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Buzz Archives for November 2003

OpenOffice.org 1.1, Standards via Writer2LaTex

For those using OpenOffice 1.1 software, Andreas Bovens has written: Converting OpenOffice.org documents to xhtml 1.0 strict with Writer2LaTeX: a quickguide. With a few changes to the OpenOffice software, Andreas clearly explains and shows how to modify the OpenOffice software to export XHTML Strict using Henrik Just's Writer2LaTeX utility. Also see: Comments ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Authoring Tools

Web standards in ASP.NET

An ASP.NET developer claims that the next version of ASP.NET will produce standards-compliant XHTML, and include a built-in markup validator and accessibility checker as well.

By Mark Pilgrim | Filed in Accessibility

Vector Wiki Whiteboard

In the article, XML.com: Creating an SVG Wiki (November 19, 2003), author Danny Ayers shows how to make a whiteboard for Wiki using standards recommended SVG DOM. Danny gives the minimal code needed for the WikiWhiteboard which allows its users the ability to draw or scribble and use a button ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Web Standards (general)

Dear Slashdot

We need to talk. Daniel M. Frommelt's “Retooling Slashdot with Web Standards” provides spot-on coverage regarding Slashdot's lack of standard fare. “Slashdot is a very prominent site, but underneath the hood you will find an old jalopy that could benefit from a web standards mechanic.” Even Joe Clark hopes Frommelt's article will ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Web Standards (general)

WaSP Interviews: Dan Cederholm

WaSP is pleased to introduce a new ongoing feature: WaSP Interviews. Taking a look at some of the groundbreaking new redesigns happening on the web, we intend to go behind the scenes and shed some light on why more and more big-name sites are turning to web standards. First on ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in WaSP Announcement

SprintPCS does CSS

With a crisp new look, SprintPCS has re-launched as yet another well-designed, corporate standards-based showcase. Hats off to France Rupert and the rest of the team for their hard work. You can view France's design notes on his personal site, Point Break. You might note that there are a few ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in Web Standards (general)

ReUSEIT Results

The ReUSEIT contest results are in. In the contest, folks were challenged to create usable, accessible, standards-based redesigns of usability pundit Jakob Nielsen's useit.com web site. Some of the designs are pretty cool, my personal favorite, Minimal Jakob, ranked in the top ten. I like this particular design mostly because ...

By Molly E. Holzschlag | Filed in Usability

I can’t help but wonder…

I can't help but wonder whether Jason would have better luck defending his position if he used standards-compliant markup (foxtrot comic of 2003.11.05 no longer available at http://www.ucomics.com/foxtrot/ ).

By Mark Pilgrim | Filed in Validation

CSS Vault

Do you ever come to the point sometimes when you are designing and the design is just simply not working so you begin to wonder why you are even a designer or could even claim to be one? So speaks Paul Scrivens of 9rules. If you've ever felt the same (and ...

By Dunstan Orchard | Filed in CSS, Design

On Saving Web Accessibility

Joe Clark writes in A List Apart that web accessibility is under threat from its own guidelines An upcoming revision to the Web Accessibility Guidelines is in danger of becoming unrealistically divorced from real-world web development, yielding guidelines that are at once too vague and too specific. Your expertise ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility

Browser Targetting: Outdated

Locking users into a specific browser is soooo 1998. In an otherwise insightful new article by Jean Tillman of Unisys (the company that brought you the now-expired GIF patent, for those keeping notes), it's argued that those building web-based applications may wish to take advantage of browser-specific technology: Designers of Web-based applications, ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in Web Standards (general)

To Hack Or Not To Hack?

Now that is a question. Specifically, I'm referring to the use of CSS hacks, tricks that take advantage of known browser bugs to do such things as hiding troublesome CSS from specific browsers but not for others. Some markup purists believe them to be as evil as mal-formed XML or ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in CSS

Validity of Eolas Patent To Be Reexamined

Apparently (and thankfully) swayed by the W3C's impassioned appeal, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has agreed to reexamine the validity of the Eolas patent: “A substantial outcry from a widespread segment of the affected industry has essentially raised a question of patentability with respect to the 906 patent ...

By Ethan Marcotte | Filed in Browsers, Legal, Web Standards (general)

A Shopping Cart That Checks Out

No matter how hard we try, there will always be web sites that refuse to validate, don't want to play ball where it comes to accessibility and laugh in the face of table-free CSS layouts - and mostly these sites are the type that are generated dynamically (be that a ...

By Ian Lloyd | Filed in Accessibility, CSS, Web Standards (general)

More than one Internet Explorer

Fellow WaSP Ethan Marcotte has stumbled across a gem of a find — turning Microsoft's recent patent headache into an opportunity, a clever Chicagoan designer has discovered that the new 'patent-friendly' version of IE highlights a hole that allows the simultaneous install of IE5.01, IE5.5, and IE6.0 all on the ...

By Dave Shea | Filed in Browsers

Seeking Students

Paul Bohman of WebAim.org is seeking college and university students with disabilities. He will be researching and conducting a study about the use of Web in higher education. Paul will conduct interviews over the next few weeks via phone, email, online chat, or in person(he is located in Logan Utah, ...

By Holly Marie Koltz | Filed in Accessibility

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Recent Buzz

Small Business Update

By Aaron Gustafson | August 5th, 2010

A while back I announced WaSP’s new small business outreach effort and, thanks to your help, we’ve been making great progress.

Back in February, I announced that one of WaSP’s new efforts was going to be in the direction of outreach to small businesses. Since that time, things have looked pretty quiet from the outside, but the Small Business Outreach Committee has actually been quite busy gathering materials and putting together our first document which aims to help small business owners evaluate the competencies of those seeking to do web work for them.

Thanks to the efforts of a handful of WaSP members and a cadre of other web professionals, we’re making great progress. We’ve just wrapped up the material organization phase and are beginning to work on drafting the document, which we hope to have out before the end of the year. We’re also in the process of putting together a website to house “living” versions of the materials we produce and assist with the promotion and distribution of this document and any others we generate in the future.

We’ll post further announcements on this project as we get closer to the launch date.

Filed in Education, Outreach, Small Business Outreach | Comments (0)

More Buzz articles

Title Author
IE9 looks really promising Aaron Gustafson
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A New Direction and a New Project Aaron Gustafson

All of the entries posted in WaSP Buzz express the opinions of their individual authors. They do not necessarily reflect the plans or positions of the Web Standards Project as a group.

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