Web Directions ’06 is almost here. Last year was a lot of fun indeed and here’s hoping it’ll again surpass my expectations. Keep your eyes peeled on all official photo-streams at the following urls and if you take photos during the event add them to Web Directions 06 Group Pool. Please tag all your Web directions photos in flickr with the following generic tags and of course you can …
Archive for the 'Web' Category
Edited: 7th September 2004: I am happy to say I am a proud owner of this book and it truly is worth every cent. Dan’s writing is simple, short and to the point and with loads of real world examples! If you are serious about your Web Standards approach to the Web, this book is for you!
Dan Cederholm has written a book ‘Web Standards Solution – The Markup and Style Handbook (Pioneering Series)’ — ISBN: 1590593812.
Continue reading ‘Web Standards Solution’
A big thank you to the core members of the Web Essentials ’04 group(Russ Weakley, Peter Firminger, John Allsopp, Maxine Sherrin) and all those that helped yesterday’s event come together so beautifully. It was a free briefing session for the Government and Education sector about Web Standards, adherence to code semantics and Accessibility(WAI). The Speakers included Russ Weakley, Roger Hudson, Dean Jackson about raising the consciousness in the Government and Education sector with focus on:
A great new addition to WebKit—the Web Inspector. It lets you browse the live DOM hierarchy in a compact HUD style window, catering to the needs of web developers. The Web Inspector highlights the node on the page as it is selected in the hierarchy. Search for nodes by node name, id and CSS class name is also possible within the same window! Whoa!! I like it already!
Download the nightly build from http://webkit.opendarwin.org/blog/?p=41 and run the followinf in Terminal.
defaults write com.apple.Safari \
WebKitDeveloperExtras -bool true
And you should be set to go. You’ll then see a new “Inspect Element” contextual menu item on any web page. This will open up the Web Inspector and refocus to the node under your cursor.
I bought Xylescope yesterday. I’ve been playing with the previous version a bit and its very handy tool for an web developer/ designer on mac. In fact I will go a step further to say it will save you an awful lot of time using Xylescope! Below is a screengrab of one of my gallery pages. On selecting on one of the thumbnail (backlit leaf) you will notice how the hierarchial navigation, HTML view, CSS view and Selector view are all exposed in the one pane!
Very proud to say the new mycareer site launched today: http://mycareer.com.au. Its the next major site from the Fairfax Digital network to take on css layout as part of a redesign. The site gets hundreds of thousands of visitors a month and is one of Australia’s largest job ad websites.
While checking my logs on Sunday I came across a rather unusual incident and no it wasn’t a very pleasant one. http://www.hotbook.com.br had generated some traffic onto my site so I was curious to know what it was that brought people to karmakars.com.
On further investigation I found that someone over in Brazil presumably by the name Marcio Sgreccia> has copied my layout, blog text, graphics, CSS including old banner, well almost everything possible of the front page!!
Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive.
- Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)
Great spotting D. Found this during our walk around the Rose garden in Devon Cottage.
Bumped into W3 Complaints sites this morning and on investigation realised this is one of Sean Ho’s brain child. Congrats Sean this is really a great idea! It helps the conscious web designers collate a reference of sites that are truly being complied to by W3 Guidelines of semantic and valid markup along with Accessibility Guidelines and conformations.
Check out the latest happenings at WE05 on our flickr group.
Listen to podCasts of each session soon after they are done at WE05 website or Odeo
Track what blogs are saying about WE05 via technorati, and make sure you tag your blog posts like this
WE05.
Russ, Lisa, Ajay and I are off to Canberra for the day to attend Web Standards Group meeting on Internationalization tomorrow. Russ has already blogged it so here goes! Can’t wait the drive will be fun. Canberra here we come. A small road trip before the big one 
A good time was had by all! We were 13 +2! and we had a blast! Visit the links below for some flickr lovin’ 
TeamSite is a CMS produced by Interwoven Inc. And an approximate listing says about 1000 clients across the globe use it for pushing content both within the local Intranets and different extranets worldwide. Most sites that talk about Content Management process and architecture like CMSwatch.com, www.cmsmatrix.org and Oscom hold TeamSite in high esteem. But I have always been skeptic about it because I haven’t seen a single site deliver clean, valid code! As a website developer, designer and website consultant I am very pedantic about valid, clean and semantically correct code. But my view about TeamSite changed since David, Ruth and I started working on building a Template for a website.
What is the difference between Localization and Internationalization in the world wide web context? What are they and why do we designers and developers need to know?
The Lead of W3C Internationalisation — Richard Ishida (blog) during his visit to Australia conducted seminars in Melbourne and Canberra asking developers to think futuristically to allow for greater localisation of Websites and Web applications.
What is Web Accessibility?
Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can use the Web.
More specifically, Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web. Web accessibility also benefits others, including older people with changing abilities due to aging.
The process of adhering to the guidelines laid out by WAI(Web Accessibility Initiative) helps websites become more accessible to a broad range of audience irrespective of age, physical or mental disability, gender, cultural background or technical knowledge.
Below is a list of tools that help assess websites for Web Accessibility as per the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
- Evaluation, Repair, and Transformation Tools for Web Content Accessibility
- Adobe’s PDF Accessibility
- Web design resource — University of Minnesota Duluth
- Dive into Accessibility — Mark Pilgrim
- Macromedia’s Accessibility
- References on Web Accessibility
- Hisoftware Test — Test your sites
- Free, Online Accessibility Tools
- WAVE Accessibility Tool
- Cynthia Says Portal
- Accessibility Valet Report
The same person (probably) has floated another site without my conscent again anguruh.com.br/novakang/kanguruh.htm
Oh how I love the net!
Update: There wasn’t a very big turn out but all the same it was fun. It poured non-stop. We were at the Opera Bar for a while before proceeding on to Aqua. Thanks to all those that made an effort to turn up and show your support and appreciation to both WSG and Firefox. Head on over to Maxine’s Flickr for the photos from last night.
Just letting you know I may not live up to your expectations today! And if you are wondering why… I got off the bed at 9 this morning! And almost flew to work… totally forgetting that I’d to take my camera along… and right now its raining pretty hard! 
I am still looking forward to the usual WSG crowd if not more… and yes after I have pinched some photos off Maxine’s camera I will have ‘em here for you to ogle!
And for those interested in yesterday’s meeting at Wellington, NZ, here you go.
Event: Sydney Web Standards Group Xmas drinks
Date: Friday 16th of December
Venue: Bungalow 8
Map: http://www.bungalow8sydney.com/sections/map/map.html
Time: 6 pm onwards…
URI: http://www.bungalow8sydney.com.
See you there!!
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheet. CSS is a standard for specifying the appearance of text and other elements on web pages.
CSS Showcases Sites
- CSS Cream
- CSS Heaven
- Web Creme
- CSS Remix
- CSS Elite
- CSS Mania
- CSS Tux
- Screenalicious
- CSS Design Yorkshire
- CSS Vault
- CSS Reboot
- CSS Showcase
- CSS Container
General CSS finesse and trickeries
- Creating Stylish Web 2.0 CSS driven menus, try these:
Five web 2.0 CSS menu tutorials, Navigation Menus: Trends and Examples and Russ Weakley’s Listamatic - Markup Maker — takes a simple list of page ids entered and converts it to a valid XHTML document. It also creates the shell of the CSS.
- CSS Optimizer — web tool for reducing the file size of cascading style sheets.
- Time Sensitive CSS using PHP — serving dynamic, time sensitive CSS with PHP
- Position is everything — Big John and Holly Bergevin explain some obtuse CSS bugs in modern browsers
- Listamatic, Selectutorials, Floatutorials & Listutorials — Russ Weakley’s obsession with lists and presentations
- Mid passs Filter — sending styles to IE5* Win only
- How to attach an IE/Win Bug
- IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter — sending styles to IE5 Mac only
- IE5 Mac oddities — miscellaneous bugs in IE5 and how to fix ‘em
- FOUC — Flash of Unstyled Content
- The CSS and XHTML Lab (RSS) — from Roger Johansson at 456 berea Street
- Eric Meyer’s CSS Edge
- Western Civilisation – CSS guidelines
- Your HTML source > Stylesheets
- The Layout Reservoir
- The noodle incident — Problem & Workaround Set for a series of CSS Boxes going from a simple single box, through 3 columns with a full width top box, all with variations
- Agitprop
- Mako 4 CSS — The CSShark Answers FAQs and CSS Tutorial
- CSS Homepage of W3C — World Wide Web’s CSS starting point and current status
CSS Optimisers
A worthy read if you plan to use the following to optimise your CSS
- Clean CSS — CSS Formatter and Optimiser
- Icey’s CSS Compressor
- Flumpcakes CSS Optimiser
- CSS Optimizer
Cascading Style Sheets for PDA’s (Handheld Devices)
CSS Editors
There are many CSS editors out there… I have used a few over the years and the one that has been my favourite so far above all is CSS Edit. Extremely fast, luscious graphic interface, easy to use. Of-course there is no substitute to handcoding but its not always handy if you are looking to pick up colours etc…
- CSS Edit | news — I prefer this as its really lightweight and extremely fast. My everyday app! (Mac)
- Style Master — software| XRay any page | courses | Blog (RSS) (Mac/Win) — great tool, loads of tutorials, great links.
- Top Style — only when I’m on Windows. (Win)
Overwhelmed by the amazing response to WE05. I don’t know where to start. Despite being a fortnight late in publishing this I seem to be still reeling from the effect of a total WE05 utopia! It was definitely an amazing conference. Let me take that back it was not only a conference that stood out as being unique but this was backed up with amazing friendly people from many walks of life and many continents around the globe. Rare! A collaboration of this nature can only come to pass where people think beyond their own thirst for knowledge, and not just the organisers and speakers but also the delegates… I, for one, saw the conference from a very different standpoint as compared to last years. Continue reading ‘WE05 from my perspective’
UPDATED 16th March 2006: Capture a Screencast with a Mac — tutorial on how to organise yourself before doing a screencast by Miraz Jordan.
Mac OS X comes with its own screen grabbing tool called Grab and it is fairly comprehensive but I needed something more powerful as I intend using this a whole lot more. On doing some quick searches I landed up here at Pure-mac with 26 applications to choose from. Holy Moly! Jeremy helped me pick the best one and I tell you this is one kick ass screen capture software. Wow!
Here is an assortment of various things I enjoying dipping my fingers into. These are not in an particular order of liking, just an outpour of things that ran down my head. Enjoy the randomness!
Photography
- Adobe Lightroom resources
links to tutorials, videos, books, podcasts and lots of Lightroom resources. A must see if you’re a photographer - Adobe Lightroom Preset collection
- Photography Related
- PhotoShop Action Brushes textures and Tutorials
Web Development, Design
- CSS goodies
- Colour Links, Tools and Calibration
tools that help you design websites better using good colour schemes. Tools that helps keep your monitor clibrated - WordPress tweaks, addons that would make the already best free CMS even better
- WordPress Themes
collection of themes that can be used for WordPress - Accessibility tools
links to Accessibility tools for web design
Miscellaneous
I spend the last two days creating a new design for Maysville Elementary School of North Carolina. Maysville Elementary School had a web presence, however, it needed a fresh look and a more user-friendly navigation. It truly is all about educating our future.
For those who many not know about Maysville — it is a small town in Jones County, North Carolina. If you are from the US of A you probably already know this but I thought a few web links would be nice. Land of the Charlotte, the flight of the Wrights, the mesmerising (we spell that the right way Chapel Hill, the historic Tyrone Palace, Comfort Country and our dearest darling Nancy who we all miss so much down-under, So here goes to North Carolina.
Very shamelessly, yet again… I gave in to my minty lusty last night. Yes, yet again. Mint version 2 works a charm and is a lot faster than its predecessor. Smooth ola-la rounded corners, row hovers, diagonal hatch separators, and overall a lot more readable interface than before. Here is a quick run down of whats new in Mint 2. Well done Shaun.
Continue reading ‘Gave in to my minty update again!’
Just so you know…. a lof of the photos from the amazing, exciting, futuristic, open-minded, inspiring, most-friendly, most enjoyable ever Web conference Web Essentials 2005 is now up. There are a few more to go to complete the entire set, so thank you for your patience. The photos include pre WE05 yak yak fun booze dance goss ummm what did I miss? Well… yes, I’ve been working my fingers to the bone but still its taking a long time isn’t it? Slow lazy me! Is this where I say… ‘Ain’t no spring chicken no more’… so, pardon my speed! Am a slow release fertiliser, gosh! did I just say that.
For those that have noticed my weblog here doesn’t have a link ‘skip to content’ instead it says ‘skip to main content‘. A fairly simplistic change one may say. But there is more to this than meets they eye! Blind users use Assistive technology to read pages on the internet. Tools like JAWS would read ‘Skip to Content’ with an accent on the second syllable. That would defeat the reason on having a skip link in the first place. The alternative to this is ‘Skip to Main Content’
Using ‘Skip to Main Content’ at the top of your pages ensures JAWS doesn’t get confussed about the world ‘content’ nor will it read it with the accent.
The search for the answers to life and its laws,
is rooted in everything, since effects have their cause.
It’s as easy as saying when words hit a wall,
they come back at the speaker like a red rubber ball.
The Great Illusions has always intrigued me, its been one of my favourites since I found it back in 2001 if I have that right. Everytime I read through the prose it seems to make a lot of sense.
Westciv, developers of the leading cross platform CSS Editor, Style Master, and long time supporters of web standards have released a special iPod edition of their renowned CSS Guide. Featuring a handy overview of CSS concepts, and in-depth information for every
selector,propertyand@ruleof CSS 2.1
Adaptive Path and Different, the Australian interactive agency specialising in human centred design, have teamed up to bring Jesse James Garrett to the all-new Human Centred Design Revolution workshop this May in Sydney. Join Jesse as he gives his full-day presentation on “The Elements of User Experience” and “The Nine Pillars of a Successful Web Team.”
The details are as follows: Locaton: Tuesday, 17th May 2005, Australian Technology Park, Sydney
Jesse runs his own site at http://www.jjg.net. His book: User – Centered Design for the Web — “The Elements of User Experience” has some tremendously positive reviews. You can download a free chapter from here.
Jesse, I am assume will be talking about Ajax too. Ajax is an innovative web application framework.
Its funny thinking of Bay 8 at Australian Technology Park now that our part of the office has moved back to north shore again, I wonder in the Australian Park for about 4 years. That place all too familiar to me.
- Australian Landscape Photography — Mark Gray
- Ami vitale — Photography with a difference
- Canon BeBit
- Canon Europe — you can Canon
- Camera Works — from Washington Post
- Fredmiranda — Professional Photographers Portal
- Photography on the net — Photography, Exhibit Engine, and forum
- Nature Photographers
- Luminous Landscape — Professional Photographers Portal
- Canon EOS
- digitalSLR — SLR Blog
- Macro — get up close
- Digital Photography Review
- Digital Outback Photo
- Digital Camera -HQ
- Ken Duncan — majestic online gallery
- Photoblogs.org — huge Photoblog Portal
Photo Accessories
- Kenkos — tools you need for Macro
- Photo Tools — Digital Image Management application
- JAlbum — Free web photo album generator
- Picture Shark — for making subtle copyrights on PRO images
Cases & Bags
Photo Resources
As some of you might know John Allsopp is already organising this (Good on you John) to get together the best Aussie contingent for South by South West(SXSW) Interactive 2006. SXSW undoubtedly is one of the #1 interactive conference/get together in the World. And even if you are in no way associated with web, music or interactive design and still would love to come along… even better! Please get in touch. All going well you’d see me there too (Molly, we’ll have to do more photo shoots ). Allow me to echo a few lines from Johns and here are some photos from last years.
If you really, really, really want people to see your great web design, you’re flattering yourself; content is king. If you didn’t believe that the content is the important part of your site, you wouldn’t be providing an RSS feed. Bite the bullet and give us full text.
John has it right. People that dont give full RSS mosly dont believe ‘content is king’ or don’t get off their lazy ass to implement it, or just don’t care enough! Some of the best usability and Accessibility gurus in the Industry have this backwards! I am not surprised.
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