You can make bookings on the WIPA site at http://wipa.org.au/html5/.

Seeing as it’s only $60 for WIPA and AWIA members ($90 non-members) for three and a half hours with Steve Faulkner and Bruce Lawson, a couple of deadset international experts in their fields who also happen to be entertaining speakers, I reckon tickets will go pretty quickly.

Here’s the lowdown:

WAI-ARIA: Making the interactive web more accessible

Presenter: Steve Faulkner
I will make a serious attempt to demystify ARIA. Outlining its major aspects and how it works under the hood to improve the user experience. I’ll talk about what it is and what it is not, when and where it should be used, explaining the advantages and the pitfalls. I’ll also go into how it fits into the emerging HTML5 UI ecosystem. Don’t expect any live screen reader demonstrations (but maybe a video or 2).

There will be slides, code and developer tool demonstrations and expect some lively debate on the topics of HTML5, ARIA and accessibility with my co-presenter Bruce.

Steve Faulkner
Steve is the Technical Director at The Paciello Group (TPG). He leads the development of the Web Accessibility Toolbar, Color Contrast Analyser and AViewer accessibility testing tools. He is an active member of the W3C HTML Working Group and W3C Protocols and Formats Working Group. His work in these groups is focused on HTML5 canvas accessibility, use of WAI-ARIA in HTML5 and he is editor of the W3C Draft Specification HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives. Steve regularly publishes articles and research on accessibility issues on the TPG blog.

HTML5: The good, the bad and the quite interesting

Presenter: Bruce Lawson
I’ll introduce the new features of HTML5 and show why it can help you make more robust and accessible web apps using open standards. I’ll look deeply at the new semantic elements, adding intelligent forms that can remove the need for JavaScript validation, and adding native video to a page that doesn’t use plugins (although degrades to Flash in older browsers). We’ll look at the new APIs for canvas, Geolocation, etc – what they can do and how simple the syntax is.

The workshop will be a mixture of slideware, live coding and in-browser demos. It’s intended for those who write mark-up, and doesn’t expect deep JavaScript knowledge (we look at the potential of the APIs but not the intricacies of coding).

We emphasise simplicity of authoring and accessibility of the user experience.

Bruce Lawson
Bruce evangelises Open Web Standards for Opera. He’s been active in Web Standards since 2002, working with the Web Standards Project, the British Standards Institution’s guidance on commissioning accessible web sites. He’s currently on the W3C Mobile Best Practices Working Group and co-authored “Introducing HTML5″ (<a href=”http://www.introducinghtml5.com”>www.introducinghtml5.com</a>), the first full-length book on the subject. He once had a girlfriend named Sheila, although neither were Australian.

Workshop Timetable

Sydney: Tuesday 23 November. 9.00am – 12.30pm
SMC Conference & Function Centre,
66 Goulburn Street, Sydney 2000

Canberra: Wednesday 24November. 12.30pm – 4.00pm
Conference Room, National Library of Australia,
Parkes Place, Parkes, ACT

Melbourne: Thursday 25November. 1.30pm – 5.00pm
Ether Conference Centre (between the Swanston Hotel and Grand Mercure)
265-281 Little Bourke St, Melbourne 3000

Perth: Monday 29November.
(Venue and time still to be finalised)

Brisbane: Wednesday 1December. 1.30pm – 5.00pm
Cliftons Conference and Seminar rooms
288 Edward Street, Brisbane 4000

Cost
WIPA and AWIA members $60.00
Non-members $90
Morning/afternoon teas will be provided

The workshops are being presented by the Web Industry Professionals Association (WIPA) and the Australian Web Industry Association (AWIA).

The web industry, in turn, is fortunate to have people like Andy Clarke, Mark Boulton and Elliot Jay Stocks to inspire us to seek and achieve beauty in our designs.

All three are highly creative visual designers as well as engaging and articulate conference speakers and workshop leaders. They are also the authors of books that highlight not just their own work and philosophies but those of their peers.

I was quick to pre-order a copy of 8 faces, a new magazine project of Elliot’s, and it was just as well I did, as it soon sold out.

No wonder, with people like Jason Santamaria, Jos Buivenga and Erik Spiekermann on board in the first issue to talk about typography: fonts, lettering, type, foundries, faces, treatments, rendering … everything to do with the presentation of words on the web.

Elliot’s idea was to plumb the thoughts of eight key people who work with type on the web, along the way asking each to list the typefaces they would use if they could have only eight.

If you are at all interested in how text is, and can be, presented on web pages and rendered by various browsers on a range of screens – and if you’re a web designer, you should be – this is fascinating and inspiring stuff.

One of the things I like about what Elliot describes as a “niche subject”, is that people who are into typography on the web see themselves as part of a historical chain, the latest practitioners of a craft that goes back beyond books and magazines in print all the way to cuneiform and hieroglyphics, as well as sideways into posters, tickets, timetables and advertising hoardings, and now onward into the digital age.

From choosing and implementing fonts for style and purpose, understanding how different fonts work together, creating illustrative lettering and designing new typefaces, right through to exploring business models for making a living out of all this, 8 Faces is both a wonderful showcase and an instructional guide.

It’s an ambitious project. $22.50 (which is what £8 worked out to) is not cheap for a magazine, but this is not your supermarket checkout kind of magazine. Producing a 210mm square 76pp paperback spinebound magazine in full cover on quality paper stock will set you back a few quid.

It must indeed have been tempting to extend the initial print run of 1,000 when it became clear the demand was there, but Elliot has said that he will keep his word to print no more, although pdf versions are available. And he’ll make sure to print more for #2, before Christmas.

I’m looking forward to it.

Anyway, Lachlan made perfect sense of it all by explaining it logically and with the passion of someone who doesn’t just understand something but really gets it, and from a perspective close to my own and in a voice that resonated strongly with me.

That’s what this book is like. HTML5 for Web Designers is pitch perfect.

In providing a practical overview of what HTML5 is and how it will affect what web designers do, Jeremy Keith has delivered something that is part conference presentation, part interview and part geeks moving coasters around a pub table.

Common to all of those is the active voice, and this book is very much Jeremy talking to you. He knows the background, he knows the politics and he most especially knows that you, jobbing web designer, just want to know whether it means you have to go back and recode everything you’ve ever done. And then learn Javascript.

What’s also common to those is that they are of a moment: not necessarily perishable, but likely to be superceded sooner or later by the next model. In the meantime, this will be the practical handbook for working with HTML5 for some time to come.

Anyone who’s seen Jeremy presenting at a conference knows he’s funny. It’s a witty, informed and clever funny. And still grounded in practical application. That’s what this book is like.

Look, frankly, I love that this book assumes I already know what I’m doing. It’s for people who are working web designers. If that’s you, you should get it.

HTML5 for Web Designers is badged as No. 1 in the new imprint A Book Apart: “brief books for people who make websites”, and represents an extension of web magazine A List Apart – itself a re-incarnation of a late ’90s web design mailing list which has more recently also moved into the US conference circuit with An Event Apart.

All but the newest or most cloistered web designers will recognise the names of the people behind all this: Zeldman, Meyer, Santa Maria. We’re talking quality, here – standards-compliant, CSS-driven, beautiful, functional quality. Yes, Virginia, web design now has stars.

In his foreword to HTML5 for Web Designers, Zeldman says that the goal of this book – and others to follow in this catalogue – is to “shed clear light on a tricky subject, and do it fast, so you can get back to work.”

That’s what this book is like.

By library I mean our total collection of books, rather than a purpose-specific room to house them.

That comes later.

The 2,600+ books we have are in fact spread across our house: living room, office, rumpus room, kitchen and bedrooms.

They have always been in a rough sort of order, but as their number has increased I decided to sort them out a bit, putting them into categories which would be useful for family members to find specific books.

These categories came out of roughly grouping the books and then regrouping them based on how many books there were, how they might be placed on the available bookshelves and the likely ease of browsing them. That determined the category names.

Within the categories, books might be grouped alphabetically by author (as in the fiction categories) or some other useful order (such as alphabetical order of subject for biographies, or alphabetical order of sport).

Where a book could fit in more than one category, I went for the one most likely to be searched for, based on what I know about the people doing the searching. I’m the person most likely to want to find Ruud Gullit’s autobiography and I think I’m more likely to look for it under Sport than International Biography. If that turns out to be wrong then I can refile it in the Int Bio section instead.

So here’s the list of categories:

• Australian Biography
• International Biography
• Australian Fiction
• International Fiction
• Web & IT
• Australian Society, Culture & Politics
• International Society, Culture & Politics
• Essays, Interviews & Letters
• Poetry
• Plays
• Cooking, House & Garden
• Fiction for Kids
• Non-Fiction for Kids
• About Kids
• Sport
• International Multi-Author Anthologies & Collections
• Australian Multi-Author Anthologies & Collections
• Games, Trivia & Puzzles
• Women’s Issues
• Writing & Language
• Travel Guides & Languages
• Reference
• Film
• Travel & Exploration
• Music & Theatre
• Science, Mathematics & the Natural World
• Philosophy & Religion
• Death

I’ve just had a look at Google‘s new Chrome browser and there is quite a lot to like: it’s slick, unfussy, fast-loading, and it mostly displays sites as I would expect it to.

I’m sympathetic to the exercise, and I like the idea of a browser that integrates even more closely the various Google apps I use.

I’m constantly tempted to dump my email client (Outlook) in favour of Gmail, especially as Google continues to refine its product to meet my needs and expectations.

I also regularly use Google’s Analytics, Maps, Reader, Earth, Docs, Images and Calendar – as well as YouTube, Picasa and a few other properties owned by Google. So I’m pretty ready for a Google browser.

I have, however, identified two issues that are pretty major obstacles to Chrome becoming my browser of choice.

First, it doesn’t seem to want to open PDF files. I haven’t seen anything to say that this is not deliberate, a policy akin to Explorer 8 not displaying Google Maps properly. Not only is that kind of attitude distasteful and contrary to the spirit of most of Google’s activites, it makes the browser unusable.

Second, I have yet to find a way to use Chrome to open an HTML file on my local hard drive. That means I can’t use Chrome to preview the sites I build. Once again, the browser is rendered (excuse pun) unusable. Maybe there actually is an option to open local files, but if it is that hard to find it’s not much use to me.

Some people might regard these as minor quibbles, trivial matters. I don’t.

Like Firefox, Opera et al, Chrome is trying to compete with a browser that comes built in to most computers sold these days. That means it has to be so good that average punters who don’t know much about browsers will be motivated to download and install it. And that means it has to be better than good, it has to be mouth-watering.

On the current showing, Chrome isn’t.

As a designer and developer, I’m also not crazy about having to check and cater to yet another browser.

Given that Chrome is driven by Webkit, most of my work should be OK, but I’ve already discovered some quirks in Chrome’s rendering of my CSS. Not at a greater level than IE, FF or Opera – but in different ways, which means I have to check for it.

Even so, if they fix the issues I’ve suggested, I’ll look again seriously at adoptiing Chrome and singing its benefits – once those benefits outweigh the disadvantages.

Technorati Tags: Google Chrome, browser, Webkit

WIPA is an organisation that brings Australian web professionals together to exchange ideas, participate in debate, advance education and promote ethical practice.

One of WIPA’s activities is holding or assisting events like this one that will help achieve positive outcomes for the web industry in Australia.

Usability and Eyetracking Seminar: an afternoon seminar with Dr Peter Brawn and Dr John Eklund on the latest eyetracking technologies and the challenges of ensuring usability during Agile Development.

Eyetracking – Applications in Digital and Media – Peter Brawn

This presentation is a practical introduction to eyetracking in which the latest mobile unit will be demonstrated.

Peter will introduce the field, describe how the technology works and how it is providing unique insights in evaluating websites as key part of usability studies.

Included in the session is a demonstration of the latest advancements in mobile eye tracking with a device that allows us to explore user behaviour with authentic materials and environments.

Peter Brawn

Dr Peter Brawn has a PhD in Visual Attention and led the introduction of the first commercial eyetracking service in Australia. His website may be found at www.eyetracker.com.au. As a practicing usability practitioner he has integrated eyetracking into studies covering both digital and advertising media, and is supported by a network of independent professionals in UX Research.

Challenges for Usability in Agile Development – John Eklund

Agile methods of development prescribe rapid prototyping and minimal documentation, and are particularly suitable for creating web interfaces for businesses, encouraging throw-away prototypes and allowing designers the freedom to be more creative.

This session discusses ways that project managers can meet the challenges of rapid development with user centred methods that will assure the usability of their systems and ultimately customer satisfaction.

The talk will focus on practical methods in a step-by-step guide covering the place of usability in a project lifecycle, how it is implemented and executed and what to expect in usability from an external supplier.

John Eklund

John Eklund has a doctorate in Education from The University of Sydney in the area of interface design of instructional systems. He has conducted a multitude of usability studies for a wide range of government and corporate clients, and has over 50 publications in refereed journals and conference proceedings. John was formerly a university lecturer and head of the usability division at a software testing company for over 8 years. He is the founder and senior analyst of UX Research, a company dedicated to providing user centred design services.

Register securely online here

Sharing information like your mother’s maiden name (commonly used by banks etc as extra security questions) with even your close friends online is asking for trouble.

And Facebook does make it easy to do this, allowing third party plug-ins and apps to invite you to record that information and then enabling you to make it available to anyone you categorise as a friend.

But you have to choose to do both of those things: you don’t have to record any but the most harmless information (ie that which is easily available anyway), and you can set your profile to limit the information made available to various groups of users.

I find the media treatment of this issue to be unsurprisingly hysterical, in both senses. One story revealed how using a name and address from a Facebook page, journalists were able to find information on other sites which they then used to open a bank account in his name, set up credit cards, etc etc.

Well, you don’t have to go to Facebook to get a name and address, you can get that from the White Pages.

And what about these “other sites”?

The real risk factor lies in how a person uses Facebook. Few people bother to give it much thought or explore the how-tos, even though I think Facebook does a pretty good job of making the consequences of actions and decisions as plain as can be.

There is undoubtedly a percentage of Facebook users who are unwittingly leaving themselves open to identity fraud, even if only at the hands of dedicated journalists.

The thing with Facebook is that, with 42 million users, even 1% translates to a huge number.

Personally, I enjoy using Facebook to share stupid, funny things with a certain number of my friends. Other friends prefer Myspace, while some business colleagues use LinkedIn in the same way but for more serious purposes. They all have their risks, and they all have their benefits.

As with everything else, use your common sense, read the rules, accept responsibility for your actions and be careful out there.

I needed an end-user friendly system that would allow my client’s non-tech savvy staff and members to log in to separate areas to update information as well as provide customised forms functionality, ecommerce capabilities, and the ability for users to upload and share files on a fairly large scale.

And it had to be hosted on the client’s existing third party web host.

And it had to cost less than $2,000. And be set up within a month.

And look good.

Now is that so much to ask?

It was, of course. Most of the options that offered the required functionality were either horrendously expensive, hosted by the vendor or required me to become a lightning fast customiser of one or other open source solution. I can barely spell PHP and MySQL.

However, it appears liveSite has come to the rescue. It does use PHP and MySQL but even the system administrator or site designer hardly has to know anything about it. It really suits someone looking to turn a static HTML site into a dynamic CMS-managed site (especially one using CSS and bits of javascript), and it’s very reasonably priced. In fact the basic version (without forms or ecommerce capabilities) comes in at under US$100.

I suppose that over time, I should really develop my ability to write a CMS to order for clients, or at least adapt a Mambo, Jango, Joomla, XOOPS, Plone or similar for the purpose. But for the time being, I’m pretty happy to have found liveSite.

For anyone working their way through the CMS quagmire, it’s definitely worth looking at.

Technorati Tags: web development, liveSite, content management system, CMS

I find the stream of content that newspapers provide pretty irresistible. I’ve now found a site called PressDisplay that aggregates content from “350 newspapers from 65 countries in 35 languages”.

OK, there are plenty of news aggregators out there, but there are two (main) elements that make this one stand out.

First, it pays full respect to the format of a print newspaper. PressDisplay reproduces entire editions of the newspapers it lists. Select a newspaper and you are shown the front page. Depending on your account limitations, you can choose to see each page of the paper displayed on screen (including all the ads). Click on a page to zoom in and display the content in a readable size.

This is much the same way I scan a paper in my hands then focus on a story to read it in detail.

Secondly, PressDisplay is an exercise in using ALL of a screen. At my most-used screen resolution of 1280×1024 it is a very busy display of five columns packed with detailed user options, site facilities, story headlines, photos, horizontal scrolling, vertical scrolling, hover balloons and endless links to more detailed displays of words, words, words.

What I find interesting is that a) it’s not a mess – it’s well structured and comprehensible, b) it looks good – the balance between text, images and (admittedly not much) white space is well-judged and c) it’s tech smart – if I resize my browser window to 1024 x 768, the display omits one entire column, producing a four column display that looks as busy but no more cluttered than the five column display.

It is, inevitably, the content that makes or breaks a site like this (and the revenue model), and there are still inroads to be made on that front. The New York Times isn’t there, nor is The Times of London or the Sydney Morning Herald. But the Washington Post is, and The Guardian and The Australian. And there is a link to The Times online. Quite an impressive selection, on the whole.

At this stage, I’d say if you like newspapers and have an interest in news on the web, PressDisplay is worth a look.

Technorati Tags: PressDisplay, newspapers, news online

The one drawback is that I haven’t found a really good reader, a tool that will systematically aggregate the content of my favourite blogs and present it for me in an attractive, useful and easily digestible format. Until now.

Google Reader absolutely does it for me. The G team have really delivered with this one. Just as the whole world seems to be tapping into not just the fun but the power of blogging, they have come up with a reader that is simple to set up, is true to the content it aggregates, is highly functional and is extremely well presented.

I have no allegiance to any particular product or service provider – I pick and choose and use what works best on my computer. I don’t care if it comes from Microsoft, Apple, open source, Yahoo, Google or Kevin down the road. I do think about what I use (especially if I have to buy it) and I’m a firm believer in ethical behaviour. On all counts, Google Reader looks good.

There are ‘ifs’ (you need a Google account) and ‘buts’ (there’s no indicator as to whether a post has any comments at the source site), but on the whole this is the best feed reader I’ve come across.

So far. See for yourself.

Technorati Tags: Google Reader, RSS feeds, feedreader