Microformats overview posted in places
On Digital Web and Vitamin John Allsopp has written The Big Picture on Microformats and Add microformats magic to your site. If you have been wondering what the heck I have been talking about when I looking at Microformats in education then this might help. So far I have stuck hCard on the footer of the UW home page, had Mitch ensure UW Events supports hCal and even had him stick some hCard into the people search results on the search off the home page.
For those Dreamweaver users out there, after you have read John’s articles and you want to check this out, a great way to do that is just go and grab Drew’s extension for Dreamweaver and create a couple simple things. Look at the code.
I am just taking a look at how maintaining Microformats will work for Dreamweaver users that support Contribute folks. I have a feeling the extra classes to wreak some havoc but there may be a simple way to manage and even enhance it. If not I would like to know and hopefully find some workarounds.
IE 7 RC 1 and a list of what to expect: UW’s stuff is ok I think
Internet Explorer 7 has reached release candidate status which I think means it is pretty much done beyond any show stoppers that might appear. You really should have a copy of the latest build and you really should be testing because they will be forcing it on IE 6 users as a high priority update so it will likely have a large user base relatively quickly.
The IE team was nice enough to give everyone a list of things fixed, things yet to fix, and what isn’t fixed. Dave Shea points out that it is only a matter of time until we start to see the new bugs appearing and I imagine it is probably best you get testing your stuff in it now otherwise you could have some late nights ahead of you in the near future. He has a good point, get testing and document the quirks you see.
As far as UW goes, I have had a poke around with the latest IE 7 and I don’t see anything major or even minor. There were some reports of printing issues with the last beta of IE 7 but I can print any UW page just fine on Windows XP SP2 and IE 7 RC1. If you see anything though please let me know (a comment on this thread works).
Personally I hope IE 7 rids us of IE 6 much faster that IE 6 has removed IE 5.5. Maybe I speak too soon but IE 7 will make web folks jobs a lot easier…
Brown breaks the mold with their new site
Brown University has introduced a new public beta site to the world that is certain to cause a lot of discussion amongst the edu and even the design community. What is so bold about it is that it steps away from the traditional web site design into something more interactive and minimalist. For higher education there are few sites that try this (maybe because of the large amount of committee oversight) but those that do are often compared with MIT’s homepage whether they like it or not.
It uses javascript to establish an automatic accordion response on mouseover, which could be problematic for some if they aren’t expecting it or have fine motor control issues. It also has a dark background, light text (some people don’t like that very much) which does focus on brown oddly enough.
I like it. They use some elements I have thought about for UW’s 50th refit and I really like the darker background. Given UW’s colours of black and gold I am a little inspired by companies like Lightmaker to give it a try. We did have black background sites about 5 years ago here… they looked good too. Just way too many graphics and spinning logos.
Anyway, have a look at Brown’s test site and let me know what you think…
BarCampWaterloo is a go! September 29th!
After a little thought about dates and talking with CECS, I can now say that BarCampWaterloo is a go for September 29th! We have a location now all I need is a few people to help out and maybe someone to donate some food budget (people that have food are always much happier). Oh and we need people to sign-up. Check out the site if you want to know more about what a BarCamp is and sign-up. Given that this will actually be my first BarCamp some experienced help would be greatly appreciated.
This event will be open to everyone in the community (staff, students, faculty, off-campus folks from other schools, alumni, etc). I know I talked about one the end of this month but that really isn’t a good idea given that this place is a ghost town that time of year. I will certainly post some more information once it is available…
IDEAS conference wrapped up
Around 140 people attended 18 different sessions that focused on technology and inclusiveness. Topics ranged from designing learning spaces to web technology to mobile devices. Derek Featherstone opened up the day with a great keynote (last minute sub for Joe Clark who had to cancel on account of illness) which I think left everyone with loads to think about for the day. There were students, staff, and faculty in attendance as well as a good number of off campus visitors.
I presented with Antonia Palmer (formerly of LT3 soon to be in Distance Education) on adopting new web technologies with an accessible mind. Our presentation notes are available in the usual place for my presentations.
All the presentations were recorded so both audio and video will be available but it will probably be a couple weeks before they are all online. I will post more when they are ready.