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SitePoint’s great book offer in aid of Bushfire victims

Our good friends and long time media partners over at SitePoint have recently announced a very special offer of 5 of their PDF books for just $29.95 all up, with all proceeds going to the Red Cross Bushfire appeal.Great work SitePoint.

Valentine’s day and Victoria

The devastating fires, and the continuing, unfolding tragedy in Victoria have surely left no one who has heard of these recent events untouched. At moments like these, our instincts are inevitably to do something, anything to help those suffering.There are many options, for donating blood, money, clothes, toys and more, ... Read more »

Dan Saffer — Tap is the New Click

Way back in 2006, when he'd just published what was to go on to become his very successful book, Designing for Interaction, Dan Saffer came out to Sydney for Web Directions South 06 and presented a much loved workshop of the same name. Since then Dan ... Read more »

Accessible Twitter

Via AniktoBlog:Accessible Twitter works just like Twitter with a few interface tweaks. Upon visiting the site, the first thing one notices is the large ... Read more »

Experimenting with social media

This interview with the staff of COSI - a Science Museum in Columbus Ohio - has some solid insights into the institutional realities of experimenting in social media. The project seems ... Read more »

Web Directions 2009 Roadshow

This April Web Directions is going to be throwing all the gear in the back of the ute and hitting the road for a whistlestop tour of Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney with a workshop lineup of the best thinkers and educators in the game: the Web ... Read more »

The State of the Web — ask the experts

A few weeks back, we published the results of our first State of the Web survey, and over 1200 web designers, developers, and others in the web industry responded, giving some valuable, and unique insights into the technologies, philosophies and practices of today's web professionals.Following on from this, next ... Read more »

A case for optimism?

It's clear from developments over the last few months, and even the last couple of days, that the current economic climate is one few of us, even those old enough to experienced the dot com bust of a few years ago have any great experience of.There's certainly plenty of cause ... Read more »

The state of Web education

The venerable "A List Apart" today publishes two articles on the state of education for web professionals, the first by Leslie Jensen-Inman, whose recently finished a Master's thesis, where sheinterviewed thirty-two web design and development leaders. Each of them expressed interest in the formal education of the next ... Read more »

Going to SXSW? Make sure you get yourself connected

John and I went to SXSW 3 years in a row between 2005 and 2007. The first year was pretty good, suffused as it was with that thrill of meeting people we'd known via email etc for years. But the second year was probably the best for a whole host ... Read more »

Campaign Monitor — giving back

Here at Web Directions we love Campaign Monitor. And what's not to love? These guys have the best email marketing software for designers in the game, a slick new look and feel for all their sites and ... Read more »

And now we play the waiting game

Interesting article over at Web Worker Daily talking about the impact of the recession, at least from the US point of view.Got me thinking about how we might get a handle on what is happening here. ... Read more »

Web Directions North discount period ends Friday

Just a quick reminder that the discount period for Web Directions North 2009 ends this Friday, the 17th. Sign up before then for just $895 (including all taxes for):24 practical, inspiring sessions by world leading experts fully catered breaks and lunches opening night reception and legendary closing night Media Temple ... Read more »

Scroll Number 1 — full articles now online

How quickly a quarter of a year rolls by. When we launched Scroll during Web Directions South 08 we promised that all the articles would be published in full online 3 months after the print magazine was published, so, here they are.If you didn't manage to get your hands on ... Read more »

Palm Pre and webOS

Palm has just announced their very interesting looking webOS, and Mojo web application framework. Unlike Apple, Palm are essentially making the way you develop for their devices the way you develop for the web.According to Palm, Mojo is:a new application framework based on the HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript standards ... Read more »

Ignite Sydney, January 22 — Register now

The second Sydney Ignite will be held at the Shelbourne Hotel on January 22. If you haven't registered to attend already, get in now - it's free! There are still a few places left, but these will go quickly.The idea of Ignite is simple - presenters stick to ... Read more »

John’s HTML5 article in A List Apart

There's an article by me (John) in today's A List Apart, on the direction that HTML5 is taking in regards to semantics. I have long thought the approach HTML5 takes to extended the semantics of HTML was problematic in several ways, being not backwards compatible with at the very ... Read more »

The State of the Web survey results

We've just published the report from our first (hopefully) annual "State of the Web" survey.Some surprising results from the survey includeNearly half the respondents use Mac OS X Leopard, and over half use a non Windows Operating system. Windows XP still outweighs Windows Vista among these users by ... Read more »

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Flash, Silverlight, and other embedded content

With both Microsoft and Adobe putting considerable energy into their respective multimedia formats, Silverlight and Flash, and the rise of web based video, driven in part by the popularity of YouTube, as well as the increasing adoption of Broadband around the world, we wanted to get a sense of the ... Read more »

Conclusions

Open Source dominates Where's the cloud? Developers, developers, developers The mobile web cometh? Best Practices on the rise Current browsers, not legacy browsers come firstWhat conclusions can we draw from this broad range of 50 or so questions? A number of broad trends, some of which we've referred to ... Read more »

Back end development languages and systems

Server Hardware Server OS and Web Servers Databases Back end Programming languages and FrameworksIn our final section, we asked about server side languages, frameworks and technologies respondents used. It included questions about server hardware, server operating systems, web servers, database systems, and backend programming languages and frameworks.Server HardwareWhen ... Read more »

JavaScript, Ajax and the DOM

Do they use JavaScript? JavaScript coding practices Libraries and FrameworksThe resurgence of the use of JavaScript, and the increased level of sophistication in its employment on the web is nothing short of spectacular. After an early surge of enthusiasm in the mid to late 1990s, JavaScript remained largely confined ... Read more »

CSS and other Presentation technologies

Consistency across browsers Development strategies for multiple browsers Quirksmode CSS Specifics Other browser based graphics Devices other than PCsThere's little doubt that CSS has become the favored way by which the significant majority of sites are styled (Opera's MAMA project found over 80% of sites searched used CSS). ... Read more »

Markup

What versions of HTML/XHTML do respondents use? How often do respondents validate their markup What doctypes do respondents declare? Tables finally out the window? Presentational HTML Extended SemanticsThe heart of any web site or application is its markup, and at the forefront of the movement toward a standards based ... Read more »

Current Practice and technologies

The remaining sections of the survey were much more squarely focussed on design and development practice. There were five such sections, looking in turn atMarkup CSS and other Presentation technologies JavaScript, Ajax and the DOM Flash, Silverlight, and other embedded content Back end development languages and systemsThe aim of ... Read more »

Browsers and Operating systems

What operating systems do they use in their day to day work? What browsers do they use? What browsers do they test with? Mobile BrowsersThe next set of questions we asked focussed on the respondents day to day technology use - the browsers and operating systems they use themselves, ... Read more »

Who was surveyed?

How was the audience reached? How did they describe their professional roles? Where did they come from? Where do they work? So who are they?We aimed to reach as many web designers and developers from around the world as possible, using our own networks, and via prominent web design ... Read more »

State of the Web — just the results

Here's the tabular results for all the questions for which this makes sense. You can also download the full dataset in CSV format (120KB compressed). Which size organization do you work for? Answer Count Percentage I'm a student 68 5.51% I'm a hobbyist 21 1.70% I'm a freelancer 225 18.23% Small Company (up to 10) 235 19.04% Medium Company (up to 50) 244 19.77% Large Company (up to ... Read more »

The State of the Web 2008

Welcome to this detailed report from our first "State of the Web" survey of professional web designers and developers. It includes details and analysis of all the responses to over 50 questions covering technologies, techniques, philosophies and practices that today's web professionals employ.You can read all the questions, ... Read more »

Google deprecating support for IE6?

TGDaily has an unattributed report asserting thatGoogle 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 »

State of the web survey closes today

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

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 »

Job — Online Director at GetUp

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 GetUp’s online presence.As the leader of our online ... Read more »

Dan Saffer on touchscreen desktops

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

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 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 »

Print and Web Designer/​Develop Job at IMMEDIA!

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 »

Ignite Sydney coming January 22nd

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 »

Introducing Soap Jr.

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 »

Chumby — now available in Australia!

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 »

Bert Bos summarizes the issues around Webfonts

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

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

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

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

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

UpdateThe 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

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 eithera half day workshop of your choice or a day's skiing or boarding at Breckenridge (return ... Read more »

Now officially very angry with Facebook

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 [caption id="attachment_1263" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="More absusive messages from Facebook"]... Read more »

Focus on education at Web Directions North

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 »

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