Sorta comes with the territory of getting a NEW JOB. Yeah, I work for Xeno Media, as a web producer.

I won’t be posting much these days, though that doesn’t mean I’m in stuck the dark ages (just stuck in an antiquated CMS). Thanks for sticking with me.

They gave me a .jpg and told me to turn it into a webpage. Oh boy.

First off, I hardly ever code websites on “my own laptop”. Yes, I love OSX and Coda but since I work in Windows and code w/ DW, it’s not that familiar. (Yes, I admit, I got the Textmate program with an educational discount.) Secondly, who knows the perfect page structure right off the bat? I don’t. When given a design, do you immediately know the perfect semantic page structure? No. You don’t.

It comes to you as you work with the page, as you move it around. What you thought were the headings were REALLY list items as you went along. And of course you have to change the wrapper ID.

As you work with a layout (or design) you change the code as you go along. It’s called coding a web page. So getting back to the skills test…

Yes, I thought I blew it. Yes, I STILL got the job. It goes to show you that if you know the basic structure of an HTML document, you’re worth hiring… 

1) I don’t tweet. Yeah, you read that right. I don’t get Twitter, and I think the service is highly annoying, to say the least. 140 characters to express yourself? Puh-leeze. I write this one off as a mindless distraction that’s perfect for our contemporary age.

2) I don’t think Wordpress is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Sure, it’s amazing what an open-source blogging application can morph into, but I don’t think Wordpress is the Swiss-Army knives of content management systems (nor do I think that ExpressionEngine/Joomla/Drupal/[insert your favorite] fills that role either). Different strokes for different folks, so you gotta assess the business need before signing on.

3) I don’t maintain a Flickr stream. Nope, no photos from me. Sure, I know how to operate a digital camera but I’m not about to post pics from my most recent vacation as inspiration for anyone. I’m not a photographer. I refuse to clutter the internet landscape with my photographic mishaps. Hence, I’m decidely uncool.

4) I’m not a Flash guru. In fact, honestly, Flash makes me dry heave. Really. I’ve no desire to spread Flash around the Inter-webs, and that’s why I’ve done so little with it. Of course I can use the ubiquitous swfobject javascript to embed Flash players and the like, but that doesn’t mean I want too.

5) I think web fonts are kinda lame. I know, we’ve been stuck with the same basic eight fonts for the past umpteen years, but I’m still convinced that unless the web content is worth it, it doesn’t matter what font-family you go with. Really. If you’ve got nothing to say, it doesn’t make any difference if you use a fancy font or not - it’s still vacuous when all is said and done. Even if it’s pretty.

I’m not a Flash guru. In fact, honestly, Flash makes me dry heave.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I have these annoying tendencies as well:

1) I think web accessibility is important and worth striving for. Yeah, I read Roger Johansson’s 456 Berea Street blog and I make no apologies for that fact. As a wise coworker once remarked, web accessibility is only going to get more important so I might as well get used to it.

2) In my book, web standards are still relevant. In fact, I’m so taken with web standards that I don’t know how to build a site using tables - I’m stuck. I offered to maintain a non-profit women’s recovery website ONLY if I could recode it using CSS, and they obliged. I think tables are only good for displaying tabular data. Yeah, I’m not “hip”. UNSUBSCRIBE.

3) I still think a website should make sense if the stylesheet is removed. Yeah, I went there. Disable the CSS and your website should still make sense. Use headings appropriately. Label lists accordingly. Let the content breathe. Uh-oh, what would happen if images were turned off on your website? Could Google still make sense of it?

4) The semantic web is operative. Let your divs and classes declare what they do. Who knows? You may not be the one who maintains the website after you leave - do a favor for the next gal and name your divs and classes semantically.

5) I think JavaScript is overrated. Of course, at knifepoint I’d take jQuery over Flash any day, but if given a choice, JS would be relegated to the periphery. You should be able to disable JS and your website should still make sense. I love jQuery (Prototype, ah, not so much) but it shouldn’t be the central feature to your web presence.

Yeah, according to these counts I’m an uncool web developer. And I’m proud of it. How are you uncool?

This project describes both the process used to create a web style guide for a higher education institution as well as the final product. I established the value of a web style guide, consulted published literature on best practice for style guide creation, evaluated web style guides from around the country, and formed a content-based method of creating a web style guide. Based on this process, I recommend that web style guides should combine the editorial and technical standards of a website, to better reflect the changing nature of web communications. Technical communicators who use this process will have a web style guide that can help their website earn higher search engine results, satisfy federal and state accessibility requirements, and better serve their end users by making information easier to find.

Curious? Read what I have to say. Creating a College Web Style Guide

Sorry, I did too much work on this for it to lapse into relative obscurity. Yeah, I did RESEARCH. Read it and weep.

Even though some may argue that BikeSnobNYC’s focus is narrow and his purview is somewhat provincial, I believe his writing style has much to teach us about writing effectively on the web.

Purpose

First off, BikeSnobNYC writes with a purpose: to offer an common-sense alternative voice to the consumeristic world of cycling. In a recent interview, Weiss said “A lot of cycling media exists to tell people about awesome stuff they need or should want. And there is awesome stuff we all want. But it’s important to have a voice that says, ‘You don’t need it. You don’t have to want this.’”

Audience

Beyond this, BikeSnobNYC knows his audience, for he’s a self-describe “mediocre” amatuer racer with Gotham Bikes in Brooklyn, New York. But that doesn’t mean he’s snooty about it either, far from it - Snobby, as he’s affectionately known, loves to take shots at the “fixerati”, those cyclists who eschew brakes and ride fixed-gear bicycles. Snobby thinks riding in the streets of New York City without brakes is one of the stupidest things a cyclist can do.

BikeSnobNYC’s intimate familiarity with the bicycling “scene” allows him to mockingly criticize at will, from those who pine after the latest and greatest gear, to those who believe that steal-framed track bikes from the 1970s are the epitomy of bicycle technology. He derides DINKS who express concern that their grossly-expensive carbon fiber bicycles might deteriorate from too much heat and cold. He also pokes fun at professional cyclists who like to “fingerbang”.

Story

BikeSnobNYC’s bi-weekly posts are similar to taking a short journey with a sarcastic, likeable tour guide through the oftentimes bizarre world of cycling.
BikeSnobNYC’s readers send him numerous examples of the consumeristic-bent of modern cycling (and contemporary culture) that include outrageous Craigslist ads to artistic concept bicycles that eschew spokes and are made from wood.

Furthermore, there are characters, both real and fictional, that appear throughout the blog, from Vito the Helper Monkey to Spencer, his ironic intern. There is also a peculiar BikeSnobNYC vocabulary in place: “doucherati”, “fixerati”, “AYHSMB”, “fingerbang”, “Dashhound of Time”, “pant yabbies”, and many others.   
 
These elements encourage one of the best aspects of blogging: the comments. Some people only read blogs for the comments, which are often more poignant and witty than the blog itself.

A Personal Reflection

I’ve been reading BikeSnobNYC for a few months now, and even though I don’t own a fixie, commute to work on a bike, or have ever served as a bicycle messenger, I’m addicted to the blog. It’s like an inside joke that you get, or a cold splash of common sense. Snobby knows who he’s writing to and what he has to say, and that’s a lethal combination that’s rarely found on the Web today. 

Sure, I see the appeal, but I’d rather use an extensive font stack than rely on a bit of JavaScript trickery. Granted, my website will never be known for its’ font selection, but that’s not my intention. Remember, it’s about the content, people. Fonts may deliver the content, but if you’ve got nothing worthwhile to say, it doesn’t matter how pretty the fonts are. 

Of course, this is a departure from my regular post content. I’m not talking about web-related stuff, though it is related, if only indirectly. I’ve determined that I need to write often about things that interest me, even if it doesn’t concern web development. Trust me, since it’s my nine-to-five job, I’m surrounded by plenty of web development content, though it’s not my life. Hence, this post.

If I’m going to do a triathlon, I need a tri-bike. So I bid on and won a “new old stock” 2002 Cannondale Multisport 2000 on eBay for $610. Yeah, that’s a $2400 bike for $610, though it’s almost eight years later. This bike really is in new condition, albeit it has been sitting on the showroom floor for the last eight years (one wonders how much they were charging if it sat for that long). Anyway, one of the main reasons I bid on it was because online reviews of the model stated that the 2002 Ironman World Championship was won on this bike. Oh, the dreams…

Hence, the Internet. Without the research tools afforded by Google, I probably wouldn’t have bid on this bike, much less this fiercely.

But here I am. With a “Made-in-the-USA” handmade aluminum frame that’s eight years old, compliments of eBay. Full Shimano Ultegra 6500 drivetrain, with Dura-Ace shifters. And yeah, I swim three times a week in a pool. It’s a triathlon, after all. 

Why is this? Well, first off, IMHO, the CSS Zen Garden has run its course. It has served its’ purpose, and is no longer needed. Dave Shea started the CSS Zen Garden in order to demonstrate to designers what could be accomplished with CSS2. This mandate has largely been fulfilled. We’re onto CSS3 (which has a slow and steady adoption).

When I first started out, the CSS Zen Garden was included into the staple of web standards perfection, a body which demonstrated what could be accomplished with CSS alone. Nonetheless, with the advent of various JS libraries, CSS adoption by itself looks to be pretty uninspiring. Sure, CSS works when JS is disabled, but how many of you know users who browse the web with JS disabled? And use a sub-par browser, at that? I didn’t think so.

CSS Zen Garden, rest in peace.

I regularly choose to use Google’s Chrome browser on OSX (Snow Leopard) over Apple’s Safari browser for casual browsing.

Why? Well, it’s pretty darn fast. In fact, it’s extremely fast. And it’s minimalistic, though not detrimentally so. I know, it doesn’t have the dev tools that Safari has. But if I wanted dev tools, I’d use Firefox (and Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar addon, right?). For casual browsing, I’m going with Google Chrome, and I think you should too.

It’s fast, minimalistic, and proficient. Thank you, Google.

(Yes, I own a T-Mobile G1 (Dream) phone that I recently rooted. )

So far, so good. Everybody is super nice, and I even have a dual monitor setup, which is amazing. Nevertheless, as with all job changes, there are certain things to get used to - different strokes for different folks - and it takes a lot of attention (hence the lack of postings).

Thanks for sticking with me. 

When burgeoning web developers like myself come across those of Snook’s caliber, we can’t help but take a heavy blow to our professional confidence. I mean, how can those of us with only a few years under our belts hope to compare?  We can’t. No matter how hard we try, our work doesn’t come close to those who’ve spent years honing their craft, who know PS like the back of their hand, and who literally have their own seal of approval (Snook Approved).

On the other end of the spectrum, when we beginning web developers run across web designers like Cameron Moll (who confesses that he never formally studied design) and Dave Shea, our confidence in our abilities drops down another notch. Dave Shea started Zen Garden for pete’s sake (though lately it has fallen fallow). Or take my favorite web standards designer, Dan Cedarholm. The man’s a regular at An Event Apart and has a written books on bulletproof web design. How do I compare? Um, I wrote a thesis on creating a web style guide that maybe three people have read?

All we can control is what we do, who we influence, and how hard we work.

Do we throw our hands up and quit? Throw in the towel (insert your favorite gloomy metaphor here)?

No. We take what we observe and study as inspiration and motivation to better ourselves. As the old adage says, “Comparison is the root of inferiority.” Let’s face it, there will always be somebody smarter, more gifted, and better than ourselves. That’s a given. As we follow blogs and web design trends, we can’t avoid coming across those who are simply further along the path than we are. All we can control is what we do, who we influence, and how hard we work.

So keep plugging away at it - perhaps someday you’ll be Snook Approved.

Recently Microsoft took a play from Google’s playbook and announced that they were going to host the jQuery library (version 1.3.2) on their CDN network (they also host the superb jQuery validation library). For more background on CDN’s, check out the Wikipedia entry. Needless to say, CDN’s are a good thing for developers.

Basically, a CDN is a super-efficient way to serve static files, and Google’s been doing it for free for a few years. Most developers download the library directly, and this benefits the end user, because the page effects load that much faster. You can also use various cloud services to construct your own CDN. However, there’s a tradeoff if you’re going to use a sponsored solution.

You’re at the mercy of said CDN, and depending on your personality, this could be a bad thing or this could be a good thing. If you’re of the paranoid bent, relying on someone else to serve the library is a good cause for many sleepless nights - If the Google or Microsoft servers go down, your applications will go down as well. That’s why it’s good practice to keep a local copy of the library on hand as a back-up. However, unless you have an easy way to reference this backup library, you’re still screwed. However, if you’re more optimistic, you’re okay with this scenario. I mean, how likely is it that a CDN network would be compromised, much less one hosted by Google and Microsoft?

I’ve been using Google’s jQuery CDN for our school’s website over a year without a problem and I’ll continue to do so. What’s your take on it? Which is better, Microsoft’s or Google’s CDN?

“You should have an audio file of a dog barking when someone comes to the website.” Um, no.

“Or how about some paw prints that follow the cursor around, wouldn’t that be cute?”

Sigh.

‘You should have an audio file of a dog barking when someone comes to the website.’ Um, no.

What this individual kept forgetting is that your website visitors just want the content. They don’t want the graphics or audio files or lame cursor trails, they want your content. Words, information, directions, store hours, whatever it may be, that’s what they want to find and then leave.

Yep, you read that correctly - your website visitors don’t want to stay on your website any longer than they have to. Chances are your site isn’t as entertaining as espn.com or nytimes.com and the sooner you realize that fact, the better off you and your website will be.

Don’t make it hard for people to find what they need on your website. Don’t give them Flash intro’s or stupid pop-up boxes or any of that other nonsense. Make them happy and give them your content.

I know, all of this has been said already before (Steve Krug, anybody?). Still, it bears repeating: deliver good content and everybody will be happy.

A quick Google search reveals that there are a lot of outdated lists of ping servers, and some of them are quite long. Here’s a small starter list of current ping servers:

• http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/
• http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
• http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
• http://ping.blo.gs/
• http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2
• http://rpc.pingomatic.com
• http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates
• http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
• http://ping.myblog.jp

How do you handle ping servers in ExpressionEngine? Have any more to add to the list?

Another benefit of using Blogger is that it’s owned by Google, and Google owns search, so ostensibly it helps with search engine optimization; odds are good that your blog post, if titled correctly, will show up higher in Google’s search rankings, though don’t quote me on that. I’ve just had good luck myself with blog posts showing up quite nicely in the search results.

I don’t mean customization by way of themes either. If you’re a business, you don’t want a blog that looks like 3,000 others, you want it to look like the rest of your website. Blogger allows you to dramatically customize the blog template and actually tinker with the HTML. However, don’t try this unless you’re comfortable with HTML and CSS - if “View > Source” means nothing to you, I’d recommend sticking with a theme or hiring someone (like me!) to incorporate Blogger into your online presence.

Before we get started, you need to create a Blogger profile. Go to www.blogger.com to sign up and create a blog. Also important is to create a directory for Blogger to publish to on your website. I creatively called mine “blog.” Again, if these steps are foreign to you, hire someone to do it.

First thing to do is set up publishing. Go to Settings > Publishing > FTP Publishing. Here you’ll want to give some FTP details so Blogger can post your entries to your webserver. This is pretty self- explanatory. However, take it slow because details matter!

Once that’s set up, the next thing is to go to Template > Edit HTML. You should be viewing the source code of the blog template. Make sure you specify the path to your own CSS file in the head of the document. Add any site-specific elements, such as headers, navigation, footers, and so forth. Most likely you have a main content area in your HTML, and this is where you want to put the Blogger code. I opted to have a main content area and a little sidebar for archives. Simply give these areas IDs and insert the respective Blogger parts as need be. You can also comment out anything you don’t want displayed on your blog, such as “Powered by Blogger” and so forth.

This takes some time to fine-tune; you’ll most likely have to republish the blog several times to iron out any layout and font errors. Nonetheless, the Blogger template code is pretty straightforward to work with. In no time you’ll have a customized Blogger-powered blog on your static website!