Technology

XML Fever

"The Extensible Markup Language (XML), which just celebrated its 10th birthday 4, is one of the big success stories of the Web. Apart from basic Web technologies (URIs, HTTP, and HTML) and the advanced scripting driving the Web 2.0 wave, XML is by far the most successful and ubiquitous Web technology. With great power, however, comes great responsibility, so while XML's success is well earned as the first truly universal standard for structured data, it must now deal with numerous problems that have grown up around it. These are not entirely the fault of XML itself, but instead can be attributed to exaggerated claims and ideas of what XML is and what it can do." (Erik Wilde and Robert J. Glushko)

Posted on June 25, 2008 | Permalink

XProc: An XML Pipeline Language

"An XML Pipeline specifies a sequence of operations to be performed on zero or more XML documents. Pipelines generally accept zero or more XML documents as input and produce zero or more XML documents as output. Pipelines are made up of simple steps which perform atomic operations on XML documents and constructs similar to conditionals, iteration, and exception handlers which control which steps are executed." (W3C)

Posted on May 07, 2008 | Permalink

Form Follows Function and Achieving Thereof

"Forms can be dreadfully tricky to style and structure properly. Several articles that are out there focus on best practises for building forms using HTML en CSS. This article focusses in a non technical fashion on the use of meaningful nomenclature and how form semantics relate to elements that current markup standards have to offer. It may help you recognise structural patterns and to compose forms properly." (Cornelis Govert Adriaan Kolbach - cornae.org)

Posted on March 26, 2008 | Permalink

The future of XML

"The wheels of progress turn slowly, but turn they do. The crystal ball might be a little hazy, but the outline of XML's future is becoming clear. The exact time line is a tad uncertain, but where XML is going isn't. XML's future lies with the Web, and more specifically with Web publishing." (Elliotte R. Harold - IBM developersWork)

Posted on February 08, 2008 | Permalink

CSS at Ten: The Next Big Thing

"Ten years ago, Håkon Wium Lie and Bert Bos gave us typographic control over web pages via CSS. But Verdana and Georgia take us only so far. Now Håkon shows us how to take web design out of the typographic ghetto, by harnessing the power of real TrueType fonts." (Håkon Wium Lie - A List Apart)

Posted on August 28, 2007 | Permalink

The myth of content and presentation separation

"One of the hallmark attributes of web standards-based design is the concept that proper use of semantic (X)HTML and CSS completely abstracts the presentation of a site from its content. One key real-world benefit of this separation is that come redesign time, one only needs to change or replace the CSS stylesheet, and needn't lay so much as a finger upon the hallowed grounds we call markup. I'm here to say that this mantra isn't much more than a fairy tale." (Jeff Croft)

Posted on August 16, 2007 | Permalink

Evangelizing Outside the Box: Web Standards and Large Companies

"Once enough large web companies use web standards and loudly proclaim that fact, other large companies will start to be afraid of missing the Latest and Greatest (always a source of management panic), mend their ways, and start to demand standards awareness from their employees and freelancers, too." (Peter-Paul Koch - A List Apart)

Posted on May 30, 2007 | Permalink

Ajax and the Old World

"Today, complex layout methods have made it possible to borrow from interaction patterns of desktop applications, including drop down menu bars, expanding trees and tabs. It's this exact inevitable shift of desktop application design patterns to the page metaphor that has more than often led to confusion amongst both web designers and end users. In this era of AJAX en RIAs, the possibilities for user interface designers have become infinite. Hence the question arises: Have all of these developments actually led to an improved user experience?" (Cornelis Kolbach - cornae)

Posted on March 09, 2007 | Permalink

Form-Content-Essence: Designing Markup for Information Representation

"To define a web-format that addresses existing problems and requirements, and will last, needs a lot of work and consultation. XHTML2 is close to ready now, and will go to last call this year we expect. XForms is already in widespread use. Even if XHTML2 is not available in browsers, it is excellent as a content language that can be transformed on the fly. Several large companies are already doing this. (Steven Pemberton)

Posted on October 08, 2006 | Permalink

12 Lessons for Those Afraid of CSS and Standards

"#1: Everything you know is wrong... sort of; #2: It's not going to look exactly the same everywhere unless you're willing to face some grief... and possibly not even then; #3: You will be forced to choose between the ideal and the practicable; #4: Perfection is not when there’s nothing to add, but when there’s nothing to take away; #5: Some sites are steaming heaps of edge cases; #6: Longer lead times are inevitable; #7: Coherent and sensible source order is the best of Good Things; #8: Descendant selectors are the beginning and end of genuinely powerful CSS rules; #9: In the real world, stylesheet hacks will get your project across the finish line; #10: Working around rendering bugs is like playing Whack-a-Mole; #11: When you're drowning in CSS layout problems, make sure of the width and height of the water, float without putting up a struggle, and get clear of the problems; #12: Background images will make the difference between the plain and the tastefully embellished." (Ben Henick - A List Apart)

Posted on October 04, 2006 | Permalink

The Big Picture of Microformats

"In this article, we’ll review what people are doing with microformats right now, and finish up by looking at a couple of cool projects that might whet your appetite for microformats' future prospects." (John Allsopp - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on August 31, 2006 | Permalink

Display 2.0: A Look Forward to the High-Definition Web and Its Effect on Our Digital Experience

"As we begin to explore this high-resolution digital world, we may find that familiar user interface models are no longer viable." (Jonathan Follett - UXmatters)

Posted on August 20, 2006 | Permalink

AJAX Seminar

"By now there isn't a software developer on earth who isn't aware of the collection of programming technologies known as AJAX. But you can't bank awareness. So, how in concrete terms can you take advantage in your own projects of this newly popular way of delivering online content to users without reloading an entire page? How soon can you be monetizing AJAX?" - including a webcast by JJG. (SYS-CON Media)

Posted on August 01, 2006 | Permalink

What are microformats?

"(1) Microformats enable the publishing and sharing of higher fidelity information on the Web. (2) Small bits of (X)HTML that identify richer data types like people and events in your webpages. (3) Building blocks that enable users to own, control, move, and share their data on the Web." (Tantek Çelik - An Event Apart)

Posted on July 13, 2006 | Permalink

Understanding XForms: Components

"Big complex data models look really imposing and impressive, but at the end of the day, XForms got their start largely because the existing HTML forms just weren't expressive enough. Consider some of the more vexing problems associated with typical web forms. Suppose that you wished to..." (Kurt Cagle - O'Reilly XML Blog)

Posted on June 26, 2006 | Permalink

The Usability of Ajax: A Primer for Usability Professionals and First Hand Account

"You can't just ask Dreamweaver for the code - it's currently a hand coding exercise." (John Whalen - HFI)

Posted on June 20, 2006 | Permalink

Proceedings of WWW 2005

The CD Version of the Fourteenth International World Wide Web Conference held at Makuhari Messe on May 10-14, 2005, in Chiba, Japan (WWW2005) - courtesy of stevenpemberton

Posted on June 09, 2006 | Permalink

The Future of the Web

"The development of Web technology has been an exciting ride, a series of socially motivated technical innovations some languishing, others catching on in a viral way. As each development has suggested many new ones, and much of the original vision is still unfulfilled, there is a lot to do. This talk will discuss new challenges and hopes for weblike systems on the net." (Tim Berners-Lee - Oxford Internet Institute Webcasts) - courtesy of boingboing

Posted on March 31, 2006 | Permalink

The Next Web?

"It sometimes seems like widely popular web-standards innovation halted around 2000, and the last few years have been a period of very slow catch-up. Various visions of a new Web, a better Web, have come and gone, leaving behind useful parts but not yet transforming the Web. Are we on the edge of the next big thing? It may make sense to look at the last few big things, comparing their visions with what's happening today." (Simon St. Laurent - XML.com) - courtesy of thinkingandmaking

Posted on March 30, 2006 | Permalink

What are microformats?

"The trick... is to make sure that each limited mechanical part of the Web, each application, is within itself composed of simple parts that will never get too powerful." - says Tim Berners-Lee (Tantek Çelik - Microformats)

Posted on March 08, 2006 | Permalink

Web Authoring Statistics

"In December 2005, we did an analysis of a sample of slightly over a billion documents, extracting information about popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata. (...) You will need a browser with SVG and CSS support to view the result graphs correctly. We recommend Firefox 1.5." (Google Code) - courtesy of justaddwater

Posted on January 27, 2006 | Permalink

Migrating from HTML to XHTML and XML: Part 2/2

"(...) validating your XHTML files, migrating from XHTML to XML, possible XML standards, creating your own standard, validating your XML files, and creating an XML to HTML transform." (Char James-Tanny - WritersUA)

Posted on January 12, 2006 | Permalink

The Future of HTML (1/2): WHATWG

"In this two-part series, Edd Dumbill examines the various ways forward for HTML that Web authors, browser developers, and standards bodies propose. This series covers the incremental approach embodied by the WHATWG specifications and the radical cleanup of XHTML proposed by the W3C. Additionally, the author gives an overview of the W3C's new Rich Client Activity. Here in Part 1, Edd focuses primarily on two specifications being developed by WHATWG: Web Applications 1.0 (HTML5) and Web Forms 2.0." (Edd Dumbill - IBM)

Posted on December 09, 2005 | Permalink

RIAs: The Technology Is Exciting, but They Really Do Help Users

"Recently, there has been a lot of talk about Rich Internet Applications (RIAs), how they work, and how to choose the appropriate RIA technology. Unfortunately, so far, we've had few discussions about the value of RIAs to users and how RIA technologies let us create better, more usable Web applications." (David Heller - UXmatters)

Posted on December 07, 2005 | Permalink

Storyboarding RIA with Visio

"With the recent rise in popularity of web technologies such as Flash and AJAX, it has become possible to create richer user experiences on the web. Even though these technologies are not actually new, we are now seeing their widespread adoption. Within the last six months, we have seen the christening of the term 'AJAX' and its broad acceptance. Most major websites are adding rich interaction to their existing features" (Bill Scott - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on December 01, 2005 | Permalink

Migrating from HTML to XHTML and XML

"This is the first part of a two-part article describing a detailed methodology for migrating HTML files to the structure and flexibility of XHTML and/or XML. By using XHTML to add structure and separate content from presentation, you'll be better positioned for a move to XML. Even if you never move to XML, your XHTML files will be easier to create and maintain, and will be more accessible." - (Char James-Tanny - WinWriterUA)

Posted on November 08, 2005 | Permalink

WE05 PodCasts

"Thanks to the generous permission of the speakers, you can listen to all these sessions from WE05." (Web Essentials 2005) - courtesy of webgraphics

Posted on September 30, 2005 | Permalink

Why Ajax Matters Now

"(...) the unexplored ways we can evolve Web conventions without the constraints of the old hypertext interaction model, are why the recent Ajax explosion signals a new chapter in the history of Web design." (Jesse James Garrett - OK/Cancel)

Posted on September 17, 2005 | Permalink

Using Ajax for Creating Web Applications

"In the past few years, developers could choose between two approaches when building a web application. The first approach was to create a screen-based system with very rich interactions using a sophisticated, powerful technology such as Java or Flash. The alternative approach was to create a page-based system using easier-to-learn core web standards like XHTML and CSS whose more basic capabilities force less-rich interactions. A new technological approach, dubbed Ajax, might just be the right mix between the two." (Joshua Porter - UI 10 Conference)

Posted on July 15, 2005 | Permalink

AJAX & Interface Design

"As AJAX applications become more widespread and users begin to expect more of the rich interactions they enable, some of the over-communicating happening today may not be necessary. Until then, however, it's necessary to consider the expectations users have and meet them accordingly." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

Posted on May 16, 2005 | Permalink

O'Reilly and Adaptive Path Team Up for Ajax Summit

"Ajax breaks the interaction model of the Web. It faces the unique user interface problem of blending the expectations users have of a website with the behavior of a desktop application. This is the consequence of giving the user desktop app powers within their trusty browser." - (Quinn Norton - O'Reilly Network)

Posted on May 13, 2005 | Permalink

State is the Web

"State requires a lot of thought and consideration. If we are going to build the web for amateurization or personal information architectures that ease how people build and structure their use of the web, we must provide state." (Thomas VanderWal)

Posted on April 25, 2005 | Permalink

Web Application Solutions: A Designer's Guide

"Web Application Solutions is a guide that helps designers, product managers, and business owners evaluate some of the most popular Web application presentation layer solutions available today. We compare each solution through consistent criteria (deployment & reach, user interactions, processing, interface components and customization, back-end integration, future proofing, staffing and cost, unique features) and provide an overview, set of examples, and references for each." (Luke Wroblewski - Functioning Form)

Posted on April 13, 2005 | Permalink

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications

"Google Suggest and Google Maps are two examples of a new approach to web applications that we call Ajax. The name is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML, and it represents a fundamental shift in what's possible on the Web. (...) The biggest challenges in creating Ajax applications are not technical. The core Ajax technologies are mature, stable, and well understood. Instead, the challenges are for the designers of these applications: to forget what we think we know about the limitations of the Web, and begin to imagine a wider, richer range of possibilities." (Jesse James Garrett - Adaptive Path)

Posted on February 20, 2005 | Permalink

Developing with Web Standards: Recommendations and Best Practices

"This document explains how and why using web standards will let you build websites in a way that saves time and money for the developer and provides a better experience for the visitor. Also discussed are other methods, guidelines and best practices that will help produce high-quality websites that are accessible to as many as possible." (Roger Johansson - 456 Berea Street)

Posted on February 13, 2005 | Permalink

The Dollars and Sense of Building to Standards

"Ultimately, the push for standards-compliant code should come from the coding ranks. We need to enlighten all levels of management to the savings they can achieve by embracing Web standards. If the people on the front lines don't take on the job of promoting standards to management and management learns of these savings first, you'll be faced with a tougher challenge-why didn't you know to use and push for standards-compliant code?" (Alan K'necht - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on February 10, 2005 | Permalink

Printing XML: Why CSS Is Better than XSL

"On the web, CSS is the style sheet language of choice. However, the usefulness of CSS is not limited to screens. If you want to transfer web content -- be it XML or HTML -- onto paper, there are good reasons to use CSS. The language is radically simpler than that of XSL, and it is suitable both on-screen and on paper. This means that you probably don't have to write a stylesheet at all but can reuse an existing one." (Håkon Wium Lie and Michael Day - xml.com)

Posted on January 20, 2005 | Permalink

Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 2.0) - W3C Recommendation

"SMIL 2.0 has the following two design goals: (1) Define an XML-based language that allows authors to write interactive multimedia presentations. Using SMIL 2.0, an author can describe the temporal behavior of a multimedia presentation, associate hyperlinks with media objects and describe the layout of the presentation on a screen. (2) Allow reusing of SMIL 2.0 syntax and semantics in other XML-based languages, in particular those who need to represent timing and synchronization. For example, SMIL 2.0 components are used for integrating timing into XHTML and into SVG." (W3C)

Posted on January 11, 2005 | Permalink

web essentials 04 - zeldman keynote captioned with quicktime SMIL

"As an experiment in the use of SMIL, a captioned version of Jeffrey Zeldman's Web Essentials 04 video keynote, using Quicktime SMIL 1.0." (splintered)

Posted on January 06, 2005 | Permalink

Achitecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One

"The World Wide Web uses relatively simple technologies with sufficient scalability, efficiency and utility that they have resulted in a remarkable information space of interrelated resources, growing across languages, cultures, and media. In an effort to preserve these properties of the information space as the technologies evolve, this architecture document discusses the core design components of the Web. They are identification of resources, representation of resource state, and the protocols that support the interaction between agents and resources in the space. We relate core design components, constraints, and good practices to the principles and properties they support." (W3C)

Posted on December 23, 2004 | Permalink

An XML Architecture for Technical Documentation: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture

"So what does media-neutral content look like? It focuses on tasks and concepts, not on chapters and appendixes. It follows the same basic information design principles that have informed good manual design and good online design for decades: task orientation, minimalism, and scenario-based development. If you author tasks and concepts, rather than sections and paragraphs, you have the makings of a topic collection that can be reordered for different needs, supporting different task flows for different users, and supporting different reading paths for different media. " (Don Day, Erik Hennum, John Hunt, Michael Priestley, David Schell, Nancy Harrison - WritersUA)

Posted on November 25, 2004 | Permalink

Web Applications 1.0

"The World Wide Web's markup language has always been HTML. HTML was primarily designed as a language for semantically describing scientific documents, although its general design and adaptations over the years has enabled it to be used to describe a number of other types of documents. The main area that has not been adequately addressed by HTML is a vague subject referred to as Web Applications. This specification attempts to rectify this." (Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group)

Posted on November 16, 2004 | Permalink

Setting the scope for light-weight Web-based applications

Unfinished version of an essay on 'Web applications'. - "The light-weight, Web-based applications ('webapps') of this essay are small, platform-independent programs that are downloaded on demand and execute inside a client program, such as a browser. They are thus like Java applets, but more 'script-like' than 'program-like' and therefore easier to write in many cases (though harder in others). They have a clearly separated user interface, that allows webapps to be easily adapted to different devices." (Bert Bos - The W3C Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents Position Papers)

Posted on November 15, 2004 | Permalink

The Power of Metadata

"This essay is an excerpt from the book 'Peer-to-Peer Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies'. It presents the goals that drive the developers of the best-known peer-to-peer systems, the problems they've faced, and the technical solutions they've found." (Rael Dornfest and Dan Brickley - O'Reilly openP2P)

Posted on November 04, 2004 | Permalink

The Croquet Project

"(...) the project seeks to define and develop a system is focused on the simulation and communication of complex ideas. We call this 'communication enhancement' - the direct extension of the abilities of humans to develop, understand, and describe even the most complex simulations." (About Croquet)

Posted on October 12, 2004 | Permalink

The beauty and business of CSS

Doug Bowman Presentation at Web Essentials 04 - "Building designs with CSS is no longer a fringe activity practiced by standards geeks and early-adopters. Creative pioneers and highly skilled designers are bringing CSS to the mainstream. The explosion in popularity is ushering in a new wave of possibilities for web design. CSS provides greater design control, allows more flexibility, and enables sites to become attractive, accessible, and faster-loading, all at the same time." (Stopdesign) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted on October 01, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Architecture of the World Wide Web, First Edition

"The World Wide Web is an information space of interrelated resources. This information space is the basis of, and is shared by, a number of information systems. Within each of these systems, people and software retrieve, create, display, analyze, relate, and reason about resources. Web architecture defines the information space in terms of identification of resources, representation of resource state, and the protocols that support the interaction between agents and resources in the space." (W3C)

Posted on August 22, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

SVG-based User Interface Framework

"The purpose of the SPARK project is to create a flexible, interoperable SVG-based user interface framework. Using well established and standardized languages including SVG, XML, Java and IDL, we went about creating a framework that could easily be used by others to rapidly develop SVG based applications or prototypes." (SVG Open 2003)

Posted on August 20, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The real reason you should care about web standards

"Generally speaking, standards are a means to apply pressure on corporations to behave in a manner that is beneficial to everyone, not just the shareholders of the corporation." (Andrei Michael Herasimchuk - Design by Fire)

Posted on June 13, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Separation: The Web Designer's Dilemma

"With all the discussion about separating presentation from content (and structure), it's easy to lose track of the goal. So let's step back, define our terms, and take a look at why it matters." (Michael Cohen - A List Apart)

Posted on May 17, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Matrix of W3C Specifications

"The specifications in the Matrix are at least at Last Call stage, except if they are working on a Test Suite at Working Draft stage. An empty cell means that the data is either not available or not known by the maintainers of the Matrix. The Matrix contains 70 Recommendations, 18 Candidate Recommendations, 0 Proposed Recommendations and 15 Last Call Working Drafts." (W3C)

Posted on April 16, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

SVG and Typography

"Mixing the worlds of documents, programming, and visual design is a familiar experience for XML developers, especially when dealing with presentation technologies like SVG. Such mixtures can produce exciting new representations of information." (Fabio Arciniegas A. - XML.com)

Posted on April 08, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Way Forward with Web Standards

"Even though Web standards are being embraced by many Web authors, some businesses are reluctant to invest in standards-based Web sites without concrete reasons to do so. To help Web authors interested in advocating Web standards, this article assembles arguments and information about Web standards into one document and explains Web standards in terms of how they affect business." (MACCAWS) - courtesy of elearningpost

Posted on April 06, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The End-All Guide to Small-Screen Web-Dev

"The number of wireless visitors using tiny browsers with ever increasing capacities is unlikely to diminish." (Heidi Pollock - Webmonkey) - courtesy of nick finck

Posted on March 26, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Next Big Thing: From Hypermedia to Datuments

"The concept of a datument as a hyperdocument for transmitting and preserving the complete content of a piece of scientific work is introduced. Currently the scientific publishing process loses almost all of the information environment that the author creates or possesses. It is shown that datuments can record and reproduce experiments and act as a lossless way of publishing science. This is illustrated with specific examples drawn from scientific documents and molecular science, showing how a datument containing molecular coordinates can be viewed in various styles and how typical documents deriving from organic and physical chemistry and expressed in XML can be transformed using XSLT." (Peter Murray-Rust and Henry S. Rzepa - Journal of Digital Information)

Posted on March 21, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

OWL Web Ontology Language

"The OWL Web Ontology Language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans." - W3C Recommendation (W3C)

Posted on March 04, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Access to a Unified Web from Any Device in Any Context by Anyone

"A few years ago, virtually the only way to access the Web was through a personal computer or workstation. True, there were variations between the facilities offered by various browsers, some being capable of use on text-based terminals. However, almost invariably, Web access, for individuals without specific accessability needs, involved using a machine with a reasonably large, color display with full graphic capabilities. While this is still primarily true, since the middle of 2000, the number of different kinds of device that can access the Web has grown from a small number with essentially the same core capabilities to many hundreds with a wide variety of different capabilities. At the time of writing, mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants, interactive television systems, voice response systems, kiosks and even certain domestic appliances can all access the Web." (W3C)

Posted on February 24, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Zurgle: The Squeak Desktop Enhancement Project

"The Zurgle project is a campaign to help clean up some of the sharper edges on the current Squeak desktop by adding things like emulated widgets and window skins." (Squeak)

Posted on February 18, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Component Technology and Modeling Support in UML for Developers

"In this article, a try has been made to see CBD from a developer's perspective. We shall see that support does exist in terms of modeling the CBD process, but the level of support differs significantly at different stages of the process. We will see how UML supports a service-based architecture and what sorts of model it provides for the different people in the development team. We try to explore the different models provided by UML to analyze, design and implement the Component-Based systems and see what sort of support do they provide for the different levels in development process." (Amjad Bashir - Journal of Conceptual Modeling)

Posted on February 11, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Modeling Language (WebML)

"Designing a data-intensive Web site amounts to specifying its characteristics in terms of various orthogonal abstractions, each captured by a distinct model. The structure, composition, navigation, and presentation models enable the description of read-only web sites. They can be extended to cope with the specification of content management and integration with external services, through the addition of operations, which can be defined and added to the hypertext model. They are invoked as a side effect of navigation and permit one to specify commonly found interaction patterns as data entry, personal data management, and shopping carts." (About WebML.org)

Posted on January 26, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Multimodal Interaction on the Web

"Interaction (input, output) between the user and the application may often be conceptualized as a series of dialogs, managed by an interaction manager. A dialog is an interaction between the user and the application that involves turn-taking." (Peter Mikhalenko - XML.Com)

Posted on January 22, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

XForms Institute: Interactive XForms School

"Like XHTML, SVG, and RSS, XForms is an XML-based language written with tags that can be identified by surrounding angle brackets. (XML purists perfer to call these elements) Learning XForms is largely a matter of understanding what individual elements do, as well as how they interrelate. One difference is that XForms provides several more elements than form authors might be accustomed to. As a result, several tasks that would have otherwise required complicated scripting can be accomplished declaratively, just by putting the right elements in place." (About XForms Institute)

Posted on January 19, 2004 | Permalink | TrackBack

Multimedia Web Forms

"Multipage tax input forms with calculations and validations; Web shop order forms (...) anything that needs user interaction within Web document formats." (Kari Pihkala, Mikko Honkala, and Petri Vuorimaa - SMIL Europe 2003)

Posted on January 01, 2004 | Permalink

OWL: Web Ontology Language - Overview

"The OWL Web Ontology Language is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans." (W3C)

Posted on December 17, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Architecture of the World Wide Web, First edition

"The World Wide Web is a network-spanning information space of resources interconnected by links. This information space is the basis of, and is shared by, a number of information systems. Within each of these systems, agents (people and software) retrieve, create, display, analyze, and reason about resources. Web architecture includes the definition of the information space in terms of identification and representation of its contents, and of the protocols that support the interaction of agents in an information system making use of the space. Web architecture is influenced by social requirements and software engineering principles, leading to design choices that constrain the behavior of systems using the Web in order to achieve desired properties of the shared information space: efficiency, scalability, and the potential for indefinite growth across languages, cultures, and media. This document reflects the three bases of Web architecture: identification, interaction, and representation." (W3C)

Posted on December 11, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

XML: One input - many outputs: A response to Hillesund

"There are problems, mostly editorial in nature, for which there are no technical solutions. As such, XML as a technology does not solve them. However, I think it does provide a platform on which to build solutions." (Norman Walsh - Journal of Digital Information / Theme: Information management)

Posted on December 04, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

FAQ Digital Object Identifier

"(...) a digital identifier for any object of intellectual property. A DOI provides a means of persistently identifying a piece of intellectual property on a digital network and associating it with related current data in a structured extensible way." (The Digital Object Identifier) - courtesy of leo robert klein

Posted on December 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

WordprocessingML schemas from Microsoft published

"(...) the xml schemas for Microsoft Office Word 2003 (WordprocessingML) along with documentation." (Infostructurebase) - courtesy of langemark

Posted on November 18, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Sliding Doors of CSS

"It's time to take back control over the tabs which are continually growing in popularity as a primary means of site navigation. Now that CSS is widely supported, we can crank up the quality and appearance of the tabs on our sites." (Douglas Bowman - A List Apart 3.0)

Posted on October 22, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Semantic Web, Today

"The key point of the semantic web is the conversion of the current structure of the web as a data storage (interpretable only by human beings, that are able to put the data into context) into a structure of information storage. In order to convert data into information we have to put it into context by adding metadata, data that contains the semantics, the explanation of the data it refers to; in the end, the context." (Juan C. Dürsteler - Info@Vis!)

Posted on October 13, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Architecture of Unusual Things

"Strap on your mental protective gear and join IBM Fellow Grady Booch on a high-energy tour of things unusual, curious, and just plain weird. Of course there are lessons to be learned along the way, as we discover how common design principals inform even the most uncommon of entities. We'll also explore the evolution of different genres of architecture, the forces that have shaped them, and their practical manifestation in today's Web- and services-oriented architectures." (IBM Rational Events)

Posted on October 06, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Business Value of Web Standards

"These aren't formulas for determining the ROI of migrating to standards, but they are some pretty good financial justifications. 'It's what all the cool sites are doing' shouldn't be your only point when arguing for a switch to XHTML and CSS. The economic benefits of standardization are tangible. Once we can quantify them, businesses will begin realize the true promise of the Web - interoperable content freely shared." (Jeffrey Veen - Adaptive Path) - courtesy of lawrence lee

Posted on September 19, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Listamatic: One List, Many Options

"Can you take a simple list and use different Cascading Style Sheets to create radically different list options? The Listamatic shows the power of CSS when applied to one simple list using samples (...)" (Max Design) - courtesy of jeffrey zeldman

Posted on September 08, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Standards: Designing for the Future

"Here's where I begin to fly in the face of common consensus - it being that if you code to web standards, it makes for easier maintenance of your site to those joining a project later. My experience has, thus far, shown the opposite to be true. It pains me to admit this." (Ian Lloyd - Mezzoblue)

Posted on August 28, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

XForms Essentials

"(...) XForms, a combination of two of the most successful experiments ever performed on the Web: XML and forms." (Micah Dubinko)

Posted on August 14, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Designing with Web Standards

"It takes the same amount of work and money to design for one browser as it does to design for all browsers and devices." (Jeffrey Zeldman)

Posted on August 06, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Using XHTML/CSS for an Effective SEO Campaign

"If youíre reading this article in the hopes of learning how to get an adult site listed in the 'school supplies' category on Google, we kindly suggest you fall off the face of the earth. Any hate mail regarding this can be directed to sally@morekinky.net. It's due time to pay her back for all those 'petting zoo pictures' that manage to bypass my spam filtering system." (Brandon Olejniczak - A List Apart)

Posted on August 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

An Essay on W3C's Design Principles

"The Web is all about helping humans communicate, but what hopefully becomes clear from this essay is that writing specs also is a form of human communication. There is one word that summarizes nearly all the fancy keywords of this essay, and that is:..." (W3C) - courtesy of dave winer

Posted on August 02, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

XForms 1.0 Proposed Recommendation

"XForms is an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three partsóXForms model, instance data, and user interfaceóit separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typingóreducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting." (W3C)

Posted on August 02, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Prototyping With Style

"Cascading Style Sheets can be one of the most important tools in a user-centered designerís toolkit when working on rapid prototyping. The combination of valid HTML/XHTML markup and external CSS can be used to rapidly create prototypes, speed up the development process, and easily incorporate more user-centered techniques into the design process." (Jeff Lash - Digital Web Magazine)

Posted on July 27, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

SVG: The Sure Thing

"If you mention Scalable Vector Graphics language (SVG) in a crowd of web developers they will immediately gravitate to the question of whether it can 'beat' Flash. Recently SVG Print has focused attention on the question of whether SVG can compete with PDF and Postscript. These are exciting possibilities: it would be great to unify these domains under a standardized, XML-based syntax. Nevertheless, it is ultimately quite limiting to define SVG by its success in replacing these existing technologies. SVG is much more than a Flash and PDF-killer." (Paul Prescod - SVG Open 2003)

Posted on July 21, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Browser Wars II: The Saga Continues

"In the First Era of browser history Mosaic and the other early browsers ruled. The Second Era was that of Netscape dominance. Microsoft's challenge to Netscape marked the beginning of the Third Era, the Heroic Age of the Browser Wars. Netscape's bleeding to death marked the start of the Fourth Era of Explorer dominance. The recent news about Explorer shows that this Era has come to an end, too. We stand at the beginning of the Fifth Era of browser history. What will it bring?" (Peter Paul Koch - Evolt)

Posted on July 14, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Introduction to the Semantic Web

"Slides of the presentation held in Brussels, Belgium, on the 24 June, 2003 at the W3C Semantic Tour event, organized by the W3C Benelux Office (...)" (Ivan Herman - W3C)

Posted on July 04, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Squeakland

"Squeak is a 'media authoring tool' -- software that you can download to your computer and then use to create your own media or share and play with others." (Alan Kay c.s.)

Posted on July 04, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Architecture of the World Wide Web

"The World Wide Web is a networked information system. Web Architecture consists of the requirements, constraints, principles, and choices that influence the design of the system and the behavior of agents within the system. When Web Architecture is followed, the large-scale effect is that of an efficient, scalable, shared information space." (W3C) - courtesy of tim bray

Posted on July 01, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Architecture of the World Wide Web

"The World Wide Web is a networked information system. Web Architecture consists of the requirements, constraints, principles, and design choices that influence the design of the system and the behavior of agents within the system. When followed, the large-scale effect is that of a shared information space. This document organizes the technical discussion of the system in three parts: identification, representation, and interaction. This document also addresses some non-technical (social) issues that contribute to the shared information space." (W3C) - courtesy of tim bray

Posted on June 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Designing a New Schema with XML Design Patterns

"In this article, we're going to start a project to design an XML format that could be generated from IDL, TLB, XDT or any other representation of a portable component and then be read by any language that supports XML and further manipulated to generate GUI tools, documentation, and more." (Kyle Downey - O'Reilly XML.com)

Posted on June 05, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

CSS Zen Garden: The Beauty in CSS Design

"A demonstration of what can be accomplished visually through CSS-based design." - (Dave Shea)

Posted on May 26, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Services - Semantic Web

"What are Web Servies? Program integration across application and organizational boundaries. (...) What is Semantic Web? Data integration across application, organizational boundaries." - (Tim Berners-Lee - The Twelfth International World Wide Web Conference)

Posted on May 21, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Taxomita: Distributed Metadata for Information Geeks

"Taxomita is a tool for creating faceted taxonomies using PHP and MySQL." (Peter van Dijck)

Posted on May 13, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Why XML Doesn't Suck

"Recently in this space I complained that XML is too hard for programmers. That article got Slashdotted and was subsequently read by over thirty thousand people; I got a lot of feedback, quite a bit of it intelligent and thought-provoking. This note will argue that XML doesn't suck, and discuss some of the issues around the difficulties encountered by programmers." (Tim Bray - Antartica Systems) - courtesy of mark bernstein

Posted on April 29, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Semantic Blog

"When the mainstream trade press first started writing about XML, one of the key benefits invariably cited was precise search. You don't hear much about that any more. It wasn't, and still isn't, the wrong idea, but XML-savvy search requires an investment in data preparation that virtually nobody was or is willing to make." (Jon Udell - XML.com)

Posted on April 22, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Architectural Design Patterns for XML Documents

This article attempts to document a few whole-document design patterns that have proven themselves in the field." (Kyle Downey - XML.com

Posted on March 27, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Markup Language Specification

"The goal of IML is to enable handheld computers, (that have limitations in the display size and input capabilities), to access and render content from the Internet." (Simputer Project) - courtesy of dmitri ragano

Posted on February 19, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

HTML's Time is Over. Let's Move On.

"Ultimately, I donít see a long term future for HTML as an application development solution. It is a misapplied tool that was never meant to be used for anything other than distributed publishing." (David Heller - Boxes and Arrows)

Posted on January 28, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) 1.1 Specification

"(...) a modularized language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML." (W3C)

Posted on January 15, 2003 | Permalink | TrackBack

Flash Satay

Embedding Flash while supporting standards (Drew McLellan - A List Apart)

Posted on November 13, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Ontology Language (OWL) - Guide Version 1.0

"(...) to provide a language that can be used to describe the classes and relations between them that are inherent in Web documents and applications." (W3C)

Posted on November 11, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

User Agent Accessibility Guidelines 1.0

"(...) guidelines for designing user agents that lower barriers to Web accessibility for people with disabilities (visual, hearing, physical, cognitive, and neurological)." (W3C)

Posted on October 29, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

XUL Defines New User Interface Options

XUL is a new Netscape/Mozilla XML dialect that describes the elements of a traditional user interface. Faster and cleaner than HTML, it might just be the quickest way yet to code a UI. (Nigel McFarlane - DevX)

Posted on October 28, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0

"(...) design principles for creating accessible Web sites." (W3C)

Posted on October 28, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Transforming Unstructured Content into Meaningful XML

"Most people who have thought about XML at a high level haven’t thought too much about the problems inherent in converting unstructured content into a meaningful XML format." (Rizwan Virk - CambridgeDocs)

Posted on October 23, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

What Are Topic Maps?

"(...) something that collects the key concepts in the organization's information and ties it all together, is nowhere to be found. This is where topic maps come in." (Lars Marius Garshol - XML.com)

Posted on September 13, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

XML and the Second-Generation Web

"The combination of hypertext and a global Internet started a revolution. A new ingredient, XML, is poised to finish the job." (Jon Bosak & Tim Bray - Scientific American)

Posted on September 05, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web

"(...) the set of principles that all agents in the system follow to create the large-scale effect of a shared information space." (The World Wide Web Consortium)

Posted on September 03, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Business Maps: Topic Maps Go B2B!

"(...) how topic maps can be used to help solve interoperability problems between XML B2B vocabularies." (Marc de Graauw - XML.com)

Posted on August 22, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Business Maps: Topic Maps Go B2B!

"(...) how topic maps can be used to help solve interoperability problems between XML B2B vocabularies." (Marc de Graauw - XML.com)

Posted on August 21, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Standard Data Vocabularies Unquestionably Harmful

"Adhering to standard vocabularies has recently meant all too often that an item properly labeled and conforming to an expected form is naively accepted as being actually what it purports to be." (Walter Perry - xml.com)

Posted on June 01, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Emergent Interface for the Internet

"(...) to bring all content into a unified visual context for human-to-human communications and interaction." (John Ko - O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference 2002: Notes & Presentations)

Posted on May 23, 2002 | Permalink

The Visual Display of Quantitative XML

"This article discusses the creation of useful graphical presentations of quantitative XML data using XSLT and SVG." (Fabio Arciniegas - O'Reilly's XML.COM)

Posted on March 01, 2002 | Permalink

Multimodal Interaction Activity

"(...) W3C is developing standards for a new class of mobile devices that support multiple modes of interaction." (W3C)

Posted on February 22, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Unified Modelling Language for Interactive Applications

"(...) there is a clear dichotomy between the state-of-the-art approaches to designing and implementing user interfaces and their underlying applications" (Norman Patton - University of Manchester)

Posted on February 15, 2002 | Permalink

Easy Topic Maps

"(...) a place to learn about topic maps" (Peter Van Dijck)

Posted on January 04, 2002 | Permalink | TrackBack

Tutorial: Functional Specification

"A functional spec is a document detailing the client's requirements for an application." (mojofat)

Posted on November 19, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

A Smarter Web

"(...) a 'Semantic Web' that understands the meanings that underlie the tangle of information" (Mark Frauenfelder - MIT Technology Review)

Posted on November 16, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

DocTypes

XML Document Types for Everyone (doctypes.org)

Posted on November 02, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

An XML Framework for Coordinating Creative and Technical Design

"(...) the cultural clash between three groups often involved in Web projects: front-end developers, information architects and visual designers." (Gordon Bennett - Intranet Journal)

Posted on October 20, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

Rapid Web Development

How to create flexible sites quickly using standards like CSS and XHTML. (James Lewin - The Lewin Group)

Posted on September 20, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Pros and Cons of XML

"(...) a better way of representing information in an increasingly linked, online world" (ZapThink Research)

Posted on September 11, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

What Are XForms?

"(...) forms have truly become commonplace for search engines, polls, surveys, electronic commerce, and even on-line applications" (Micah Dubinko - O'Reilly XML.COM)

Posted on September 07, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

Modeling Web Applications with UML

"The audience of this paper are developers and designers of web applications" (Jim Conallen)

Posted on August 07, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

Use Case Maps

"(...) they can help you to describe and understand emergent behaviour of complex and dynamic systems" (Use Case Maps User Group - Carleton University)

Posted on July 11, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

Introduction to CSS3 (W3C Working Draft)

"This document lists all the modules to be contained in the future CSS3 specification" (W3C)

Posted on May 22, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

Topic Maps

"Topic Maps provide for the specification of a standard, interchangeable hypertext navigation layer above diverse electronic information sources" (InfoLoom, Inc.)

Posted on April 19, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

The Semantic Web

"A new form of Web content that is meaningful to computers will unleash a revolution of new possibilities" (Tim Berners-Lee et al. - Scientific American)

Posted on April 11, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

An XHTML Roadmap for Beginners

"XHTML is both strong and important." (Molly E. Holzschlag - WebReview.com)

Posted on March 03, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

Common User Agent Problems

"(...) not a complete set of guidelines for good user agent behavior" (W3C)

Posted on February 11, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

Generating Style Sheets Dynamically

"An information architect (...) possesses the background and aptitude for designing and implementing document structure" (Michael Floyd - Webtechniques)

Posted on January 03, 2001 | Permalink | TrackBack

XML Topic Maps

"(...) developing the applicability of the Topic Maps Paradigm to the World Wide Web" (TopicMaps.org)

Posted on December 22, 2000 | Permalink | TrackBack

POIX and NVML

Point of Interest eXchange Language / NaVigation Markup Language (W3C Notes)

Posted on August 21, 2000 | Permalink | TrackBack

The HTML Hell Page

"Some curmudgeonly comments on bad Web design" (Eric S. Raymond)

Posted on August 09, 2000 | Permalink | TrackBack

Information Design on the Web: XML

"XML is very powerful (...)" (School of Library and Information Science at Indiana University)

Posted on August 07, 2000 | Permalink | TrackBack

XML Information Set

A description of the information available in a well-formed XML document (W3C Working Draft)

Posted on July 28, 2000 | Permalink | TrackBack

XML Schemas

Needed Rules for XML Documents (Simon St. Laurent at XML DevCon 2000 NYC)

Posted on July 01, 2000 | Permalink | TrackBack

XSL and CSS: One Year Later

A hot topic in the XML community (Leigh Dodds of XML.COM)

Posted on June 28, 2000 | Permalink | TrackBack