Tips, web design book reviews, resources and observations for teaching and learning web development.
Quick answer: WHATWG is the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group. They are working on develping a working draft of HTML 5 and have a site with all sorts of information. The information includes the answer to the burning question “What’s the difference between HTML 5 and XHTML 2.0?” Go find out.
Technorati Tags: web standards
Dan Russell has a couple of posts on sense making over at Creating Passionate Users. Today’s post said something that stuck me as a key element in terms of teaching web design.
The point is that you need to frame things because the act of framing helps to focus on what to do next.
There’s a struggle involved in getting teachers who are used to teaching methods that began with Photoshop comps or tables based design moved over into a way of thinking that emphasizes semantics and interoperability. I think what we have here is a framing issue.
We need to reframe the whole notion of web design. Instead of thinking first about how we expect to make a site look, we need to think first about how we expect a site to be semantically organized. If we organize the content in a semantic manner, we achieve interoperability. Any design can be added to the structure we develop. Or as Mani Scheriar said in a previous post,
Let’s code our XHTML as if we plan to have 10 different designers apply their own unique layouts to it.
This is truly a change in thinking, a new frame for the whole idea of “designing a web site.” We can no longer assume that our web sites will be viewed on computer monitors. There are too many mobile devices out there. More, in fact, than computers. And at least 10 percent of your visitors will be using some sort of assistive device such as a screen reader to obtain your content. We have to think first about content and how it can be coded semantically in order to make our sites operable and accessible for any device. Once that goal is reached, we can think about creating a beautiful appearance for our content.
For those of you planning to attend SXSWi 2007, I invite you to attend my session on Sunday afternoon called “Best Practices in Teaching Web Design.” It’s a 25 minute power session with co-presenter Stephanie Troeth.
Technorati Tags: web design, accessibility, usability, CSS, education, web design education, web standards, sxsw
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has posted a Functional Accessibility Evaluator which takes a new approach to accessiblity testing. Each of the points checked are tied to Web Accessibility Best Practices, which explain in clear language (unlike some of the other online testing tools) what the best practice is and what you need to do to be compliant. An excellent resource for learning and for testing.
Technorati Tags: web design, accessibility, CSS, web standards
A very interesting animated example from MBoffin.com – Designline – A Design Timeline shows a content driven design process. This is the design approach that is considered current best practice.
Mani Sheriar has an article in Vitamin today in which she says something very simple and very radical at the same time. Vitamin Features: Real-world CSS Zen for your site:
“I suggest that we begin to code our XHTML first, independent of what we plan for the layout to be. Let’s code our XHTML as if we plan to have 10 different designers apply their own unique layouts to it. If we can do it that way, then we will be able to execute minor or even major design overhauls without touching a single page in the site. And what’s more, any other developer will be able to do the same.”
Technorati Tags: web design, CSS
[Draft] Before and After Demonstration: Overview: “The ‘Before and After Demonstration’ is a multi-page resource suite that shows common accessibility barriers using practical examples. The demonstration consists of an inaccessible Web site, an accessible version of the same site, as well as information about the demonstrated barriers. This demonstration does not attempt to cover every checkpoint of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) nor to provide an exhaustive list of examples but to demonstrate some key aspects of Web accessibility.”
Technorati Tags: web design, accessibility, CSS, web design education, web standards
Christian Montoya has a series of articles about teaching web design using standards. Here’s a quote from his latest post: Teaching Web Standards | Christian Montoya: “. . . we simply presented the tools and techniques to the students, and showed them what they would be capable of doing. It wasn’t about doing things the ethical way, but doing them the best way. Many students were learning Web design for the first time. They had the privilege of learning the modern way to build websites from the start. By now, we have a class full of students who know, and to varying degrees understand, technologies that many seasoned web designers still have trouble learning. I think this is something to be proud of. The most important thing is that students have learned all of this simply by doing.”
The series begins here and contains several interesting posts so far.