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John | Web Directions - Part 2
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Google deprecating support for IE6?
- In: Blog
- By: John
- January 2, 2009
TGDaily has an unattributed report asserting that
Google is now urging Gmail users to drop Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) in favor of Firefox or Chrome that, according to the company, run the popular web-based email service “twice as fast.” Google also labels IE6 as an unsupported browser, meaning it … Read more »
Google’s “Browser Security Handbook” published
- In: Blog
- By: John
- January 2, 2009
Michal Zalewski at Google has published a “Browser Security Handbook” the goal of which is
to provide web application developers, browser engineers, and information security researchers with a one-stop reference to key security properties of contemporary web browsers. Insufficient understanding of these often poorly-documented characteristics is a … Read more »
Shiny CSS buttons
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 23, 2008
Drew McLellan and Brian Suda, curators of the now traditional “24 Ways” web developers advent calendar kindly asked me to write something for the 2008 edition.
So, having been playing around a lot with CSS3 and experimental CSS currently supported in various browsers, I put together a proof of … Read more »
State of the web survey closes today
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 20, 2008
Today’s your last chance to do the first “State of the web” survey for web designers and developers. If you can find a few minutes to take the anonymous survey about web design and development practices, it will definitely help gain a better understanding about current best practice in … Read more »
Adrian Holovaty featured in the Chicago Tribune
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 17, 2008
While these days Chicago might have an even bigger “local boy makes good” story than Adrian Holovaty, I’m happy to say that I consider Adrian one of the most incentive, and nicest people doing stuff on the web. We’ve had the great privilege to have him speak at both … Read more »
Cartoon characters and pornography
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 17, 2008
Last week, I drafted an article on a NSW Supreme Court decision, finding a man guilty of possessing child pornography, in the form of a cartoon depicting various members of the Simpsons family in sexual acts. But I didn’t publish it. I censored myself, because frankly in the current climate, … Read more »
Job – Online Director at GetUp
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 17, 2008
A job that will appeal to quite a few of our readers, Online Director at GetUp, just popped up at our jobs board.
We are looking for a dynamic, self-motivated individual to direct the overall growth and strategic direction of GetUpâs online presence.
As the leader of our online … Read more »
Dan Saffer on touchscreen desktops
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 17, 2008
Via the ever excellent core77, a great place to keep up with design trends and events beyond the web, Dan Saffer who’ll be doing both a presentation and workshop at Web Directions North talks about whether “pure” touchscreen systems really are a great interface for desktop … Read more »
State of the Web Survey – a few days to go
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 16, 2008
There’s still a few days to go to complete our State of the Web Survey - along with the well over 1,000 people who’ve done so so far.
If you’ve not done so, please think about finding the time - it should only take a few minutes.
And remember, we’ll be … Read more »
Google Chrome exits beta
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 12, 2008
In what might be some sort of record for Google, Chrome, their webkit based browser, has gone 1.0 today.
In our survey of web developers and designers, we asked what browsers people use, and what they test for, and we’ll be interested to see whether early adopter web types are … Read more »
Donate to the W3C’s Validator project
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 12, 2008
OK folks,
you’ve used them many many times, so now’s your chance to contribute to the W3C’s validator project to help keep these vitally important tools for us web people going strong.
Print and Web Designer/Develop Job at IMMEDIA!
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 11, 2008
With our Jobs site up and running, we don’t post too many job ads here on the blog, but from time to time we want to draw attention to ones that turn up.
IMMEDIA!, legendary in the Australian music scene, is looking for someone to replace their long standing, and … Read more »
Australian Bureau of Statistics new creative commons license
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 11, 2008
In what is excellent news (via the Open Knowledge Foundation), and hopefully a model for other government agencies in Australia, the ABS has just announced that their soon to be released site update will be licensed under the liberal Create Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence.
Here’s hoping that we’ll … Read more »
Ignite Sydney coming January 22nd
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 11, 2008
After the great success of the recent GeoSpatial Ignite, bringing together folks from the world of Geo Sciences and the Web, Stephen Lead is putting together Ignite Sydney, to be held Thursday January 22nd, at the Shelbourne Hotel (scene of the last two closing night parties for Web Directions … Read more »
Shoot your inspiration photo competition
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 10, 2008
Core77, one of our daily reads for keeping up with the wider design world, along with Braun, have just announced the “Shoot your inspiration” photographic competition.
Photos can be of objects, people, or environments; they can be artistic gestures or graphic messages. Use your camera as a lens or … Read more »
Introducing Soap Jr.
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 10, 2008
We’ll let you in on a little secret - well, it might come as little surprise, I’m actually wearing my fabulous Moltn: I Like Code t-shirt as I type this, but here at Web Directions we are geeks. We love code, coding, and all manner of technical stuff. So, … Read more »
Scroll Magazine – the Design Process
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 10, 2008
The super talented Veerle Pieters, responsible for the design of both the Scroll Magazine logotype, and Scroll Magazine, has a detailed article on the design process for Scroll today.
Australian Government net censorship plans in trouble
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 10, 2008
In what appears to be a triumph of common sense, the much maligned plans by the Australian government to create a mandatory, secret black list or sites that all ISPs must filter looks to be in considerable trouble. With little support from any quarter, even many child welfare groups … Read more »
Chumby – now available in Australia!
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 8, 2008
You may not know, but we here at Web Directions are big fans of Chumby - but it’s not been available in Australia, until now.
That’s right, Chumby is now available thorough ISP Internode.
And they have even got a competition to create Australian flavoured Chumby widgets.
So, if … Read more »
Advice for freelance web designers/developers
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 8, 2008
Over at Slashdot, a discussion of best practices for freelance web designers and developers. There’s a lot of you folks out there (and doubtless many thinking about making the move), so head over and participate, or soak in the wisdom (and otherwise) of the slashdot crowd.
Bert Bos summarizes the issues around Webfonts
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 6, 2008
Bert Bos, co-inventor of CSS, has a detailed summary of the issues around font embedding and standardization from a couple of months back.
Why so much on this of late here? We feel at web directions that this is a development ultimately as significant as the rise of CSS for … Read more »
Webfonts – an excellent article by Jon Tan
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 6, 2008
If you want to get up to speed with the who, what, where how and when of Web fonts, this recent article by Jon Tan is the place to start.
Web fonts – great news with Opera 10 Alpha
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 5, 2008
Opera had just announced an Alpha of Opera 10, with some excellent support for new and emerging standards, including one of my favorites, font linking.
Currently, Safari, Internet Explorer, Firefox 3.1, and now Opera 10 support font linking via the @font-face mechanism. Internet Explorer has in fact supported this feature … Read more »
Surface article in Desktop Magazine
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 4, 2008
Matt Magain, from our media partners SitePoint, has an article in this month’s Desktop Magazine (another Media Partner) about Microsoft Surface, along with an interview with Web Directions keynote speaker and chief Surface guy August de los Reyes (and a lovely person to boot).
The full article … Read more »
Screen resolutions
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 4, 2008
Ben Buchanan, Web Directions speaker and long time friend has a very detailed discussion of the issues around screen resolution. Long gone are the days where you could reasonably safely rely on a small number of possible screen resolutions. Now, we might be designing for screen sizes from 240x320 … Read more »
The State of the Web 2008 – a Survey of Web Designers and Developers
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 3, 2008
Update
The results of the survey have now been published.
At Web Directions and Westciv, we’ve been strongly focussed on the standards based web, and best practices in web design and development for well over ten years. Over that period, we’ve seen the rise of CSS, along with the … Read more »
Web Directions North – “cyber-monday” super special
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 1, 2008
For those on the edge of registering for the conference, here’s something that might just help you make up your mind.
For today (Monday December 1st) only, register for the conference, and we’ll give you either
- a half day workshop of your choice or
- a day’s skiing or boarding at Breckenridge (return … Read more »
Help stop the draconian and ignorant federal government proposed internet censorship regime
- In: Blog
- By: John
- December 1, 2008
We’ve not said anything as yet about the Australian Federal Government’s draconian and ignorant mandatory internet censorship regime, in part due to a combination of incredulity and anger. But, luckily someone is on the case. Action group Getup has an online petition that you should sign, and get anyone … Read more »
Now officially very angry with Facebook
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 21, 2008
After yesterday’s saga with Facebook, I had hoped the rude message I’d received was the extent of the problems I’d face. Wrong.
Today, responding to a birthday greeting for tomorrow on my wall, from a friend, I received the following
More absusive messages from Facebook
… Read more »Focus on education at Web Directions North
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 21, 2008
A significant focus for us at Web Directions North will be educating the next generation of web professionals. It’s clear from many conversations we’ve had with those in the industry, recent graduates, employers, and others, that on the whole, the education systems world wide simply aren’t preparing people for the … Read more »
Australian Film Industry emulates last centuries failed business models – suing ISPs
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 20, 2008
Well, at least (for now) it’s not users, but news today via the Sydney Morning Herald that Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), the histrionically named consortium of Australian Film and Television companies such as Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, … Read more »
How not to communicate
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 20, 2008
Yes, like all of you out there, I use Facebook. But so many of the things it does annoys me (and worse).
Here’s a perfect example.
I’ve been using Facebook to message a small number of folks I’ve messaged in the past about various professional matters. Sadly, the send mechanism simply wasn’t … Read more »
HTML5 Markup Language first draft published
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 14, 2008
HTML5 is big. It contains multitudes. It’s very much a work in progress. One important milestone in that process occurred today, with the publication of the first draft of the HTML5 Language first draft, titled, perhaps a little confusingly “HTML: The Markup Language”
This specification describes the fifth major version … Read more »
Time picker
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 12, 2008
Via John Resig, a brand new control concept (and implementation using JQuery), for picking the time. At first glance, it seems far more efficient than popup menus for hours and minutes, and more adapted to a mouse driven interface than the iPhones nifty time chooser. Is a new UI … Read more »
Oomph Developers interviewed at Delicate Genius
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 9, 2008
Following up the last post on Microsoft’s Oomph and microformats toolkit, Michael “Delicate Genius” Kordahi has a video interview with the brains behind Oomph. Check it out.
Web Directions East in Tokyo – a great success
- In: Blog
- By: John
- November 9, 2008
We’re just wrapping up the workshops at our first ever Web Directions in Tokyo, and a great event it has been.
Events like Web Directions aren’t at all common here, and despite I think some skepticism, turnout was fantastic, and the response by those involved who I’ve spoken with has … Read more »
Interview about Scroll and Web Directions at Opera Developer Network
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 28, 2008
Bruce Lawson, and Opera Software, recently interviewed us about Scroll and the conferences. For those interested in knowing a little more about the conference, or the magazine, there’s quite a bit of detail there.
In particular for those interested in the conferences, we tried to go into a little of … Read more »
On (digital) gardens and wilderness
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 24, 2008
Nearly 3 years ago, after yet another rip off of our site design (I’ve lost count of the number of times people have ripped our design, a lot of our content (in one case submitting it to a notable publisher, and being only days away from being published as a … Read more »
Web Directions North 09 is launched
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 22, 2008
We’ve just launched the site and registrations for Web Directions North 09 - to be held in Denver Colorado in the first week of February.
We’ve got an amazing lineup of experts, sessions and workshops, - check out all the details at the site.
This year for the … Read more »
Ubiquitous web font embedding just got a step closer
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 19, 2008
[Update 1] A couple of months back, I surveyed the scene regarding a long cherished dream of web designers and developers - font linking and embedding.
[Update 2] Opera 10, and Firefox 3.1 now support linking to TrueType and OpenType (but not EOT) in currently shipping alphas or betas.
A short … Read more »
A glimmer of hope in the current economic climate
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 17, 2008
Unless one lives under a rock, or is hiking in Bhutan, the current chaotic and clearly difficult state of the world economy will have not escaped attention. So, Google’s recently reported 30% year on year increase in revenues is something of a glimmer of positive news at least in … Read more »
Opera: 4.13% of the web is standards compliant
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 17, 2008
Via Ars Technica, news of a survey by Opera Software, long time supporters of Web Directions, makers of fine browsers, and strong advocates for an open, standards based web, that finds, to probably no one’s surprise, that the vast majority of the web is not standards based.
The good … Read more »
Great moments in Hypocrisy (mine)
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 16, 2008
So, some while back I wrote quite scathingly about native iPhone apps. I still stand by what I wrote there - but that hasn’t stopped me downloading some apps, and even paying for a couple.
But one really stands out, and I bought it this morning, sight unseen, less … Read more »
Fauxmunity
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 14, 2008
Those of us who’ve been round online a while will have seen at least one, and probably several occasions where large organisation starts blog/forum/online community, then proceeds to try hamfistedly to control the conversation, whether by deleting adverse comments, stacking the community with “sock puppets” (community members who are employees, … Read more »
Cameron Adams “cloud versus bird” remix – now with Dinosaurs
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 14, 2008
As if the man (in blue) doesn’t have enough to do, he’s now remixed Carla Hackett’s wonderful “Cloud v Bird” cartoon featured on the cover of Scroll (and at Web Directions South about eveywhere).
It’s also available at RedBubble should … Read more »
Douglas Crockford interviewed over at SitePoint
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 9, 2008
Kevin Yank over at SitePoint has an in-depth interview with Douglas Crockford over at SitePoint. Conducted right after Douglas’s presentation at the conference, Kevin follows up on some of the key points in that presentation.
Happy Birthday A List Apart
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 8, 2008
The (now officially) venerable A List Apart is now 10 years old. For old folks like me it seems like such a short period of time, and yet so long as well.
Congratulations to Jeffrey Zeldman, and all whom over the years have contributed to the success of this … Read more »
Scroll Magazine is launched
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 8, 2008
Those who came to Web Directions left with something special - a brand new magazine for web professionals - Scroll. Designed by Veerle Pieters, with a fantastic name courtesy of Maxine Sherrin, and largely the fruit of incredibly hard work by Maxine, Scroll features in depth articles by … Read more »
Web Directions North – launching next week
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 8, 2008
A quick note for visitors new and old, that Web Directions North will be launching next week. We are just finalizing speakers and workshops, so that when we launch, you’ll know exactly why you should be coming.
This year, Web Directions North moves to Denver, Colorado, for a whole host … Read more »
State Library of NSW photos on Flickr
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 5, 2008
Today’s Sun Herald reports that The State Library of New South Wales joins the PowerHouse Museum, along with institutions like the US Library of Congress, and the Smithsonian Institute in posting parts of their extensive photographic collections online at Flickr.
Great work SLoNSW and Flickr!
Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours – Joe Clark’s new book
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 3, 2008
Many in the web professions will be familiar with (and rightly so) Joe Clark. He spoke at the first conference we were associated with in 2004, and is well known as one of the earliest web accessibility experts, and author of the groundbreaking Building Accessible Websites.
Joe has just … Read more »
Web Directions Jobs – more than 50 up there now
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 2, 2008
Just quick note to say we now have over 50 reputable, legitimate jobs at jobs.webirections in just a few short weeks. There’s design, development, IA, and many more positions at the likes of the ABC, Atlassian, Gruden, Medicare, and many more. If you are looking for contractors part timers … Read more »
Ignite Geospatial
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 1, 2008
Stephen Lead is putting together what I think might be one of the first “Ignite” events in Australia - Ignite GeoSpatial. While it’s not entirely web focussed, it’s not hard to see the importance of geo data for the web, and the web as a delivery platform for GeoSpatial … Read more »
Firefox in Australia – the survey
- In: Blog
- By: John
- October 1, 2008
While the audience of Web Directions probably somewhat skews the sample, Mozilla are looking to get a better understanding of the use of Firefox around the world. So if you have a few minutes, please do head over to their survey.
In fact, even if you don’t use Firefox … Read more »
Thank you
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 29, 2008
There’s so much to come in the hours, days and weeks ahead, but just right now, a huge thanks to all who made Web Directions what it was. Amazing.
We’ll have much more specific thanks coming soon, but for now, the sincerest gratitude from Maxine and me.
McFarlane Prize winners for 2008
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 29, 2008
The winner of the McFarlane Prize, 2008, is Pro Plaster Products by Propeller Global. Billy Hughes at War for the Old Parliament House, by IceLab was highly commended by the judges. Congratulations to the team at Propeller, at IceLab, and all the finaists, and a … Read more »
Follow us on Flickr, Twitter, teh blogs and YouTube
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 26, 2008
It’s quiet on the blog, but Twitter, Flickr, the blogs and YouTube are are alive with comments, photos, video and more from the conference.
Follow along if you couldn’t come!
A silver lining in the global financial market fallout?
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 23, 2008
I’m an optimist - it’s in my nature. Not a blithe one, but definitely my instinct is to not see the worst in a situation. Clearly so to is Douglas Rushkoff, author, public intellectual, and all round big thinker.
Douglas has a long essay on the implications of the current … Read more »
The McFarlane Prize Shortlist for 2008
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 20, 2008
The Jury for the prize has now drawn up the shortlist for this year’s prize. The standard of this year’s entries was without doubt the best yet, demonstrating that each year, the quality of Australia’s web industry’s output improves considerably. I’m sure Nigel would have been most pleased with that.
This … Read more »
Web Directions and web application, social networks, and so on
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 20, 2008
With a week to go, it’s time to start firing up your social networks, and other online tools in preparation for the conference.
If you take photos, and use Flickr, please upload them with the tag wds08 (or search for photos tagged wds08 to see what others are seeing).
If you … Read more »
Coming to Web Directions? Win a Macbook Air courtesy of Campaign Monitor
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 19, 2008
The boys from Campaign monitor always make a splash at Web Directions, this year going one better than an iMac, by giving away a Macbook Air during the conference. And they’ve teamed up with a number of speakers to reward you for paying attention - check out their blog … Read more »
Web Directions speaker Jina Bolton – the SitePoint Sexy Stylesheets interview
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 19, 2008
Jina Bolton, one of the excellent international speakers we have lined up for Web Directions next week features in a detailed interview in SitePoint - so to get a sense of what she has in store for her presentation, head over to SitePoint for her chat with Matt … Read more »
500th Attendee free
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 17, 2008
We are fast coming up on a milestone that when we started this crazy web directions thing a few years ago, if you’d told me we’d be anywhere near, I would have doubted your sanity. Last year we went just past 500 attendees, and we are again nearing that pretty … Read more »
Session Spotlight – HTML5 with Michael (TM) Smith
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 17, 2008
Keeping abreast with browser and standards developments, latest scripting and styling techniques, let alone next generation developments like HTML5 is a full time job. Since most of us have full time jobs, what we at Web Directions try to do is a lot of that job for you - by … Read more »
Microsoft Surface at Web Directions!
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 16, 2008
A couple of weeks back we announced a keynote presentation by August de los Reyes, chief experience architect for the Surface project. Well, not only will we have August speaking, but you’ll be able to get your hands on the Surface itself, in a rare public outing.
Not sure how … Read more »
the World Wide Web Foundation
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 16, 2008
Sir Tim Berners-Lee has announced a new organization, the World Wide Web Foundation, whose goals are
- to advance One Web that is free and open
- to expand the Web’s capability and robustness
- to extend the Web’s benefits to all people on the planet
Clearly the foundation is meant to complement the technical … Read more »
Adobe’s CS4 launch date – September 23rd
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 15, 2008
It’s been widely reported that CS4 is to be launched on September 23rd.
And, Adobe is exhibiting at Web Directions South on September 25th and 26th.
So, I’m wondering what folks might be able to se at the Adobe stand at Web Directions South?
Just speculating wildly is all ;-)
Jobs at our job board
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 15, 2008
Jut a little reminder that if you are looking for employees - part tim, full time, or contractors, or looking for a job, or contract, the Web Directions Job board now has over 40 jobs for web professionals, covering a wide range of job titles.
Posting jobs and applying for … Read more »
Web Directions South – Discount ends tomorrow!
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 9, 2008
Only one more day to get the $100 discount for Web Directions South. Don’t miss out!
Introducing Aconex, our student scholarship sponsor
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 9, 2008
Since we started Web Directions, we’ve tried to make the conference accessible as possible. Which doesn’t just mean accessible to people with special needs, but also as affordable as possible. One way we do this is by making the conference as reasonably priced as possible. Now, you might say $1050 … Read more »
The history of touch interfaces
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 8, 2008
Via Web Directions speaker Gabriel White’s blog “Small Surfaces”, is a detailed article of the history of touch technology in user interfaces, going back into the dark ages early 1970s, in the Economist magazine’s quarterly Technology Review. Well worth a read ahead of Web Directions, where both … Read more »
Thanks to our significant supporters – Opera
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 8, 2008
All of us in the web industry know about Opera, the browser, and probably have installed it for testing, and maybe even our everyday web use. What many of us don’t really realize is the sheer reach of the Opera platform.
The browser in the Wii is powered by Opera
Hundreds … Read more »
JavaScript libraries roundup
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 8, 2008
Keeping up with developments in the world of JavaScript libraries is increasingly a challenge - with new libraries seemingly springing up by the week. If you are interested in what’s out there beyond “the usual suspects” of JQuery, Prototype and so on, Six Revisions has a round up of … Read more »
Discount period extended ’til next Wednesday
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 5, 2008
In what appears to have become something of a tradition, we’ve extended the discount period, which was to end tonight, until next Wednesday. So, if you still need to make arrangements, bribe the boss and so on, you have a few more days.
This year looks set to be even better … Read more »
Many thanks to our Key Sponsor, Adobe
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 5, 2008
Last year, Adobe became involved with Web Directions, as a key supporter. For those of your who’d been to previous conferences, I hope you felt that across the board, the quality of the conference had improved - from the venue, to the number of sessions and tracks, to the … Read more »
Cappuccino arrives
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 5, 2008
I’m more of a latté kind of guy (well, not really), but today sees the arrival of the long anticipated Cappucino framework, from 280 North, makers of the beautiful web based presentation application (think Keynote for the Web) 280 Slides.
280 Slides particularly excited me as a web app, … Read more »
Web Directions Expo almost full
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 4, 2008
There’s only a place or so left for this year’s Expo - so if your company might be interested in exhibiting to what is doubtless the finest audience of web professionals in the country, then let the right people in your organisation know, as there’s not much time left. … Read more »
Campaign Monitor 2.0 sneak peak at WDS08
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 4, 2008
For those many folks who use Campaign Monitor, the great email campaign management tool built specifically with designers in mind (we’ve used it for some years here at Web Directions!), then make sure you check out their stand at the Web Directions Expo, where they’ll be showing off sneak … Read more »
Wireless access at Web Directions South – the past and the future
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 4, 2008
In 2004, at the first conference we ran, there was no wireless access - and I think barely a single person even mentioned it to us.
In 2005, we organized wifi connectivity at UTS, which worked fine if you were on a Mac, but caused major headaches if you were using … Read more »
SitePoint interview with Jeffrey Veen (and more)
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 2, 2008
Long time supporters, and media partners with Web Directions, the great Aussie based publishers of web and print based books articles, and much more for web designers and developers are currently running an interview with keynote speaker, Jeffrey Veen, by Josh Catone.
Once again Sitepoint are showing their support for … Read more »
The Google Browser
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 2, 2008
It appears that the long fabled browser from Google is indeed real, and will be coming soon to a desktop near you. Soon it would seem as in tomorrow according to Google themselves.
There are plenty of posts round the the intarwebs about this, including a 38 page … Read more »
Discount pricing ends this Friday – Save $100
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 1, 2008
Another quick note about time running out, this time for our $100 discount, which ends Friday.
If you are keen to come, and haven’t signed up, make sure you do so before Friday night!
If you know someone keen to come, please let them know they can save $100 before … Read more »
McFarlane Prize nominations close midnight
- In: Blog
- By: John
- September 1, 2008
A final reminder that nominations for this year’s McFarlane Prize for Excellence in Australian Web Design close tonight at midnight.
Nominating is as simple as filling in a two field form.
As usual we are having a late rush on nominations. So, don’t miss out on the opportunity to have … Read more »
McFarlane Prize closing date looming
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 26, 2008
The closing date for this year’s McFarlane for Excellence in Australian Web Design prize is next Monday, so you only have a few days to nominate your site, or someone else’s site for the prize.
The McFarlane prize was inaugurated in 2006 in memory of Nigel McFarlane. The goal … Read more »
Federal disability commissioner threatens to “name and shame” government departments and agencies
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 25, 2008
Via our friends at PropellerGlobal we read at Yahoo!7 that
The federal disability commissioner has threatened to “name and shame” government departments and agencies which do not make public information accessible to people with disabilities.
Commissioner Graeme Innis said
Making information as socially important and highly publicised as the … Read more »
Web Directions Jobs update
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 25, 2008
We launched our web industry focussed jobs site, Jobs.WebDirections only a couple of weeks back, and we’ve already got 27 jobs from the likes of Atlassian, Freshview, NAB, Yahoo!7 and many other fantastic companies to work for. There are full time and freelance jobs for developers, designers, managers, marketers … Read more »
Announcing Web Directions East
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 25, 2008
In 2007 Web Directions headed offshore to Vancouver for our first Web Directions North. Now, we are really excited to announce Web Directions East, to be held in Tokyo, Japan in November of this year, in conjunction with leading local web design and training companies Actlink and … Read more »
Shock Second Life news – no one much seems to use it
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 21, 2008
Well, it’s probably not much of a shock, but much touted research by QUT postgraduate student Kim Mackenzie, (reports in SMH, Australian, SmartCompany and elsewhere) suggests that
companies that rushed to set up bases within the cult virtual world of Second Life appear to have wasted their … Read more »
August de los Reyes , principal experience architect for Surface, our final keynote presenter for 2008
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 20, 2008
Unless you have been asleep for the last 2 years or so, then you’ll almost certainly have heard of two pieces of technology.
The iPhone is one of course, but also getting people everywhere excited has been Surface, the table top based, muti-user, multi-touch device from Microsoft.
Right now, probably … Read more »
JavaScript/ECMAScript – the current state of standards development
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 20, 2008
Javascript is increasingly playing an important role for all web developers and designers, and obviously at Web Directions as well. Our favourite Ajax focussed blog, Ajaxian, has a post today detailing the current state of pay when it comes to the next generation of the JavaScript standard, ECMAScript 3.1/4. … Read more »
The return of font embedding to the web?
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 15, 2008
Sadly, quite a bit of what I wrote in this article is based on out of date information, and on my own testing that had a fatal flaw. I’ve left the article as it is, and added corrections inline
Most web designers and developers will be familiar with Image Replacement techniques, … Read more »
New Workshop – Web 2.0 Executive Bootcamp
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 14, 2008
Web Directions started out with very much a designer and developer focus. But, based on feedback, and our general observations about the industry, we recognised that there was a need for a wider focus on the web - not just the practicalities of implementation, but the strategic and business side … Read more »
On cue – web browsing phone debt fears newstories
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 14, 2008
Well, it didn’t take long for, as we predicted, the first reports of “unexpectedly high debt from bills for excess data usage” for users of “fast web-browsing phones, such as the new Apple iPhone” (Sydney Morning Herald.)
I’m not sure whether this affects a lot of people, or only a … Read more »
On deafness and Deafness
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 13, 2008
The wonderful Lisa Herrod, who has spoken at a number of our events, has just had a detailed article focussing on deafness (capital and lower case D - read about the difference in her article) at A List Apart - the pre-eminent online journal for web professionals.
The lessons … Read more »
A big thank you to our Key Supporters, Microsoft
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 13, 2008
After last year’s Web Directions South we did a survey of attendees to get a sense of what you liked, and where we might improve. It was anonymous, which meant, hopefully, we got very honest answers. The responses were overwhelmingly positive - about the speakers and content, and about … Read more »
Web site security in the New York Times
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 11, 2008
The New York Times has a worthwhile read today on password security (and its serious limitations), with a focus on among other things OpenID (which Myles Eftos will be focussing on at Web Directions South)
I think almost all of us would admit to not adhering to best … Read more »
Grocerychoice – Accessibility disaster (to put it kindly)
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 8, 2008
The Australian Federal government recently launched grocerychoice, a website whose goal is to
[help] consumers find the cheapest supermarket chain in their area without having to compare hundreds of prices.
A laudable goal no doubt. But sadly, as our friends over at PropellerGlobal note, quoting news.com.au, it’s … Read more »
Painless cross browser vector graphics with Dmitry Baranovskiy’s Raphael Javascript Library
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 8, 2008
If you’ve not heard of Dmitry Baranovskiy yet, well, you will soon. Now at Atlassian Dmitry has only been in Australia a handful of years, coming here with his young family from the Ukraine.
Dmitry is not only very smart, he’s very imaginative, having wowed the crowd at … Read more »
Digital Futures report – how do Australians use the web?
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 4, 2008
The rather cumbersomely named “ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation (CCI)” has just released the findings of its Digital Futures project.
The report looks at internet and web use in Australia. It can be downloaded as a PDF (about 3.5MB), and at first glance makes for … Read more »
Australian Mobile Data Plans get a touch more realistic
- In: Blog
- By: John
- August 1, 2008
The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting (as flagged by Cheryl in a comment yesterday) that Virgin Mobile, who will begin selling the iPhone shortly, is offering 1GB data plans with very generous call, text and other caps, for $70 (including no upfront charge for the phone … Read more »
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