In a very crude way, you could say that there are three types of people on the Web: there are those who just use it in their daily life without it having any particular meaning to them; there are those who love the Web and have learned all about one or more of its infinitely many aspects. The third group consists of people who have completed an education of one kind or another which helps them have a profession on the Web. These people can be designers, online marketeers, back-end programmers, you name it. They can be anything that involves the Web in some way, but as far as profession is concerned, this third group overlaps entirely with the second. Nevertheless, there are vital differences between the two, differences that play out against our educated group. Why is this?
Over the past few years, the Web has seen considerable changes down to its very core. With the spread of web standards awareness have come many new technologies and innovations, an immense amount of new techniques for designing and coding websites, and brand-new community-based websites that are currently turning the Web upside down as we speak. The web is growing, it always has been and it always will, but now a new site is bringing order where there was chaos, combining the best elements of the best new websites of late. Now, there is Newsvine!
You know them from their respective weblogs, but a little while ago, Andy Budd, Jeremy Keith and Richard Rutter combined their talents to form a new web consultancy, named Clear: left. I sat down with the three of them and asked them ten questions, hoping to get a good idea of what Clear: left is all about.
Whether you want to call it Web 2.0, Web 3.0 or prefer to not use buzzwords at all, it's safe to say that the Web of today is changing. The advent of blogging and feed aggregation has greatly influenced the way we spend our time on the web. More and more people rely on newsfeeds for their latest information and the blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months, but is this all such a great thing? What dangers do technologies like RSS bring with them, and are we even aware of them?
Andy Clarke hurriedly posted an experiment on his way out (no, he's not leaving, just temporarily away from his own site. Don't worry, he's not jumping that bandwagon) on trying to create "a fluid/elastic XHTML layout with minimal markup, CSS2 and a sprinkling of DOM scripting magic." Now, I think it's a great thing to minimize markup and try out new approaches to creating modern websites, but you can overdo it.
Douglas Bowman is widely known from his design consultancy, Stopdesign. He is responsible for very popular redesigns such as Wired News, Blogger and, more recently, Capgemini. In London, Douglas shared his wisdom with us twice. His first presentation was The Beauty of CSS.
Robin Christopherson is an Accessibility consultant working for AbilityNet. Being blind, Robin is all too familiar with screenreaders and other assistive technologies. Robin presented Web Accessibility and Disability - A Practical Introduction on day one of @media 2005.
Joe Clark is one of the world's leading experts on web accessibility, author of the best-selling Building Accessible Websites and also an extremely funny guy. On day one of @media 2005 he presented the first presentation, entitled Accessibility: Simple Facts About a Tricky Subject.
Before the presentations at the @media 2005 conference (London, June 9-10) started, Jeffrey Zeldman, man and legend to all who deal with Web Standards, had the honor of giving the keynote speech. A reflection on Jeffrey's speech, and also the first in my series of @media-covering articles.
Some people say XHTML on the web has failed, but I say it is our biggest success in the fight for Web Standards.