Web Design Topic
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Web Technology
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Just the facts (and more)
Open source can have a transformational effect for companies, and news organizations are starting to figure that out. -
Mix07 wrap-up
Finally made it back to Toronto after a case of mistaken departure and a very bumpy takeoff. -
Seeing the Web’s future
Vegas may be the city you can gamble 24-7, but try to find a decent bar open in The Venetian after 11 p.m.… -
New development platforms
Well, this has been eventful. -
The universal Web is hard to do
Sitting in the keynote for the Mix07 conference, I got intrigued by some of the demos of Silverlight (which is one of the reasons I wanted to come to this). All throughout people like Ray Ozzie have been talking about how its is part of the “univeral web” and can run both on the Mac and other browsers. I happen to to be using a Mac hear (in fact David Crow has the only other that I've seen) and am using Firefox, so… -
CBC.ca’s down
Sadly, it sometimes takes an outside event to put things into perspective. So it was when I saw nothing but a server error on cbc.ca this afternoon. That error (or error message) stayed for at least a few hours, until they managed to create a simplified, yet attractive, homepage for the news. -
When to update a site
Mike Davidson’s thoughts on code promotion schedules have generated a number of interesting comments. Essentially, he began by questioning whether two weeks is too long or too short for releasing Web site improvements. There’s a lot of back-and-forth debating the meaning of “code” but most agree that it depends. (Anil Dash’s clarification of Vox’s scheduling explains in detail how good updates should be managed.) -
Securing identity online
Although The Globe and Mail article suggests it could end spam, the Seven Laws of Identity have little to do with unsolicited bulk email. What the framework could do — which Dr. Ann Cavoukian, Ontario’s privacy commissioner, endorsed and extended today — is reduce spam while protecting what data companies can collect about us. (For a nice summary, download the brochure — or download the full white-paper for more details.) -
The Google Office
Looks like Google is partnering with Sun Microsystems to release a browser-accessible version OpenOffice. Is this the return of the network computer? The re-emergence of the GooOS meme? Is this why 37 Signals finally released Writeboard (which is kinda like a wiki and Writely)? -
ICANN killing the domain name system
I now believe ICANN is intentionally trying to destroy the domain name system. How else can you explain the ludicrous, opportunistic creation of the new “mobi” TLD? And why “mobi”? Is it supposed to be hip? What’s wrong with “mobile”? Web-Graphics outlines one of the largest problems with the “mobi” TLD (as did did Tim Berners-Lee earlier). -
A Royal pain in the…
The man behind the RBC crash and Eric Reguly on how the bank reacted -
Introducing WHATWG
Some frustration, perhaps, has lead to the creation of the YABA-friendly WHATWG. The idea is, in essence, to create new technologies to extend the core Web standards (HTML, CSS, DOM and ECMA Script) and allow developers to created Web-based applications. (MozillaZine offers a good overview.) -
RSS and newspapers
RSS’s relationship with online newspapers is on my brain, and the topic seems to be appearing everywhere: -
RSS review
Push is back, and I don’t know what to make of it this time around. As it begins to reach mainstream penetration, I can’t help wondering whether it will suffer the same bandwidth waste that killed it the first time around (although solutions are being sought). Nevertheless, the kids like it, and J.D. Lasica reviews some of the popular aggregator. For what it’s worth, I just installed the RSS Reader Panel extension for Firefox encourages me to read the updated posts on the original Web site -
TCP flaw
The myth goes that the Internet could survive a nuclear attack. Though it was never true, the network has proven surprisingly robust. But the British government has disclosed flaw affecting the transmission control protocol that was discovered late last year by terrorist.net owner, Paul “Tony” Watson. The result is someone could trick, within seconds, computers and routers into severing connections by restarting. The hack will revealed in detail by Watson on Thursday at the cansecwest conference -
Online-news evolution
Although I know it’s true, I still find it hard to believe I’ve playing with this medium for ten years. Steve Yelvington, though, has been working in it for that same period (for me, it’s only eight). His look back is also a call to arms, challenging online journalism to live up to the potential we once saw in this “new media.” -
Challenging the tarrif; VeriSign wants RFIDs; cross-browser DHTML Behaviors
Not like it was unexpected: Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and a bunch of retailers are challenging the tarrif to be placed on MP3 players. A successful suit could lead to the end of legal downloading in Canada, though. -
Best of 2003; MOZiE; liquid layouts
The New York Times makes smart use of its “E-Mail This Article” feature, and creates a quirky profile of its readers. -
Buzzing: XFN, delicious, RSS and Atom; IE accessibility toolbar; hiking gas prices; year ending
XFN is starting to build some momentum, but I haven’t really bought into the concept for use on this site. Who knows, maybe in the next version… What I do like is proposed method — XMDP — for marking up profiles though. -
Standard bitterness; Safari hacks; Movies for Me
Not sure when everything got so nasty… -
Fixing Acrobat Reader; Peer Review; ThrashBox; subheads;
Been having problems with how slow Acrobat Reader 6 is? Try re-organizing the program’s files. -
Was Wired right? Analyzing canada.com’s subscriptions
Some quick hits: -
In-browser XHTML editor; testing CSS designs; ALA redesigns; Postman has died
A Toronto-based company called Belus Technology has developed an ActiveX-based WYSIWYG editor that produces valid CSS and XHTML 1.1 content. After a quick demo run, it looks to be good in-browser editor, and an excellent replacement for the typical mark-up produced by contentEditable interfaces. It could also be a solution to the problem Tom Gilder raised yesterday. -
Asper v. MacDonald; calling VeriSign’s bluff; future of email
Still more on Asper v. MacDonald, via the Toronto Star media column by Antonia Zerbisias and a press release from Leonard Asper about the aforementioned Canadian Press article. -
Mozilla’s Midas and other browser tools
Tim Berners-Lee mentions in his book, Weaving the Web, that he had originally intended the Web-pages to be fully editable in one application. You load up a page and edit the document within the browser. Amaya does this by default. Internet Explorer has had a couple of proprietary extension for this since 4.0 (designMode and contentEditable). Mozilla introduced its version of “designMode” in 1.3. -
WiFi; TV on the Web; progressive enhancement
WiFi is being pushed into the mainstream consciousness, thanks to Intel’s new chip and some McDonald’s restaurants, among others. -
Internet2; hack HotBot contest
I think it was the dot-coms; once those IPO-bound companies started capturing the media’s attention, Internet2 faded to the background. Webmonkey, though, pulls it front and centre in an excellent four-page summary of the network and the technology behind it. -
HomeSite update; sins of free content
For those who still use (and love) HomeSite, deep within Macromedia’s site is an update for version 5 the Dreamweaver MX version. HomeSite+ 5.2 offers an improved spell-check and search highlighting, customization of the toolbars, as well as some minor XHTML problems. And two of my big pet peeves are fixed: convert tag case no longer converts the DOCTYPE and files now preview properly with Mozilla. -
The year that was
A year-end review, without the predictions, of the Internet in 2002 -
Dean Allen’s Textile; inside HotBot’s new design
Interrupting the overworked-induced silence to point to Dean Allen’s great typography tool, and a new all-CSS design at HotBot (my one-time search engine of choice). Those interested in corporate site development and how things come to be, should read Doug Bowman’s inside-look at the development of HotBot’s new design -
New gig; GetContentSize; XUL; no W3C patents
As has been officially announced, I’m now the Assistant Editor at Digital Web Magazine meaning I’ll be handling interviews, like this one with Jakob Nielson conducted by Meryl K. Evans and Nick Finck. -
Blogging; Contribute
Some of you may have seen this, but for designers itching to get the work out to a huge audience, the Blogger Template Contest may be of interest. -
Fixing Dreamweaver; the blog beat; DevEdge Sidebar
LIFT NN/g is an interesting attempt to solve accessibility problems at the source (i.e., the Web editor) — problem is Dreamweaver is rarely used to complete large Web projects. For those places that do use Dreamweaver all the way through the process, the price could be a little too steep. -
AOL Time Warner Disney; gzip
Looks like AOL is looking for an MSNBC killer. -
No hyperlink patent
One of the stupider patent claims has been struck down. British Telecom’s attempt to charge a U.S. ISP a fee for using hyperlinks was nixed. The judge ruled that the patent may not even cover hyperlinks, saying the backbone of the patent, “BT’s alleged ‘complete address’ — the path name — is by definition incomplete on a network of networks like the Internet.” -
Microsoft removes its fonts; email money
Further proof that nothing ever dies on the Net: yesterday it became public knowledge that Microsoft had removed its core Web fonts from its site. Conspiracy theories were quickly silenced by when typographica asked a simple question. Nevertheless, the core fonts were re-discovered, safely stored by the Internet Archive. I like that these digital packages have both the qualities of both a physical object a transient idea. -
CANOE spams, email thrives
Like the ghost of Hamlet’s father, CANOE Money began appearing to me each night at the same time. Starting Monday I began receiving CANOE Money’s Mortgage Alert, as I requested. Strangely enough, I'd never requested it on the email address I was receiving it at. In fact I can’t recall ever requesting it… -
Standards and steganography
When standards go bad: Chuck Scholton wrote a fascinating study of the problems with the standardized list of country names. -
Uncle Sam wants your email
Canada Post’s epost offers every Canadian a free, secure, spam-free email account. Unfortunately the system is a one-to-many service for sending bills and catalogs from less than 60 organizations to the 210,000 people who have signed up. (An early review of the service by Chuck McKinnon offers a good description of the service and some its usability problems.) -
Bizarro SoundScan; CANOE redesigns
When SoundScan debuted — about ten years ago — it radically changed the top 40 genre, as its rankings are based on sales. The CDDB could therefore be the Bizzaro version of SoundScan as it records how often an album is played. The differences are subtle — as you can see by comparing the resulting Digital Top Ten list with the Billboard 200 — but important. -
Lycos Europe and Web standards; JPEG fallout
Word is spreading fast about Lycos Europe’s planned switch to a valid XHTML/CSS page layouts. Lycos Germany has rolled-out the new look (though it uses tables for layout due to a high portion of Netscape 4.x users), but a version of the valid layout is being showcased at Thor Larholm’ site. -
JPEG patented?!
How come it took almost 15 years for Forgent to clarify “its licensing program regarding…JPEG data compression technology”? Is it because there are only two hits on Google for “US Patent No. 4,698,672” (one of them is a news story about this issue) and none them are for Forgent? -
Net access; Gecko DOCTYPE snifffing
Here’s a couple of administrative-type stories that could have a big effect on how we access and use the Net: -
Blocking AOL
Let the shouting match come north. -
On- and offline reading
Gotta love the weekend rituals. First read the Globe while drinking some coffee (today’s mug: a two-cupper from promoting excite.ca), then grabbing my email and reading the latest Netsurfer Digest, from whence these came: -
Text ads; Sympatico rate hike
Last September, usability expert Jakob Nielsen wrote a column on how to milk text ads for all they’re worth. When Christophe Bruno tried to do the same, in a more poetic manner, Google pulled them. -
DOCTYPE clarity
If you ever wondered what DOCTYPE triggers a browser’s strict mode, Eric A. Meyer has the chart for you. -
Intelligent targeting; new economy unions
Meant to link to this story about DoubleClick abandoning its attempts to target individual users on Friday—quite interesting in light of the shrinking ad industry, and the company’s closure of its Canadian branch. -
Back…
Well, that took longer than I’d imagined. After answering a former students questions about online journalism, I decided I will be adding to the Web Journalism section a FAQ about the craft/industry. One of these days I’ll get around to finishing my five-year-old treatise about online writing. -
The year that was
A year-end review, without the predictions, of the Internet in 2001 -
Content management systems
In anticipation of this site’s switch from an Apache-powered server to an ASP-based one, I’ve been doing experimentation with building a simple content management system. And, in the Net’s typically serendipitous way, an excellent article detailing Salon’s CMS came to my attention via evolt.org’s thelist. -
Flash stats
Some stats on the popularity of the different multimedia players as of September 2001 (caveat emptor: the study was commissioned by Macromedia—the makers of Flash and Shockwave): -
Hackers threaten news sites’ integrity
Online news sites face risks with Web site defacements. -
Computers as writers
Years ago I was asked to participate in an online debate technology will affect writers. In one of my arguments (which I think I still have lying around somewhere, and may post one day), I said that its very possible that computers will be able to write acceptable quality newspaper articles. Though intended as a minor — and by no means original — point of my argument, it became the most fiercly debated topic with many participants refusing to accept the possibility. -
Client-side data manipulation
Finally started to play with XML and XSLT, using it to manipulate some data about some human cannonball performances (a whole other story). I've never had the chance to work (in-depth) with ASP, PHP, or any other database-driven, server-side language, but using JavaScript to access the XML-HTML parser in IE 5+, I was easily able to do some pretty impressive data manipulation on the client-side. -
Cleaning Word
Dean Allen (of Textism fame) has created a little tool for cleaning Word's HTML. Apparently, it can strip out all the nonsense HTML/XML/CSS code Word 2000+ puts in your documents when you save the work to HTML. While I haven’t much use for it yet (both copies of Word I have — one at home, one at work — are the ’97 editions, which surprisingly, generate relatively clean code), I thought someone out there might appreciate it -
Smart Tags and more IE fun
Been quiet here as I’ve been busy with the post-mortem of the Ontario Science Centre’s launch. One day there'll be an article about the differences between pushing out a corporate site and a media site. Over this past week or so there’s been a lot of very interesting sites, articles, and issues which have caught my eye, many of which are listed below for your enjoyment: -
Weblogging journalists
J.D. Lasica writes about blogging as it relates to journalism in his recent OJR column, which profiles a six weblogging journalist. As always, his column was a good read, but it was this month's opening that got me thinking. -
Dot-what?!
A less-than-postive reaction to the domains ICANN approved. -
Give students their own Web site
hat if journalism students were given the oppurtunity to create their own online portfolio that was hosted by the school? This piece looks at how that might be possible. -
Re: Question about Technology
An answer about the effect technology has had on journalism. -
Pushing for You
The first Bytewriter take on the emerging world of webcasting.