I'll be giving a brief talk tomorrow on the advantages of using web standards to a group of web developers from local school districts.
I thought I'd post the slides. There isn't anything here that will be new to anyone who has read Zeldman or followed the evolution of web standards for the past few years.
Also, I somehow feel compelled to apologize for the barren look of my slides. Two reasons:
a) The focus of the talk is on what I'm saying, not the pretty pictures on the slides.
b) We don't have a standard PPT template at work yet, so I'm sticking with the minimalist default for now.
Finally, here are links to some of the resources I mention in the talk:
(Update) And here's a link I wish I had seen before I gave the talk:
Gerry McGovern, Be a web editor, not administrator:
Somebody needs to be put in charge. Somebody who has real authority. Somebody who can say no, that’s not being published. Somebody who can say, take that down, it’s out of date. Somebody who can say, if you don’t have that content to me by Tuesday, there’ll be hell to pay.
From James Robertson comes mention of the Australian Government's list of "better practices" in a variety of website-related topics.
I've skimmed over a few of these, and they look quite well done. They're not quite "how-tos," not really articles, and not exactly heuristics. Rather, they are very comprehensive lists of things to consider and think about as you undertake specific web projects. I'd say that following these checklists would help pretty much any project turn out okay.
Topics covered include:
Providing Forms Online
Website Navigation
Testing Websites with Users
Use of Cookies in Online Services
Providing an Online Sales Facility
Use of Metadata for Web Resources
Archiving Web Resources
Managing Online Content
Selecting a Content Management System
Implementing a Content Management System
Website Usage Monitoring and Evaluation
Online Policy Consultation
Knowledge Management
Designing and Managing an Intranet
Information Architecture for Websites
Implementing an Effective Website Search Facility
Spatial Data on the Internet
Digitisation of Records
Access and Equity Issues for Websites
Marketing E-government
Hmm...Microsoft is getting deeper into identity management. (I care mostly because I'm working on a project in the identity/authentication realm.)
Lou Rosenfeld, on a visit to my fair city, commented on the new downtown Seattle Public Library. Fellow Seattle-ite Oren Sreebny posted on the library, too. So, I guess I'll chime in with my two cents.
The new library is a must see for anyone interested in architecture or libraries. It qualifies as perhaps the most interesting civic space in Seattle. And it's always fun to have a building done by a superstar architect like Rem Koolhaas (check out his project proposal).
It's amazing to see the amount of excitement and hoopla surrounding the opening of a library. Think about that for a second. It's a library. And about 30,000 lined up to get inside on opening day (I was one of them!). And, I heard there were lines the next day, too. Wow! (Check out the press coverage.)
There are a couple of interesting findability innovations:
a) They put call numbers on the floor, in big (removable) rubber mats. Nice.
b) The stacks are in one long spiral, meaning that the books aren't broken up by floor or room divisions.
If you're near Seattle, come on down and check it out. And if you ever visit, put it on your sight-seeing list.
I think everybody is a bit skeptical when they hear "education" and "video game" in the same sentence. I know I get visions of edutainment (leaning more toward the "'tainment" than the "edu") or someone trying to pass Quake off as educational. But, the NY Times has a very interesting article on a company that is creating an educational history simulator:
Making History starts in the 1930's. Students take on the roles of various European leaders, making decisions on taxes and spending, trade policy, international treaties and military action. The simulation engine calculates the effects of each player's actions and moves the game forward, sometimes with results that differ strikingly from actual events.
It's worth a try, I guess.
I've been following a number of discussions around the educational uses of weblogs. The latest entry at Weblogg-Ed, despite a dreary title ('EduBlogs as "Slow Motion Distributed Car Wreck"'), shows both sides of the story. A couple of the positive quotes:
And I have a handful of teachers who are interested too because their students are showing signs of learning more effectively with the use of Weblogs. They articulate argument in writing, they synthesize what they have read and discussed, and they research more effectively when they are asked to annotate sources and information. Not that any of that can't be done with a Weblog, and not that it's happening across the board.
"The building of a community through weblogs is exhilarating. It's truly the best way to learn." And that's the thing. For Anne, and for me, this has become one of our greatest learning experiences. And that in itself is motivation enough to keep looking at ways to make this work in the classroom. Will it work for enough teachers and students to make it worth continuing our collective efforts? I guess we'll see.
I've long thought that weblogs might have a positive impact in the classroom. But, it isn't going to be a magic bullet.
I've had a number of conversations with some really smart ed tech folks in the past few days. I've been asking about the types of online tools that could be useful for students or teachers. One of the more astute comments was: "it isn't the tool that matters; its how you use the tool." This clearly applies to weblogs as well.
Good advice from D. Keith Robinson on the subject of redesign a website:
- Make sure you really need a redesign first. There are many, many times when it might not be worth the risk, let alone the time and effort.
- Set concrete, realistic goals for your new design and stick to them. Don’t get too crazy.
- Let your visitors know it’s coming beforehand.
- User test your new design before you launch. At least have a few “user representatives” go through the site and offer feedback.
- Consider a staged approach instead. Maybe you just need to enhance portions of your site, not the whole thing.
- Consider a beta version to let people try it out first.
- Gather feedback about what your visitors would like from a redesign before you begin.
- Respond to feedback (both before and after relaunch) and make changes if needed.
I'm trying the incremental change approach with my current website project. By making a number of small changes and tweaks over time, we can avoid pulling the rug out from under our users. But, as Robinson says, if you're going to pull the rug out, at least give 'em warning first.
I like this thought from Ian Bicking in a post on becoming a great software developer:
Besides tackling challenging problems -- and making mistakes -- I think it's important to be opinionated about what you're doing. This applies to any craft, not just software. It's better to be rash and mistaken than to be withhold opinion, or to simply defer to the opinion of others. (Of course, none of this works if you are stubborn and won't change your opinion, because than you'll be stuck with premature and incorrect opinions.) But after making an opinion, you must of course be reflective and thoughtful, and have a bit of humility, so you can recognize where you were right and where you were wrong. And somewhere in this process you should be developing an intuition, but you probably won't realize its arrival, nor will ever be clear exactly where it came from.
Sharing opinions, as Bicking mentions, is a critical skill for developers and designers, I think. "Whatever" is rarely an acceptable answer to any question. Think about the work you're doing, and how to make it better. If you can improve on an idea, do so. Take a stand. Get creative. Know why you think the way you do, and be prepared to back up your opinion.
But, another critical skill is knowing when to "fold 'em." You might find yourself in a situation where you've stated your opinion, it has been noted, and yet the decision comes down contrary to your position. To often, we're inclined to hold on to our opinion when it would be better to accept the decision and live to fight another day. Unless you're creating software soley for yourself, you'll need to answer to a variety of stakeholders, including management.
It's not all on the developer, though. A good part of the deal involves management creating an atmosphere where opinions can be offered and heard, if not always acted on. This isn't always easy, but it is vital for a successful development effort.
This is entry number 500 in my humble weblog. I've been at this since September, 2002. Number 500 seems worth celebrating...so here's a nice dump of interesting links I've collected over the past week or so:
Every once in a while, I'll check out the server stats for this weblog. In yesterday's logs, I noticed that one person found their way to this site by typing the following phrase into a search engine:
"a panda walks into a bar"
Of course, this is referring to a post I wrote about "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves," a nice and humorous little book on grammar.
Naturally, I typed the aforementioned phrase into Google to see where I landed in the rankings. As of the moment I'm writing this, I'm the number one hit for this phrase! (I'm number 3 when you put the phrase in quotes.) Nifty!
I've just finished speaking to Bob Boiko's IMT 582 (Strategic Planning and Eval.) class. This is one of the courses in the Information School program I finished last year, so it was fun to come back and speak about Information Audits to the latest cohort of MSIM students. I really enjoyed giving the talk, and I hope that the students got something out of it, too (although I remember the difficulty of paying attention around noon on a Saturday...).
37signals' Jason Fried describes a good idea for requirements documents:
Like most specs, this spec details the key features and wish list for the web-based application. However, after each feature description they boil it down and say “at the very least” it needs to do this. So, in other words, we’d love it if it would do A B C and D, but at the very least it needs to do A.
Christina Wodke recently pointed to a couple of nice pieces on "innovation":
BusinessWeek's profile of the design firm IDEO: "The Power Of Design."
Doblin's "The Ten Types of Innovation."
Two recent articles touch on how web pages are structured (from a code point of view).
Michael Cohen, writing in A List Apart, "Separation: The Web Designer’s Dilemma":
With all the discussion about separating presentation from content (and structure), it’s easy to lose track of the goal. So let’s step back, define our terms, and take a look at why it matters.
Andy Budd, "An Objective Look at Table Based vs. CSS Based Design":
Over the years there have been many great articles extolling the virtues of CSS based design and bemoaning table based design. However there have been very few articles looking at things from the other side of the fence. This is probably because you really have to understand and use CSS based design before you can criticise it. Yet once converted, few (if any) people go back to the old way of coding.
Tim Bray posted a nice piece on web services and Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), specifically focusing on some very interesting work being done in Ireland:
Reach is an agency of the Irish government concerned generally with government services to people and organizations, and specifically with E-Government. They are building reachservices, a large piece of E-Government portal and integration infrastructure.
Bray also points to Reach's online documentation. I've skimmed over a few docs, and it looks like it's worth further invesitgations.
Update: Microsoft's Pat Helland describes SOA in a short video.
I've noticed a couple of nice new resources for those interested in enterprise-level information management (or, as it beginning to be called, enterprise information architecture):
Tony Byrne's "Enterprise Information Architecture: Don’t Do ECM Without It" (eContent).
The April issue of ACM Queue, focusing on Enterprise Search. (via Unstruct.org)
The UW's Oren Sreebny blogged the Common Solutions Group spring meeting. Here's a couple of talks that look interesting:
Rather listen than read? Here's a few things that look promising:
Makes me wish I had an iPod so I could listen to this stuff on the bus...
The past week or so has seen a number of interesting web-related articles:
Happy reading!
There are plenty of in-browser WYSIWYG editors out there, and most of 'em produce pretty marginal code. Looks like XStandard is different. Too bad its an ActiveX-based product, limiting it to IE and Windows.
(via Web Standards Project)
I'm mid-way through Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, which may be the most entertaining book you'll ever read on punctuation. Lynn Truss, the author, really carries this book through her distinct style and voice. Standing alone, the subject matter doesn't go very far (its punctuation!!). Truss's (or is it Truss'??) voice shines through. Bringing this mostly random comment back to the topic at hand: a good, strong voice can take ordinary material and inject with much needed verve. I'm reminded of this when I read most of what is posted on commerical websites.