Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
Yesterday Emily Lewis and I gave a presentation on web accessibility at the Southwest Conference on Disability in Albuquerque. We talked about accessibility tests and what to do with the results of your tests.
We don’t have a slide deck to share, but did create a PDF document with a number of links of interest to the people who attended. We also have some pages of code snippets that show correct code to fix the errors we demoed. Go to our presentation materials.
A big part of being a successful web designer is being innovative, allowing you to set yourself apart from the very large pool of designers available on the web. Whether you draw your inspiration from art, the work of your competitors, everyday objects or any other place, you can bet that your best source will be among the best of your colleagues!
Need a hand getting motivated towards your next beautiful creation of web-friendly art? No matter where in the world you call home, you can join your peers at one of these inspiring web design meetups across the globe:
A relatively small and relaxed event, Brooklyn Beta brings together web designers, developers and web-based entrepreneurs for three days of talks, workshops and social activities that will help you to hone your skills and make valuable new connections; with inspiration ranking as the event’s main goal, you’re also guaranteed to leave Brooklyn Beta with a renewed passion for your creative work!
When and Where: Set to take place from October 10-12, 2012, Brooklyn Beta will be held in New York City, in the borough that is its namesake.
Professional education is the top item on the bill at the HOW Interactive Design Conference, an event that promises to help web designers better at what they do by teaching new techniques and immersing all attendees in fields of design that they’ve not previously experienced.
Lead by industry experts, this meetup of top-notch web designers will consist of three full days of workshops and presentations, each with a unique focus and goal, making for one of the most wide-ranging design conferences you’ve ever attended!
When and Where: Take a trip to the always vibrant city of San Francisco, California from October 29-31, 2012 in order to attend this year’s HOW Interactive Design Conference.
Focusing on the theme of technology that is just around the corner, this year’s Le Web Paris event aims to encompass the idea of Web 3.0 and its evolution from a buzzword to an identifier for the growing social web.
From consumer technology run via web-based applications to the standards of design and development, the topics covered by Le Web Paris are are vast importance to all designers at every level of the web in their quest to stay on the cutting edge of what it means to produce beautiful, functional web design.
When and Where: Use Le Web Paris as your excuse to visit that European center of culture and history from December 4-6, 2012, saving money while you do by locating budget hotels via CheapHotels.org.
Well-known as one of the best professional design events on the American circuit, An Event Apart will spread 12 well-planned speakers and sessions over the course of three days, promising to provide a platform for in-depth learning and inspiration that cannot be replicated anywhere else.
When and Where: Hosted in San Francisco and taking place shortly after the HOW Interactive Design Conference detailed above, this year’s An Event Apart could very well be your second web design conference in two weeks!
Offering a new look and a tweaked itinerary compared to years past, Web Unleashed 2012 will provide one day of hands-on workshops and presentations and one day of informative sessions, including lectures from some of the most exciting names in the web design and development industry.
Focusing on being both deep and affordable, this event is the perfect option for designers who are rarely able to attend industry conferences.
When and Where: The city of Waltham, Massachusetts will play host to this year’s Web Unleashed conference from November 8-9, placing attendees only 20 minutes from downtown Boston and its shopping and entertainment opportunities!
Guest Writer Jessy Troy is the creativity blogger behind TekSocial.
A great new resource for learning web design was announced at webplatform.org. It’s a wiki and participation by knowledgeable web designers and developers is needed. That said, it’s already a huge resource of the best information available.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this effort. The group calls itself the Web Platform Stewards, and includes
Paul Irish has a lot of good ideas about how you can contribute to the site in Why I’m So Excited about Web Platform Docs.
A good part of what I do here and elsewhere on the web as a writer and in my teaching life is keep up. I enjoy learning new things, trying out new ideas, and sharing what I learn with others. I don’t mind investing my time and energy in keeping up. In fact, I love doing it. I’m happy that at this point in my life I can do what I love – that hasn’t always been the case.
I live in a world where I don’t belong. Most people who are fascinated with tech and web accessibility and social media are young people who are still working. I’m a freak (or a time traveler): an elder, retired, who loves learning the newest stuff. Most people my age are afraid of their computers and can’t figure out how to send a text message. I don’t know why but I’ve been crazy about technology since I first got my hands on an Apple IIe. I was not a young person when that occurred, and I haven’t grown any younger since. I sometimes feel I should apologize for being an elder who is interested in topics that everyone thinks belong to the young. What was I thinking?
But keeping up is a double edged sword, because keeping up with hardware and software changes is an expensive proposition. No amount of love and energy can pay for a new computer or new software. My computer is so old it is no longer upgradable. Nor will it accept the latest versions of several of the software programs I use. Even my browser is telling me daily that it won’t be upgraded any longer because my OS is too old for my browser. And don’t even ask me how often Safari hangs.
But, keeping up is where my mind goes, so keeping up is what I’m doing, whether I can afford it or not. To celebrate adding megabucks to my credit card balance, I am writing this, my first post on my new MacBook Pro. After three days of setting up, upgrading software, fiddling with settings, serial numbers, and and mail accounts the world is fast and efficient again.
Sent with great speed from the latest version of MacBook Pro.
Web Evaluation Tools Bookmarklet comes from NCSU. Here’s the description of this very useful tool:
This tool will visually show you any headings, ARIA landmarks, internal links, and tabindex attributes present on a page. This information is useful for examining the structure of a page as a screen reader user would experience it, without having to actually start up a screen reader to test it.
Speaking useful of accessibility tools, the wonderful WAVE tool now has a Firefox WAVE Toolbar. The tool works completely within Firefox so can be used for “intranet, password-protected, dynamically generated, or sensitive web pages. Also, because the WAVE toolbar evaluates the rendered version of your page, locally displayed styles and dynamically-generated content from scripts or AJAX can be evaluated.”
A new study looked at sans-serif typefaces and tested how they performed in different situations where speed was important – such as reading screens while driving. Here’s what they learned. How Sans-Serif Typefaces Affect Readability.
Image by mickey van der stap via Flickr
With so much sensationalism and tragedy, it can be easy to tire of reading the news. But the news can be an excellent resource for graphic designers and marketers. Here are five reasons why you should be reading the news.
When a major story breaks, you can profit by designing related materials or marketing your company along a parallel story line.
Simply browsing headlines can be enough to inspire you to conceive a new design style or marketing strategy.
Watch the business and classifieds sections for companies that need graphic design services. Find undiscovered target customer bases in the lifestyle and features for your products and services. Advertise and sell.
Scour the news and photos for mentions of your main competitors to find out what they’re doing. Then use the information to your advantage.
Read industry-related publications to learn about new tools that can increase your efficiency, return on investment, and your bottom line.
Try reading new publications from similar industries to find overlapping opportunities. You should also skim news you’re normally not interested in; you’ll be surprised at how many opportunities you discover. And if you’re used to reading your news digitally, try picking up a few newspapers and magazines. The various interests represented in such publications can expose you to new ideas that might not cross your mind if you only read the same material.
Start thinking of reading the news as an investment in your own profits, and it can quickly become a go-to source for inspiration.
Guest Author Brian Morris writes for the PsPrint Design & Printing Blog. PsPrint is an online commercial printing company. Follow PsPrint on Twitter @PsPrint and Facebook.
Hackers and Makers: Language Matters is from Curious for a Living. She said, “Yes, language matters. Especially when we’re inviting community. What feels more welcoming to you: A hackerspace or a Maker Faire?”
NIce summary of how the candidates are using social media in the 2012 election. Do you think it makes a difference?
CSS: The Definitive Guide, Fourth Edition by Eric Meyer is a post about much more than the latest edition of Eric’s CSS opus. It’s about how books are marketed, sold, packaged, distributed and even conceived of as entities. As far as I know, O’Reilly is the first publisher to do something like this. I don’t think O’Reilly will be the last. Even if you aren’t interested in the latest CSS book, you need to read this post.
I tweeted about Eric’s post yesterday. He doesn’t completely share my opinion. Here’s a part the conversation Eric and I had then. (By the way, have you noticed how impossible it is to embed a complete conversation from Twitter? Twitter decides for you what tweets you want to include. This is a patchwork and not complete.)
Is this the future of publishing? tinyurl.com/8u83pp2#prebooks #writing
— Virginia DeBolt (@vdebolt) October 2, 2012
@meyerweb It says something to me about publishing in general beyond your particular book. A new idea may have many implications.
— Virginia DeBolt (@vdebolt) October 2, 2012
@meyerweb My mind always goes to the text book market. This type of delivery could be useful there. And in many other ways.
— Virginia DeBolt (@vdebolt) October 2, 2012
@vdebolt Yes, in academic settings it could be invaluable.And in some ways it echoes the way legal publishing works by default.
— Eric A. Meyer (@meyerweb) October 2, 2012