The Problem with Web Apps

What it looks like to an outsider is that many web apps are the work of lone developers. And what the developers lack is technical writing skills. Wonderful as the apps are, the support and help files are dismal.

Web apps, Twitter spinoffs, iPhone apps: they are everywhere, sprouting like bluebonnets after a long Texas rain. Everyone loves them. Developers are creating them as fast as they can in hopes of finding the magic app that will go viral and make a career.

It looks to me, an outsider, like many of these efforts are the work of lone developers. What the developers lack is technical writing skills. Wonderful as the apps are, the support and help files are dismal.

I suggest that a bit of an investment in a technical writer (someone like me who enjoys explaining things in simple terms) would help the app succeed and be adopted by more people. Does anyone agree with me, or do you think that support and help files are a waste of time and money?

Look what happened to Zappos when they decided the most important thing they had to offer was good service. Developers of web apps need to think about providing clear information about their product for their users.

Communicate for success!

Accessible web applications

Christian Heilman talks about how to make web apps accessible at the panel on accessible web applications at the European Accessibility Forum in Frankfurt.

Accessible web applications

This is the presentation where he was quoted on Twitter as saying “web design is a form of autism.” Listen and find out what he meant.

Could FairShare Help You?

FairShare is one of several web apps that will follow your copyright protected content. If you think your content is being used without permission, FairShare is a way to track it.

Start by setting up the content your want Fair Share to watch:  your blog, your photos, or any text that you publish. (To track images, you have to enter your name and email in a separate screen. Click the “Learn about FairShare for images” link to do this.)

Provide a URL of a blog feed or whatever the content is you want to track. If you are tracking a static page with no RSS feed, it takes a bit of extra work on your part to create a feed for it. The FairShare Help files explain how to do this. Select the Creative Commons License that you want to apply to your work.

Finally, create an account. You provide your email address, create a password, and complete a CAPTCHA form to get started. Your email address is what FairShare uses to notify you when your text or images are found published by someone else. You must agree to the unreadably formatted terms of service, as well.

There is a paid subscription service with additional features. Once you have an account set up, you can add more sites for FairShare to monitor.

Brighten up your April Fool’s Day, revised

I haven’t seen all the April 1 stuff yet, I’m still working on my first cup of coffee, but I don’t think anything will be able to top this: SaveIE6.

I’m seeing on Twitter that the site above has been up for a while, and isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke. But it’s still hilarious.

Here’s a great one that is real for today: Purpose of Conficker Worm Uncovered.

Resources for Learning SVG

Shelley Powers from Burningbird sent out a tweet this morning that IE 8.1 is going to include support for SVG. If you haven’t started paying attention to SVG yet, now is the time.

A good place to start learning about SVG is Burningbird. Shelley has been working with it on her personal sites for quite some time and has explained in numerous posts how to make it all work. The site itself is the best example, so look under the hood and kick the tires. Here are a few of Burningbird’s posts:

You should look at Shelley Powers excellent book, Painting the Web. Chapter 7, which clocks in at just over 50 pages, is called SVG Bootcamp.

Other learning resources on the web include,

Open source vector graphics software is available from Inkscape. There’s a Java based SVG toolkit available from Batik.

Other books, neither of which I’ve read (I have read Painting the Web and recommend it.)

Useful LInks: Twitter apps, RDFa, WCAG 2.0

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.

How Educators Can Get the Most from WaSP InterAct

The framework is ready for education and ready for teachers. It contains competencies that can be measured. Exam questions for assessing the competencies are provided. Assignments are provided that address the competencies, with grading rubrics to help with evaluation. More . . .

Educators, this one’s for you. The WaSP InterAct Curriculum Framework is now available. The curriculum is for high school, community college and universtity level teaching of  Web Design and Development. The focus is on using best practices and web standards to create students trained and capable in the skills most needed by industry.

The eleven completed courses (with more to come) that comprise the initial release are grouped into learning tracks.

  • foundations
  • front-end dev
  • design
  • user science
  • server-side dev
  • professional practice

The eleven currently available courses are:

  • Internet Fundamentals
  • Web Design 1
  • Web Design  2
  • Accessibility
  • DOM Scripting 1
  • Findability
  • Digital Design Production
  • Information Architecture 1
  • Internship
  • Professional Practice
  • Independent Study

If that list does not contain a course you need or currently teach, there are ways to help WaSP develop future courses. First download a PDF of the framework to see the entire range of courses planned. You can help with the courses still in the planning stage in several ways. You can contribute

However, the best way to help with this curriculum is to TEACH WITH IT.

Teach With It

The framework is ready for education and ready for teachers. The courses are modular. That means you can cherry-pick parts and add them into your current classes to see how they work and fit. Or you can choose to take an entire course and use it from start to finish in a semester. Read the Integration Guide to get a comprehensive set of ideas on using the curriculum.

The framework is ready for education and ready for teachers. It contains competencies that can be measured. Exam questions for assessing the competencies are provided. Assignments are provided that address the competencies, with grading rubrics  to help with evaluation.

The framework is ready for education and ready for teachers. Books and resources are listed for core assignments, exploration, online assignments, and external reading assignments. Lab and discussion assignments are suggested. Student blogging assignments are provided. Other outstanding curriculum materials such as the Opera Web Standards Curriculum materials are integrated with the InterAct courses.

Why?

The WaSP InterAct curriculum emphasizes best practices and web standards. Why? The InterAct site says,

Web standards are technologies that are free to use, and work the same, regardless of device or platform. Provided you build a website using web standards and best practices, it will be usable by anyone, regardless of their location, the device they are surfing the Web with, and any disabilities they may have.

Standards for HTML, CSS, JavaScript and the other languages that make up the fabric of the Web are critical for its continued growth and success.

Give students a strong grounding in web standards based education and they are ready for the demands of industry, better equipped to find a job in a fast-changing environment, and prepared to step into a job without any additional training from an employer. This last point is a big one with industry, because many companies spend large amounts of time and money training college graduates to do the things they should have learned in college.

Look at the testimonials in support of the WaSP InterAct Curriculum Framework. The people with the jobs to offer your students are stepping up and saying, “We want to hire people with the skills they get from this curriculum.”

Let others know

If you use the materials in the curriculum, let others know. Let the WaSP people know, and offer feedback on the problems and successes you found with the curriculum. It’s a living, changeable framework and your input matters. If you write about your experiences with the curriculum, make sure the WaSP InterAct team knows about it so they can take what you are saying into account.

Let others know who might be interested in teaching with the materials so that the curriculum is adopted in more and more classrooms.

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