Category: Software

Useful links: Forms, WeTopia, Moodle, 24 Ways

How to Make Forms more Usable with HTML5 is a good tutorial from Steven Bradley.

The new WeTopia game on Facebook is described by TechCrunch. This game is a perfect example of what Jane McGonigal and other thinkers say about using game theory to create social good.

NC State U evaluates the accessibility of Moodle 2.1.1.

If you are like me and your subscription to 24 ways has been languishing quietly in your feed reader since last December, you know that 24 Ways is back. If not, be sure to check them out and have a great December with 24 Ways.

Useful links: top 25 books, edu conferences, blue beanie day, semantics, Think Up

The top 25 books for web developers and designers from .net is a good list to check to see if you’re keeping up with the latest. I noticed that several of the 25 are from A Book Apart. That led me to tweet this:

Is there some sort of brain implant that would directly feed every publication from A Book Apart into my brain?Sun Nov 13 17:26:02 via TweetDeckVirginia DeBolt
vdebolt

Oddly, there were people on Twitter who didn’t see the humor in that and suggested I should read the books. With my eyes. Because I don’t want you to worry about me, you should know that I am reading them. With my eyes.

Conferencepalooza suggests some good conferences for high ed folks. Check it out, there might be a great one there. You do know that SXSW is holding a special pre-conference for EDU this year, don’t you? It’s SXSWEDU.

Get out your blue beanie and join Chris in giving thanks for web standards on Nov. 30, 2011 – Blue Beanie Day. Why should we give thanks, Chris asks? Because the bums lost!

Installment 3 in a round robin of posts about semantics. This one from Paul Irish explains enough about the first two that you can follow even if you haven’t read them. (Why haven’t you read them!)

Think Up is new software that Gina Trapani announced was out of beta yesterday. It does all of what I was wishing Twitter would do plus more with Facebook and Google+. It’s installed or your server or can run from the Amazon cloud for a monthly fee. I think Think Up is going to be big.

Useful links: Triberr, Hidden, WebVTT

That Tech Chick has a post about a new social tool called Triberr. You might want to give it a spin to see if it increases traffic to your blog.

Hidden is a nice app for Macs. If your Mac is stolen, it sends you a location and photos of the thief.

Recent developments around WebVTT.

People have been asking me lots of questions about WebVTT (Web Video Text Tracks) recently. Questions about its technical nature such as: are the features included in WebVTT sufficient for broadcast captions including positioning and colors? Questions about its standardisation level: when is the spec officially finished and when will it move from the WHATWG to the W3C? Questions about implementation: are any browsers supporting it yet and how can I make use of it now?

Useful links: captioning YouTube, HTML5, or not, Final Cut Pro X

YouTube’s instructions on how to add captions to your video.

How is HTML5 changing web development? An interview with Remy Sharp.

Stop Obsessing over HTML5 and CSS3. Paul Boag has some ideas about what we should be thinking about instead of merely worrying about learning HTML5 and CSS3. What I want to know is does Paul – or any web educator – think topics like those he suggests need to be part of a comprehensive web education curriculum?

Microformats 2 and RFDa Collaboration references where these two are heading and includes a mention of schema.org. [See also: Modifying an hReview to include HTML from schema.org.]

Final Cut Pro Reactions:

BlueGriffon

A new web standards compliant WYSIWYG web editor is now available at bluegriffon.org. Features include that it’s open source and free, plus it does:

  • HTML5 – including forms, video and audio
  • CSS3 – including D Transforms, Transitions, Shadows, Linear/Radial Gradients and Repeating Gradients, Border Images, Columns, Flex Box Model
  • SVG
  • MathML
  • a user interface to work with some important ARIA attributes

It’s based on the Gecko rendering engine and works in Linux, Mac and Windows. Although the software is free, they are selling add ons for a few Euros each. The MathML, for example, is an add on.

You can, of course, toggle between code and design views.

A hat tip to @mollydotcom who tweeted the news.

Proud of @glazou – he made a very sweet WYSIWYG editor. x-platform, HTML5, CSS3, SVG, MathML – very cool! http://t.co/qnoV3CeWed May 11 11:54:36 via Tweet ButtonMolly E. Holzschlag
mollydotcom

Big News from Adobe

In Introducing Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Product Family, Adobe made some announcements important to educators.

First, they are moving milestone releases such as CS3, CS4, and CS5 to a two year cycle. The in between years will get updates like the just announced CS5.5. Here’s what they are doing to the web suite.

For Web folks: huge updates to HTML5 and Adobe Flash authoring tools, enabling designers and developers to deliver mobile applications on Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS, iOS and other platforms — and create rich browser-based content across screens. All the big HTML5 checkboxes are ticked in Dreamweaver CS5.5: jQuery mobile framework integration for browser-based content, PhoneGap’s in, as well as WebKit engine updates.  We’ve also launched Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 Premium and the Flex 4.5 framework now includes mobile support.   Now hundreds of millions of mobile devices can be targeted with content and apps, created through our web tools.  Remember, Adobe tools support the development of both HTML and Flash content, don’t let crazy headlines make you think otherwise.

Secondly, they announced a subscription plan that means users will always have access to the most up to date version of the software for a monthly subscription fee. The Adobe announcement page does not show specific subscription pricing, but an article I linked to yesterday in a Useful Links post does gave a chart of subscription pricing.

Both these announcements are important to web educators, especially the news that Dreamweaver will come equipped to write HTML5.