New Adobe Fireworks CS5 Tutorial

The tutorial has been updated for Adobe Fireworks CS5:
Adobe Fireworks CS5 Banner Tutorial

New Adobe Photoshop CS5 Tutorial

The tutorial for Adobe Photoshop has been updated for CS5:
Adobe Photoshop CS5 Banner Tutorial.

The Growing Importance of Social Media

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn ... the list can go on and on. Social media seems intertwined with our daily lives. Check out Erik Qualman's slick video that answers the question, "Is Social Media a Fad?"

The statistics to support the statements in the video are available at Socialnomics.net.

HTML5 Online Conference

If you've been looking for a quick way to get up-to-speed on HTML5, check out ThinkVitamin's HTML5 Online Conference on April 12, 2010. It's four hours of online presentations from some leading edge web developers:

• An Introduction to HTML5
  
• HTML5 Canvas, Video & Forms
  
• HTML5 Web Sockets, Web Workers, and Geolocation Unleasehed
  
• HTML5 Storage APIs
  

Purchase HTML5 Conference Ticket Here

CS5 Launch Announced by Adobe

It's here — the new version of Adobe's Creative Suite, CS5. Adobe will launch Creative Suite 5 during a webinar on April 12, 2010.

Google Moving Forward on YouTube Accessibility

Google recently announced that their pilot auto-captioning project will be expanded to include all English language videos on YouTube. Not only is this a huge step in increasing the accessibility of YouTube content, auto-captions are also useful in searching for video content. Although speech-to-text technology is not perfect, the owner of the video has the option to download the auto-generated captions and improve them. The service will expand to include more languages in the future. More information on the announcement. More information on YouTube captioning.

Interview Posted at WebProfessionals.org

Wondering if web development/design may be right for you? For a brief overview of the web development programs at Harper College and a description of the career, check out my interview at WebProfessionals.org.

Universal Design for the Web

The Center for Universal Design defines universal design as "the design of products and environments to be usable by all people, to the greatest extent possible, without the need for adaptation or specialized design." See http://terrymorris.net/universaldesign for a video overview of universal design for the web.

Awareness of universal design by web developers has been steadily increasing. Web accessibility — often left until the last moment — has garnered increased attention and is now more typically integrated into the design and coding process. Accessible web sites, with alt text for images, heading tags used in an organized manner, text navigation links, and captions or transcriptions for multimedia are more easily used not only by visitors with disabilities but also by visitors using a mobile browser. An accessible web site may also help with search engine optimization.

Here are some resourcs to jumpstart your accessible design skillset:

• Web Accessibility: 6 Reasons Why Its Important


• Accessibility Jargon Overvidew


• Tools for Conducting an Accessibility Review

Apple Announces "iPad"

The long awaited tablet device from Apple was announced today. The iPad, a touchscreen tablet computer that access the Web via WiFi and the AT&T network. More about the iPad.

CSS3 RGBA Color

Looking for ways to use transparency and color? Check out RGBa color, part of the CSS3 working draft, to configure both color and alpha (tranparency) with CSS. All major browsers with the exception of Internet Explorer (are you listening, Microsoft?) support RGBA color. 24ways.com offers a brief overview of RGBA Color.

A List Apart Survey

A List Apart is conducting their annual survey of web professionals. Check out http://alistapart.com/articles/survey2009 to take the survey. You might also be interested in the analysis of the 2008 survey results.

Technology Predictions for 2010

Wondering what's in store technology-wise for the new year? Check out Newsweek's technology predictions for 2010. The most intriguing is the long-awaited Apple tablet netbook, described as a 10-12 inch full color touch screen tablet device that can access the Web, online newspapers, and books (and may possibly run Mac OS X). And if the price really is as low as rumored (possibly as low as $600) — sign me up!

Visible Tweets

Jump into the twitterstream and explore your favorite topic on Twitter in a visual way at http://www.visualtweets.com. This could be an effective attention-getting method when introducing a new topic class or beginning a presentation.

The Social Media Count

Check out the Social Media Count for a visual look at the growth of social media.

CSS Property Review

Announcing a new resource on the Web Development & Design Foundations textbook companion site: CSS Property Review.

Use this Ajax application to review your knowledge of CSS properties:

• Begin typing the name of a CSS property in the text box.
• As you type, a list of suggested CSS property names will be displayed.
• When you type a complete CSS property name, a description of the property is shown.

Web Design Best Practices Checklist (redux)

Another article in Smashing Magazine includes a link to the Web Design Best Practices Checklist. Check out Cameron Chapman's 6/29/09 article, 45 Incredibly Useful Checklists and Questionnaires.

OWEA - Open Web Education Alliance

The new W3C incubator group, The Open Web Education Alliance (OWEA), is expected to have a significant positive impact promoting web standards and best practices to the realm of web education. OWEA's mission of OWEA is to bring together companies, schools, and organizations involved in shaping the education of Web professionals to explore the issues around the topic of Web development education and create solutions for improvement.

Web Design Best Practices Checklist

Smashing Magazine included a link to the Web Design Best Practices Checklist in Cameron Chapman's May 14, 2008 article, Non Profit Website Design: Examples and Best Practices.

WolframAlpha — Beyond Search Engines

Check out WolframAlpha (http://wolframalpha.com) — a computational knowlege engine.

The rather lofty goal of WolframAlpha's developers is to "make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone"! They're collecting objective data, implementing models, methods, and algorithms, with the final aim to "build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries."

A video overview is available at
http://www75.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

Zeldman Explains "What are web standards and why are they important?

Jeffrey Zeldman, one of the founders of The Web Standards Project, discusses how the movement for web standards began, why it succeeded, his thoughts on design, accessibility, validation, and more...

My fav quote is Zeldman's take on design, "..design, like everything in life is about understanding what the problems are, solving those problems, and there's always trade offs."