This is the Web Conference, 2nd Edition, where we discuss all things
related to the World Wide Web, such as the core web standards
including HTTP, HTML, CSS, XML, RDF as well as interesting newer
trends and technologies like AJAX, RSS, weblogs, microformats, tagging,
and wikis.

We're living in an exciting era of transition.  In the long-ago days
of the 1990s, the web was a mostly-read-only medium for publishing
documents.  This was Web 1.0.  But now we're more than halfway through
the first decade of the 21st century, and the web has become a
read-write, social medium that users are continuously shaping by
contributing searchable, linkable, and even re-usable data (think
weblogs, Flickr, YouTube, Wikipedia, del.icio.us).  This is the era of
Web 2.0, in which the web is radically transforming the way people
acquire knowledge and interact with one another.  

We're here to discuss both the web phenomenon itself and its technical
underpinnings.  A new era merits a new conference.  We welcome both
technical items like "How do I do drop-down menus in JavaScript?" and
non-technical ones such as "Flickr is Cool! Discuss."  Do you have a
question about web technology, or news about some interesting web site
or web service that you'd like to share, or some web-related issue you
want to discuss?  Then by all means post an item here.

It's ironic that, to some extent, the web that has made one of the
original purposes of a conference like this -- to serve as a
repository of information, a place to look stuff up -- obsolete.  Do
you want to find out what PHP is all about?  You certainly don't come
here; you do a Wikipedia lookup, or type "php" or define:php or
php+tutorial into Google, or something like that.

But conferences, being vehicles for social interaction, provide value
that tutorials and search engines don't -- having conversations,
sharing insights and perspectives, directing people's attention to
places of interest.  This conference won't be an encyclopedia of the
web, but it's my hope that we can have some enlightening conversations
about the web here, and that these conversations will be useful to the
participants.

I suggest responding to this item by introducing yourself.  I'll
start.

19 responses total.

I'm a retired computer science professor and first became involved in
web development in the mid 1990s, when a large internet mailing list
for linguists, The Linguist List, wanted to establish a web presence
and employed me to make it happen.  It was in the course of developing
software to create a web version of the mailing list that I became
acquainted with technologies like HTML (the core language for web
publishing) and SGML (predecessor to XML).  More recently, I've done a
modest amount of web development (CSS, PHP) in connection with my 
personal web site. I have a strong interest in web technologies in 
general and the web as a community-building medium in particular.

I'm Dan Cross.  My training I'm a Mathematician, but I work as a software
engineer.  I once worked for a dot-com company, which built a social
networking site similar in nature to myspace (in fact, it was the grandaddy
of all such sites).  Today, I work at a company probably everyone here uses
on a daily basis without even thinking about.  In neither of these jobs have
I ever worked hands-on with the user-interface code (e.g., HTML or any of
the other canonical `web technologies'), but I have a feeling for them
regardless.

I'm Jonathan Lovelace. I'm a sophomore at Calvin College, as of January 2
majoring in computer science. Even though most of it was well before my time,
for the most part I prefer the old way of doing things on the Web. (If I could
have one wish about a government policy of the past fifty years granted, it
would probably be to not privatize the Internet.) When developing web documents
for myself, my primary goals (besides accuracy of information) are a)
compatibility with so-called "obsolete" browsers including lynx and b) low
bandwith usage/elegance/etc., which for me boils down to using as few tags and
attributes as possible.

On the other end of the spectrum, this past Interim (Calvin's term between the
two semesters, in which you take three hours of class every day for fifteen
days, for three credits, in January) I took a course on AJAX (the only CS
course available), in which I was in a group that developed a blog application
in AJAX, using PHP, MySQL, and XSLT. (I coined the expression "XSLT is the AWK
of the Web.")

I'm Colleen.  I've had varied interests and occupations.  Right now I'm
volunteering at Menlo Innovations, which is an agile programming software
company that rights user-driven software and uses automated unit testing to
make weekly releases of useable, upgraded software to clients.  

I'm also a beginning scripter on Second Life, which uses its own scripting
language (based on C++) to create some amazing 3D objects and effects.

What is user-driven software, and how does one right it?

User-driven software is software that is designed by people who specify
functional requirements, not by people who write code.  The developers do not
get to add any elements to the code that are not explicitly requested, and
the developers do not get to say "C++ can't do that" when what they really
mean is it isn't easy to do that in C++.  

Paying clients are not necessarily the main user, so they have to agree to
let the main user's workstyle and need be the user interface.  Fancy bells
and whistles that are easy to add and give power user functionality are kept
out of the main screen of the software.

It is a way of focusing design so that it is intuitive.  It is not a software
point of view, but a design point of view.  One of the best books I know that
makes the point is "The Design of Everyday Things".

Thanks - in fact, a programmer is writing such a user-driven program for some
research work I am doing, but I had not heard it called that before. Makes
sense, though. 

Hi John

ok, i will do my best to participate in this conference. i do 
webdesign so i should be able to help peoples out in here.

I'm a software developer (java/jsp) for a number of major websites and
currently leading a research team in mobile technology.  I'll try to be
understandable.

I'm Mike. I am webmaster for my company's website. I came to this 
company 6 years ago to work in their in-house graphic art department. 
They had a stagnant web presence and when I suggested this was an 
underutilized resource they told me to go ahead and fix it. 
Between myself and the art director here we have developed this site 
into a valuable resource for client and staff.

I have gained much expeariance in developing ASP driven dynamic pages 
that leverage Access database technology. I have written an ASP.NET 
application in C# to dynamically deliver PDF documents to our clients. 

When I first designed the website it was designed using 'frames' and 
tables which worked okay but left a lot to be desired in terms of 
accessability. I have since totally redesigned the web site using xhtml 
and CSS based layout and I am so glad I did. The transition from html 
to CSS design was a bit of a steep curve but once you 'get it' you 
cannot imagine turning back. I am a firm believer in 'standards based' 
design.

I have set-up a couple of Content Management Systems (CMS) but prefer 
to build websites from the ground up. I maintain a hobby website that 
is running on an old IBM Aptiva (650mhz) with Fedora Core6, Apache, PHP 
and MySQL. This is running on a DSL out of my home. 

I have a working knowledge of Javascript and VBScript and enjoy audio 
and vidio processing using open source solutions. 

I have designed and built 'member forum' applications in both ASP and 
PHP and really do favor PHP (unfortunately that's my hobby language.)

I am about to dive deeper into the ASP.NET possibly AJAX arena as my 
corporate site looks to go more into eCommerce. So I am just as likely 
to look for advice here as to dish it.

Good!  I'm glad to hear that we have some really web savvy folks showing up
now.  This will make things more interesting.

re #11
Do you use any website building software or is it all hand coded?

If I may quote myself from item #6 of the Web Conference...

Dreamweaver is the only real choice for sophisticated web design. I use 
it for both ASP and PHP dynamic pages. It really simplifies - rather 
facilitates - the incorporation of Access Database (ASP) and MySQL 
(PHP). While it is not fool proof it is certainly powerfull.

I have also found Cute HTML a fantastic code source editor. It offers 
syntax checking and code optimization (Two utilities I would feel lost 
without.) 

In the LINUX platform I would strongly recommend Quanta+. It offers bou-
coup features and is user friendly. The site management features alone 
make it worth adding to the arsenal.

For Text editing I say notepad is handy mainly for holding code 
snippets (as a side-kick) but get yourself a free copy of JSoft's 
EditPadPro. You get tabbed pages and syntax coloring. And a very slick 
find and replace that can work for all open pages (so handy.)

The one bit of software I would be totally lost without is On-Target 
Software's Technical Editor 2.65 C.1993. It is a DOS mode ascii editor 
with block editing mode that has saved literally hundreds of 
programming hours. Every computer I have ever had gets this little 
jewel as program one after the OS. Everyone has their own favorite 
simple text editor but I tell you, if you cannot BLOCK edit you do not 
know what you are missing. TE 2.65 is very hard to get hold of these 
days that is why almost every backup disk I ever make contains this APP.

If anyone knows of an HTML editor that does a decent job of CSS I would 
love to hear about it. Dreamweaver obviously tries it's heart out, but 
to develop standards based pages is a bear! (thank you firefox!) 

I use jEdit (http://www.jedit.org/) for web design work. With the FTP
plug-in, I can open a remote file, edit it, and save it back to the
location. Wysiwyg is for n00bs ;) 

Perhaps one of the toughest things for the nOOb designer to wrap their 
head around is that 'what you see' can never be expected to be 'what 
the other guy sees'. The best you can do is make sure the information 
(content) that you are trying to deliver is made available to all who 
come looking for it. 

When I design a page I like to view it in several browsers. I use IE6 
as primary testing browser (thinking that most visitors will be on IE - 
true according to webstats.) Secondly I will check on Linux driven 
FireFox5 (to point out all the holes in CSS - IE being very forgiving 
of CSS errors.) One of the features I like about FireFox is the ability 
to completely turn off the stylesheet so I will view the page style 
free. I will then visit the page on LYNX for the ultimate test of 
accessability. I figure if LYNX can do it then it's probably good for 
most mobiles/palm pilots etc.

Then I will try every browser I come across from windows3.11 html 
renderers to PSP2 video game. The thing I have come to relize is that 
to depend on Flash effects and JAVA trickery is to to exclude a certian 
segment of the websurfing public. That's not to say that I don't 
utilize these valuable tools, but never on the front door and only when 
html can't deliver the product.

Back in the early '90s I was 'bent on text'. I was a strict LYNX surfer 
and would resist the graphics browsers at every turn. Mostly I stuck 
with LYNX because I was usually using a 1200baud dial-up connection to 
the local library "Call-A-Cat" and would worm my way to a remote 
library that offered LYNX browsing (usually Arizona or Tennessee) so I 
was able to explore the internet for free. Using this approach lead to 
a 'following the path of least resistance' attitude to surfing the net 
that carries over to my attitude in web designing. 

I guess you can see how it is that I have come to keep a weather eye on 
good ol' GREX here. ;)

Great stuff, Mike.  I started off as a gopher surfer and have stuck with
text as my primary mode of online amusement, too.
I've used Dreamweaver but I suppose I should RTFM a bit more as I'm not
that acute with CSS and the whole style-sheet idea.

CSS is no doubt the way to go in web design for a whole host of 
reasons. The keyword is XML. XML (or extensable markup language) is 
poised to be the backbone of digital communications. At least XML is 
the key to cross platform compatability and diverse content delivery 
systems now and into the future. Adopting a 'standards based' aproach 
to web design helps to 'future proof' your web pages and sites. 

The beauty of Cascading Style Sheets is all your styling and layout 
information is carried 'outboard' of your all-important content. This 
way if the browser of the future does some really wierd things to the 
design of your site you can write a browser specific stylesheet to 
accomodate 'who-knows-what' and by testing for browser type you can 
custom deliver said CSS. Your content can then be routed to whoever 
needs/wants it; Firefox here, screen reader there, cellphone over 
younder, Morse code generater or jumbo-tron just beyond that hill - 
nobody knows.

The power behind XML - the way I view it - is:
combine two of the most basic elements of the computer. 

1. ASCII text delivered in 
2. hierarchally organized format.

You pass it on or you take it in... what the other guy does with it is 
pretty much up to him. Of course this assumes that what you are 
delivering is information in the form of words - but remember those 
words could also be computer language in search of processing.

ANYWAY...  as for RTFM... There is a book that really opened my eyes to 
this whole 'standards based' XML way of looking at the web. I strongly 
recommend, Jeffery Zeldman's - "Designing With Web Standards". I found 
it at the library but I'm sure it is worth whatever price Amazon has 
for it. Once you start utilizing the stuff he's talking about you will 
look back on your past web designing efforts and most likely feel silly.

Don't get me wrong, standards based design (XHTML strict) is not for 
the faint of heart, but starting down that road by learning the power 
and beauty of CSS is sure to reward you in ways you have yet to 
conceive.

Re resp:18 - I whole-heartedly agree with the Zeldman recommendation. 
Dan Cederholm's books on web design are quite good too.

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