Webstuff 2

Today was the first day of WordCamp Dallas which began with the release of WordPress 2.5 and an introduction to its new features by Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress. This is a major release with a totally reworked administrative area and a greatly enhanced ability to manage images with a gallery function. The WordPress website is totally new also, featuring a simpler, more effective interface that gets right to the point.

I have been working with the new version for several days now (it has been available in a pre-release testing format) and it is an exciting product which is much more efficient and yet more sophisticated. It is easy to get used to the simpler menus and the great new writing section. So far my new blog is only operating on my development environment on my laptop, but it should be ready to go in a few more days.

There is another full day of presentations Sunday (March 30) with registration beginning at 9:30 am. Check the site for details if you have time to attend. The participants are leaders in blogging and bring a lot of experience to share with those who are new and beginning bloggers. There should be room for anyone to attend Sunday if they show up for registration.

I completed my registration for the WordCamp Dallas informal conference to be held in Frisco, Tx. March 29 - 30. I highly recommend all students interested in blogging and all things web-development to go to this convenient conference and do some valuable networking, as well as learn from experienced users and developers. Mark Mullenweb, founder of WordPress will be one of the speakers. For only $20 you get two days of group meetings and lots of networking opportunities. I look forward to seeing a bunch of IMD students at the conference.

A unique opportunity for IMD students (and others) is the WordCamp Dallas event to be held in Frisco Saturday, March 29 - Sunday, March 30, 2008. WordCamp is an informal gathering of WordPress users where they “teach, learn, eat, drink and generally have fun with one another.” There have been dozens of these events throughout the world and this is the first opportunity for the Dallas/Ft.Worth area! The cost is $20 and there will be coffee and munchies, lunch, and t-shirts to take home. The event will be held at the George A. Purefoy Municipal Center in Frisco, Texas. To register and learn more about the gathering visit the website at http://dallas.wordcamp.org.

I just learned about Flip Video, a $119 video camera that appears to produce good enough quality video (30 min) and it plugs directly into the USB port of a computer. It could be a real value for IMD students to implement original video clips in projects which would add meaning and value to your communication.

Check them out at http://www.theflip.com/products_flip_video.shtml

The models shown below are $149, but there is also a model for $119.

This collection of top web sites includes some of my regulars, so I figured this list of sites are worth sharing with others. Jessica Hupp of Virtual Hosting offers 100 blogs related to user-centered issues in the design and development of websites. Categories include the top 10, accessibility, human computer interaction, web standards, user experience and interaction, user-centered design, and user-centered Writing and content. Surely you will find a few new gems for your collections in this list!

From the information age to the connected age: “The Information Age is the age of the knowledge worker. The Connected Age is the age of the web worker. Knowledge workers create and manage information, massaging it into intangible knowledge goods. Web workers create and manage relationships across knowledge goods, hardware, and people”.

This is an interesting comparison of roles with a specific emphasis on validating the information age and the knowledge workers that drive it and the connected workers who manage the integral nature of mashing-up of all the various information and knowledge products. It affirms both the network and connected.

This is an interesting article that would be good discussion for Interactive Media Design students who are pondering their careers. It describes two different roles and two eras in networks and connected-ness. Perhaps in IMD we have to be in both of these roles, but it would be interesting to hear where you think you best fit this scenario. We are all nodes on a network doing our thing (or being who we are?), but distinguishing between “creating, managing and massaging information into knowledge goods” is an interesting proposition. I assume this means content authoring or collective authoring. Then there is the role of “web workers” creating and managing the relationships (social networking?) between knowledge assets, people and technology. Both seem the edge leadership in our industry, but they also point to the diversity of possibilities in our future.

Leigh Blackall’s “What to Do” provides a group of instructional videos that engage you in activities that will add to your PLE tool chest. I believe that as we experience new digital technologies we gain new potential as designer/developers and here you can pick and choose what is attractive and appropriate for your needs.

If you enjoy the videos and find some useful information, don’t hesitate to comment and thank Leigh for making these tutorials available. It never hurts to add a friend to our blogging network!

The World Wide Web Consortium (w3c) has announced a new W3C Markup Validator. The announcement states:

2007-08-08: “W3C’s most popular service just got better, prettier, faster, and smarter. The W3C Markup Validator has a new user interface and a validation engine with improved accuracy and performance. Among new features are an automatic cleanup option using HTML Tidy, and checking of HTML fragments. Driven by W3C as an open-source software project, the markup validator is made by Web professionals for Web professionals, and aims to be a major step in any Web development quality process. Read the change log for a list of all changes and new features”.

Also announced was the CSS3 Working Drafts for Box Model and Advanced Layout.

Google Business Referral Representatives will be paid up to $10 per business by visiting “local businesses to collect information (such as hours of operation, types of payment accepted, etc.) for Google Maps, and tell them about Google Maps and Google AdWords. You’ll also take a few digital photos of the business that will appear on the Google Maps listing along with the business information”.

And you participate in one of the most interesting and resourceful services on the planet! And if you haven’t heard, Google Maps now has a sky, you can look up as well as down.

Thanks to Bruce MacVarish’s blog where I first read an article about “Google’s social network powered Local ‘Sales Force.’”

A framework is a “set of tools, libraries, conventions, and best practices that attempt to abstract routine tasks into generic modules that can be reused” (Frameworks for Designers, by Jeff Croft, A List Apart, June 12, 2007). Basically a CSS framework, such as Olav Bjorkoy’s Blueprint, is a CSS framework that is designed to cut down on your CSS development time. It provides a CSS foundation to build your project on, with an easy to use grid, with typography and a print stylesheet. I have been reading about frameworks of various funtions including ajax, JavaScript, HTML, and Web 2.0. The concept smacks of templates for hire, which is having someone else do the hard work of designing a stylesheet(s) and you just plug it in and write the HTML structure and save a lot of time in the process.

I think using a “hired hand” to create your CSS is not a good idea for anyone learning the deeper aspects of coding with CSS and XHTML. You simply have to experience the process to become proficient at it. But I like the idea of developing your own framework that includes a lot of CSS features you use over an over. This would be an obvious advantage to anyone working on a large group of projects where there is a lot of similar code. Programmers have used libraries forever to keep various coding components available so they don’t have to repeat themselves over and over. I assume this is the key to object oriented programming also.

So I encourage students wishing to become competent with web design, to study the frameworks out there and learn what it means to design and create your own. In the long run I think it could provide a good learning tool, and give you ideas about how you would want to create your own and eventually, become much more efficient at building creative sites. Below are some resources to get you started learning about these tools and processes of designers.

I would enjoy hearing your responses to these articles and the potential of “frameworks”.

“Design with Web 2.0 frameworks”, .net/July 2007, p. 47-51.

Launching the Web 2.0 framework

A CSS Framework, by Mike Stenhouse

Blueprint Tutorial, Olave Bjorkoy

YUI Grids CSS, Yahoo UI library: Grids CSS