Category Archives: Design

CSS/Standards Link Roundup

Posted on by David
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Here are a few standards-related links I’ve been meaning to post. Hope you find them useful!

  • High Accessibility is Effective Search Engine Optimization
    Nice ALA article. It is completely true, as well. If you make your site highly accessible it becomes more accessible to search engine indexers as well as the visually impaired.
  • Visual Studio to Support Standards
    Based on my own personal experience, I’ll believe it when I see it. I believe they intend to do it but MS does not have much experience paying attention to standards in the past so I’m sure it will take them a while to get it right.
  • Tantek on CSS Hacks
    Great review of the state of CSS, hacks needed to implement, and future directions for browsers.
  • Printing a Book with CSS
    Another ALA article on how CSS could be used to format text appropriately for printing a book.

Feel the Power of Standards-based Design

Posted on by David
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Chris Spurgeon works on the American Public Media family of web sites. He recently posted on the Well about some changes he made to the Marketplace web site:

I just changed the tab navigation of the Marketplace radio show website (www.marketplace.org) from vertical tabs along the left hand side of thepage to horizontal tabs along the top. Other than uploading the new tab graphics, all I had to do was tweak 2 CSS rules and the change instantly appeared on more than 5 thousand static pages. So damn cool.

Chris graciously gave permission for me to quote his post here. This is a fantastic example of how going to a CSS design allows you to make significant changes quickly by editing just a single file.

Another thing to note is that if you look at the source code for the page, you can see that it includes corporate branding and search elements for the overall organization that do not cleanly separate content from presentation. The reality of web design in large organizations is that you often don’t have control of everything and have to work around various things that are not open for negotiation. However, the rest of the page does separate presentation from content markup, which enabled Chris to make that big change so easily. This shows how you don’t have to follow a purist approach to still benefit from these techniques.

W3C Forms Working Group on Web APIs

Posted on by David
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The W3C is forming a working group to look standards for Web APIs. This will be good in the long run for making AJAX interfaces much easier to develop across browsers and platforms.

The W3C Web API Working Group is chartered to develop standard APIs for client-side Web Application development. This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as XMLHttpRequest and developing new APIs in order to enable richer Web Applications.

The 15 Minute Web Plan

Posted on by David
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I had a call this morning with someone who runs a summer camp talking about how their web site can help their organization. It was a pro bono thing I did for a friend (I have a soft-spot for camps, being a former camp counselor myself). Here is my 15 minute method for developing a plan of action for your web site:

  • Identify the top 2 or 3 objectives your organization has for the next 12 months or so.
    • If you have no formal objectives, make some up. (I’m not kidding. It’s not hard if you know your organization well.)
  • For each objective, identify at least one thing that your web site can contribute to success in that area.
  • Go do them.

Simple but it lets you quickly identify actions you can take that will make a difference. Your planning can get more complex and comprehensive down the road if you feel the need for that but the important thing is to begin doing something, see how it works, and adjust going forward. It also lets you act even if your organization has little in the way of strategic direction at the moment.

Fun with Map APIs

Posted on by David
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I have been looking into Yahoo!’s mapping service API this week (Google offers one as well). What they have done is opened up their mapping services so that you can display your data on their maps. I have created a example on Yahoo! that displays my upcoming speaking gigs. Kind of silly but it took me all of 15 minutes to put this together which is quite amazing. It is all driven by this little xml file.

I think this kind of thing could be quite useful for association meetings where you could develop your own custom map of the meeting and lodging facilities related to your event. You could even create a special map for VIPs with all the locations of special dinners and other invitation-only events.

Using the Bottom of Your Page

Posted on by David
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Derek Powazek had a nice post a while ago on how to reward visitors who read an entire page:

When you’re designing pages – specifically content pages – what is the best possible thing that could happen? I mean after the user has bought a computer, gotten internet connectivity, figured out how to use a browser, and somehow found their way to your site … what is the single best thing that they could do?

Read. That’s right, read. And read all the way to the bottom of the page. In this business, a user that actually reads all the way to the bottom of a page is like gold. They’re your best, most engaged, happiest users. You know, because they haven’t clicked away. They did the best possible thing they could do, and now they’re at the bottom of the page. And how do you reward them?

With a copyright statement. Maybe, if they’re lucky, some bland footer navigation.

If you ask me, that’s just rude.

Read the rest of the post for the ideas on to provide value at the bottom of your pages.

Presentation Zen gets all Zenny

Posted on by David
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I mentioned the Presentation Zen blog earlier this week. Love this zen-like line I just read in a recent post about Larry Lessig’s presentation method:

The number is not important. To be concerned with the number of slides shows that our head is in the wrong place. Because…it is the wrong question to ask.

And what is the right question? You’ll have to read the post to find out.

JPEG Patent Woes?

Posted on by David
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Just saw this on Paul Bissex’s blog: Burn all JPEGs?:

Some recent news is giving me flashbacks to 1995, when Unisys sprung their GIF patent surprise on the young World Wide Web. We got quite angry and some enterprising people even built a replacement for the beloved GIF.

Are we going there again? Forgent, a Texas company that “develops and licenses intellectual property and makes scheduling software” (it makes me feel dirty just to type that) is suing 40 companies, including Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo, for infringing on JPEG-related patent No. 4,698,672.

Sounds like patent trolling to me. Hopefully this will not become an issue (I imagine it will unite a big chunk of silicon valley to fight it if it does).

New Article: The Association Web Job Description

Posted on by David
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I have just posted an article I wrote that went out in ASAE’s Technoscope newsletter a while ago: The Association Web Job Description. The article identifies the major areas that should be considered when designing positions to support an association web site, including sample language.

You may also want to see the sample interview questions for content management positions that I posted a while ago.

Architecting CSS Files

Posted on by David
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Here is a nice article in Digital Web Magazine on Architecting CSS.

With nearly ubiquitous standards support among modern browsers, we’re turning to CSS to handle presentational heavy lifting more than ever. The more we rely upon CSS, the larger and more complex CSS files become. These files bring with them a few maintenance and organizational challenges.

Gone are the days of creating a single CSS file and dropping in rules as needed. As we build new sites, it is necessary to spend time planning how to organize and structure CSS.

Following the tips in this article should save you quite a bit of time during initial design and when going back to revise later.