Being EDU™

Movable Type 3.2 was released this morning by the team at Six Apart. The new release has a wealth of features designed to make blogging even easier and smarter.

See what Max has done with the Yellow Fade Technique (YTF) made infamous by Basecamp and then further tweaked by Adam Michela into the Fade Anything Technique (FAT). Max has taken that and adapted it into his blog. Read more about it in his post Designing With AJAX: CSS and AJAX Web page Transition.

A recent article by Susannah Gardner in the USC Annenberg Online Journalism Review titled "Time to Check: Are you using the right blogging tool?" is a great starting point if you're new to blogs (features, terminology, uses) or looking for a blog software comparison chart.

Cameron Marlow (creator of Blogdex) has launched a survey about blogs at the MIT Media Lab, so if you're a blogger, click on over and take 15 minutes to voice your opinions and participate in community research.

This evening, while searching technorati for content on education and blogs, I came across this interesting post at a blog called Allison's Notions. The writer emphasizes the need to design appropriately for the platforms that your audience uses and for his or her specific methods of delivery.

Since I started designing websites for universities and colleges in 1996, I've had numerous conversations about design, both with those on the inside (administrators, marketing communications directors, admissions counselors, information technology teams, webmasters and developers, designers, vice presidents, CIOs, alumni, faculty) as well as those on the outside (students, parents, the community, business leaders, consultants, people on the street).

The most recent redesign of the Middlebury College external website deserves mention for its new tableless CSS markup and 508 compliancy. The new site has a decidedly more marketing-oriented and friendly design.

If you're a school that wants to start a blog for reasons of recruitment, communication, academic voice, strategic planning, or community-buiding, but you've been hesitant to, I feel your pain. I used to work for a "marketing communications consulting firm in higher education" where they once recommended an admissions-focused blog for a client with a $30,000 price tag for implementation. No wonder the client ran for the door.

As big fans of Basecamp, we were excited to try out 37signals' personal information manager, Backpack. A lot of applications have claimed to be online organizers, but Backpack is the first web app that really comes close to being a true web-based brain.

Most colleges and universities have an IT department that deals with incoming spam to your school. However, If you're a department or administrative webmaster you may have noticed you still get spam to the email addresses on your site. Or worse, administrators or professors complain to you that they do.

If you haven't heard of flickr yet, it's the perfect time to visit, sign up for a free account, and start photo-sharing, photoblogging, and using one of the most user-friendly web applications available today. If you're a school, read on for some ideas on what your admissions office or alumni association might do with Flickr.

On a recent project I found a need to apply a single style rule to Safari. Initially I turned up a great link to dithered.com which has all known CSS filters. Unfortunately, I could not locate one that filtered for Safari only.

If you're considering blog software and want to save some time trying to navigate various feature lists and options, take a look at this blog software chart comparing features of various user-installed (not hosted) blog software packages. It's a good start. I suggest downloading the trial versions, installing them, and testing them out for yourself. It's also a great idea to read through the user manual and the user forums and see if the blog can be configured to your needs. If you're looking for someone to create a blog for you, contact us.

Consolidated links to websites, essays, resources, and tools related to web standards.

Consolidated links to websites, essays, resources, and tools related to accessibility.

Consolidated links to websites, essays, resources, and tools related to usability.

We've been advocating web standards for some time now, but for those of you first hearing about the benefits of building and designing sites around web standards, the W3C has a great introduction to understanding the concepts and the relationships between web standards, accessibility, and CSS in its article, "How to achieve Web standards and quality on your Web site." Also, check out the Web Standards Project.

As an online designer, I'm always looking offline for inspiration and ideas. (Once you've been a sculptor, you can never truly escape the physical world.) Part of the beauty of city life is the constant stream of emotional and environmental influence - every city block a testament to the power of design's influence over our daily lives. In my quest to seek out design that is both functional and beautiful, I often look to industrial and product design, as well as interior design and architecture. You might enjoy these two sites if you're looking to tap into the spirit of modern, contemporary design in the physical world.

A good list of some web policies from universities and colleges to be found here.

Also take a look at the article, "University Web Accessibility Policies:
A Bridge Not Quite Far Enough" by Paul Ryan Bohman of WebAim for an understanding of the importance of a web policy.