Summary of eHow articles for February

Links for the numerous articles I posted in February on eHow. More . . .

Denver at dawn

I had an absolutely fabulous time at Web Directions North in Denver this month and got to meet and talk with some really interesting people. In this photo,  you see Denver just waking up with the sun just touching the tops of the buildings.

Then I returned to reality and wrote some stuff ‘n things for eHow.

Dear Adobe, Here’s an idea for you

Dreamweaver and RDFa. Can they be friends? More. . .

Dear Adobe,

I know you’ve been learning about RDFa (Resource Description Framework). You guys pay attention. I’d love it if the folks working on Dreamweaver could add some RDFa support to the next version of Dreamweaver.

Here’s my vision of this. The already existing metadata developed by The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative could simply be added as a menu, perhaps a new DC menu. Using that menu, a developer could quickly select from a list of existing properties and insert them in semantically appropriate locations on a web page.

Here’s an example of some RDFa code from the W3C:

<div xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/">
<h2 property="dc:title">The trouble with Bob</h2>
<h3 property="dc:creator">Alice</h3>
...
</div>

Wouldn’t it be lovely if a busy front end developer using Dreamweaver could just grab the xmlns or one of the dc properties from a menu and apply it to the proper semantic element?

The other day I heard  Michael (TM) Smith say,

Semantic markup is markup that encodes meaning into content. Semantic markup transforms a document into an information source. The information becomes usable in unanticipated ways when the structure is reusable.

I know that the hand coders and the standardistas out here in web page land will take to RDF without your help. But what about Adobe’s core user group? Don’t those developers need to be describing their data with machine-readable structured meta data, too?

I  hope you will give the idea some consideration.

Sincerely,
Dreamweaver’s  biggest fan,
Virginia

Summary of eHow Articles for January

A list of the thrilling and educational how to articles I wrote at eHow this month. And tulips! More . . .

Yellow Tulips

One of the gifts I received for Christmas was a jar with three tulip bulbs in water. They were sprouting by January and bloomed in a few days. This is the first day they opened, eventually all three bloomed. In addition to watching the flowers grow this January, I wrote these articles at eHow.

Organizing topics for blog posts

I post here, I create a daily writing prompt at First 50 Words, I post twice a week at BlogHer I write a number of how-to articles each month for eHow, I come up with a weekly writing prompt for a group at Elderwoman Space and I just agreed to do a twice monthly stint as the “Elder Geek” for Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By. Good grief, no wonder I’m always in search of a topic.

I scour the news, blogs, newspapers, magazines and everything else that passes before my eyes for ideas. Once I see the germ of an idea, I need a way to save the idea for future use, and to start building resources around the idea that will help me elaborate on it when I’m ready to write a full post.

Several tools are available that can help you organize your ideas as a blogger. I have a favorite.

Many people may prefer delicious or digg for organizing links to posts of interest that you want to blog about, but I like Tumblr. With any of these, you can save a link to a post of interest and have an easy way to go back later to find the information when you are ready to write. Here’s my Tumblr page, if you want to see how I’m using it.

I used to keep a text file of ideas for various blog sites I write for, but now I keep it all on Tumblr.

The reason I like Tumblr is that I can add so much information when saving the link that will help me remember why I saved it and what I was thinking about. I leave notes for myself to document how I’m hoping to use the link and how I want to connect it to something else I’ve saved. It’s a little like commenting your code.

saving a link on Tumblr

The dialog that opens when you Share on Tumblr has all sorts of helpful options that help organize ideas and save quotes or other information about the idea.

Tumblr pages are searchable. The one feature I’d like to see at Tumblr is the addition of a tab in the Share on Tumblr dialog window for tags. I put a semblance of tags in the description because I know what I’ll want to search for later. But tags would be an improvement.

One other tool I’m beginning to explore is StumbleUpon. So far, I’m using it to save pages I think are really cool for one reason or another and I’d like to spread the link around for other people to enjoy, too. I’m not using it to collect information I might want to refer to later.

I’d like to hear about the idea saving tools you think are helpful, and why they are especially useful to you. For example, is anyone finding StumbleUpon useful for  idea collecting, or are you using it to spread the word about good sites the way I am?

New Accessiblity Features in IE8

The Internet Explorer blog released a story by JP Gonzalez-Castella, IE8’s accessibility program manager. Here’s a summary of their points and the changes  in IE8 that will improve accessibility.

  1. All users will benefit from the new features. Making software more accessible helps everyone.
  2. Improvements in keyboard use include Caret Browsing feature, Accelerators, Web Slices and revamped Find on Page.  Adaptive Zoom and High DPI support have also been added.
    • Caret Browsing: This works like moving the caret in a Word doc. Select text by holding the shift key down and pressing the arrow keys. Turn it on or off with F7.
    • Accelerators: These will be reached through a context menu key on the keyboard and do chores like translate text.
    • Web Slices: WebSlices are portions of a webpage that you can subscribe to and view from the Favorites bar.
    • Find on Page: Moved to a bar at the top so it doesn’t get in the way of actually finding something on the page.
    • Adaptive Zoom: Rather than magnifying everything, adaptive zoom looks at the elements pre-layout and scales and then redraws them on the screen.
    • HiDPI: Internet Explorer 8 will zoom the content of a Web page to match your Windows DPI Scaling settings, which are set by the user in the Control Pane > Personalization > Tasks > Adjust Font Size (DPI) menu.
  3. ARIA Support: Here’s a whole list of ARIA roles, states and properties that will be supported by IE8. By using Microsoft UI Automation properties and control patterns, all of the ARIA information can be made available to ATs (Assistive Technologies) through Accessibility APIs. This feature is more for use by developers than by browser users.
  4. WinEvents: New WinEvents will notify ATs when the content of a page changes dynamically.

Updates on Aviary

Aviary, the online image editing tool that I reviewed way back in April in An Early Look at Aviary announced updates today. One important point is that the URL is now aviary.com, with no extra dot. The software is out of beta and has added features including a vector editor and other new apps. There’s a free plan and a pro plan. It you were interested in Aviary back in April, take another look now and see if the finished product meets your needs.

Summary of eHow articles for November

We call this Tai Chi position lift hands

Every fall the sandhill cranes return to the Rio Grande bosque and the wetlands along the Rio Grande for wintering. Watching them is a favorite annual activity. This year my Tai Chi instructor suggested we do Tai Chi with the cranes in an Open Space area near the river. A previous Open Space visitor left behind this small toy, which seemed to do Tai Chi with us, at least the lift hands part of the form.

In between several days a week of Tai Chi, I wrote these articles for eHow.

Another great place to observe the sandhill cranes and a multitude of other wintering birds is the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge, near Socorro. For those of you not from the southwest, bosque is Spanish for wood or woodland. The term is used here to mean any low-lying area near the Rio Grande, densely forested with cottonwoods and other deciduous trees.