Alex Jones: Web Technologist, Barbecue Acolyte, Information Junkie, Austinite

Recent Links: March 19 to March 26

Posted in Quick Links

Searching for Findability

Everyone seemed to have their place in the project life-cycle at the web design agency; everyone but little Findability. Occasionally someone would notice his value to a project, but instead of giving him the care he deserved, they’d just fork over copious amounts of cash to ship him off to his sketchy uncle SEO, who tied him up and fed him keywords all day long. He spent so much time at uncle SEO’s that everyone started to think Findability was SEO, and subsequently became a little dubious of his importance.

Aarron Walter

Aaron’s article, Findability, Orphan of the Web Design Industry is a great reminder that we should not overlook the importance of findability, nor confuse it with SEO and usability as we create our designs and interfaces.

Posted in Design & UI & Tagged: ui, user experience, web design, Web Development

Recent Links: March 12 to March 19

Posted in Quick Links

Recent Links: March 05 to March 12

Posted in Quick Links

Turn Out the Lights…

While South by Southwest 2008 continues to rock Austin, the mass influx of geeks have made their way back to their domiciles in cities near and far. The Interactive conference is over, but we made our mark on the city, doubt you not: Tex-Mex and Barbecue were eaten in vast quantities, liquor, beer and wine were ingested in copious quantities and many a breakfast was consumed at the crack of noon.

Yet again, I met some outstanding people and count myself lucky to have participated in amazing conversations.

Our community is vibrant and strong because we have held onto the expectations that we have a world to improve, and that the changes we need to make require the concentrated effort of a diverse and passionate team.

While so many technologies exist to make it easy for us to work together from disparate locations and time zones, South by Southwest 2008 demonstrated yet again that physical presence conjoined with social interaction forms mighty bonds, reenergizes the community and breeds new ideas. I can’t wait to see the projects that launch in the coming months, nor can I wait to interact with and learn from the friends I made at the conference this year as I have with those I met in years past.

Thanks to everyone who came to Austin this year and thanks most especially to those who took the time to strike up a conversation with friends-to-be.

Oh, and yes, my voice is coming back, though I rather like the deeper, Tom Waits-like guttural undertones it picked up in the last few days. It makes me sound ten times cooler than I really am.

Posted in South by Southwest & Tagged: austin, social, South by Southwest, sxsw2008

Recent Links: February 27 to March 05

Posted in Quick Links

Time for South-By

South by Southwest officially starts tomorrow, though some of us are kicking things off a bit early, so I wanted to post a quick note for anyone who may be attending. South-By is the king of Web conferences, but the best part for me is meeting so many great people and the amazing conversations the occur between panels and during the parties.

I’ve posted my badge photo so you’ll know what I look like - if you see me at the conference, say hi. For that matter, make sure you start conversations with total strangers, especially if they’re one of your heroes on the Net. Everyone is approachable, and unbelievably friendly.

If you’re in town tonight (Thursday), c’mon by the Gingerman, where a few of us will be raising pints in anticipation.

Posted in South by Southwest & Tagged: social, South by Southwest, sxsw2008

Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit

Microsoft has posted the Internet Explorer 8 Readiness Toolkit page. While the links don’t work quite yet, odds are good that an announcement will be made at MIX. Hat tip to Jonathan Snook for the link.

There’s some interesting information available on the site, including how to make your site “light up” on IE8:

• Site-specific contextual menus called Activities
• Web Slices, which provide individual feeds of information from parts of a Web page. This seems to be akin to the capabilities added to the most recent version of Safari on OS X
• CSS 2.1 Compliance and “some of the most requested CSS3 features by web developers and designers.”
• Developer Tools for debugging JavaScript, CSS and markup
• And more

We’re on the precipice of another major phase in Web development, and given the recent arguments and outrage around IE8, which ended nicely, it is likely to be contentious at best, and outright nasty at worst.

Here’s to hoping that we as an industry have progressed a bit and embrace meaningful debate and dialog over diatribes and partisanship.

Posted in Web Development & Tagged: internet explorer, Web Development, web standards

A Good Day for the Web - IE8 to Properly Support Standards

The IE team announced a change from their previously stated plan for IE 8 ‘involved showing pages requesting “Standards” mode in an IE7’s “Standards” mode, and requiring developers to ask for IE8’s actual “Standards” mode separately’ via a specific bit of meta information delivered per page or at the server level. After a lot of discussion in the community, some of it quite heated, Microsoft has relented. IE8 will now ‘show pages requesting “Standards” mode in IE8’s Standards mode. Developers who want their pages shown using IE8’s “IE7 Standards mode” will need to request that explicitly (using the http header/meta tag approach described here).’

Microsoft is notorious amongst the Web development community for past decisions, some, like their initial decision on this issue, made with the best of intentions; so it is great to see that they are willing to step back, re-evaluate and change their direction when the community speaks up. It is a change from the old days, and alongside their shift regarding open source, I truly hope it is an indicator of the future.

Posted in Web Development & Tagged: internet explorer, microsoft, web design, Web Development, web standards

Recent Links: February 20 to February 27