Category: women

Useful links: Liquidapsive, women and CES, @supports

Liquidapsive enables you to demo a site done as static, liquid, adaptive and responsive. Nice to use with students or clients.

Women are the major electronics buyers. What happened at CES 2013 that actually appealed to women?

I’m officially making fun of that potty with the iPad attached until they make one for full-sized commodes. What’s your position on iPads in the john?

@supports API lands in Firefox nightlies examines which browsers currently are heading toward support for @supports.

BlogHer Women and Work Study (Infographic)

The survey included over 1000 women in the BlogHer community. The basic findings show that these women love their work, feel that entrepreneureal spirit about work, believe in mentorship, but still see inequity in the workplace.

The infographic is easier to read if you view it full screen.

You can learn more about the study on BlogHer.

Web Teacher’s Seldom Asked Questions

Okay, never asked questions. Seldom is an exaggeration. But always that philosophical question lingers in the air: why are you here? These SAQs (okay NAQs) will explain everything.

The famous Santorini Sunset

Q: Why are you here?

A: I started here because I wanted to talk about how non-web-standards-based and non-teachable most of the tech books I was using to teach with were. Books are better now, so I mostly talk nice about them.

Q: Do you have any really great tips?

A: I have a lot of tips, but this is the best one. In fact, it is such a great tip I’m calling it Virginia’s Law Against Unintended HTML. It goes like this:

Play with the way your content will look before the content is on the page, not after.

Virginia’s Law Against Unintended HTML is so all-encompassing it applies to blog users and Dreamweaver users, too.*

Q: What’s this teacher thing?

A: Well, I’m an educator. You thought I was a dream in PHP coder? No, I’m an educator. So when I talk about web design or technology or web education, it’s always through that peculiar filter.

Q: Who cares about that web education crap, anyway?

A: Mostly teachers and students and web standards gurus and accessibility advocates and corporate trainers and human resource managers and small businesses in search of a web site. Even self-taught learners scrolling among Google results. Are you anything like those people?

Q: You’re always going on about women. What’s up with that?

A: I support good work from others. I’m not the jealous type so it doesn’t bother me to promote other people’s work rather than my own. I support good work from both men and women, but I love to point out what women do because they are a misused and misunderstood element in the tech world. I’m a woman, so I know this. I’m also old – would you rather I was always going on about old people?

Q: What’s a good book to read about web design?

A: Start with books about HTML and CSS. Read a lot of those. After you get really good at those two things, read books about JavaScript or PHP. I’ve recommended a few books over the years. Read good books about design and Photoshop, too. Read the books I wrote, for gosh sakes, and buy them brand new, not used. Thank you.

Q: What are you learning about lately?

A: I’m quite interested in HTML5 and study it a lot. The new CSS is fascinating, too. I like new ideas. If your job is to produce HTML emails for big corporations, I recommend you study HTML 3.2 a lot. You can make big money by doing things from the old days that everyone else has forgotten how to do. HTML 3.2 anyone?

Q: Has social media changed the world?

A: Wait, I will answer as soon as I update my Twitter and take my turn in Words with Friends. Oh, look what my friend said on Facebook – isn’t that cute? Uhh, what was the question?

*Look! A Footnote: Some people refer to this concept as separation of content from presentation, but I refer to it as Virginia’s Law Against Unintended HTML.

Useful links: spellcheck attribute, blog for good, Eileen Moran, social media parodies

spellcheck Attribute from David Walsh has code examples and working demos.

Alexandra Wrote talks about when the personal becomes political and the power of having a platform in Blog the Change: Social Media Good in 2012. By the way, if you are interested in learning about how to use Pinterest to support your blog and to  gain more blog traffic, Alexandra Wrote is an excellent example to study.

WETA visual effects pioneer Eileen Moran, 60, dies of cancer. She worked on all your faves.

Need a laugh? Here are a bunch of social media parody videos.

#1reasonwhy

I first noticed the uproar over #1reasonwhy in this post: As Of Right Now, Women in Games and Tech Are Tweeting About Industry Sexism, Offering Mentoring To Others at The Mary Sue. I went to Twitter and searched on the hash tag and the number of posts coming in were so rapid I couldn’t even read them before they were gone. Since then, The Guardian has published a more comprehensive post on the topic, #1reasonwhy: the hashtag that exposed games industry sexism.

Here are just a couple of the more hopeful posts out of a sad Twitter stream on #1reasonwhy.

 

 

Will the worst offenders in the gaming industry be changed by the conversation? I hope so. Congratulations to those who spoke out about their treatment, and to those who offered mentoring and help to others.

Useful links: rvl.io, Windows 8, NMWIT

rvl.io, which is pronounced “reveal ee oo” is an online tool that uses HTML, CSS and some JavaScript to allow you to create presentation slides with nice transitions. You can download your finished presentation for offline use, or direct people to it on their site.

The RNIB in the UK did a very thorough analysis of Windows 8 in terms of accessibility.

I’m attending a New Mexico Women in Technology event this week. This event honors women in technology. Since I was a winner last year, I get to attend and helped with the judging for this years winners. The speaker this year is Valerie Plame Wilson, but the real emphasis is on the fantastic women who receive recognition as women in technology during the event. The New Mexico Technology Council also gives several scholarships to high school girls during the event. All in all, an excellent thing.

Useful Links: Meritocracy, Primers, Binder fun

you keep using that word is a passionate rant about the word “meritocracy” in response to the post I linked to yesterday called A primer on sexism in the tech industry.

With even more response to that primer post, Laura Sanders wrote A primer on sexism in the tech industry – by an actual girl. Then Kathy Sierra send an email to Faruk Ateş, who wrote the original post, and later gave him permission to publish her email.

On a lighter note, were you on Twitter last night during the debate? I was, and was surprised by how inane some of the tweets were. But you know what, perhaps humor is the only response to politics in our time. Here’s a TechCrunch report about some of the fun people had at the expense of the Romney: ‘Binders Full Of Women’, Romney Gaffe, Gets Tumblr And 200k Likes On Facebook. It’s just amazing what the Internet and social media allow in this day and age – sometimes we forget that.