Category Archives: Web Design/HTML
New Look for W3C Site?
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has long been the place to go for standards dealing with the web. The problem has been . . . well . . . that the site has always looked . . . old.
They now have a beta for their new site:
So much easier to use and cleaner!
[from W3C News]
Emulator for Digital Materials
Research being done in Europe hopes to create KEEP – Keeping Emulation Environments Portable. The goal is to create a universal emulator that can open and play obsolete formats from the 1970s on. Although we normally think of digital documents, this emulator hopes to also allow people to work with multimedia files and games.
[BBC]
Top Ten Techie Traits
I couldn’t resist this one, even with #10 staring at me. Roy Tennant has pulled together the top ten traits for any techies today. If you’re looking to get into or stay in this field, I’d say he’s hit the nail on the head!
- The ability to speak simply and directly about technical topics, either without using jargon or by explaining technical terms simply
- Knowledge of a somewhat popular programming language
- Humility
- Facility with one or more databases and one or more indexing tools
- A sense of humor
- Ability to configure and manage web server software
- Skill at user interface design
- XML and XSLT proficiency
- Ability to manage projects well
- The intelligence to stay away from top ten lists ;-)
Catalog Interfaces Getting Better
When the North Carolina State University Libraries integrated their library catalog into their website, I was excited. Why do we move our patrons to a different interface just to search our collections?
Now, other libraries are following suit and, thanks to Roy Tennant, I’ve seen the cleanest implementation yet at Villanova University. Only four tabs in the upper right hand corner. They are using VuFind as the ILS software overlay.
Cool!
Mobile Web Best Practices
The World Wide Web Consortium has announced a recommendation that will help us create web pages for mobile devices — Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0.
It includes a list of 60 best practices, which are provided at the beginning of the document and discussed further into the document. A definite good read!
XHTML Version 1.1
XHTML Basic has been updated to version 1.1. From the W3C website:
The XHTML Basic document type includes the minimal set of modules required to be an XHTML host language document type, and in addition it includes images, forms, basic tables, and object support. It is designed for Web clients that do not support the full set of XHTML features; for example, Web clients such as mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and settop boxes. The document type is rich enough for content authoring.
XHTML Basic is designed as a common base that may be extended. The goal of XHTML Basic is to serve as a common language supported by various kinds of user agents.
Fonts on the Web
When creating web pages, most of us are stuck with the few, basic fonts that are used across most operating systems. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to tap into the exact font we want — regardless of what is installed on our users’ computers? It’s possible.
Cascading Style Sheets version 3 has a property called @font-face. It allows a font to be stored on the web server and is called when that web page is served. It is supported by the current versions of Firefox, Opera, and Safari. There is, of course, one hold-out — Internet Explorer. As usual, they have their own way of doing it, called Embedded OpenType. There are pushing to make it an open standard, but for now, it muddies the water, as we cannot actually use either well.
Adding Functionality to Your Website
Engagedpatrons.org was created for public libraries to add functionality to their websites that will encourage community interaction. Each service is meant to be easily added to your website – no programming necessary. Currently, they are offering:
- Library Events — also includes searching, online registration, email alerts for patrons, RSS feeds
- Library Blogs — basic blog functionality, but can look like your library’s website
- Google Maps Mashup — Use Google Maps to show maps/locations on your website
- Contact form
- RSS feeds
- Custom Web-enabled Databases — if you have a local database you’d like to have available via the web, they can help.
All of these services are free to public libraries that receive less than $1,000,000 in total income per year.
100 Cheat Sheets
The Cheat Sheet Cheat Sheet: Everthing from HTML and CSS to MySQL and Perl to Blogger and WordPress to general web technology. Definitely worth a look.
HTML 5?
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 and even a scan of it would give you an idea of their direction.
Some of the major changes that might be in the final version include:
- Different, and shorter, DOCTYPE statement
- New elements that identify more specific structure of a document, e.g., section, article, header, footer, nav, audio, video
- New attributes that work with existing elements like form elements
- Elements that have different meanings, e.g., a without href is a placeholder, b is a span of text that is offset stylistically, i is a span of text in an alternate voice or mood
- Elements not to be used, e.g., center, font, frame, acronym
- Attributes not to be used include those that deal with presentation, as CSS is preferred
- Some APIs are included, e.g., playing video/audio, drag and drop
Neat stuff — I’m looking forward to the next draft to see how much of this stays and how much more is coming!
