champeon
http://www.hesketh.com/publications/
javascript_why_you_dont_know_more.html

Working With JavaScript: Introduction, by Steve Champeon
http://www.hesketh.com/publications/javascript_introduction.html

Modifying Styles, Apple Internet Developer Site
http://developer.apple.com/internet/webcontent/styles.html

Firefox Story: Wired Magazine

2005-01-31T22:35:00.000-06:00

Everyone interested in interactive media should read the story about the development of Firefox by Blake Ross and Ben Goodger. It is a good read and gives you lots of information about the industry, how it works, and other good stuff. You'll even hear about XAML, Microsofts developer language that is the heir to HTML, or so they hope! The current February 05 issue is in the Library, or Wired online conveniently makes the story available at: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/firefox.html
Enjoy!