Web Teacher

Important Blog Changes

2007-09-30T12:34:00.000-07:00

As of tomorrow, this blog will undergo a major change. It will switch to Wordpress. This means all bookmarks, RSS feeds, and other elements you may have used in the past will change. Please resubscribe after the change if you are a regular reader and bear with me while I work out the bugs.

Review: High Performance Web Sites

2007-09-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

Summary: increase your loading speed

Sep 28, 2007 by Web Teacher

High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End Engineers

★★★★ This book from O'Reilly (2007) is by Steve Souders. Souders is the chief performance guru at Yahoo! and knows how to make a web site display more quickly.

This isn't the type of book you would use as a class text. However, its a useful reference. It is billed as "Essential Knowledge for Frontend Engineers" but any web site owner can benefit from the 14 "rules" Souders provides for faster download speed.

A sampling of the 14 steps Souders suggests inlcude making fewer HTTP requests, gzipping components, putting scripts at the bottom, avoiding redirects, and making Ajax cacheable.

The final chapter of the book deconstructs 10 top sites. This includes such high traffic destinations as Amazon, eBay, and MySpace. A very interesting chapter.

Technorati Tags: web design, Book Reviews, High Performance Web Sites

Does coolness trump price?

2007-09-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Amazon.com announced today that is it selling MP3 Downloads that are DRM free and work in any MP3 player for 89 cents a song. Since Apple recently bumped the price of its DRM free songs to $1.29, this may be the beginning of a serious struggle for the music download buck. It will be interesting to watch, at any rate. We know that millions of people are willing to lay down their money for a cool phone or a cool MP3 player from Apple, but will that loyalty extend to laying down money for songs to fill up said devices?

Let the party begin!

Teaching by blog

2007-09-25T09:07:00.001-07:00

I heard from teacher Bob Minott about a blog he started as a way to continue teaching while he's away for two weeks on an expedition. He said,

Teachers that are terrified at creating blogs are welcome to view my first attempt at a multi-media blog.

There's an Earthwatch landing page that serves several teachers. When you click Mr. Minott, you read a brief bio about Bob and then see the link to his blog. It is Bob's blog where the action is for his students. He notes,

That is where you will find a variety of things. Hopefully, each teacher will be posting pictures, videos, voice clips and a diary. The blogs should each have a place for student's and teacher's comments. Children are welcome to do this from home, so feel free to give them the web address (all comments are "filtered"). They do not need a Google ID, if they click "anonymous." Remind them NOT to use their last names. Ex: Billy K. , Mrs. Frank's 7th Grade class.

Sound like a perfect way to keep his class back home engaged in the process while providing interesting information and inviting their participation.

What's your favorite Web 2.0 site and why?

2007-09-25T08:17:00.000-07:00

I really like Flickr and Slide. They are both very easy to use and provide a great service. What do you like?

Web Design 101: Floats (in French)

2007-09-22T12:05:00.000-07:00

I've been communicating with Jean-Jacques Solari from YoYo Design about the piece I had recently in Digital Web Magazine called Web Design 101: Floats. Jean-Jacques has translated it into French, including all the example HTML pages that went with the article. Quite a lot of work. Here it is: Introduction � la conception graphique Web: Les flottants. Fun to see it in another language.

A summary of my eHow articles

2007-09-22T07:52:00.000-07:00

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I had accepted the role of Internet Expert at eHow.com. I've been contributing how-to articles since then and have several to my credit now. These are fine-grained how-tos, focused on one concept at a time. I'll continue to add articles there, and am open to suggestions as to what you'd like to know. You can request an article at eHow, or leave a note here with an idea. Here's a list of what I've written thus far.

The definition list

2007-09-21T09:46:00.000-07:00

Definition lists are the neglected step-children of list elements. Many people struggle with how to code something, going through all sorts of complications when all they really need is a definition list. A definition list is meant to include a term and its definition or definitions. But that can be stretched quite a bit, and has been. Definition lists are used for dialog, FAQs, navigation, and photo galleries.

Here is the syntax, which uses dl (definiton list), dt (definition term) and dd (definiton data) to build the list:

<dl> <dt>a term or title or label</dt> <dd>some data about the term</dd> <dd>other possible data about the term <p>perhaps even a block level element such as this paragraph</p></dd> </dl>

That renders like this:

a term or title or label: some data about the term; other possible data about the term
perhaps even a block level element such as this paragraph

As you can see, the default style shows the dt, with the dd indented under it. I used two dd elements to show that a dt can have more than one dd. The fact that a block level element can be nested inside a dd is handy to know, especially if you are using the list to write dialog and a character needs to speak for a number of paragraphs.

So much for the default style. If you add CSS, you can do some of the magic I mentioned before. There is an older but highly relevant article at MaxDesign called Definition Lists: misused or misunderstood that you should read. It gives you some philosophical overviews of the semantics of using definition lists in various ways, but more importantly, it provides a large set of styled definitions list examples. Be sure to look at the examples.

Tip: Using cite in HTML

2007-09-18T09:34:00.000-07:00

It's true, cite can be confusing. It is an element and it can also be used as an attribute. Here's what the W3C says:

CITE:
Contains a citation or a reference to other sources.

What's the proper semantic way to markup a citation of a book title or a magazine title? The answer is with the HTML cite element. The cite element causes the title to be rendered in italics.

How does that "reference to other sources" part work? Well, you use cite as an attribute in those cases. Here are some examples that will make it easier to explain.

Cite: the element

Suppose you read this article in The New York Times. You want to refer to the name of the newspaper in a reference to the article. In other words, you want a citation for The New York Times. Here's how to use cite as an element to create the citation.

<p>I read in <cite>The New York Times</cite> about Google selling ads for mobile phones.</p>

Cite: the attribute

Suppose you want to quote something from the article, perhaps as a blockquote? Here's how to do that. It shows the use of both the cite element and the cite attribute.


<p>According to <cite>Google to Sell Web-Page Ads Visible on Mobile Phones</cite> in today's <cite>New York Times</cite>, </p>
<blockquote cite="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/18/technology/18google.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin">The company said that its new product, AdSense for Mobile, would establish a cellphone advertising network in which Google would match ads with the content of mobile Web pages, much as it does online.</blockquote>

Note that the URL for the article source is given in a cite attribute in the blockquote. A cite can also be used as an attribute in other block level elements such as p.

My web design authors dream team

2007-09-15T06:54:00.000-07:00

The other day I was looking at a web design book with ten authors, one for each chapter. All the authors were men.

I write books about web design. I know some other women who do, too. I thought, it would be fun to put together a team of women to write a book about web design. And, of course, as soon as I had that thought, I started ticking off names of women who ought to participate and write a chapter.

Well, okay, it's my idea, so I get to be one of the authors, don't I? I could do a chapter on what to include in a web design curriculum or best practices in educating web designers. Or something.

I've been looking at the built-in CSS layouts packed with Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 for a classroom seminar I have to give. And I know who did all those layouts. It's Stephanie Sullivan. She writes for Adobe about Dreamweaver. She co-authored a book about Dreamweaver, she's a contributor at Community MX. Her personal business site is W3conversions.com. How about a chapter on Dreamweaver from Steph?

Another writer for Community MX is Zoe Gillenwater. Zoe is an absolute genius about CSS. I know this is true because I've watched her work on the CSS Discuss list. I also know first hand how brilliant she is because she was the technical editor of my latest book. Her personal site is Pixel Surge. Her chapter? Something about CSS, or maybe Dreamweaver.

Then I thought of Liz Castro. I own every edition of Elizabeth Castro's best selling book HTML book. The latest is the 6th edition. The book? HTML, XHTML, and CSS, Sixth Edition (Visual Quickstart Guide). She's written about 10 other books about everything from XML to Blogger. Her personal site is Cookwood Press. She should definitely write a chapter.

The book needs a chapter about blogs, right? How about the co-author of WordPress 2 (Visual Quickstart Guide), Miraz Jordan? She writes the Mactips blog. She's also published articles in a whole lot of places.

A web design does not live by HTML and CSS alone. No, it needs JavaScript. It needs PHP. It needs AJAX. It needs Dori Smith. Poor Amazon can't seem to distinguish Dori from Doris, but look for a title about JavaScript, Java, Mac OS, or AJAX, and you'll know you found Dori. She can add a chapter about programming to my dream team book.

We need something about design strategy in there. Usability, maybe. How about Adaptive Path's Sarah B. Nelson? Her blog is called Cartographies of Imagination, and since it's about collaboration, she ought to be a natural contributor to the book.

The book has to have something about design, right? Who else but Robin Williams knows the secrets of design for non-designers? And we can't forget the graphics side of things. Veerle would be perfect for that chapter. Oh, oh, oh! A chapter on accessibility. By Knowbility's Sharron Rush, naturally. Sharron blogs at NetSquared now.

But wait. There's more!

The book still needs chapters from Rachel Andrew, Shelley Powers (we really need more than one chapter on programming), Kelly Goto, and Molly Holzschlag. I couldn't possibly leave out Molly, she's written 25 or 30 web design books all by herself. And she worked on the Web Standards Project. Oh, that's right, there are other female web design writers from the Web Standards Project, like Shirley Kaiser. Oh, my. Help me, I can't stop. This is waaaayyyyy more than the ten chapters the men needed. Could we add additional quality information about topics the men overlooked? Or a prolog, an introduction, an epilog? Guest footnotes?

I know I'm missing someone really important, too. Who is it?

Cross posted at BlogHer.

Event: She's Geeky (Un)Conference

2007-09-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

Info from She's Geeky:

A Women's Tech (un)Conference
October 22-23 Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA.
Cost: $125 until Sept 30 | $175 after.

The She's Geeky (un)conference will provide an agenda-free and friendly environment for women who not only care about building technology that is useful for people, but who also want to encourage more women to get involved. It is designed to provide women who self-identify as geeky and who are engaged in various technology-focused disciplines with a gathering space in which they can exchange skills and discuss ideas and form community across and within disciplines.

Our goal is to create an open space forum for women in tech to come together to
Exchanging skills and learning from women from diverse fields of technology.

Discussing topics about women and technology.

Connecting the diverse range of women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical geeky field.

This is an unconference so it will have an agenda created by the people who attend.

While we're on the topic of women, I must point out the current issue of Wharton University's Wharton @ Work, which features articles about women in technology. And I hope you've been keeping up with the O'Reilly Women in Technology series, where today Amy Hoy says that she doesn't like articles about women in technology.

Technorati Tags: She's Geeky

My article "Web Design 101" published at Digital Web Mag

2007-09-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

I wrote an article for Digital Web Magazine called Web Design 101: Floats which appeared today. It explains the basics of float. The article gives several methods for containing floats and also some example layouts based on floats.

Technorati Tags: web design, CSS, Web Design 101: Floats

Feds OK fee for priority Web traffic

2007-09-10T07:24:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! News reports in Feds OK fee for priority Web traffic: "The Justice Department on Thursday said Internet service providers should be allowed to charge a fee for priority Web traffic." The report pointed out that, "The agency's stance comes more than two months after Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Deborah Platt Majoras cautioned policy makers to enact Net neutrality regulation."

If you dropped your attention from the issue of Internet freedom recently because of all the other important issues facing the U.S., it might be time to refocus on this issue again for a while. At Save the Internet, you can learn more and participate in the resolution of the issue by sending your thoughts to Congress and the FCC.

Technorati Tags: Net Neutrality

QuarkXPress changes educational licenses

2007-09-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

The latest news from Quark is good news for students who buy QuarkXPress under an educational license while in college. The software can now be used legally in a commercial way after the student has completed college, or even while still enrolled in college. Since a full version is about $750, vs. the $200 or so for an educational license, this is a great opportunity for students to get a deal on needed software before completing college.

O'Reilly's Women in Technology: Hear Us Roar

2007-09-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

O'Reilly Network has a series called Women in Technology beginning now and continuing through September. The series creator, Tatiana Apandi, describes the purpose of the series:

My hope is that the myriad of experiences you read about here will showcase how valuable it is to hear from different women at all stages of their careers and lives. Whether you believe that there is gender inequality within the tech community that we should all work to improve or if you think that there are no issues at all, one underlying truth is that we should support each other as individuals.

I'll give you a taste of what's been said in the first three posts. I hope this will give you an incentive to subscribe to or follow the entire series for the month of September. The first article in the series is Social Engineering by Leslie Hawthorne. She tends to look at her work in terms of tasks, rather than gender specific. Her comments included:

I've never thought of my role in the technical community as being the result of or in any way inextricably tied to my femininity. If anything, in an effort to be the change I wish to see in the world, I've distanced myself from questions of gender roles in my work. If we are all (to be) equal, it seems counter-intuitive to look at my work as informed by my being a woman. I do and I make, I listen and I advise, I lead and I follow, and none of these things are the exclusive purview of women. While others might, I would not argue that either sex has a particular aptitude for any of these things. Still, when I look at what I do and what I make, I far more often than not find women playing a similar role and doing similar tasks: building communities, creating space for creativity and connection to manifest, taking care of mundane and arcane details so that others can focus on executing to a grander vision.

Maria Klawe, in A Fifty Year Wave of Change, said

In many ways, this is the best time ever to be a female student in a technical area. Most of the leading high-tech companies are trying to increase the recruitment and retention of women, and they are doing it for business reasons. They value the diverse perspectives women bring to technical teams and have found that women tend to make excellent project managers because of their people and organizational skills. There are more female professors in science and engineering than ever before, though in some fields (such as biology and chemistry), the numbers are still significantly lower than one would expect given the increased numbers of women receiving Ph.D.s. Is everything rosy for women in technology? Unfortunately, the answer is no. In the computer science (CS) field in which I've ended up working, participation by women has been steadily decreasing at the undergraduate level. Despite hard work by many people, we haven't turned that around yet. Today, the percentage of CS bachelor's degrees granted in research universities to women is at 14 percent, its lowest ever (see http://www.cra.org/info/taulbee/women.html). Many of the top departments are reporting female enrollments of fewer than 10 percent in their CS major programs. The situation at the doctoral level is a bit better, with between 15 and 18 percent of CS Ph.D.s going to women over the last seven years, and the percentage of women faculty in CS departments steadily increasing.

The oh, so fabulous Nelly Yusupova wrote an article called Be a Part of Influencing the Future. Nelly talks about the stereotypic geek vs. the reality of what geeks are and do. She mentioned the lack of geek role models for young women. She commented,

When I started my career, I was lucky to have had many positive role models. I entered the technology field in 1996, just as the Internet craze was hitting its stride and I landed a job at Webgrrls International. Their mission has been to get more women online. Our office was full of technically savvy women from whom I could learn; and learn I did. I am now the CTO of Webgrrls International and the Founder of DigitalWoman.com. Webgrrls International has an outreach program called Team Webgrrls. We go into the inner-city to get girls excited about technology and show them how fun it can be. One of these sessions showcased the different career possibilities in Technology. We had a "career fair" at the Mercy Center for Women and Girls in the Bronx and, as I was talking about my career path, being a geek, and how cool it was, one of the girls said to me "But you don't wear thick glasses!" She now has a different perspective of what being a geek means. It is with pleasure that I am a geek. I love technology and I live it; and, hopefully, I can be that role model that other girls need so much.
We need to change the geek stereotype and start showcasing that geek girls are the hip and cool people in society. We are driving society, creating the tools for the musicians, artists, actors, humanitarians, scientists, and doctors. If more girls knew the broader picture of the technology applications, I believe they would be intrigued to be a part of it. I became an expert at computers and technology by not being intimidated by new information and not giving up just because I did not know something.

Technorati Tags: Women in Technology

Review: Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP

2007-09-05T08:42:00.000-07:00

Summary: a complete course

Sep 5, 2007 by Web Teacher

The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP

★★★★★ The Essential Guide to Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP by David Powers is from Friends of ED (2007). The book is a replacement for Powers' earlier book, Foundation PHP for Dreamweaver 8, but largely revised, rewritten, and with new chapters. The new Spry widgets in CS3 are covered in several chapters.

I very much like the approach taken to most topics in this book. The author takes a look at the underlying XHTML, talks about how to keep things accessible, and warns you when things are not best practice, or still in development (as a number of the Spry widgets are) or just plain a bad idea.

As you could gather from the title, there is more to this book than just a run through the ways you use Dreamweaver to put text on a page. You find out how to set up for PHP, how to install a MySQL database, and how to use phpMyAdmin.

In the CSS chapter, Powers supports concepts I've preached for quite some time, such as to stay away from the Property inspector for fonts. There is a whole chapter on modifiying one of the built-in CSS layouts that are included in Dreamweaver CS3.

There are several chapters dealing with data, data tables, data access, searching data.

This is a very complete, helpful book to anyone who wants to learn more about Dreamweaver CS3 and use it to maintain dynamic, database driven sites. It is not for the complete novice with Dreamweaver.

If I were teaching a Dreamweaver course on a level that included working with databases, I would be quite happy to use this book. It's thorough, it supports standards and best practices, and it's clearly written.

Technorati Tags: Book Review, Dreamweaver CS3 with CSS, Ajax, and PHP

New technology allows the disabled to control devices by clenching teeth

2007-09-01T12:33:00.000-07:00

From Popgadget:

There's nothing more exciting than new innovations in assistive technology that can help disabled or elderly people live fuller, more independent lives. This particular hands-free device, developed by researchers at Osaka University, is worn on the head like a hairband, with either end equipped with microcomputers and infrared sensors to detect your movements when you press your back teeth together.

Technorati Tags: Accessibiity

Five Recommendations for Blog Day 2007

2007-08-31T06:22:00.000-07:00

What is Blog Day?

BlogDay was created with the belief that bloggers should have one day dedicated to getting to know other bloggers from other countries and areas of interest. On that day Bloggers will recommend other blogs to their blog visitors.

With the goal in mind, on this day every blogger will post a recommendation of 5 new blogs. This way, all blog readers will find themselves leaping around and discovering new, previously unknown blogs.

These have to be blogs I discover outside my normal, everyday reading list, according to the way I read the description at BlogDay. I can't simply recommend the blogs I've had in my list of recommended blogs since back in the day. Here are my new and wonderful finds.

Notes from the Trenches: I discovered this blog while following a thread about the Edwards family taking their children with them on the campaign trail. What I found was an articulate and funny mommy blog with engaging writing. Mommy blogs are definitely not my usual territory, but the writing is so good here it drew me in.

eLearning Queen: This is a blog about online and distributed training and education, from instructional design to e-learning and mobile solutions. A Susan Smith Nash blog, this is a treasure trove of educational ideas, videos, articles, and provocations.

Techsploitation: This tech, science, sex, and pop culture blog is the work of Annalee Newitz. If the topics covered sound like quite a combination, you know that you're in for a geek thrill ride.

Curb Cut: An accessibility blog I never heard of before? Yes. And it's a good one, written by Christopher Phillips. Topics include accessibility, disability, formats, and learning.

My Mom's Blog: Stories, videos and lots of fancy stuff by 83 year old blogger Millie Garfield. Expand your horizons, children.

These BlogDay2007 recommendations are cross-posted at BlogHer.

Technorati Tags: BlogDay2007

Review: The CSS Anthology

2007-08-27T07:26:00.000-07:00

Summary: A handy resource

Aug 27, 2007 by Web Teacher

The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks and Hacks

★★★★ Rachel Andrew's 2nd edition of The CSS Anthology: 101 Essential Tips, Tricks, and Hacks is now available from Sitepoint. The book is essentially a reference, the sort of volume you grab when you need a specific answer quickly. It uses the question and answer technique.

The 101 tips cover a wide range of CSS information. A random selection of questions include:

How do I add borders to images?

How do I make a horizontal menu using CSS and lists?

How do I add a border to a table without using the HTML border attribute?

How do I hide some CSS from a particular browser?

How do I decide when to use a class and when to use an ID?

The book is in full color, which is nice, even if not entirely necessary. There a web site where a reader can download all the code used in the book.

The tips advocate best practices. Each answer is clear, concise but complete, and ready to be used. All in all, a useful reference.

Technorati Tags: The CSS Anthology, Book Reviews

Event: Best in the SW :: Flash Animation & Motion Graphics Conference

2007-08-24T06:21:00.000-07:00

Animators, Flash developers, and other motion graphics creators are gathering in October for Best in the SW :: Flash Animation & Motion Graphics Conference. There are some top level speakers and great learning opportunities. Be aware that this event is in Albuquerque at the same time in October as the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, so airlines and hotels will be in short supply. Decide early if you want to attend so you can get your reservations set.

Technorati Tags: Best in the SW Flash Animation and Motion Graphics Conference

Tip: Make a slideshow with Fireworks CS3 (or not)

2007-08-23T07:06:00.000-07:00

My latest Web Teacher Tip is a test drive of the new slideshow creator in Fireworks CS3. The article is on a separate page so as to accomodate the completed slide show. Read about slideshows here.

If you don't own Fireworks, I suggest other slideshow creators you can try.

If you have any comments to add, return to this post to leave them here.

Now Being Eric Meyer is almost a reality

2007-08-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

Remember this review, in which I compared a book by Eric Meyer to Being John Malkovich, saying that reading it was like being in Meyer's brain? Well, now you can almost do that. Web Assist and Eric Meyer are offering a product called Eric Meyer's CSS Sculptor. For a temporary price of $99, you get 30 CSS layouts from the brain of the man himself. The layouts work with Dreamweaver 8/CS3 on Windows or Mac. Oh, my.

Construct an online quiz

2007-08-22T07:47:00.000-07:00

Quiz Press is a small software tool that makes quizzes and converts them to a combination of Flash and HTML for online use. It costs $50 and works on both Mac and Windows.

Users must have Flash 7 to work the tests. There's a free demo. You can only make a 5 question quiz with the demo version, but I downloaded it and made a quiz. Take a run through my example quiz.

I tried one of every sort of question it will make: true or false, fill in the blank, cloze, multiple choice and short answer. You can have the results emailed to you, and you can require that students include their name (I didn't put that in my example quiz.)

Drawbacks I saw were that the quiz requires Flash, and there is no management of results on the back end to help the teacher track things. You'd have to deal with individually emailed results. However, I think many people might find this a useful bit of software.

Technorati Tags: Quiz Press, Education

National School Boards reports on social networking

2007-08-17T11:13:00.000-07:00

The National School Boards Associaton just published a study called CREATING & CONNECTING//Research and Guidelines on Online Social—and Educational—Networking as a PDF file.

The study was comprised of three surveys: an online survey of 1,277 nine- to 17-year-old students, an online survey of 1,039 parents and telephone interviews with 250 school district leaders who make decisions on Internet policy.

According the the NSBA Media Advisory on the report, these are the key findings:

96 percent of students with online access use social networking technologies, such as chatting, text messaging, blogging, and visiting online communities such as Facebook, MySpace, and Webkinz. Further, students report that one of the most common topics of conversation on the social networking scene is education.
Nearly 60 percent of online students report discussing education-related topics such as college or college planning, learning outside of school, and careers and 50 percent of online students say they talk specifically about schoolwork.
Students report spending almost as much time using social network services and Web sites as they spend watching television. Among teens who use social networking sites, that amounts to about 9 hours a week online, compared to 10 hours a week watching television.
96 percent of school districts say that at least some of their teachers assign homework requiring Internet use.

With almost 100% of today's students reporting that they use online technology such as social networking, chatting, texting, and blogging the NSBA has some observations and recommendations for education and educators.

Technorati Tags: Social Media, Creating and Connecting, Education

In plain English

2007-08-13T06:17:00.000-07:00

A tip of the hat to Lorelle on Wordpress for pointing me to the great series of technology videos from commoncraft.com/blog. This series of videos (also on You Tube) explain things such as RSS, Wikis, social bookmarking, and more in plain English. Here's the one about Wikis for your enjoyment and as an example of how the videos work.