It’s been a little quiet here. Hopefully that’ll change soon.

In the meantime I wanted to draw attention to these posts about web design. It all started with a couple of posts from 37 Signals about not using Photoshop and designers doing their own HTML & CSS.

I saw them thanks to Douglas Bowman’s post about choosing the right tool, which lead me to Jeff Croft’s post about why he doesn’t skip Photoshop.

I feel this slew of commentary illustrates that there are many, many ways to deliver a great website (as all of these guys can do) using the same tools and procedures, but in different ways. “Horses for courses” as we used to say back in Blighty.

These posts got me thinking about some for RefreshCleveland. What I might do is try and capture the tools and procedures I use and let you know what worked for me and what didn’t. That is not to say that any combination is right or wrong, as I feel in this day and age, web designers have to be nimble and ready to change depending on client and project.

Happy to hear your thoughts on this.

Technorati tags: tools, web design, process

Tags: tools, webdesign, process

Google Doctype has now been released.  It’s kind of a like a Wiki of all things web development that you can add to using your Google account.

It includes such gems as CSS colors which will let you know:

• the keyword
• the hex value
• which browser supports it
• related documents or sites

There is also a lot of tips & tricks as well as DOM manipulation and everything in between.

Worth bookmarking and tootling around in.

Technorati tags: google, doctype, reference, “open web”

Tags: google, doctype, reference, openweb

Last night the CWSA presented “Standards Demystified” at the May NEOUPA meeting.

The panel was made up of:

• Brad Colbow - Colbow Design
• Julie Cousins - American Greetings
• Brendan Cullen - Aztek Creative
• Beth Dean - Progressive Insurance
• Brad Dielman - Moskal Gross Orchosky
• Bridget Stewart - Voices for Ohio’s Children

After Beth & Bridget rattled through the slides, highlighting the origin and need for web standards, the panel opened themselves to a good Q&A session. Topics covered included microformats, the business case for adoption, and browser compatibility issues. I think they answered all the questions well for both the technical and non-technical members assembled there.

Kudos to Progressive for hosting these events and NEOUPA for lining up the speakers and supplying the pizza. I hope this is the first of many collaborations between web-focused organizations in and around Cleveland.

Technorati tags: cwsa, neoupa, web standards, presentation

Tags: cwsa, neoupa, webstandards, presentation

I’m attending CollabTech’08 - a conference being held at CASE about collaborative technologies on campus. It promises to have talks about things such as; OpenID, 2D Codes, Wikis & blogs.

All this in our own backyard.

So if you’re going, be sure to say “Hi”. If you can’t make it I’ll be twittering (#collabtech08) and perhaps sharing stuff on Evernote, WiFi permitting.

Tags: CASE, technology, conference, collaboration, cleveland

I’m happy to say that the first Refresh Cleveland gathering was a success. We met up for dinner and beers at the Winking Lizard in Lakewood, and topics of conversation included:

• We have a lot of talented folks in this town. Why are they not speaking to each other?
• The Cleveland Web Standards Association is a Good Thing. Go. Attend. Support.
• Cleveland Day of .NET and the Worthiness of Rails.
• The pitfalls of freelancing.
• General frustration with the tech-lag at agencies in town. Anyone just discovering that RSS is a Good Idea really needs to get out more.
• Never let marketers drive design or development decisions.
• Cleveland Web Association lunches were discussed. Snarky blog post to follow.
• Oregon Trail
• The keys to a good presentation.

I’d like to thank the following folks for coming out to share their experiences (and some fine, fine boneless wings):

• Bridget Stewart
• Brad Dielman
• Brad Colbow
• Kris Johnson
• Adam Hutcheson
• Joe Fiorini

We have some big plans coming up…a Barcamp over the summer (probably in cooperation with the CWSA), more gathers, and hosting some panel discussions. If you’d like to be in the loop, please subscribe to the Refresh Cleveland mailing list.

And, as promised, here is the the excellent presentation video I brought up at dinner. Watch to the end. It’s worth it:

Here are the presentation slides, for the curious.