An Event Apart Wrap-up
After trying to absorb a ton of great stuff over two info-packed days here is some of what I took away:
- Read “Attack of the Zombie Copy” on the Alistapart website
- Try to have a writing/editing budget and even a content czar for a web site project (but no one really does!)
- Web text should be brief, chunked, use subheads, appropriate, persuasive, offer a value proposition, serve users in a “find” mode, use short sentences.
- Check out Lulu.com publish on demand service
- The ALA site redesign uses 1024 pixel page width, but breaks the important stuff at 800 pixels to serve both audiences. (good idea!)
- Eric Meyer is as good in person as he is in his books — a CSS maven.
- CSS sprites give an easy way to introduce roll-over behaviors with background images.
- zefrank.com — Ze Frank is as cool now as when I saw him two years (or so) ago at FlashForward.
- Using CSS you can make table data display as a bar graph (Eric Meyer again!)
- !important is a useful CSS technique that shouldn’t be overused unless you are lazy or desperate.
- The user’s browser also has a CSS style sheet that will cause things like hyperlinks to display in the default way even if you didn’t expect this.
- microformats, with things like hCard, hCalendar, and hReview can help you do some VERY cool stuff and link browser content to other programs. I need to to a lot more reading here!
- One True Layout proves that even Eric Meyer doesn’t know everything, and doesn’t mind admitting it. (But he’s still the man!)
- Javascript is still confusing to me, and I’m not sure I’m really ready to dig into the DOM, but FireBug might help. (and one more reason to use Firefox)
- Need to add Weaving the Web to my reading list.
Finally, I really like web design and wish I had more time to dedicate to it. AND its time to give this blog a serious re-design. I want to dig into WordPress and see how far I can push this. Look for the total re-design coming soon.
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