Especially #6.
The article is called “Six Ways to Take Your Web design From Good to Great“. Read it and be enlightended.
Filed under: tips, best practices, strategies, web design
September 27, 2009 • 5:13 pm 1
Podcasts for passive participation while doing the dishes
Last week you joined the online communities that will help you when you run into trouble with your CMS, as well as provide you an opportunity for giving back to the OS community yourself. Another way to participate and be “in the know” is to subscribe to podcasts that pertain to your CMS.
I like to listen to podcasts on my Zune when I’m doing dishes or cooking dinner. I’m always amazed at how much I learn! It’s like you are in the insider club even if you live alone on a mountain somewhere (which is kind of what it feels like when you are home with small children 
). You can use any MP3 player, or you can listen directly on your computer.
There are several new podcasts that have started this summer, and what I’ve heard of them has been interesting to say the least. Here are the ones I subscribe to; I highly recommend you take the time to listen in.
WordPress
- WordPress Weekly
- Press This (check out “the future of WordPress” episode, especially)
Joomla
- Joomla Juice
- The Joomla Podcast (Joomla 1.6 news from one of the founders, Andrew Eddie)
- 10 Minute Joomla Tips (Video Tutorials)
Drupal
Let me know if you enjoy them.
Filed under: tips, dishes, Drupal, Joomla, life with kids, news, podcast, tutorials, wordpress
September 22, 2009 • 1:53 pm 2
Painless IE testing for Windows machines
Click to see screenshot.
As you know, it is difficult to test designs in IE 6 without running a virtual machine or using some other technically cumbersome solution. This may or may not be important to you. If your client’s site caters to the technorati crowd, it’s doubtful you have to worry about IE6. However, if your client’s users are government or public sector types, there is a very good chance that a high percentage of them are using IE6 as their current browser (and that they don’t have the option of installing a newer browser).
Last year Microsoft released Expression Web, its standards compliant Dreamweaver competitor, to rave reviews. SuperPreview, a component of Expression Web, allows you to view a web page as IE6 and IE7, 8, or 8cv would render them simultaneously. Microsoft has made SuperPreview a stand-alone program available for download free of charge. I tested it while it was in Beta, and although I loved the concept, I couldn’t get it to work correctly. Sometime in July, however, they released the final version and I can now recommend it to everyone.
It actually does a lot more than just render the page; a number of views and comparisons are available. Also, as you hover over and click on various elements, it will give you information such as element type, width, and placement. In this way it reminds me of certain aspects of the Web Developers toolbar on steroids.
Overlay Layout view. You can see the text renders slightly differently in an annoying kind of way.
In the screenshot I took of one of my client’s pages, you can see how the placement of the image is offset slightly in the IE6 view in the side-by-side comparison. There are quite a few different layouts to choose from, however, and if you want to know exactly what the differences are between the two renderings, you can choose the overlay layout. That was very revealing!
If you are interested in learning more about how to use SuperPreview, see the following resources:
Download Link:
If you try it, let me know what you think.
Filed under: tips, browser testing, expression web, free, ie6, layout, software, superpreview, tools
September 20, 2009 • 3:35 pm 2
Template Starting Points
It seems that some of you are already trying to alter themes or create your own with another theme as it’s base. In this class you will modify a template to fit your site by altering the CSS /images and you will create your own theme from scratch. Which one you use on your site in the end will be up to you; both skills are important.
In creating your own template, I do think it is useful to have a good solid framework from which to start. I do not mind if you use a “blank” template as a starting point for this task. You may wonder which ones are the best to start with, right? These are what I would use. If you find another starter theme or template that you think is better, please let me know so I can add it.
All of these templates are written in valid XHTML and come with pointers on what ids and classes to use to write your style sheet, which, as you may have found out, is invaluable.
- WordPress: Sandbox
- Joomla: Blank template from Bulletproof Templates
- Drupal: Zen
Filed under: tips, blank theme, Drupal, Joomla, theming, wireframe, wordpress
September 19, 2009 • 4:08 pm 0
IRC, baby
Well, we had a pretty good experience on IRC last night in that we got online and managed to get into the same channel. Towards the end of the connect session we were talking about making my test channel #dmac217 “permanent”; well I’ve registered it now so hopefully that will work for the time being. In the meantime, I will be working on creating a channel for Cerro Coso’s Digital Media and Computer Sciences departments, with the idea that we can be an ongoing help to one another both as students and alumni. It’s Justin’s idea and I think it’s a good one! (If you have no idea what I’m talking about, I suggest you watch last night’s recorded Adobe Connect session. )
I found a great resource of IRC/freenode ettiquette and expectations, so please read it before you spend very much time in the channels.
One thing I mentioned last night was a website where folks could share code back and forth. If you get into any PHP tweaking of modules, etc., you will want to use Pastebin in order to get help and coding advice. In fact, I think I will encourage my XHTML students to use it next semester when dealing with coding problems! It’s a great resource.
See you online!
Update: Pastebin is good for posting programming code, but if you want to help debug HTML and CSS, use Webpage Test.
Filed under: tips, alumni, chat, connections, debugging, freenode, IRC, pastebin, troubleshooting
September 9, 2009 • 2:10 am 0
What is RSS anyway?
I realize that not all of you are familiar with RSS feeds and how you might want to make use of them. The following article does a really good job of explaining the hows and whys of RSS in a very simple way. This may also convince you that it’s worth the effort to configure RSS feeds for your site if you were thinking of doing without them for the time being.
ProfHacker 101: Keeping Up Online–an Intro to RSS
Filed under: tips
September 8, 2009 • 12:06 am 0
Copyright Issues Website
I came across a site called Plagerism Today that focuses on copyright issues, especially in this new world of all sorts of information being available on the web for the copying and pasting. They also produce a podcast. Take a look; this is something that you should be aware of as you start working with clients and producing your own original content. I thought of posting this immediately because of the problem that Maggie recently encountered.
(Yes, even clients can be plagerists. I was contacted by a photographer who claims the photographs on a website I built for a client were hers, with links to the photos on her own site. The client had presented them to me as his own. Of course I took them down immediately.)
Filed under: tips, best practices, copyright, web 2.0
September 3, 2009 • 9:39 pm 0
Use a Feed Reader to Keep Track of Blog Posts
You might find it easier to track what your fellow students are doing on their blogs if your subscribe to their blogs on a feed reader. You can use an online reader like Google Reader, or reader embedded in your browser, like Wizz for Firefox, or the built in RSS capability in Internet Explorer 7 and 8. I prefer to use a desktop solution, because I’m familiar with it mostly, called Feed Reader. I have installed it and added all of your blogs to my reader. Below is a screenshot of what it looks like.
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- Feedreader Layout
What is nice about it is that you will get popups when a new post arrives, you can see new posts by the fact that a blog title is bold, and you can read posts right in the reader. I have exported my subscriptions to an OPML file, or a file that is an xml file that contains all of the RSS feed urls in one document. If you want, you can download this file and add it to the feedreader of your choice.
(Right click on the above link and choose “Save Link As”)
What's that you said?