Brian Fitzgerald

It may not be often that you give your mouse a lot of thought, but I just had one of those moments where I thought “Wow! What a great mouse."

I use a Logitech VX when I’m portable and a Logitech MX at my desktop. These are basically the same mouse with some small differences that make each better for the environment they were designed to be used in. The key feature on both is a scroll wheel that is able to work (as many scroll wheels do) in a mode that sort of clicks as you scroll, and a mode that is unique where it is free to spin like the Price-is-right Big Wheel. This last mode is by far my favorite. When you are on a long document of any sort it is really nice to be able to give the wheel a little flick and have the page scroll along until you stop the wheel. The wheel is weighted to keep it moving and has a good-enough build quality that it doesn’t feel like a cheap feature as one might expect that it would.

Thanks again to those of you that attended my workshop in Columbus on Tuesday. Here are some of the resources that I told you I would post here:

Firefox Add-ons

• Firebug (Firebox-based CSS Inspector)
• Firefox Web Development Toolbar
• MeasureIt (screen ruler)
• ColorZilla (Color grabber)

Browser Testing

• Evolt.org (Browser Archives)
• Install multiple version of IE on Windows XP

Web Sites

• CSS Zen Garden
• CSS Beauty: CSS Design Showcase
• CSS Vault: Inspiring Creativity
• CSS Hack
• Glish: CSS Layout Techniques
• Layout-o-matic
• A List Apart
• Digital-Web Magazine
• Stylegala
• The Web Standards Project

Useful books

• Designing with Web Standards — Jeffrey Zeldman
• Bulletproof Web Design — Dan Cederholm
• Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability — Steve Krug
• CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions — Andy Budd, Simon Collison, and Cameron Moll
• Access by Design : A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers — Sarah Horton
• CSS Pocket Reference — Eric Meyer
• HTML Pocket Reference — Jennifer Niederst

Workshop Files

• America — Finish
• America — Start

It’s hard to say anything about this without sounding insensitive, but unfortunately Wikipedia sometimes shines when there are terrible events. Here is Wikipedia’s coverage of today’s shootings at Virginia Tech University.

iPod Observer: Analyst is Skeptical of Apple TV

I’m not saying that Apple TV is going to be a big hit. I really don’t know. I do think that this analyst is missing the point. The Jupiter analyst doesn’t see the point of such a device when one can get the content over the air or via cable/satellite. I think that the iTunes store coupled with Apple TV causes one to question the need for shelling out $50 to $100 or more each month on cable or satellite. How many shows can one really watch? I’ve counted up the shows that my family watches and there are really only five. They are all available on iTunes. If I purchase a season pass to all of them, that averages out to around $14/month over a year for commercial-free, on-demand entertainment. The savings, just from moving from Time Warner’s basic-plus package would be almost $450 a year - easily covering the cost of the Apple TV.

I’m just saying I guess that Apple is not looking to supplement cable/satellite. They are looking to supplant it. They only thing this solution is missing is the ability to watch live events such as sports, but it can display streaming video and I think that it would be perfectly capable of displaying it once Apple starts to deliver it. The telephone companies have had to face the awkward situation of providing DSL to customers that use it to get their telephone service from other sources like Vonage. The cable companies may soon have the same scenario as they provide internet to customers that then get their TV programming from another source.

Looks like a bright future to me.

Today is the deadline for presentation submissions for the National Educational Computing Conference occuring in Atlanta next summer. I got mine in last night. I proposed a three hour workshop covering the creation of web pages using web standards (xhtml, css, xml, etc.). I’m not real hopeful as it sounds dull and I was tired when I wrote the submission so I may have not sold the idea real well. Sometime in December I’ll learn whether I’m in.

Explorer (I’m not sure what else to call him) Dan Buettner gave an impressive presentation at the NETA spring conference on Friday morning. You can catch his presentations (keynote and followup) on the NETA podcast page. You can view the web site of his current project, Blue Zones, here. Finally, here is a link to his latest article in National Geographic on the same topic.

technorati tags: neta06, blue zones, dan buettner

The keynote and feature presentations at this year’s NETA conference are being podcast. You can find them here.

technorati tags: neta06, podcast

Yesterday I helped Kristi Peters with her Firefox workshop. Here are some extensions that were referenced during that workshop.

• Tab Sidebar
  
• Forecastfox
  
• Search Engines
  

technorati tags: neta06, firefox

I will be at the NETA Spring Conference in Omaha today and tomorrow (April 27th and 28th, 2006). I am teaching a workshop on Thursday morning and will be attending the conference the rest of the time.

Have you used SubEthaEdit from CodingMonkeys? It’s a fantastic text-editing program that allows you to collaborate with others on the same document at the same time. If you need to do real-time collaboration on a document, it’s the best thing I have ever seen. If you don’t, it is still a fantastic editor that recognizes many code languages.

Why am I telling you this now? Because for today only, it is the the feature software in BLOGZOT 2.0 on MacZot.com. BlogZot takes a piece of software and offers it for a great price, but then it gets better. Every time a person blogs about the deal and tells MacZot about it, the price drops by five cents. A person can purchase at the going rate any time, or wait until the software becomes free. Today, the Coding Monkeys, that make SubEthaEdit, has offered to give away up to 3,000 copies. That figures out to about $105,000 in free software given away by MacZot and theCodingMonkeys!

SO, if you have a blog, start blogging. Otherwise, keep an eye on MacZot and get your cheap or free software later today.

This morning I worked with two students from Cambridge, Nebraska on web development topics. Here are the links and other resources that I mentioned during that time.

h3. Downloadable Files

• "Completed _America_ Project":[www.brianfitz.net/america_f...](http://www.brianfitz.net/america_finished.zip)

h3. Web Sites

• "CSS Zen Garden":[www.csszengarden.com](http://www.csszengarden.com/) This site show what's possible with CSS by inviting CSS designers to contribute stylesheets to style a common html file.
• "CSS Vault":[www.cssvault.com](http://www.cssvault.com/) A showcase of CSS sites
• "Stylegala":[www.stylegala.com](http://www.stylegala.com/) Another showcase/magazine covering css
• "Layout-o-matic":[www.inknoise.com/experimen...](http://www.inknoise.com/experimental/layoutomatic.php) Have the basics of a css layout built for you.
• "List-o-matic":[www.accessify.com/tools-and...](http://www.accessify.com/tools-and-wizards/developer-tools/list-o-matic/) Have a css-based navigation created with a list built for you
• "Glish":[glish.com/css/](http://glish.com/css/) A source for solid, basic css layouts.
• "Digital-Web Magazine":[www.digital-web.com](http://www.digital-web.com/) IMHO, One of the best standards-based web design magazines
• "A List Apart":[www.alistapart.com](http://www.alistapart.com/) What some may consider the center of the standards universe, this is where you will find some of the best articles and information about standards-based design.

h3. Books

• "Designing with Web Standards (Jeffrey Zeldman)":[www.amazon.com/exec/obid...](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0735712018/qid=1114802761/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-1101931-0476668?v=glance&s=books&n=507846&id=1114802761/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-1101931-0476668?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) If you are serious about learning standards based design, this book is a great place to start. It won't teach you any particular skills, but it will give you all of the background you need to know why you are doing what you are doing?
• "Eric Meyer on CSS":[www.amazon.com/gp/produc...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/073571245X/102-4391777-8320103?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance) This is a good book for a beginning CSS developer as it takes web page elements that everyone builds like navigations and teaches how to build them with CSS using solid techniques.
• "More Eric Meyer on CSS":[www.amazon.com/gp/produc...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0735714258/102-4391777-8320103?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance) An extension of the previous book.
• "CSS Pocket Reference":href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596007779/102-4391777-8320103?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance The other books are too large to carry everywhere you go. This one is small enough to bring with you and will remind you that you change font with font-family, not text-family.
• "Bulletproof Web Design":[www.amazon.com/gp/produc...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321346939/102-4391777-8320103?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance) A recent publication that, like the Eric Meyer books talks about how to create web pages using cascading style sheets that will be compatible with all browsers.

Some observations and thoughts from the first day at Macromedia’s MAX Conference:

Flex is awesome and the price may be right now. I’m frustrated that right now there is no way to develop flex applications on the Macintosh (that I can see). The code is just XML, but you have to have something that can compile the SWF file and that seems to be Windows-only right now.

Stephen Elop (Macromedia CEO) took quite a swing at Microsoft and their new flash-like features in Avalon. He displayed a big slide telling them to “try again”. Of course Microsoft has the money and resources to try again, and again, and again, and again.

Adobe’s Bruce Chizen (CEO) spoke at the end of the general session (many thought it was over and had left). He’s not a great speaker and stumbled over his points quite a bit. He flattered the developers some, but propped Acrobat and print. It will be a curious melding of philosophies when Adobe meets Macromedia. The first’s idea of digitizing content is to put replicate print formats while the other’s goal is to blow people’s minds with ways in which content can be delivered.

Macromedia’s XD development group has a series of sessions available in which they are discussing the way that they build applications. This is something that I thought was really missing next year – talk about how to build an application (beyond the code). The session I was in this morning talked about application design, brainstorming, cycling, etc. It got me excited and I hope to find more sessions like it tomorrow.

Tomorrow is going to be a loooong day. Morning starts at seven. General session should be a lot of fun as the different product groups take turns showing what cool and new. There will be a sneak peak session after the sessions have ended to show what may (or may not) be coming in future products. Finally, there is an event for attendees at Disneyland’s Paradise Pier. I may need to be dragged back to the hotel room tomorrow night.

Hasting workshopers: Here are the final notes and downloads from yesterday’s workshop…

You may “view the completed site here”:www.brianfitz.net/20051006_… OR “download the project folder”:www.brianfitz.net/20051006_… to mess with.

A few extra notes…

I didn’t have a chance to show sites and books, although there are many reference “on the workshop page”:www.brianfitz.net and in your handout. If you are really interested in standards-based design and want to read more about “why?” than “how?”, the best book you can read is Jeffrey Zeldman’s “Designing with Web Standards”:www.amazon.com/exec/obid… It’s a fantastic book that I think everyone doing web development should read. Second, you should take a look through the “CSS Zen Garden”:www.csszengarden.com . It is a single page that different people design style sheets for to demonstrate how great style sheets are. It’s a lot of fun to go through.

Thank you to those that attended the workshop at ESU 9 in Hastings on Thursday. I really had a fun time out there and hope that each of you got something from it when it was all finished &em; other than a headache. ;-) I’m working on getting some final wrapup pieces posted here tonight or tomorrow.

I’m in Hastings, Nebraska today to work with 16 victims willing participants on Dreamweaver, CSS, XHTML and other standards-based issue. It’s going to be a great day…

“View the Workshop Outline”:www.brianfitz.net

Again, for any interested, here are the presentation slides and handout from my "Next Web" presentation on Tuesday at the Midwest Internet Institute in Lincoln.

View Presentation | Download Handout

For anybody that might be interested. Here are the files that I used during my session on cascading style sheets Monday afternoon at the Midwest Internet Institute in Lincoln. They are included here as a zip file that you can expand and proceed to play around with if you wish. The presentation itself is also here. Please be patient with these while they download as my server uplink is not very fast.

Download: Presentation | Files