We visited the Newsgator site in class today, and I didn’t notice that on Tuesday of this week, they announced that they were now offering all of their individual desktop applications free! Apparently too much competition has made them choose this route. I highly recommend that each of you try out desktop content aggregator’s on your home systems. The excellent NetNewsWire for Mac (a product I have been using for several years), and FeedDemon for Windows are now FREE products for you to download at http://www.newsgator.com/Individuals/Default.aspx

Enjoy!

I mentioned that WordPress folk have created forum software called “bbpress”. If you are interested in using it you will have to download it and serve it on your own server as there is not a multiuser version at this point. I think there are examples on the bbpress site (http://bbpress.org).

If anyone in the class would like to try it out, you are welcome to use the one I have on my server, which I really haven’t used yet. It it located at: http://www.elearningdesign.us/forum

If you do use it, please email me and let me know because I am not actively checking it unless I know someone is using it.

All IMD students in the class who would like to attend the IMC2 field trip this week are encouraged to participate. You will need to leave class at 10:30 and have your assignments up to date before leaving. These field trips are valuable for your experience and I fully support your participation.

This week is iMUG’s field trip to IMC2. IMC2 is a top 10 interactive agency in the Dallas area. We will learn about their company, tour their interesting work environment, and meet their employees. There is also a possibility that we will be having lunch with some of the IMC2 employees. This is a great opportunity to get some insight on a real world working environment. If you are interested in joining us, please RSVP to this email. We will be meeting this Tuesday in 320 at 10:30am and carpooling to the location. See you there!

The RSVP email address is: i MUG <interactivemug@gmail.com>

Mike asked about CSS3 and Safari, and my post didn’t work so here it is for everyone. To begin with, you guys need to be able to locate information like this on your own, and then share with each other as you find articles that make sense - this is the value of blogging. So, since I am offering some sites to begin your exploration of this subject, how about everyone finding additional appropriate articles about CSS3 and share them via your blog. Find some info in particular about what CSS3 properties are supported by current Firefox versions. Safari is close behind when its version 3 comes out. What all this means is that the browsers are beginning to get CSS3 implemented but certainly not all the major browsers which makes it difficult to implement them now. But it is time to begin learning all that you can.

456BereaStreet.com: Roger Johansson CSS3 Selectors Explained

http://www.456bereastreet.com/archive/200601/css_3_selectors_explained/

CSS3.Info - a site about CSS3
http://www.css3.info/preview/

CSS3 Columns : Mozilla dev.
http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/CSS3_Columns

A List Apart: Introducing the CSS3 Multi-column Module, by Cedric Savarese

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/css3multicolumn

Blake Scarbrough Blog: CSS3
http://www.blakems.com/archives/000088.html

Leland Scott”s Musings from Mars: Safari 3.0 Blazes a Rewarding Trail to CSS 3.0

http://www.musingsfrommars.org/2007/06/safari-30-blazes-trail-for-css-30.html

Content aggregation is a simple process of an application that is capable of collecting RSS based site information and providing the user with a list of articles updated from each of the collected sites. The articles are available to view in abstract (shortened) form or the complete article. You can read it within the aggregator application or click on the title and it will take you to the site it originates from. I encourage you to try working with it, and to plan the type of information you want to have access to and the purpose of your “research”. Then, use RSS search engines such as Feedster.com and blogsearch.google.com to search for topics and sites of interest.

The blogroll on this site is a good starting point. Link to some of these sites and see if it provides the type of information that will help you with learning and deepening your skills of web design. When you find a good site, observe that author’s blogroll and discover the people that he/she links to and communicates with. This is a good way to build your own resources.

Intermediate Scripting is about deepening our skills in CSS or the presentation aspects of web design. We will work with a core content that focuses on developing skills in understanding layout design with CSS, integrating imagry with type, as well as separating structure from presentation. The introduction of microformats as well as RSS scripting for your web project will also be included in the course.