If you haven’t yet seen the two cookbooks put out by MaintainIT, you should take a look. In addition to these resources, they have started a series of free, monthly, 30-minute webinars on topics pulled from the cookbooks.
The first was today, April 16th — Notes from a Laptop Circulation Program. It is archived, so you [...]
A new version of Unicode is now available. Version 5.1 contains:
the enabling of ideographic variation sequences which are needed for Japanese, Chinese, and Korean.
changes to properties and behavioral specifications, which primarily deal with Polish, Portuguese, and Tamil and other languages.
1,624 newly encoded characters
[from Cafe con Leche]
Microsoft is allowing developers to download the first beta of Internet Explorer version 8. They are asking the rest of us to wait until at least the second beta. However, some of the changes they’ve made should be helpful:
URLs in the Address Bar will now have the owning domain name highlighted. For [...]
The XML specification became a W3C recommendation February 10, 1998 and just 10 years old! Not even a teenager yet and note how influential it is.
[from World Wide Web Consortium News]
The W3C has posted a document to help both developers and authors create XML documents that work across languages and cultures. Best Practices for XML Internationalization is divided into primarily two sections: best practices for those designing XML applications and those authoring XML content.
Best practices for authors include:
Specifying the language of content
Specifying text directionality
Overriding information [...]
The first draft of HTML version 5 is now available. This is a working draft and is probably a long way from true implementation. However, it does give us an idea of where HTML is headed. There is also a document which defines the differences between versions 4 and 5. It is an excellent document [...]
NISO has published a best practices document surrounding the implementation and maintenance of RFID use in US libraries (RP-6-2008). The recommendations include:
RFID tags should comply with the ALA/BISG Resolution on RFID Technology and Privacy Principles
Use 13.56 MHz High Frequency tags
Use passive tags, not active
Read range should not be substantially increased
Tags should use standardized AFI feature
AFI [...]
For the second year, the Congressional Management Foundation has reported on the web sites created by members of Congress and their staff. Called the 2007 Gold Mouse Report, the report itself is well written, with insights into what makes a good congressional website, e.g., easy to use and navigate, Section 508 compliance, information on how [...]
The Web Standards Project encourages the use of web standards in software used on the web — browsers, in particular. They have a quick way to tell if browsers are supporting the major standards — the Acid 2 test. If you see a happy face, you’re set.
Internet Explorer has been one of the [...]
I teach Cascading Style Sheets, so as a result, I try to keep up with the specification. Versions 1 and 2 were relatively easy to incorporate. However, with the next version(s), the World Wide Web Consortium has decided to break the specification into pieces, or modules — the Cascading Style Sheets Snapshot 2007. [...]
