What to do, what to do…Part II

World Wide Web Consortium Presents the US Patent Office with Evidence Invalidating Eolas Patent. W3C Director Tim Berners-Lee urges US Patent and Trademark Office Director to review prior art, take action to eliminate “this unjustified impediment to the operation of the Web.” We first mentioned this issue on October 9, with links to sources of information about changes that might need to be made in Web pages.

Tip: If it’s yellow it must be Google

I recently learned from my highly valued Wise Women friends that the source of my yellow form fields was the Google Toolbar. I had been searching my HTML and my CSS for some explanation as to why my form had yellow backgrounds in some of the text fields. Turns out that the Google toolbar (which I like and am not knocking) has an autocomplete option in the Options area. If autocomplete is turned on, the Google toolbar indicates form fields which it will autocomplete by making them yellow. This also explains the mystery of why the form fields looked yellow in Windows but not in Mac, as the Google toolbar doesn’t work in Mac browsers.

Macromedia Curriculum for Higher Education

Macromedia has stepped into the publishing fray with a number of new training products. Macromedia – Curriculum includes a Foundations in Web Design year-long curriculum, a Design Concepts and Technical Guide for Digital Design classes, and a Studio MX 2004 Step-By-Step textbook with a hands-on project for each of the tools in Studio MX 2004.

I haven’t seen any of this material yet, so can’t give you any sort of review. The new curriculum will be marketed in addition to the current publications called Training from the Source available from Macromedia press.