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!

The Year of the DOM

2005-01-22T13:44:00.000-06:00

Simon Willison of Sitepoint suggests that cutting edge web designers have been fixed on CSS for the past couple of years and now that CSS is more established, 2005 is the year that JavaScript will take center stage. He describes a post-version 4 browser era where all major browsers now support on the standard called the Document Object Model or DOM, which makes JavaScript coding less painful. But the new world of CSS-based design elements gives new reasons for scripting. 2005: The Year of the DOM

We are working on changing the emphasis of our JavaScript course at AID and move it along more modern uses and in particular in a stronger relationship with CSS elements as well as envisioning it with the scope of "structure (XHTML) - presentation (CSS) - behavior (JavaScript). There are a number of articles that relate to this shift in the developers use of JavaScript that I have referenced in other articles. If you are interested in reading more, let me know.

Also, for those who would like to better introduce themselves or go deeper with the DOM, a couple of references for your study include:
For those who like the original specifications: Web Consortium DOM Technical Reference
For those who like to understand what they are reading: Introduction to the Document Object Model by Mike Hall at Brainjar.com

Another interesting read is Joel Spolsky article about How Microsoft Lost the API War which concludes with the punch line:
None of this bodes well for Microsoft and the profits it enjoyed thanks to its API power. The new API is HTML, and the new winners in the application development marketplace will be the people who can make HTML sing.

Nvu! Open Source Web Editor

2005-01-22T13:33:00.000-06:00

Sitepoint Tech Times also reports on a new open source Web Editor along the lines of a WYSIWYG editor such as Dreamweaver. Nvu, pronounced N-view (for new view) according to the developers, is currently in the second pre-release version N-vu 1.0 Beta (version 0.7). It is available for download at the N-vu site . It is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux environments.

The product is being developed by Linspire, and is based on Gecko, the layout engine inside Mozilla. It claims to be super fast, reliable, and standards conformant with remarkable support of XML, CSS and JavaScript. It is the replacement for Mozilla's composer product within the Mozilla browser, and will become a separate Mozilla product much like their Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird applications.

I have downloaded a Mac version and struggled without documentation and all seems well, even though I perfer coding with BBEdit. I also experienced some wierdness in my Mac Operating system shortly thereafter which I do not know was caused by N-vu, but have removed it until further versions are released. It may be an important product to watch, since its price is right for everyone. It's free.

White Rock Lake in Winter?

2005-01-21T17:35:00.000-06:00

A little break from writing papers – a trip down the street for a hours walk at White Rock. Sure seemed like a beautiful summer day in January!

CSS on your IPod!

2005-01-17T19:43:00.000-06:00

With Podcasts, movies, calendars, etc. the IPod's value continues as an amazing media player or recorder, sound system, etc. This is not a commercial for Apple or the Ipod, but that's just because I haven't bought one–yet. The day is very near.
Now you can upload the Style Master CSS podGuide from WestCiv. To get your css podGuide go to the Western Civilisation site at: http://www.westciv.com/news/podguide.html. Information and installation instructions are available on the website.

Another new concept for the IPod is PodSites. PodSites take advantage of linking features of the Notes component, and lots of things can be done with these sites that can be uploaded to your ipod. The Podsites web site can give you all the information about how to create podsites: http://www.podsites.com/. Podsites was created by Westciv, the same company that provides the free CSS PodGuide. Podsites that are currently listed on the Podsites site include: Web Accessibility, Tao Ti Ching, The US Constitution. Podsites are particularily handy for learning tools, that can assist you with coding, design issues, standards information, or just about anything you can dream up.

South by Southwest Festival 2005

2005-01-17T18:56:00.000-06:00

This year's South by SouthWest Festival will be held in Austin March 11-15. Review the SxSW Interactive at http://2005.sxsw.com/interactive/ and the list of speakers at: http://2005.sxsw.com/interactive/conference/speakers/. If you have heard of a developer or read any of the blogs referenced on the links of this page, they are probably going to present at the conference. This is a must see for designers if at all possible. In addition to the interactive section there is also film, and music. The whole town is alive with the festive and conferences. If you can afford the time and save some dollars, this is the place to hang out in March.

netWindows JavaScript tools

2004-11-29T19:15:00.000-06:00

A set of JavaScript tools that can dramatically reduce the overhead of many applications is available in "netWindows", a liberally licensed set of JavaScript applications that drive a user interface from the client side, according to Stephen Downes in his OLDaily newsletter.

The documentation states: "netWindows is a DHTML toolkit that aides in the construction of web applictions. The toolkit provides widgets which comprise the building blocs of an application interface and the core framework exposes mechansisms for developers to build their own widgets easily". Check it out at http://netwindows.org.

Send some feedback or comments if you make use of it and let others know how it functions. I suggest looking at the documentation, then then FAQ document, to get an overview of how the product can be implemented.

Web Usability

2004-11-24T19:09:00.000-06:00

I just found a new weblog about Web Usability-accessibility and usability services, that is well written and a good source for keeping updated about accessibility issues. There has been an interesting discussion about usability in the school forum - AID Creative Forums > Multimedia & Web Design Department > Web Design > The End of Usability Culture, and I think this is another good resource concerning these issues.
Basically, Jacob Neilson, the usability guru, is not exactly the popular guy these days. And as Aaron suggested that form of usability is probably not intact today. But keeping the web designed for the user is never dead, as we have no one else to design for. I am hoping all student developers will become very serious about accessibility issues. We try to teach strong well-formed standards based web design concepts, which if followed, keeps your sites accessible and more usable than most. The article "Accessible Forms" located at http://www.usability.com.au/resources/forms.cfm is a good explanation of why some of the tedious tags are necessary in forms. The article and the blog also has great resources to link to as well as tools used for accessibility.

Web Tools

2004-11-17T18:10:00.000-06:00

I have intended to write an article about "web based tools for learning", but when my comprehensive committee did not choose that topic, I haven't gotten back into it. This is a brief substitute to put some tools before you, so you can just go and try them out and see what benefit they have for you. All of these are tools that I use as a grad student, and quite frankly, I'm not sure how I would have worked without them. Some have been around awhile, and some are fairly new. They art tools often described as "social software" applications, because of their feature set including the ability to post or sent content to anyone or any web site you choose. I would be glad to talk with anyone about the various tools, but I think most of you would do best to just go to the site and see what they are about and try them out if it moves you. Here is an unorganized list, slightly annotated:

Furl
http://www.furl.net
With a menu button added to your browser menu bar, furl will capture any web site you select, allow you to add a category from a dropdown menu, and any notes you choose to identify it. You can then search by keywords any resources you have "furled", bring the site back up, and even send a list of your items to someone else, or to your Weblog. They provide the hard drive, you get a great research tool, and its FREE.

Flickr
http://flickr.com/
A great way to store, search, sort, and share your digital pictures! Also Free.

del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/
A social bookmarks manager. Same concept: menu bar button, click, saves whatever web page your on as a bookmark. Uses their storage facilities, you can sort, export, import, and format to any number of file types, including IE Favorites, or Mozilla style bookmarks.

Technorati
http://www.technorati.com

A Technorati Watchlist is a customized report that tracks incoming links to people and places you care about. With your Watchlist, you can track the daily conversations that develop between people on weblogs and the sites, news, products and topics they are talking about. 3 free watchlists are available.

Feedburner
http://www.feedburner.com
For Weblog authors, feedburner can provide several services. It captures your RSS or Atom feeds, and stores them, and makes them available for publishing in an RSS newsreader, or export to wherever you like. It also can track traffic using your RSS feeds.

Blogdigger and Feedster Blog Search Engines
http://www.blogdigger.com
http://www.feedster.com

Blogdex
http://www.blogdex.com
A research project from MIT Media Lab that tracks ideas as they move across the blogsphere.

I have another group of tools, more in the "Personal Information Management" category that will require another article due to the platform differences of the applications. This category is primarily software that you download and use on your own computer. More later.

Learning PHP

2004-11-17T17:55:00.000-06:00

Hopefully, we will have another PHP workshop next quarter, if some of the student teachers choose to put one together again. In the mean time, those of you interested in learning PHP, here are a few suggestions to get started.

XOOPS, an eXtensible Object Oriented Portal System, is an open source (as in free!) content management system built with PHP. I think it is an excellent product for students to learn about PHP, dynamic web site development, and a lot of related issues. Basically, it works with PHP and MySQL to provide a Web site a "back-end" system that makes it dynamic instead of static. You can design your own interface (XHTML/CSS) and manage it with XOOPS among other things. You can learn as much as you desire, or just use it to help you automate the development of web sites. You will need a Web server that supports PHP and MySQL.

On the XOOPS site, are some good PHP tutorials as well as an online Manual. I think the combination of downloading the XOOPS module, studying the tutorials and related manual, will give anyone a good starting experience with PHP, and certainly will expand your web development skills. The following links will get you to the site and the tutorials:
XOOPS Content Management System (Open Source - free)
http://docs.xoops.org/modules/intro/

php tutorial
http://docs.xoops.org/modules/mylinks/visit.php?cid=1&lid=2

php manual
http://docs.xoops.org/modules/mylinks/visit.php?cid=1&lid=2

W3Schools php tutorial
http://docs.xoops.org/modules/mylinks/visit.php?cid=1&lid=4

It's only the "internet" now!

2004-10-11T20:56:00.000-05:00

On August 16, 2004, Wired News announced that they officially will no longer capitalize the "I" in internet. At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net. Their reason? " Why? The simple answer is because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. Actually, there never was."
Does that make anything official in the English Language (or any other). No, of course not. Only in Wired News. But thank you Wired for getting the internet and the web back where it belongs, as a normal part of our world, bouncing along happily with no capitals to make it special. Now it will only be special if it is.

Web Publishers not required to comply?

2004-10-11T20:45:00.000-05:00

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court's decision from October 2002, which concluded that Web sites cannot be required to comply with the 1991 disabilities law. Southwest Airlines had been sued by an advocacy group for the blind, seeking redesign of its Web site.

There have been other documented cases that skirted the issues, but this is the first that addressed the question directly. Technically, the 11th Circuit only involves Alabama, Florida, and Georgia. But of course the issues are bigger than that.

Does this mean that accessible design is no longer an issue for web designers? Of course not. Hopefully, we do not need courts to tell us that there are millions or Internet users who have disabilities that require some type of intervention for them to use the Web conveniently. As a design community we hopefully are always concerned to reach all users when possible and the continued emphasis upon designing for accessibility just makes sense. It will continue to be one of the learning objectives in classes that I teach and curriculum I develop.

IE loses market share

2004-10-11T20:26:00.000-05:00

This is old news, but if you didn't see it and you are not a Microsoft fan, it is good news, even if only slightly.
Back in July, The Guardian Review published an article that says Microsoft's Internet Explorer, for the first time, dropped in percentage share of the browser market from 95.73% to 94.73%. They called it a "sustained trend downward for them".
So what's going on to incite masses of users to drop the product? Guardian cites IE security problems dating back to a year ago as one issue. Another is that the maturation of developers of alternative browsers concentrating on support of openly developed standards as another.
Why is this news and why should designers be interested? Mainly because like it or not, Microsoft has a huge market share and IE has an enormous effect on the ecosystem of the internet. The difference in the way IE deals with technical standards compared with the open systems browsers means that web designers must constantly be aware of work-arounds and hacks to get sites to work correctly. It is a problem for all of us, simply because of their market share.
For some unknown reason, Microsoft stopped development of IE. The next change to IE will accompany the launch of the next version of Windows, which is not scheduled until 2006. The question remains. Who will influence the greatest control over the next two years – the open standards bodies or Microsoft. Will great new browsers such as Firefox, Mozilla, and Safari generate new market share by focusing on better browser technologies and web standards? Our work and passion will be involved – ready or not. We have another edition of the browser wars!

Browsers for AID Web Scripting Classes

2004-09-24T18:21:00.000-05:00

Firefox 1.0, Mozilla 1.7.3, Safari 1.1 (OSX Panther) are the current choices for developing web sites. Mozilla is the "parent organization" of FireFox as well as the current engine of Netscape Navigator. It is an "open source" product, which means that developers freely contribute to the growth and addition to these browsers. (Safari is a product of Apple Computer.) These products are known to support XHTML 1.0 and CSS 2.1 as fully as any browsers on the market.

The ever popular Internet Explorer from Microsoft, is slowly becoming a serious problem. Microsoft has stated that they will not upgrade the browser (Mac or Windows versions) until their new operating system codenamed "Longhorn" is released sometime in 2006. This leaves IE very problematic with a number of known bugs that have to be "hacked" to work correctly. It also means that IE will not support any changes in the standards. It is not even clear if Microsoft plans to support web standards with their new products. The problem with designing with IE as the "viewer" of your web pages, is that it will often result in all other browsers seeing it quite differently.

The recently released (Sept 04) Firefox 1.0 Preview release not only is fully compatable, it has a number of innovative features including the ability to save RSS files similar to a news aggregator. It also allows the installation of plug-in extensions, which can add functionality to the basic browser. Our classroom Firefox browsers have the popular EditCSS 0.2.2 plug-in as well as the Webdev plug-in added. These tools allow you to quickly view the source code of browser page, view any CSS rules attached to the document, perform validation of CSS, HTML, or Accessability of your pages at the touch of a menu button. This makes your work more efficient, and better organized.

Browser Issues & Web Standards

Some history about browsers for those who are curious. Browser technology had a small window when most of the "biggies" all were functioning close to Web Standards. That meant that code in one browser looked the same as in another browser. But additions to the standards (CSS 2.1) brings with it, familar problems with browsers not seeing files consistently.

The solution for the lack of comformity with current Web standards is for designer/developers of web sites to use the most compliant browser available at all times. This can change as new versions of Web standards are approved and considered final. Not every manufacturer can or will update when we want them too. The reasons why one browser is more compliant than another is not the issue. Which browser you favor or have used in the past is not the issue. You can continue to use any browser you choose when you are a "user" surfing the Web. But when developing, it is best to use the most compliant browser possible. It will save you a lot of headaches and problems later.

Links to Mozilla and Firefox sites.

Mozilla Web site: Mozilla and FireFox
http://www.mozilla.org

Plug-ins and extensions for Mozilla & Firefox
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/ Firefox & Mozilla extensions

A blog about Mozilla - by Pinder Johal
http://www.deftone.com/blogzilla/about/

Welcome to Webstuff!

2004-09-22T14:10:00.000-05:00

This blog was created to support my web scripting classes and will be made available to students in my classes. Please register as a member, and you are free to make comments and receive information.