Tip: Using Firefox to Wage a Class War

Firefox has a number of Add-Ons. The one especially loved by web developers, the Web Developer Toolbar add-on, gives you the tools to wage a class war.

What is a class war? I’m talking about a war on classitis, a disease characterized by using classes for just about everything on a page of HTML. Read the complete article . . .

Technorati Tags: , , , , , ,

Visit Web Teacher to read any comments.

Are you using Angel or Moodle?

I just learned about another online teaching and learning tool called ANGEL Learning. I’d be interested in hearing about how it compares with Blackboard and WebCT, if you have any information to share. It uses XHTML and makes some accessibility claims that sound good, but what’s the reality?

This just in: two more content management systems for learning that claim accessibility. ATutor and Moodle. Is anyone using either of these? Can you tell me what you think?

Technorati Tags: , , ,

I want that!

Apple – Boot Camp: “More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.”

I keep saying things like, “This the last car I’m buying. I’ll park this one outside the nursing home years from now.” or, “This computer does everything I need, I won’t buy another one.” Yeah, right. I am so not able to resist the lure of new toys, especially a Mac that runs Windows natively. No more of the agony of Windows PC, where you wait long minutes just to watch a URL you typed appear one-letter-at-a-time in the browser location bar.

I thought one laptop, one set of wires on my desk, one machine with Mac and Virtual PC was just it: the most and the best. I thought that right up until this minute. Now, I’m thinking, I WANT THAT! It will be an interesting exercise in self-discipline, fiscal responsibility, and adult understanding of my real needs to see how long it takes me to buy one.

Now, about that Toyota I’m driving till the end of time . . .

Another big name adopts standards

The New York Times – Breaking News, World News & Multimedia has a new CSS layout with five, count ’em, five columns. It looks good and uses standards with menus constructed of lists and a layout built of divs. There’s a bit of JavaScript directing readers with really ancient browsers to some text-heavy pages for the headlines. Things aren’t perfect yet in terms of standards, but it’s deserving of praise as a step in the right direction.

Today’s big NY Times headline is that Katie Couric is leaving morning TV to become the first woman to lead an evening newscast on her own. I may start watching TV news again just to celebrate!

Technorati Tags: , , , ,

Is it just me?

RSS readers are the greatest. I use the one in Safari as my regular reader. It’s easy to bookmark a feed and I notice when something new pops up because its right there in my browser chrome.

Often, however, I find myself clicking through to the actual blog when I see a fairly long article I want to read. The RSS feed is unformatted and runs the entire width of my browser viewport, an unacceptably long line-length to track when reading. Clicking through to the actual blog brings me to a well designed page where line-length is usually controlled by a columnar layout. This makes for much easier reading, and it looks nicer, too, since most designers have spent some time trying to make their blogs look attractive.

Am I the only person doing this? Is there an RSS reader that is formatted closer to the posting blogs appearance?