Off the Top: Resource Entries
Showing posts: 16-30 of 36 total posts
Movies with iSight
Derrik Story provides Making Movies with the Apple iSight, which can be done on the cheap. This could make Mike's idea of a roving reporter using WiFi more viable.
Joshua changes before our eyes
Things have been a little busy around these parts of late. One site you should be watching is Joshua's redesign. Joshua is learning many of the painful lessons in a CSS redesign. Joshua has not only been redesigning and documenting in front of our eyes, but he has been sharing his resources. Joshua just rocks as he learned the mantra of the Web is to share openly. He has also learned Windows IE 6 is not your friend as it does not render valid CSS properly. Go get 'em Joshua
Perl for Website Management book site
The Perl for Website Management book is helpful, but even more so are the samples found at the book site. There is even a Perl for Website Management book Wiki that has some of the samples and some other related info.
I have found the book to be very helpful for giving ideas and means to approach dealing with Web access logs.
Boxes and Arrows Birthday
Happy Birthday Boxes and Arrows. It is Boxes and Arrows one year anniversary. It seems like so much longer, but to some of us it has been a little longer. There have been a flood of great articles that have shared knowledge and experiences to help us all get better at what we do. I am looking foreward to the next anniversaries and looking back too.
Learning proper French Cooking at and Inn
We has a wonderful weekend at a L'Academie de Cuisine French Cooking weekend held at the Mercersburg Inn in Mercersburg, Pennsylvania. The Inn was fantastic, with wonderful accommodations, great common rooms, caring innkeepers that are friendly and very helpful, and very good food.
The cooking portion of the weekend was great. It was a present from Joy and it turned out to be a wonderful gift. The weekend revolved around the founder of L'Academie, Francois Dionot guiding the 14 students through making a four course French meal each day. The 14 split into four teams that prep and cook their portion of the meal. The meals are prepared in the kitchen of the Inn, which is just large enough for the 14, the instructor and his wonderfully helpful wife, and one person helping clean-up. Saturday's meal was a Cream of Cauliflower and Roquefort Soup with a Roquefort Flan, Quennelle of Salmon with Saffron Butter Sauce (our dish we helped create), Beef Goulash with Mashed Potatoes, and a Caramelized Pear Cake with Calvados Creme Anglaise. Today's menu was a Bourride of Fish with Aioli, Quail Salad with Polenta and Porcini Dressing (our dish), Chicken Blanquette with Root Vegetables (including salsify), Phyllo Tart of Chocolate and Raspberry with Chocolate Sauce.
We had a lot of fun and learned a lot. Francios is a perfectionist as one would expect and hope for as it pushed us to expand beyond what we knew. We also learned about adding more salt, not table salt, but wonderful sea salt (Sel de Mer) and kosher salt (containing all the minerals that should be in salt). Everything that was made was wonderful and a glass of wine was raised to the team that helped create that course. We also met wonderful people also taking the course, which was an added blessing. We plan to make courses at L'Academie a regular part of our lives and hope the rest of them are as fulfilling as this weekend.
Web Techniques / New Architect says Buh-Bye
R.I.P. Web Techniques / New Architect. Amit and Maggie shared the news.
This is a sad note, but also one that seems to show how things have changed. How many of us were excited when the new issues of Web Techniques arrived or were anxious when it was late? The publication changed over time as did the market for the magazine. The need for a printed magazine changed over time, but having a printed article to show clients or superiors was a great help as they discounted the information printed from the Web (I don't know how much this has changed). There are many Web based outlets for similar information and similar quality of information, Boxes and Arrows, Digital Web, A List Apart, and O'Reilly Network to name a few. None the less, we morn this day and get back to building a better Web.
Usability Net from the EU - Updated
UsabilityNet is a solid resource put out by the EU. There are many great resources, like the methods table, but there were also many visual presentation and structural problems that kept me from getting the most out of the site. On the top page there presentation is very cluttered and the image buttons are not easy to scan, or for that matter read (here a text links with CSS would offer much better readability and would easily be resizable for those with visual difficulties). The inside pages often have two layers of navigation, but use a visual presentation that not only had me slightly baffled, but other Web development and design professionals too. Not only are there two layers of hierarchial navigation layers on the top, but there are sometimes left navigation provided. I really was not sure what the differences were between the second tier top nav and the left nav as they were similar.
I completely agree with Beth that the Usability for Managers section offers great resources. This page gives solid reasoning behind the benefits of using usability testing and development.
The area where this site could use the most improvement is the accessibility of some of the informaiton. The methods table is a great idea with a solid presentation, but it is not accessible in the slightest for folks with disabilities or those using mobile devices. The largest disappointment is the page is not printable.
In all this will be a great site if they can get through some of the structure and presentation issues. It seems ironic that the site has usability problems, but it is a young site with a great future and I have no doubt they will get there.
[hat tip Beth]
PHP Architect mag launches
The PHP Architect Magazine launched, which seems would make a wonderful pairing to The Perl Journal (TPJ). This could be two great resources produced for those that believe in the power and stability of open source scripting.Nathan and Peter explain UCD
Meryl has wonderful interview with Peter Merholz and Nathan Shedroff on User-Centered Design over at Digital Web.AppleTechs gets moving again
Damien has his AppleTechs running again. This has been on hold since late April and it will be so nice to have this back and running again as both of these sites are great resources for Apple users.Font size sample gallery
A sample browser font size gallery is available for the Microsoft fonts (Ariel, Courier New, Timew New Roman, Verdana).Windows to Mac OS X keystroke conversions
Terrie Miller offers former Windows users tips to using Mac OS X. This is the type of resouce I have been looking for, and I know there are many others out there looking for the same thing. I have asked and in turn have answered some of these keyboard and keystroke questions. The keystrokes took a little adjusting to, but nothing that a couple hours of retraining muscle memory could not cure.CCS with Moz bugs annotated
From the "this will be insanely helpful" department, CSS-1 with annotated Mozilla bugs. This could be a first-turn resource when the huhs? start. [hat tip Scott]Unix tips of OS X
Unix Tips for Mac OS X is a good place to get below the surface of OS X. You know you want to.« Previous | 1 2 3 | Next »