vanderwal.net

Arg, running into issues in links when the link has an equal sign followed by a number or two (") does not look like (=22). This will take some playing around as I am using the "quoted_printable_decode" in php to print things properly.

Do you build Web pages? Do you have Mac? Do you have to convert text to HTML/XHTML? If you answered yes (if you didn't you should see what you are missing) please go check out Dean Allen's AppleScript for writing on the Web. These should be wonderful additions to our tool belt.

In a follow-up to the Wall Street Journal site redesign, Webreference explains how WJS achieves the faster page load (scroll down a bit).

After procrastinating for long enough and reading Nick's review in Digital Web I upgraded to Homesite 5. This is what I used to update and validate sections of this site to XHTML. I have been using Homesite for work projects for a few years, but rarely used it for this site or other personal projects (just a quirk) as I usually do my work handcoding with TextPad. Some of the layout of the tools has changed slightly from Homesite 4.5.2 to 5, but it was not a major difference. I really liked the XHTML elements and collapsing the code, which makes finding non-closed tags an easy task.

I have been able to read through all of this month's Digital Web and can say it is a solid issue from end to end. I really enjoyed the interview with Hether Hesketh. I am also a fan of the two business pieces, Managing the client: A fairy tale and Building the Business Game Plan. Both of these business articles I have pointed others to already as they are great insights from experience.

Moving to XHTML and general updates

There are some changes around here. The links page has been updated with some new links, updated links, and a few removed (ones that I was not visiting for various reasons or had gone dead).

The links and about pages are both converted to XHTML and are validating, for the most part, to XHTML Transitional. The next step will be to get this section, Off the Top, to validate. This will be a little more effort as it will require making some edits to the templates and internal code validation. Not a monsterous task, but a task none-the-less. A large part of the conversion in this section is creating compliant output from non-standard input. Much of this section does not use starting paragraph tags (<p>), which will take some work to ammend.

This means that this site is finally moving toward being standards compliant. This means that it will be easier to display information across browsers (standards compliant browsers, which most are becoming), ease of maintenance, and information reuse.

Champeon interviewed in pixelview

Steve Champeon is interviewed in Pixelview. Yes, the list-mom for webdesign-L shows his softer side.

Zeldman has been busy while I was a way. It is always good to keep an eye on what Jeffery is upto, particularly when he is talking about the the Web and standards.

Those of you that have been following the KPMG Linking poor mindedness, would probably enjoy Chris Raettig and his Sunday Stroll (Chris it the chap KPMG was peeved with for linking to their site, particularly their company song).

Foundations of Hypertext Navigation, Part 1.1

Another resource for getting to the foundation of the navigation metaphor, Navigating Hypertext: Visualising Knowledge on the Net. It has a poor interface, as the words on the left are links, but missing any interactive component to let one know they are links.

Foundations of Hypertext Navigation, Part 1

Another discussion on Peterme that has fallen into the discussion of spatial metaphors and the Web. The general feeling is that the spatial metaphor provides a poor descriptive language and metaphorical base to discuss the Web. Finding a replacement seems to be the focus, but there is an embedded base in the population of users that have adopted these analogies. I agree to a great degree that the spatial metaphor is not the best (agreeing with the negative of a positive superlative is the easy way out as there is very little room to be wrong so it is a false method of looking smart).

There is a chapter on "NAVIGATION THROUGH COMPLEX INFORMATION SPACES" from Hypertext in Context by Cliff McKnight, Andrew Dillon, John Richardson, which provides a solid understanding of some of the history of the navigational metaphor in hypertext services.

A Nick posts the outline and links for he and Ross Olson's Web Standards discussion, which was delivered in Portland, Oregon at the Portland Multimedia | Internet Developer's Group.

Shirley Kaiser has redesigned her professional site, SK Designs and provided a fantastic redesign write-up on her personal site Brianstorms and Raves. The redesign is quite nice and provides a nice job of chunking the information with headers and bullets for scanning. The write-up is a very good approach regarding when and how to go about a redesign.
[hat tip Nick Finck at Digital Web - What is New]

Web-Building provides website development resources. Don't be afraid of the initial presentation, this is a one-stop-shopping resource for HTML, scripting, application development, and everything in between.

Evolt provides a solid review of HomeSite 5. The changes from 4.5x seem somewhat incremental, but quite helpful. If you have a version now, this article provides a good insight into what you may be missing for $29.

Are you using a Mozilla based browser, such as Netscape 6x? You may want to grab the XUL useragent toolbar, which allows you to overwrite your general.useragent (the component in the Web browser that states its browser type to the Web sites). Why is this important? If you are using Netscape 6x or Mozilla and the folks maintaining the site have not added the proper browser sniffing to include these browsers you may not find the site usable. As NS6x and Mozilla are Web standards compliant, as is IE 5.5 and up, you should be able to set your useragent to reflect IE 5.5 or IE 6 and find the site perfectly usable.