End of fall 2005 term
Well this term is over, wow. I have posted a summary of Fall 2005 projects that got completed for the most part. Take a look if you are interested. Big thanks to Vincent Marta who is moving on to his last term at UW in the winter 2005. He built on the work Areeb did in the spring term and has really helped CPA move ahead with new and exciting web technologies. Jax, you have your work cut out for you next term 
Have a good holiday! There may be a post or two over the holidays… not sure yet.
How did I do with 2005 web predictions?
Its mid-December, 2005 is pretty much over, so how did I do with my predictions from last January? Well lets take a look…
sIFR
This one is easy. We use it on the home page but I failed to get it included in the CLF template. Why? It is easy but it strays from the ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’ I was going for. It’s not hard to add though, if you are interested all you have to do is let me know.
Essential tools for web development and web management
Think I was beating around the bush on this one. Basically I was pretty against a Content Management System and I still am. What has changed is that CPA has basically created one. More on that in 2006 As for tools, in 2005 the essential tools:
Applications
- Studio 8 + Contribute Publishing Server
- TextWrangler
- NetNewWire Lite – to keep on top of all that is going on.
…and one that has squeaked in this term:
- Zend Studio for PHP
Languages
- PHP
- Javascript
- XHTML
- XML
- JavaScript
Servers
- LAMP – Linux Apache MySQL
No version control in 2005… lets hope for 2006.
LAMP/Web application development
LAMP has been where all our work is done in 2005. Just a great platform that is primarily responsible for the development of most of the fall 2005 projects. The flexibility is perfect for web development.
Web apps on campus though? Leave that to the users but I think a lot of PHP based applications have appeared. Even Ruby on Rails is making an inroad.
What about 2006?
Just thinking about that now… I will have a post in January for that For now check out these predictions already posted from others:
More will be added as they appear.
24ways.org is worth watching this month
There are a couple advent calendar type publications popping up this month. The first on the block was Drew’s 24ways.org (24 ways to impress your friends) which is just been fun to follow for the past 12 days. But I think last nights post is one people here really should read: Transitional vs. Strict Mark-up. I have been considering switching all CPA’s pages doctype’s to strict, there is a good reason to do it
Then there is the 12days advent by Dustin Diaz. His site is just great to follow all the time but now he has himself on a nightly publication cycle. Today’s post is pretty funny.
If I find any more advent type web posting schedules I will post them here.
A day of WatITis in 2005
December 6th (tomorrow) will see the third annual WatITis (What-IT-is not Wah-Ti-Tis but I prefer the latter) conference on campus. You can check out the history of the conference if you are wondering what it is and how it started. Basically it started with Ian Howard who then went off on a Geekcorps tour of Africa and Martin Timmerman (still in IST). Bob Hicks and Vic Neglia have carried the co-director position both last year and this year.
All IT staff on campus gather to attend presentations, talk about stuff, and have a good day learning some new things. I am involved in two presentations again this year: Paradox of Accessibility and Usability as well as Applying Usability to the UW Webspace. In the first one I look at the great paradox of web development in a higher education setting with the focus being on accessibility and usability. Good fun.
The second is where the original UW web usability project group will discuss our first study back in April and how our work will help the rest of campus. The whole idea is have a good discussion on usability testing and the issues surrounding usability.
Both will be online by the end of the week. As a test I will be working on a few podcasts of presentations as well. Hopefully I will have more than just the keynote and the two presentations I am involved in, but we will see how much IT folks like being recorded
