Experiment #2 - Semantic Blog Template - Part 1

I made the decision some time back to overhaul my site templates based on best practice principles of web design. Partly inspired by the classic CSS Zen Garden I wanted to be able to switch stylesheets without needing to change the underlying markup. I also wanted to …

Experiment #2 - Semantic Blog Template - Part 2

In part 1 of this experiment I tried to define the semantic structure of the page and incorporate some of the available microformats, the major one being the hAtom format for blog posts.

In this part I'm filling in more content to get a more realistic view of the markup …

Questions about semantic HTML

My current project to re-template this blog using semantic markup and microformats has raised some interesting questions.

Why use semantic markup?

There are plenty of good reasons to use semantic markup, the main one being that the markup gives context to the content …

Elegant UI idea to beat comment spam

I spotted this today on ajaxian, it a nice idea for beating spambots without resorting to captcha.

The idea is to use jQuery's drag and drop functionality based on the assuption that spambots can't interact with the page in this way. I could see an elegant UI solution …

The Facebook Debate

My colleague Paul attended the Facebook Debate and wrote up this great report.

The following list is my favourite part:

1. There are a vast amount of people out there who have no idea what Facebook is.


2. There are almost as many people out there who want to do something with …

"Now is gone" is a great resource for PR, Marketing & some Web Developers

I've finally found the time to finish reading "Now is Gone", and I'm impressed.

The book is aimed at traditional Marketing and PR executives with an important message about how the communications paradigms have changed and they are now faced with an "evolve or die" …

Live Writer is outstanding

When my colleague Paul rushed into my office today ranting about how good Live Writer is, I was skeptical to say the least - Microsoft have a checkered history in the field of web authoring software (I've still not forgiven them for FrontPage and the havoc it wreaked on …

This week, I 'ave mostly been...

... designing ways to manage an application.

It's a subject that I've broached before, but I still get uncomprehending looks from developers when I explain that an application management interface should be as simple as (if not simpler than) the user facing interface.

The Facebook Generation

I saw a report on the news this evening about people getting caught out after publishing embarrassing photos and videos on the web. I've looked at this phenomenon before and one expert had a nice piece of advice - "you shouldn't publish anything online that you wouldn't …

Deconstructing page design

Amy Hoy thunders through the user experience design methodolgy that she uses giving some excellent insights - especially for the type of designer who fires up Photoshop as the first step in every design task.

My favourite part of the article comes later where she …

Question everything, including the questions

In my recent posts concerning the development of my new blog markup, I've deliberately tried to document my thought processes and the decisions I made along the way. It was a conscious decision not to write up the work in the style of "this is how it should be done", …

Practicing what I preach

I spend much of my working day looking at web sites and web applications with a view to optimising the important elements and removing or hiding the ones which add no value or take value away from more important elements. It's surprising then, how easily I overlooked …

Web Trendmap

This was just too good not to post. Information Architects Japan have created this Web Trendmap. It's a pretty chaotic overview of the top site on the internet in various categories - no surprise really. What's interesting is the amount of data that they've manged to …

Is it 2008 already?

I've been very bad for keeping up with posting to this blog for the past few months, various reasons have contributed to this:

• New addition to the family
• Heavy Work commitments
• A long stint of redecoration which left my home PC without a home for a while

So anyway, …

Genius!

Given my tendency to ramble on and ignore some of the niceties of grammar and punctuation, I'm not convinced about the accuracy of this blog reading level calculator. It is however nice to be given the "Genius" rating, especially after finding it on my friend Gerry's …

now is gone

Yesterday I received a copy of "now is gone" by Geoff Livingston with Brian Solis, courtesy of Social Media Today (thanks Lauren). I've only just begun to read it but it's already proving very interesting.

The aim of the book is to introduce the benefits of social media …

Content optimisation rant

I'm writing this post whilst waiting for a 63 Mb image embedded into a webpage to be displayed - so that I can replace it with a smaller version. I find it hard to believe that these sort of fundamental mistakes are still being made. Is this one of those things that we …

The Year in Web Video

Yahoo's People of the Web News points out that 2007 has been huge for online video. It seems odd to think that not too long ago, embedding video in a website was technically challenging and expensive, now we only have to decide which video sharing platform we want to …

An 'Xmas' appeal from GrammarBlog

GrammarBlog is looking for contributors to a Christmas special editions of their recurring post "Grammar abuse in signage". Grammar pedants from all over the Internet are asked to get involved by submitting photographs of Christmas signs and banners that contain …

Widget Marketing is officially cool

Daft Punk are promoting their new album "Alive" primarily via a widget rather than a full blown site. This is a smart move in my opinion, effectively they will have a small promotional website embedded all over the internet via their technologically savvy fans. This …