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2002-2003 Webmaster Schedule

September 11 - Applying Visual Communication Principles to Web Design:

Presenter: Luke Wroblewski Senior Interface Designer for National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Luke is the author of a book entitled Site-seeing: A visual approach to web usability. The book also addresses technical issues that affect website usability. See: http://www.lukew.com/resources/site_seeing.html and http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/News/HN/02HN/020731.html#Newbook for more information.

Post-synopsis

Two exciting things happened with this presentation. The first item of course was Luke's presentation. The second for many of us was our first exposure to NCSA's "Access Grid." For the first item, Luke spoke on numerous design principles that we often take for granted, such as color, eye flow, and information heirarchy. His extensive knowledge on this topic provided the audience with a lot of information. We all came away from the presentation more aware of how our web pages are structured graphically, both the negative and positive aspects. The second item was a demonstration of video conferencing on steriods. The presentation was broadcast to other universities and several cameras displayed not only our classroom, but the classrooms of our visitors as well. We will be looking forward to future presentations using this exciting classroom setup.

Here is a link to Luke's presentation slides at http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Divisions/eot/Training/Events/Seminars/

October 8 - Adobe Presents GoLive Studio

 

November 13 - Writing in the Information Age: A Panel Discussion

Post-synopsis

Please follow this link to read the Post-synopsis of the November 13th Webmaster Brownbag.


December 12 - Displaying Mathematics on the Web with MathML

Post-synopsis

Pavi Sandhu's talk and a resources list are available at this URL: http://members.wri.com/pavi/MathML/. Please note this index page has links for Mathematica notebooks and PDF files only.

January 14 - Valid HTML and Why You Should Care: Tips, Tricks, Tools, for Creating Usable, Accessible, and Maintainable Web Pages

Post-synopsis

Cordelia and John's presentation was well attended and very informative. Click on PowerPoint presentation for a listing of their references and information.

January 21 - Disability and Accessibility Issues in Web Design

Designing more flexible, re-presentable, and re-purposable Web technologies is important not just for accessibility for people with disabilities but also to allow better access by people with mobile technologies, web tools, and intelligent agent software and systems. Gregg Vanderheiden co-chairs the W3C Web content accessibility working group and will share with participants insights into what makes Web pages and Web technologies more usable or less-usable to a wider range of users including users with disabilities, older users, and mobile users. He will also briefly discuss the benefits of such techniques for future intelligent web agents and technologies.

For more information, see http://trace.wisc.edu/world/

February 11 - Macromedia Event

Post-synopsis

This marathon of 5 hour-long demonstrations of Macromedia's web development tools received positive responses from attendees. Tom Person, Senior Web and Learning Evangelist for Macromedia, took us on whirlwind tours of Dreamweaver MX, Coursebuilder, Contribute, Cold Fusion MX, Director MX, Communication Server MX, Studio MX, and their newest app, Presedia Express.

Tom emphasized that all Macromedia products are available for 30-day trials at http://www.macromedia.com/. Of particular interest to many attendees was the free or shareware exchange of Dreamweaver extensions available at http://www.macromedia.com/exchange/dreamweaver/. Tom demonstrated the use of Dreamweaver extensions from within the application. An especially relevant example was CourseBuilder, which allows easy development of web-based instructional content and test instruments. CourseBuilder is free.

Tom also highlighted the new Contribute v. 1, which allows non-technical users to update text and images, add new pages, and publish to existing websites - while respecting your style, layout, and code standards, but without knowing HTML. Contribute is only available for Windows OS at this time. Download a free trial version at http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/.

For more information view the Workshop Flyer (PDF)

March 18 - Fun with Servlets and JSPs

This presentation will cover various aspects of Servlets and Java Servlet Pages, the Java server-side technologies that allow you to create dynamic web content and build web applications. The material covered will depend somewhat on the level and interests of the audience. Potential topics include developing and deploying servlets and JSPs, the Servlet API, JSP objects/actions/tags, sessions, database connectivity, and servlets/JSP and XML.

For more information, get Milt Epstein's PowerPoint presentation on Servlets and JavaServer Pages.

March 19 - A CSS Hands-On Clinic

Announcing a CSS Hands-On Clinic March 19, 12-1 in room 029 of the ACES Library. Open to 30 participants on a first-come, first-serve basis. This is an introductory clinic for those who are not experienced with CSS. A good understanding of HTML and Dreamweaver are required. In this clinic we will cover:

Because of time and schedule constraints, we will have to forego a CSS Brown bag for March. In leu of the brown bag, required reading and resources will be provided to participants of the CSS Clinic. We hope to host a CSS brown bag after the Webmaster forum.

Please rsvp to Sheila Daniels directly if you want to participate: sdnls@uiuc.edu.

April 9, 2003- 4th Annual Webmasters Forum

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