News : February 2003
Another issue of Digital Web Magazine is now online for your reading pleasure. In this issue Jesse Nieminen takes up the challenge of pitting Adobe’s GoLive 6 against Macromedia’s Dreamweaver MX is what is perhaps the most aggressive side-by-side comparison reviews of WYSIWYG editors on the Web. It’s a close match, perhaps too close to call. See what product Jesse sides with in the end he may surprise you.
For those in the Portland area, CHIFOO has put together the first of several “next day workshops” which will be on “Scenarios for Information Architecture and Experience Design in a Future of Increasing Change” presented by Nathan Shedroff. The event kicks off at 9AM on Thursday, March 6, 2003. You can read more details about this event here. I highly recommend you RSVP for this even as soon as possible, space is limited.
Another major site, sitepoint.com, redesigns to W3C standards.
One of the things we love about CodeBitch at MacEdition is her ability to produce great resources with a no-BS perspective. The lastest treasure at MacEdition is a Guide to CSS2 Support in PDA/Handheld Browsers. Maybe the development team at ESPN.com can take a few tips from this guide. Sites to check out using a PDA or Cell Phone are the Web Standards Project site (of course) and Wired News. [from LCKY]
The newist addition to the Digital Web Magazine staff: Madison Mackenzie Parrott was born at 6:41 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 21. She weighed 7 lbs., 5 oz. Mom and baby are doing well. Congrats Kimmie and Britt!
ESPN.com has been redesigned using CSS for layout. Many comments have already been made at Jeffrey Zeldman Presents, Signal Vs. Noise, What Do I Know, and WebWord. Some concerns have been raised about the content on their browser upgrade page. The funny thing is that no one has commented on the more critical issues of what ESPN.com did wrong that could be easily corrected.
For example, I am not sure if anyone bothered to actually test the site in Netscape Navigator 3.x or 4.x, see if it would load in WebTV, reviewed the results on a PDA or cell phone. I did. And it was ugly. Despite what the browser upgrade page may make you believe about older browsers seeing this content, the fact is that they will never get there. Netscape Navigator 3.04 choked on the excessive and poorly written JavaScript and did one of two things in my testing. It either 1) crashed the browser completely… or 2) displayed approximately 5 JavaScript error and upon clicking “ok” for each one the user was given a page full of unreadable programming syntax (i.e. script on the screen). WebTV never did get the chance to click the “if you are using WebTV… click here” link on the upgrade page. Instead, it attempted to process the ESPN.com page as if it was capable of rendering the content but failed miserably. The result is a page that looks as if Picasso designed it. The cell phone tests that I have done all failed to produce any content or layout in WML or simplified HTML.
Don’t get me wrong, I think ESPN.com is a huge step forward, but I think they should do some more aggressive testing before they call it a day. Ultimately these older browsers should see a page that looks plain and un-styled, simply text with hyperlinks and minimal layout in order for the user to still have access to the information and for the site to still be functional. It’s not like it can’t be done, Wired.com was able to do it successfully.
For those in the Portland area, I will be speaking at the STC: Willamette Valley Chapter’s Online Communications SIG meeting about Structure with Style: An Introduction to Inclusive Web Design for the Future. I will cover CSS in detail and it’s role in a semantic web. This presentation is scheduled for the evening of Monday, Feb. 24th. More details on their site.
After a short unexpected hiatus, Digital Web Magazine is back with a new issue, a new host provider and a new newsletter system. With thanks to Acta Divina we now have a fully sponsored hosting solution. The new newsletter system will now require new subscribers to verify their email addresses with the system before they can be subscribed. Now on to the content… In this issue we have another edition of Jeff Lash‘s IAnything Goes column that covers the topic of “A User-Centered Approach to Selling Information Architecture.” Also in this issue James McNally authors a great review of Hillman Curtis’s book “Making the Invisible Visible: Process, Inspiration and Practice for the New Media Designer.” That’s all for this week. See you next week with more great content.
In addition to the extensive lineup of keynote speakers and panels, a couple of new twists have been added to this year’s South by Southwest Interactive Festival. I’m particularly excited that the Third Annual Weblog Awards will be presented from the Trade Show Day Stage on Sunday, March 9. You can score a free trade show pass to see Bloggies here. I hope to see you there, and don’t forget to check out the panel Steven Champeon and myself will be presenting on “Inclusive Web Design for the Future.”
Do the names Vannevar Bush, Richard Dawkins, or Theodore Nelson ring a bell? Probably not, but they were the few who helped pave the way for Tim Berners-Lee logical design of the World Wide Web. Dennis G. Jerz authors a great, but lengthy, article which covers these inventors (or would-be inventors) entitled On the Trail of the Memex. Vannevar Bush, Weblogs and the Google Galaxy. Hot on the tails of Google’s purchase of Pyra Labs. [from InfoDesign]
WebWord publishes a great interview with Jesse James Garrett entitled Talking About the Elements of User Experience.
The cat is out of the bag; AIfIA to Operate IA Slash. Of course there are still a lot of details to work out, but you can expect the IA Slash site to grow as a central source of IA news and information. [from InfoDesign]
PPK writes a great article on Evolt.org that covers the idea of user-driven functions. What shall we do with the W3C DOM? The article weighs the pros and cons… an open for discussion topic at least. Should the users have this kind of control over the sites? Will the users understand how to control the sites this way? …etc. A good read.
Last call for entries into the WThRemix, Design and Code Challenge. February 17th is the deadline.
Adam Greenfield of v-2.org interviews Jeff Lash and Karl Fast about the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture. [from InfoDesign]
In other news, WaSP recruits 17 new members. The list includes Douglas Bowman, Chris Casciano, Andrew Clover, Rick Cecil, Anil Dash, Meryl K. Evans, Matthias Gutfeldt, Chris Kaminski, Ian Lloyd, Holly Marie Koltz, Anitra Pavka, Anders Pearson, Mark Pilgrim, April Siegfried, Stephanie Troeth, Thomas Vander Wal, and Jessamyn West. Meanwhile Eric Costello, Sally Khudairi, Michael Sweeney, Jeff Veen, and Jeffrey Zeldman have moved to emeritus status. [from Living Can Kill You]
It appears that Google has bought Pyra (Blogger). [from What Do I know]
If you are seeing this post, the DNS has up/files/includes/date.cssd.
Digital Web Magazine is in the process of transitioning over to a new server. We may experience some down time and perhaps a few email address that bounce. We will have everything back in place as soon as possible.
Juanita Benedicto, of NewBreed Librarian fame, has redeigned her personal site. She has added CSS to the mix and done away with the frames. Very nice!
Is Design Art? have your opinions ready and participate here.
The SXSW Website Competition finalists have been announced. The Redesign/Relaunch section is going to be a tough call: Art*o*mat, Jeffrey Zeldman Presents, Kaliber/files/includes/10.css000, PeterFunch.com, Scene 360m. My hats off to all on the finalists list for creating such supurb sites. Also, there is still time to vote for the People’s Choice Award.
This week we are happy to announce the publication of “Toward a more standards compliant Internet Explorer” which proposes a new use for the CSS doctype switch. Authored by John P. Gallant, AKA Big John. Also in this issue is another edition of Peter-Paul Koch’s column, Keep it Simple, which is entitled “Form follows function” which covers Louis Henri Sullivan’s coined phrase from a web perspective. The piece is a great follow-up to the Christopher Schmitt interview last week. We will see you next week with more great content.
Joe Gillespie publishes another issue of Web Page Design for Designers. In this month’s issue Joe covers Designing Effective Banner Ads and I am happy to say the article is very effective and to the point. I can’t tell you how many people want to throw their ad money away on the wrong target audience, well… I could actually, but there is a fee attached with it… anyway, he makes some great points. If you are considering banner advertising anywhere you should read this article.
If your design office posse is a bit short, just addonestaff.