skip to content rich footer

stevenclark.com.au

subscibe to the StevenClark.com.au rss feed

Archive for July, 2007

Paul Boag on Web Standards

Friday, July 27th, 2007

I’m consolidating my resources today looking towards the material I’ll need to present to students this time next week. I have to create activities and make some interactive exercises on the doing-is-learning principle rather than the Steven-is-talking one. Paul Boag’s podcast and accompanying presentation slides making The Business Case for Web Standards actually shone out and I’ll be playing it at the beginning - actually after explaining how the Web works and the client-server relationship, Common Gateway Interface and Apache etc - both to inspire people to be interested in web standards and also to lay down the groundwork from which I hope to build high quality graduates.

I have to raise the only problem in Paul’s video - Tim Berner’s Lee didn’t invent the Internet and if anyone isn’t sure what really happens its that the World Wide Web runs on the Internet along with a bunch of other technologies. But that’s splitting hairs and to many people the terms are quite often used interchangeably to mean either.

The power of Paul’s podcast, and I can’t see when it was made or posted as I expect it isn’t new at all, is that he’s kept it non-technical with simple slides. That directly suits people who you would consider new to these ideas and are of greater use to my audience.

Also on Paul’s site - the great internet crash of 2007.

skip to top of page

Currently Reading

Mental Models by Indi Young (cover)Developing software from the user's perspective as opposed the organisational one is a critical area we need to work on as designers. I'm reading Mental Models by Indi Young, a book about understanding users' reasons for doing things and one system for understanding and designing for those reasons.

It's important to understand that when people visit your website they bring with them their own world view, motivations, experience and expectations. And, by working with those factors, we can improve our game significantly by providing them with what they want and need.