Archive for November 2001

It’s good to be home. I’m exhausted from the two day whirlwind tour of New Orleans wearing not the best walking shoes. As much as I love learning about anything Web and meeting the wonderful people in it, my attention span gets shorter and shorter with each session — so by today’s afternoon sessions, I was a listened-out. It’s not easy as a lipreader to listen to speaker after speaker no matter how dynamic or energetic they are. I will write more later as I just got through whittling 140+ emails down to 60 by removing spam and other quick emails.

Meanwhile, here’s a link from Andy King to Webref’s review of Heinle’s updated Designing with JavaScript.

Tomalak’s Realm pointed out "Web Designers Should Stop Searching&quot from PC World. It urges Web designers to make the site usable so users can find what they need instead of relying on the search button. I agree with the statement that the site should be geared to the users’ needs. Yes, do you hear a "but" coming? Too many factors come to play when designing a Web site: size, audience, nature of the site, etc. etc. Mega-sites have so much to them with different groups designing different parts of the site. Yes, this is where style guides come in handy — but mega-sites probably can’t get everyone together to create one or assign the job to a central point of contact.

Currently, I am drawing my site layout on paper. While determining the navigation, I think of other similar sites to what I have in mind for this one and consider all the things I look for on a regular basis. Despite the foresight, I’m still gonna put that search button in a visible place. Unlike mega-sites, I don’t have mega-bucks or mega-time to have users test out the new site and tell me what navs need to be more visible and invisible.

Head Lemur has good taste as he posted interviews with Shirley and Nick on his Pixelview page. There are other notables you’ll want to check out.

Great day for travel — not…

It’s 32 degrees in Dallas with a mix of rain and sleet. My flight leaves this afternoon and I’ll be armed with plenty of reading should it be delayed. Off to bug everyone in New Orleans. Beeehave!

Woulda loved to add this to my gotchas section, but alas… it’s not there no mo’. Tsk… tsk… New York Times.

Looks like I am underway with redesigning my site and adding new components to it. I wouldn’t call it "seriously" until I actually start doing some mockups in Photoshop, although I did play with the banner a little bit. With my going to New Orleans tomorrow, it will have to wait until returning back to freezing Texas. Meanwhile, I did sketch the site map and some pages. It’s my goal to bring you some cool stuff that would interest you. Don’t want to miss out? <shamelessPlug>Just sign over there <pointing left> to get notified of updates.</shamelessPlug>

I’ve been thinking about redesigning my Web site to add a few sections for articles just for you and to better organize it on the backend. I took a small step and played with the design for the banner. Now, I am trying to figure out what road I want to take for the layout. Complete CSS? A wee bit of tables? I can just see myself going bald from pulling my hair out in the battle to make the site look purty in all browsers. I guess I’ll do some thinking while I am in cajun country.

Webreference has a good introduction to SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics by Eddie Traversa. Me thinks it looks like Java programming without needing the Java Developer Environment. However, you do need a SVG plug-in from Adobe to view this stuff. Like all other plug-ins, it’s free and no different than having a Flash plug-in.

OK, maybe I won’t be takin’ it easy since I’m only going to New Orleans for two nights to attend the Web Builder conference where I’ll be gathering information to write six articles for Fawcette. Now, behave while I’m away, ya heah?

One of the more challenging topics to research and discuss is Intranets since we can’t access them to evaluate them. Of course, that isn’t a problem for Jakob Nielsen. He has posted a column on what he thinks are the 10 Best Intranet Designs of 2001. What caught my eye is DOT! I used to work for Department of Transportation in Washington, DC. I’m sure its Intranet has changed drastically from when I was last there in 1995. Anyway, according to the article, these ten sites "emphasize iterative design and standardized navigation, and feature collaboration tools and content management systems." It was the first Intranet I ever experienced. Thanks to Tomalak’s Realm for the pointer.

The American Thanksgiving weekend has ended and most of us grudgingly head back to the office or have to face the music, er… the kitchen mess. Just what we need — a yellow book titled "Clean the (@#*$ Kitchen for Dummies."

I think I’m gonna order a few of these cuties. Gotta get me the Texas – ’cause I is a Native Texan and I let everyone know it. These would put a smile on anyone’s face after a harsh day. No, I’m not taking kickbacks for mentioning it.

I’ve been watching Shirley redesign her business site, SKDesigns for the last few weeks and it’s been inspirational and educational watching her progress. She has officially finished the design and it’s online with the story behind it. Shirley has done a great job separating style from content, following Web standards, using CSS, and using XHTML without neglecting users who can’t let go of older browsers. It’s hard to have the patience in resdesigning for all the browsers out there and I admire Shirley for that. She has been making me rethink my Web site’s design especially since I want to add a section for original articles and somehow implement CSS (I do use it for fonts), HTML 4.01 or XHTML, PHP, and perhaps a little XML. It is too overwhelming so I end up procrastinating… a rare thing for me. Congratulations, Shirley!

It was good to watch a movie that made me laugh throughout. Cats & Dogs is great fun and creative. My favorite line was when a dog says, “Son of my mom!” As a dog lover, I was glad to see the dogs be the good guys.

WebReview features an article on Web Services, which covers today’s challenges, what is Web services, what it can do for me, and where we’re going with it. We have our information spread all over the place and have to continuously re-enter it each time we go to a new place requesting something. Thomas Powers writes, "This environment, in which we are forced to adapt to technology instead of technology adapting to us, means that applications, web sites, and devices are limited in what they can do for us."

Web Services would be at OUR service by ensuring technology works together and build bridges to one another. The architecture uses SOAP and XML open access technologies in which network-connected device supporting SOAP can call any Web Services regardless of the operating system or service provider.

While you’re at WebReview, jump over and read Chuck Musciano’s article on "Absolute Fixed Positions — Relatively Speaking." One of my biggest CSS frustrations is getting a handle on positioning and controlling it. The article discusses three models for positioning (fixed, relative, and absolute) and how the other elements impact them.

Ack! I wrote a wonderfully comedic piece about this… and then it got lost in cyberblog space. OK, maybe it was not all that. Anyway, Bookpool has extended its design a bookmark contest through January 25, 2002. You can check out many of the submitted entries to see what you’re up against. Wow, some are muy impressivo! It’s gonna be tough to vote on one, two or even three winners. Oh ya, what’s the prize??? $3000 US smackeroos! Even 2nd place gets $2000 and 3rd receives $1000! Not bad for designing for a small-sized item that could possibly get printed.

They say we’re gonna vote on the best bookmark. How the heck am I supposed to do that? I propose they do what PDABuzz did with its PDABuzz Desert Island Survival Contest and (using my best Anne Robinson accent) let us vote off the weakest bookmarks and work our way up to the strongest link.

If you’re not up for the design challenge, you can spend some mondo bucks and save 43% on O’Reilly books at Bookpool. Sounds like they bribed me to say this, doesn’t it? Well, they didn’t and I don’t even get anything if you buy a book since they don’t have a Bookpool Associates program in place like Amazon. Just trying to be a nice gal and letting you know about the big sale on O’Reilly books. I recommend books by Jennifer Niederst and Eric Meyers.