happy happy joy joy

A nice list of web terms, from Accessibility to Z(eldman). Fun stuff...

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

l10n & i18n (!!)

Good article about localization (l10n) and internationalization (i18n).

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

Good Ajax Book, training, or tutorial?

How does one go about learning more about Ajax, the fundementals and the details? Has anyone found anything worthwhile?

Does anyone have any tips for training related to Ajax? Any sites, strategies or Tutorials? Books?

If you feel like you have a pretty good handle on Ajax, how did this happen. What would you reccommend to someone who has very little experience? What path did you take?

Organic SEO Wiki

I've enjoyed reading through this wiki related to Organic SEO, check it out:

http://www.organicseo.org/A_Brief_Overview.html

Seems like a great place to get a good understanding of Organic SEO.

Web Developer Interview

This list of 20 questions is not only helpful for interviewing web developer candidates but will also help you determine if your own skills are up to speed. Anyone have any additional questions they like to ask?

http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1064

Run IE7 in stand alone mode.

Interesting article on how to launch and run IE7 Beta 2 without installing it. The solution is a little buggy on some systems but can be handy when testing your site for compatibility.


http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/12/28/434132.aspx

CSS Positioning

Great article about the additional benefits ESPN found when updating their site to CSS P.

http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/archive/2003/06/espn-interview

FED Best Practices

I want to start a conversation around FED Best Practices. At this point, we should be offering the following services (at a minimum) as part of the FED Group. This is kind of a line in the sand towards who we are as a group and reflects the knowledge and skills we should have as individuals.

Ideally, once we have a wiki up and working, we can create a best practices document that will review this stuff. Currently, you can see the FED folder in the collaboration tool by clicking on the link to the right.

• Ability to write Validated XHTML Code.
• what validation tool are folks using? I am usign CSE Validator for now.
  
• A high level understanding of Javascript and DHTML, with proven ability and examples of code written.
• CSS driven layouts
• This includes an understanding and ability to code a completely CSS driven site and knowing the best way to do it and what the affects will be in older browsers. (this needs it's own best practice document).
  
• An understanding of the differences between IE 6, Firefox, Safari and Safari, with a working knowledge of what the changes in IE 7 will be.
• An understanding of Accessibility, specifically around the three levels of W3C accessibility and Section 508.
• An understanding of Search Engine Optimization

What else should we add to this list? Any comments?

RSS - Cool uses?

Does anyone have any examples of good uses of RSS on a site?

We are thinking of implementing RSS on our site (users can subscribe from the footer/homepage) to link to news pages. Any other interesting uses? I was thinking an RSS for Special Offers would make more sense, since it's information people want to hear about (in addition to new vehicles).

I believe other sites have created stand - alone applications for the desktop that brings in pricing/special offer or other constantly updating information?

Training Resources

Just a reminder: There are resources available for training. If you are interested in a class, seminar, conference or just a book, please contact Ron or me, and one of us will get it moving.

For west-coasters, this looks like a good seminar:
http://www.fitc.ca/event_list.cfm