Last month, I attended the Future of Web Design conference 
in eclectic Manhattan, NY. The 1-day conference (plus a 2nd day for workshop) included speakers such as Andy Clarke, Keith Robinson, Jonathan Snook, and Jeffrey Zeldman. Apart from a few technical problems with the venue it was a great conference covering lots of interesting topics about current and "future" technologies.
Raw XML is rarely suitable for direct presentation, and frequently must be organized, or transformed, to suit the needs of a specifc output device. The most widely used option for this is XSLT. Older techniques such DTD and Schemas can be used as well, but as discussed in my first post about XML, XSLT was specifically created for this and should be used when possible.
XSLT provides an effective procedure - a tree transformation process - for manipulating XML at the level of elements and attributes. A special-purpose language, XSLT has features that simplify that task of defining transformations of XML.
Here is the xml file (.xml) that is used throughout the explanations.
In a recent article from Visual Studio Magazine, Rod Stephens wrote an article on how to write better code for yourself as well as other people who may view it. These tips can be applied to almost any programming language (JavaScript, .NET, PHP, etc.) so it is useful for any web developer.
"A computer does exactly what the code tells it to do and doesn't care what the code looks like. At the same time, it's easy to forget that you write code for people, not computers. Ultimately, you are satisfying the requirements of a user somewhere, not just writing text that will execute in a vacuum. In a development environment of any size, the code you write will be reviewed and or maintained by other people, so you need to make sure that you are clear about your intentions."
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is based on the same parent technology as HTML or XHTML. XML looks a lot like HTML, complete with tags, attributes and values. But rather that serving as a lagnguage just for creating web pages, XML is a language for creating other languages. You use XML to design your own custom markup language and then you use that language to format your own documents. Your custom markup language, officially called an XML application will contain tags that actually describe the data that they contain.
If a tag indentifies data, that data becomes available for other tasks. A software program can be designed to extract just the information that it needs, perhaps join it with data from another source, and finally output the resulting combination in another form for another purpose. Instead of being lost on an HTML-based web page, labeled information can be reused as often as neccessary.
"A blog (short for web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and displayed in reverse chronological order" Wikipedia. There are many blogging engines available such as Expression Engine, Movable Type, TextPattern, and WordPress among others. Most are open source (free), provide almost unlimited customizable features and take only minutes to install.
WordPress is customizable through themes and extendable through the use of plug-ins. To use WordPress you can either use your own web host and install it (assuming your web host does not already have it pre-installed) or use the hosted site of WordPress.com which provides a hosted login for you. Of course, hosting it yourself gives you more flexibility of having access to the source code.
As I am cursed with no artistic talent whatsoever, I am amazed at what people can do with Flash. From simple animated banners to truly beautiful interactive web sites. I do not use Flash on a regular basis, but am knowledgeable of the scripting language ActionScript and what it can do for Flash. As an adjunct part-time faculty for a local community college, I ocassionally teach weekend classes on Flash. One of the classes I teach is on the basics of ActionScript.
The most extensible of all browsers is Firefox, which now has over 1,000 extensions. These are almost all cross-platform, so they work on Macs and Linux machines as well as Windows. They include debugging consoles, syntax validators, cookie manipulators, accessibility tools, manuals, and measurement tools. Add to that extensions that can rewrite the pages and stylesheets you’re using and suddenly Firefox becomes by far the most developer-friendly of all the browsers available.
Last month I attended my first web conference, Refresh06 
in sunny Orlando Florida. It was the first of its kind for the area and organized by the Refresh Cities community. The three day conference had some big names in the web design community such as Andy Budd, Cameron Moll, Jeremy Keith and more.
Microsoft will be releasing Expression Studio, a set of web-design and graphics software that will try to compete with tools from Adobe. These products are Graphic Designer Expression Design, Interactive Designer Expression Blend, Expression Web and Expression Media
