News : January 2004
Call for Articles
Digital Web Magazine is now accepting proposals for articles covering web design, web development, information architecture and the web industry in general. If you have an idea for an article and would like to write for us please contact the Editor. Be sure to include a short summary of your articles topic and direction. Unfortunately we can not accept any articles that have previously been published online. Articles are contributed strictly on a volunteer basis. We do not accept advertorials or articles that exclusively market a specific product or service. See the contributor guidelines for more details.
Definition Lists - misused or misunderstood?
You may remember Russ Weakley from such excellent CSS learning resources as Listamatic, Listamatic2, Listutorial, Floatutorial and Selectutorial. Russ writes well and often on many aspects of standards-based web design. His latest article: Definition Lists - misused or misunderstood? delves into appropriate uses for definition lists and how to style them to look like tables, image galleries, calendars and more. See a complete list of Russ' articles, tutorials and presentations.
Community Overload
Meryl finally twisted my arm enough so that i would join Orkut ...yet another friend/business/dating network site like the 200 already out there. I had high hopes for this site because it is backed by Google. Not more than 10 minutes after joining up and adding friends had the site crashed... down... dead... kaput. I just checked, still down. Look, I have 151 connections on LinkedIn, an entire community that I founded grew to about 155 members over night without my help on Tribe.net and continues to be active, and I don't have time to wait around for the slow Friendster servers any more, much less wait for Google to reboot Orkut. Thanks, but no thanks.
reader survey is now closed
The 3rd annual Digital Web Magazine reader survey is now closed. A big thanks to the 486 readers who took the time to complete the survey, it was time well spent. I'd like to take a moment to answer some questions that came up in the survey:
- Yes, we do have a blog. It's called "What's New", it contains daily industry news as well as announcements of new articles.
- Yes, there is a a RSS feed.
- Yes, we are redesigning the current design is from 1998.
- No, we will never become a job board, sorry.
- Yes, we know SurveyMonkey is annoying at times, but it works for what we need it to do.
- No, I am afraid we can't publish more articles more frequently unless readers like you write more and volunteer to help edit and publish them.
blogs in large corporations
DL Byron make a few comments about the adoption rate of blogs in large corporations. I am amazed at the same thing myself. I find the level of adoption for blogs in medium to large size companies this year far greater than I have in any previous year. Is it year of the blog for corps? Well, D. Keith Robinson, Phil Wolff, Nick Bradbury, DL Byron and yours truly will hit on this subject and more in our SXSW pannel "Blogging for Business." We hope to see you there!
sxswBlog
Well, it looks like sxswBlog is back online thanks to Matthew Haughey and Paul Bausch. For those who are planning to go to SXSW, this is a great community blog to find out who else is going and what's going on each night of the conference.
Digital Web Magazine Readership Survey
Only four more days to complete the Digital Web Magazine Readership Survey. Thanks to all those who have taken a few moments to invest their thoughts and feedback into DWM. If you haven't yet had a chance, please take some time before January 31st to complete the survey.
SXSW Web Awards
As a media partner, Digital Web Magazine is proud to bring you the finalists for the 7th annual SXSW Web Awards ...as if you didn't know. This year there are so many good candidates for each award we would have to list them all as our favorites... thankfully SXSW has done this for us. Visit the site to see who the finalists are.
designing on spec
Here is another great post about designing on spec and why it is a bad idea. Rule of thumb: if you are expecting to get paid for your work at some point, don't design anything until your contract is signed.
Document Object Model Level 3 Validation
Document Object Model Level 3 Validation becomes a W3C recommendation today. We are one step closer to a more powerful behavior layer. "DOM Level 3 Validation is a module that provides guidance to programs and scripts to dynamically update the content and the structure of documents while ensuring that the document remains valid, or to ensure that the document becomes valid."
the popularity of web standards
Paul writes about the popularity of web standards. One thing that comes to mind is a conversation I had with Jeffrey Zeldman while in New York... I am not going to repeat what he said as it was a private conversation, but if you read deeply into Paul's post you will see evidence of what all of us face from time to time. People make mistakes, yes everyone should practice what they preach, but that doesn't give you or anyone else a free license to ridicule them when they make an error. Always remember to be thoughtful in your emails, offer suggestions and constructive advice... never blame or demand.
Bongseg.net
Bong's new online portfolio is up. Bongseg.net
checkout the kickass reel.
Molly Day
Well, today is Molly Day. Molly Day is a day to celebrate the woman who has been a source of continual inspiration to us all. Happy birthday Molly Holzschlag, the web wouldn't be the same without you!
home page redesign challenge
Well, we have received a few responses to the home page redesign challenge, but not nearly as many as we had hoped. So to help us out Michael Schmidt at K10k is helping spread the word. The new deadline is the end of the month.
The Daily Standards
Adam Howell runs a great site called The Daily Standards which is "dedicated to recognizing sites that have been lovingly crafted with web standards and the future in mind." This site is worth a bookmark. Very well done.
Web Power Tools
In case you missed Ross and my presentation, here's the links and notes: Web Power Tools.
Business Case for Web Accessibility
Andy Budd makes the Business Case for Web Accessibility. Making your website accessible to the widest possible audience is socially responsible and makes excellent business sense.
new issue of Digital Web Magazine
Here is another new issue of Digital Web Magazine. As you know every so often we are fortunate enough to interview some of the most talented and creative people in the web industry, and this week is no exception. Thanks to Craig Saila we were able to get Dave Shea to answer a few questions. For those who don't know Dave, he is the guy that runs the CSS Zen Garden website as well as mezzoblue.com in his spare time. If you haven't already visited his sites I highly recommend you do. They are perfect examples of what is possible with CSS. On a related note, we are extending our Homepage Redesign Challenge for another week to accommodate last minute entries. Be sure to send in your home page redesign before the end of the month. See details in this post. Last but not least, if you have already, please complete the Digital Web Magazine annual reader survey, it will only take about 15 minutes at the most. We value your input and would like to hear what you have to say about Digital Web Magazine. See you next week.
What are the differences between a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a meta-model?
Woody Pidcock of the Boeing company writes a great article that answers the question What are the differences between a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a meta-model? If you come across these terms often in your work, this is a good place to start.
Web Building Tools
For those in Portland, tonight Ross Olson and I are giving a presentation on Web Building Tools, and some semi-related tools. Click on the link for more details. Hope to see you there.
XHTML-Print
The W3C has announced the advancement of XHTML-Print to Candidate Recommendation. "XHTML-Print is member of the family of XHTML languages defined by the Modularization of XHTML. It is designed to be appropriate for printing from mobile devices to low-cost printers that might not have a full-page buffer and that generally print from top-to-bottom and left-to-right with the paper in a portrait orientation. XHTML-Print is also targeted at printing in environments where it is not feasible or desirable to install a printer-specific driver and where some variability in the formatting of the output is acceptable."
Home Page Redesign Challenge
Only one more day to enter your design into the Digital Web Magazine Home Page Redesign Challenge. We have see a few good designs so far but we would like to see more. Get yours in today!
One of the smaller award shows I look forward to each year is the Weblog Awards. For the past three years Nikolai Nolan has done an excellent job at running the awards for the people by the people. The nominees for the Fourth Annual Weblog Awards
Paul has a great post about Comments and Human Discussion
Dave Shea dives into Type: the Extra Mile
Dirk Knemeyer returns with part three of the seven article series From Brick to Click - Bridging the Divide. In this part Dirk covers eCommerce and Experience Design
Andy Budd writes well about The Importance of Process in Web Design
Often times we find ourselves caught up in the debate about presentation and structure that we overlook some of the things that are key factors to any good web site no matter how well designed or how valid the markup. I am talking about the behavior layer. Now that browsers are finally making their way towards standard compliance and web developers are building valid markup, it's time to look at the interaction of a web site. There is a lot that can be done within a web site or even web application if we take advantage of the behavior layer. In this new issue of Digital Web Magazine
A new issue of Boxes and Arrows
On behalf of Digital Web Magazine we would like to wish Jeffrey Zeldman
Well, I am not sure if Paul Scrivens has a really good idea or a death wish here. In either case Paul critiques Zeldman.com
Dirk Knemeyer informs us that he is publishing a series of seven articles on Thread about eCommerce entitled "From Brick to Click - Bridging the Divide
WaSP has posted another interview in their excellent series. This time it is with Ryan Carver
Issue 167 of A List Apart
Another new year and another new issue of Digital Web Magazine
What would you do?
Both Keith and Paul have posted about opinions in web design. In specific constructive negative criticism
So far 201 people completed the Digital Web Magazine Annual Reader Survey
D. Keith Robinson is taking a informal poll on Page Size (KB)
Dave Shea makes some good points about Abstracting CSS
Great discussion going on at Mezzoblue about What Type of Standards Person Are You?
129 people have completed the annual Digital Web Magazine reader survey
As we know, not everyone has the money to spend on a high-end CMS. Thankfully there are other options, specifically blogs. Here is a great article about Weblog strategies for nonprofits
More the IAs: Thomas find a great paper by Natalya F. Noy and Deborah L. McGuinness at Stanford entitled A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology
Another great article to wrap up the year with: Key Research Findings Related to User-Centered Design
For those readers who are hardcore IAs, here is a great article on How to Make a Faceted Classification and Put It On the Web
Every once in a while you find a true gem on the Web. I am talking about someone who really gets the Web and, for the lack of a better word, is a genius when it comes to technology. It turns out one of those diamonds is back on the market. That's right Tim Bray is looking for work
Dirk Knemeyer informs me that a new site has launched for Information Designers. It is driven by functionality provided from Peter J. Bogaards's InfoDesign site but also includes compelling original content. Yes, that is right, a ezine for information design. Check it out: InfoDesign: Understanding by Design
What a better way to start off the new year than with a thick blanket of snow
