Flickr - Photo Sharing
The best way to store, search, sort and share photos. Upload from camera phone, Mac or PC, make albums, add comments, post photos to any blog, RSS/XML feeds.
Flickr - Photo Sharing
Program and department web pages play a big role in college selection
From
collegewebeditor.com
Are you proud of the web pages featuring your academic majors and departments?
According to a survey conducted by Stamats in 2004 and published in their newsletter, you’d better put your best efforts in these pages as they are at the top of your prospective students’ list when they visit college websites.
Read more...
Conference Proceedings - Designing for the 21st Century III
From designfor21st.org conference procedings
By Bob Rega, Macromedia
"Web Accessibility and Web Design are two disciplines with a common theory and divergent practices. Both endeavors rely on a standard set of techniques to ensure a consistent experience of data and content across a diverse set of end users. Both rely on creative individuals to build and deliver great sites and great experiences that have an impact on the user. Both seek to extend the reach of the end user and link individuals together to form a stronger collective whole. However, despite the common theory that links them, web accessibility and web design do not share a common set of practices. Sites hailed for their accessibility are rarely noted for their design. Sites hailed for their design are rarely noteworthy as models of accessibility. Few sites are ever held up as models of both great accessibility and great design."
Read more...
Zen of CSS Design, The: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
Co authored by Dave Shea and Molly Holzschlag (molly.com) this book is a must for standard-compliant designers who are looking for way to design engaging visual user interfaces.
For all of you traditional graphic designers doing work on the web keep in mind that a web site's design is more than a pretty layout....it's a user interface, so don't think that just because you have extensive graphic design experience or a degree or anything else that "qualifies" you it is impossible to simply translate your existing skill set to the webspace and design effective and usable web sites. You must learn new design theories that will allow you to adopt your existing skill set to the websphere.
Zen of CSS Design, The: Visual Enlightenment for the Web - $29.99
The First Photo Ever Posted on the Web
Back in 1992, after their show at the CERN Hardronic Festival, my colleague Tim Berners-Lee asked me for a few scanned photos of "the CERN girls" to publish them on some sort of information system he had just invented, called the "World Wide Web". I had only a vague idea of what that was, but I scanned some photos on my Mac and FTPed them to Tim's now famous "info.cern.ch". How was I to know that I was passing an historical milestone, as the one above was the first picture ever to be clicked on in a web browser!"
Silvano de Gennaro |
LHC: Les Horribles Cernettes
Educate Your Website Stakeholders About the Net Generation
Found on
collegewebeditor.comFrom
EducauseSometimes hundreds of thousand words are worth more than a short executive summary, especially in higher education.
- Does your VP need some hard cold (read “printed") facts before entertaining your latest web bugdet request?
- Is your admission office not convinced that it would be a good idea to offer instant messaging (IM) as a way for prospective students to contact an advisor?
- Does your Alum Association still rely on snail mail to keep in touch with their constituents?
Educating the Net Generation, a collection of essays published by Educause should help you spread the word that Web 101 isn’t enough anymore in colleges and universities.
A quick glance at the table of contents reveals what seems to be a very promising resource. This 267-page book is free, and that you can download the full PDF version (careful, it’s 4.5 MB) as well as any chapter in PDF and HTML from the table of contents?
Read more...
The Accessibility Challenge
Found on
alt tags
A story from the trenches.
Read more...
Accessibility Features in Adobe Reader 7
Found on
WebAIMPDF files are nortorious for lack of accessibility. Even worse, many college and university professors (and even administrative assistants) think that converted Word files to PDF files is the quick and easiest way to post content to the web. Well it is, but it is also not the best way. Since Section 508 became law manufacturers have scrambled to incorporate accessibility hooks into their products. PDF files are still a pain to make accessibility but with version 7 of Acrobat Reader out things will be a bit easier. Now if we can just get people to make to actually use these new features to create accessible PDFs!
Read more...
Blogger Codes of Ethics
While they may not have a rulebook, bloggers have evolved a loose-knit set of general tenets. These principles seem to be widely held:
* Disclose, disclose, disclose. Transparency – of actions, motives and financial considerations – is the golden rule of the blogosphere.
* Follow your passions. Blog about topics you care deeply about.
* Be honest. Write what you believe.
* Trust your readers to form their own judgments and conclusions.
* Reputation is the principal currency of cyberspace. Maintain your independence and integrity – lost trust is difficult to regain.
Found on Weblogg-ed >>
Google Launches EduBlogger
Found on
Weblogg-edThat will happen in 2007 according to predictions by Teemu Arina over at the new
Flosse Posse Weblog dedicated to open source technologies in education.
2007--Educators discover one-click publishing In contrary to large and rigid content management systems, educators and students have noticed easy personal publishing on a wide scale. One weblog related to education is created every second according to statistics provided by Technorati. Google has launched a specially branded service called EduBlogger™ based on their popular Blogger™ service.
Teemu spun this prediction and many others out of an
interview with Alan Levine that is definitely worth putting on your iPod.
Read more...
ePortfolios - The Open Source Portfolio Initiative
There's been much talk lately about ePortfolios. As an open-source proponent I've come across this open-source eportfolio project that I know I'm going to look into.
The Open Source Portfolio Initiative (OSPI) is a community of individuals and organizations collaborating on the development of the leading non-proprietary, open source electronic portfolio software available.
Read more...
Ed-related Blogs
Here are a few of the educationally-related blog sites that I've recently come across.
Need an idea for your next admission ad campaign? Ask your prospective students
From
collegewebeditor.com
This is what St. Edward’s University has just done with its Student Ad Contest.
Participants were asked to submit an ad concept for the university’s ad campaign “Learn to think.” Launched in September 2001, these ads decline the same theme by contrasting real-life situations and course titles.
To get a chance to put their hands on the big prize, a year of free tuition at St. Edward’s University, high school seniors had to review the ads available on the website and browse through the university online course catalog.
Such contest rules were a good way to entice high school seniors to explore the university’s website - whether they decided to submit an entry or not.
As stated in the university’s press release about the results of the contest, “St. Edward’s launched the contest as a fun way to inform college-bound high school students about the university and to offer them the chance to experience St. Edward’s for free.”
This integrated marketing initiative resulted in 13,000 visits to the contest web page, 97 contest entries, a lot of buzz in the targeted high schools and probably some good media clips.
Read more...
From graduation to alum registration in less than 5 minutes
From
collegewebeditor.comIn the last issue of its email newsletter,
IAC has an interesting idea for colleges and universities wanting to keep in touch with their alums:
First, it was an idea in the brain of Gary Toyne, the Alumni Director of Weber State University. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the computers he needed to get put his plan into effect. So, as any entrepreneurial alumni affairs administrator would do, Gary decided to grab every laptop in his office and then invite colleagues to donate their personal laptops for the day. He and his staff wheeled the computers down to the graduation ceremony and set them up in a strategic area where graduates had to pass by. Once the line formed, all the grads got in it, and staff members and volunteers were able to quickly get them registered.
But, here is an even better plan to avoid the risk of a big graduation day traffic jam:
Set up a few computers to have your graduates-to-be register to your online alum directory at the same time they pick up their academic attire.
A little “offline” planning definitely goes a long way.
Read more...
collegewebeditor.com
News, tips and, hopefully, some good ideas for people taking care of websites and online marketing in colleges and universities. Site has various web syndication formats.
Visit site >>>
So Where are all the Information Designers?
Found on
InfoDesign From
Online-Learning.com "Over time, we believe that this combination of skills will become the norm and may even become mandatory for many Information Design positions. Given the current economic climate, employers are already demanding more from their prospective new hires. As evidence of this trend, look at the career section in your local newspaper and you will see that employers are now asking for combination skill sets for many jobs. Companies are looking for people who can simultaneously write, design and develop websites. With a small amount of cross-training, many of today's Information Designers could position themselves for these multi-skilled jobs." (
Online Learning)
Read more...
Web Analytics: The Voice of Users in Information Architecture Projects
Found on
InfoDesignFrom
Hurol Inan"An information architecture project will uncover the very heart of internal politics in any organisation. In most cases, content owners, department heads and product managers all fight for prime 'real estate' and prominence within the website structure - resulting in a site design that looks like a 'truce' rather than an effective solution." (Hurol Inan) -
courtesy of digital web magazine.
Read more...
Microsoft to Release New Browser
From Reuters | Posted on Yahoo!
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -
Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) will release a new version of Internet Explorer, the world's most popular Internet browsing software, with new, built-in security features, Chairman Bill Gates (news - web sites) said on Tuesday.
Read more...
WebAIM's Response to the National Education Technology Plan
On January 7, 2004, the U.S. Department of Education released its
National Education Technology Plan 2004 - external link,
"Toward a New Golden Age in American Education: How the Internet, the law and today's students are revolutionizing expectations". While WebAIM applauds the plan for it's visionary action, we are concerned that the plan does not mention the critical need for accessible technology for millions of students with disabilities.
Read more...
WebAIM.org
WebAIM.org, an incredible site for web accessibility-related information has an RSS feed.
(
http://rss.webaim.org/webaim.xml). At a minimum you should bookmark the site (
www.webaim.org) for future use. It is a must-have online resource.
Accessibility Features in Dreamweaver
From
Webaim.orgAuthor:
Jared Smith Date: September 2004
Dreamweaver MX, developed by Macromedia, is one of the most popular and powerful Web development applications available today. Macromedia has greatly improved the accessibility features of Dreamweaver MX over
previous versions. MX and MX 2004 now allow developers to be prompted when inserting certain Web elements that may need accessibility attributes added to them. Dreamweaver includes many new tools, features, and reference materials to help developers in developing accessible Web content.
Read more...
Developing with Web Standards: Recommendations and Best Practices
By PJB on Technology
"This document explains how and why using web standards will let you build websites in a way that saves time and money for the developer and provides a better experience for the visitor. Also discussed are other methods, guidelines and best practices that will help produce high-quality websites that are accessible to as many as possible." (
Roger Johansson -
456 Berea Street)
Read more...
Why XHTML with CSS matters
From
youcansleepwhenyouredead.comJanuary 22, 2005
The IE/Netscape browser war is over, and most web users are using standards-compliant browsers like Firefox, Safari, and IE 6. The old table-based layout techniques are no longer necessary.
Read more...
LIFT Text Transcoder is not the answer
When it comes to accessibility LIFT text-transcoder should be considered a component of a solution (if considered at all) and not the answer to being accessible and 508 compliant. As far as I'm concerned LIFTs text-transcoder only gives you a printer-friendly page...IT IS NOT A REPAIR TOOL! The text transcoder can not add ALT text when there is no text; it can't make poor ALT tag syntax (ex.
photo) better (ex.
photo: headshot of Bill Gates).
Basically, with the text-transcoder you are going to get a linearized version of the page with the same acccessibility hurdles and roadblocks that existed before. Think I'm mistaken? Read this post from alttags.com about the Sacramento County website and it's use of LIFT text-transcoder.
Do You Care About Accessibility? | 3/31/2004
Free Usability Toolkit
The
AIfIA Tools project aims to disseminate new IA tools from the community in order to learn from each other. Below you will find document templates, process map posters and other tools to help you in your practice. The documents have been donated by the community, by people just like you.
One of the items posted is the
Usability Toolkit from the Society for Technical Communication.
Another item of interest was Case Study: Digital Web Redesign.
Christina Wodtke produced this set of deliverables--personas, conceptual model, site map and wireframes--for the
Digital Web redesign in 2002.
Digital Web Redesign (3.3 MB)
Full text of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (1st edition)
O'Rielly has generously published the
full text of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. (Note that this is the 1st edition of the book, and the 2nd edition has been substantially enhanced, expanded and improved.)
Ground Up, Accessibility
From
The Web Standards ProjectIn a
Digital Web Magazine article this past week, a
W3C web accessibility specialist
Matt May offers up a short primer for web designers. The article,
Accessibility From The Ground Up, gives a quick overview and answers key questions regarding accessible web design.
Read more...
Key steps in creating your reader persona
By Gerry McGovern
February 07, 2005
The first step in developing successful reader personas is to decide what readers you are not going to focus on. Good web management is often more about what you exclude than what you include.
Read more...
alttags.org
Add these to your quiver of information:
CMS Do's and Don'ts
From
alttags.orgJan 21, 2005
Have you made peace with your Content Management System yet? If you’re like most CMS users, the answer is ‘no’ (or a steady stream of expletives that could easily be understood as a ‘no’). For many,
CMS has become synonymous with the word ‘failure’.
Read more...
The Dollar and Sense of Building with Standards
From
Digital Web MagazineBy
Alan K'nechtThere is no need for a Web site to reflect a printed brochure to smallest detail. One is paper and the other is electronic. By accepting this reality, you can expect savings of 5-10% in your HTML development phase...think of standards as a guide to writing valid code.
Read more...
Usability in e-learning
"While a large number of organizations have adopted e-learning programs, far fewer have addressed the usability of their learning applications. More attention should be devoted to assuring the usability of e-learning applications if organizations are to fully benefit from their investments." (Michael J. Miller -
Learning Circuits)
Read more...
Web Standards vs. Search Friendly Sites: Can You Have Both?
By
Bill Hunt,
February 10, 2005
Web designers don't understand search optimization, and search marketers are clueless about usability and style—at least according to conventional wisdom. The good news is, those attitudes are slowly starting to change.
A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference, December 13-16, 2004, Chicago, IL. Read more...
Weblogs in Higher Education
A blog devoted to understanding the best pedagogical and other uses of weblogs and wikis in higher education.
Join in...
Albertson's: A Cast Study in Technology Making People Stupid
Dont' you get tired of people for using technology for technology's sake? Site's that have flash and all the other bells and whistles just for sh!t and giggles? There is a time and place for everything and when you get to that time and place you need to make so you have the proper implementation and that once implemented your business philosophy and decisions account for the changes that technology introduces at every point along the spectrum. Here's a real-world example.
Albertson's: A Cast Study in Technology Making People StupidDon't let this scenario playout at your university.
UXCentric - a blog worth mentioning
UXCentric: news, views and links about user experience, information architecture and all things web
WebAbility :: web design that enables
Things for designing successful sites...web design that works:
WebAbility
Browse Happy
Are you tired and frustrated with Internet Exporer (or just Microsoft in general)? We all know that there are much better (and safer) browsers out there but we are also aware of the fact that about 85% of the population are using IE. So what a quandry! Don't worry, others emphatize and have even gone the distance to put up a site. Check it out:
browsehappy.com
Browser Speed Comparisons
Of course there are many benefits to designing with usabiility and accessibility in mind and doing so with web standards. One of the benefits is faster loading pages. Of course with an external CSS once the first page of your site has been loaded the CSS is in the browser cache of the user so that's one less thing that has to be downloaded and one less hit to your server. Additionally, separating presentation and content code keeps the amount of code to a minimum which decreases download time and minimizes the overhead on the server.
Yes, this is a minimal amount for each person and may be negligible but that all adds up on your server and you will see and better performing server. Additionally, if you don't have your own server and pay for hosting and have a business level plan that charges by bandwidth then you just incurred some immediate cost-saving benefits.
If you go through all this effort it's important to know how much the browser factor into this. Of course this is something out of a designers control but it's good to know what's going on in the environment you are designing for.
There a interesting article on
browser speed comparisons that I came across. In general the site I found the comparison data on
howtocreate.co.uk is quite excellent. He has a RSS feed which I was more than eager to add to my watchlist.
Outdated HTML Guides
Molly E. Holzschlag is another excellent presenter and industry expert. Her site
molly.com contains a wealth of information. Her site has a post talking about HTML guildes, along with a recommendation.
Read more...
Hakon Gets Hot :: Opera to MS: Get real about interoperability, Mr Gates
As an extreme advocate of accessibility and usability designing with web standards is a must.
Last week Bill Gates
got the interoperability religion. Allegedly - given Microsoft's long and sometimes less than constructive history in the field of interoperability, a certain amount of scepticism is perhaps appropriate. Hakon Lie, Chief Technology Officer of long-standing Microsoft competitor Opera Software, welcomes Gates' new-found enthusiasm for interoperability, but in the following response to Gates, has just a few suggestions about what Microsoft might do to actually achieve it.
Read more...
Scoble posts SJSU visit on Scobleizer
Robert Scoble, a technical evangelist with Microsoft and SJSU alum spoke to SJSU students, staff, and faculty in a session titled
Into the Blogosphere: Blogging, Changing the Way We Communicate. Scobles' blog
Scobleizer is well-known among bloggers. His post on his SJSU talk is at
http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2005/02/11.html
Conferences & presenters to look for
Jakob Nielsen is the de facto expert in usability...hands down. Jakob is the Nielsen part of the
Nielsen/Norman Group (a consultancy for HCI usability and advocates of accessibility) which will have the
SF location of their usability week three-day tutorial June 20-22 (mon-wed). This is definitely worth the money.
Additionally, I recommend keeping your eyes open for any conferences that have
Jeffrey Veen or
Jeffrey Zeldman (
alistapart |
happycog) as speakers. Incredible speakers with a wealth of information, it's no wonder they are industry experts and conference regulars. Veen is part of
Adaptive Path which focuses on user experience who also have excellent
workshops.
In a previous post I also mentioned
Kelly Goto and her book
WebRedesign | Workflow that Works. You would obviously also want to keep an eye out for any conference where she is presenting.
Finally check out
ThunderLizard, they put on some great conferences. It was at a ThunderLizard conference where I saw everyone (except for Jakob Nielsen) speak. Needless to say it was quite an experience.
Last, make sure to check out
FTPOnline Conferences, they are responsible for some of the larger conferences like
Web Design World.
You're never really the first...but hopefully you're better!
So, here I was thinking that I was being clever...delving into the blogsphere and exploring it as as not only a relatively new technology, but also as a potential communication tool for those in my niche of the industry to share ideas in the hopes of identifying best practices (or something along those lines). But then as I typed in the URL to this blog I accidently visited
higheredwebs.blogspot.com and happily stumbled across the blog of someone in my niche of the industry who had the same brilliant idea...only first. I guess this is is my first link to an industry cohort that has resulted from the blogosphere...and I haven't even been online fo 6 hours yet! The power of technology. So, yeah...visit this other higher ed websites blog and for general pet peeves in web sites (design, usability, etc.) hop on the eSoapbox over at
webpeeves.blogspot.comAs I think about it more this is simply atypical for the web. Chances are that when it comes to what you are doing or planning on doing to or with your site you will not be the first to do so. However, whether or not you have the best and most usable implementation of said solution is entirely up to you. Yes, you will have to overcome political, bugetary, and technical issues but that's your job. To deal with all that other crap and minimize the impact that crap has on your final work product. This means becoming an expert in everything that the project requires plus everything that will require you to finesse your way around the political issues, plus being savvy enough to find a way to address bugets. You can't do this job effectively if you don't have the proper people skills, self confidence, and tact. Without this stuff your technology knowledge and experience will not afford you the proper credance needed to grow and direct the web presence of a univeristy. Have fun! ;-)
Note: the other higher ed website blog listed above hasn't been updated since 2003; there is still some good information there; too bad it was abandoned, looks like the blogger had done a bit of research.
Inaugural Post
More than one out of three Internet users say the web site is a critical factor in providing the information they need to choose their school or college. Basically, they want three things from a college web site: accurate and complete information, intuitive navigation and an inspirational environment for their college experience. Does your site meet these expectations and provide this content? How will you know if it does?
Best practices, standards, benchmarks, metrics, hits, page views, analytics. What do these mean and can any of them be used to determine the efficacy and success of your site?
As the current webmaster at my second university with an average of 30,000 FTE I am a HUGE advocate for user-centered accessible design that is based on
web standards. I have presented at conferences on both web accessibility and on designing with web strandards and I'm hoping that the communication resulting from this blog results in a community of all types of web users whose dialog can be used by university webmasters and web administrators to develop better university and college web sites. There are many books and resources that deal with the usability and efficacy of commercial sites but there is very little information available and even less dialog when it comes to how to design a successful university (from hence forth this term will be used inclusively to refer to all institutions of higher education) web site that meets the needs of each user segment for a university site.
So far the only resource that I've found is a book by
Pam Cox-Otto, PH.D. Make Your Web Site Work: Research and Guidance for Effective Recruiting published by LRP Publications. This book is a MUST! for any one involved with a university web site. There is much more value in this book than simply recruitment-related data and information. Dr. Cox-Otto has done incredible research with user segments from the traditional high school student to non-traditional adult learners and from business partners to alumni. In her book she shares her results and also provides recommendations on how to address the needs of these various and varied user groups.
As far as I'm concerned this book is as necessary a resource for university sites as
Kelly Goto's Web ReDesign | Workflow that Works book is for web design project workflow. Add in a couple of books on
web accessibility and
usability and you have a start to an excellent library. At some point in the future I will post an Excel file with my entire book list. It's quite interesting to see the wide range of not only technical, but also theoretical knowledge that increases the usability and success of a site...not only from an end-user's perspective but also from a business model and recruitment angle.
Bear with me as I start to familiarize myself with the blogosphere. I'm sure it will take some time for me to fully incorporated postings into my daily lifestyle, but I feel that my daily experience (and some of the frustrations resulting from) will provide me with insightful inforamtion, inquisitive questions, and at times simply with the need to hop onto my eSoapbox and vent.
