Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
Web 3.0, a documentary movie by Kate Ray describes the semantic web. It’s about 15 minutes long and worth every minute.
iPad Assistive Technology/Disability Round up from ATMac is a great resource list.
I can’t let Lena Horne’s passing go unremarked, even though it’s completely off topic here. A great woman.
A fun Twitter app, a good explanation of RDFa and the semantic web, and a simplified checklist to use with WCAG 2.0 specs. More . . .
There’s another fun web app to use with Twitter. It’s called Twitter Grader. It isn’t quite as useful as some of the apps growing up around Twitter, but it’s fun to play with and get your “grade.”
RDFa, Drupal and a Practical Semantic Web at CMS Wire is a terrific piece in clear language that explains what a sematic web is and how RDFa fits into that concept. It also will help RDFa newbies grasp what it’s all about.
WebAIM’s WCAG 2.0 Checklist. WebAIM has simplified and organized the WCAG specs into an easy to use format with simplified explanations of how you can meet the standards. This would make a great handout or required reading assignment to add to your students’ reading lists. It could also be useful as a grading rubric for assignments that are required to be accessible.
Useful links, including the Twitter fan wiki, a short essay of mine, the results of the state of the web survey and a look at bold and italic.
Thanks to a tip from the fabulous Miraz, I discovered the Twitter Fan Wiki and its page of apps that work with Twitter. I was just reading in Macworld yesterday about the Twitterific app for the iPhone, but this page reveals many more choices.
The Gift is a story of mine, totally off topic and only for the incurably curious about me. Published at The Elder Storytelling Place.
A Blog Not Limited reflects on the results of the state of the Web 2008 survey. At a Blog Not Limited, we see,
What surprised me the most (in an entirely unpleasant way) were the findings for use of HTML elements:
Seventeen percent use <b>
Fifteen percent use <i>
Seriously? Someone please explain this to me.
I can explain why I occasionally use <b> and <i>. There are times when I need a presentational effect that does not involve emphasis or strong. I don’t want to give the impression that the marked up text should be more important or in any way distinct. I just want a presentational effect that will be apparent to the majority of users and won’t confuse users with assistive software.
If I don’t have control over the CSS for a site, and I write for a lot of sites where I do not, then how can I achieve benign presentational effects like bold or italic without using <b> or <i>? Em and strong have semantic meaning that I may not want to attach to text. Therefore, I may resort to bold and italic for appearance sake.
Microformats University – 100+ Articles and Resources is a helpful collection of microformats information.
Semantic Web Patterns: A Guide to Semantic Technologies at Read/Write Web: “The Semantic Web means many things to different people, because there are a lot of pieces to it. To some, the Semantic Web is the web of data, where information is represented in RDF and OWL. Some people replace RDF with Microformats. Others think that the Semantic Web is about web services, while for many it is about artificial intelligence.”
Webkit achieves Acid 3 100/100 in public build from Surfin’ Safari. It is humanly possible, people!