Abstract Sequential » nervous

A blessing and a curse.

Stephanie — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 03:21:06 +0000

June 12: I decide I’m not taking any more free lance work on this summer. I have two donated time projects I’ve been wanting to finish, three web aps I’d like to write for myself and two blogs to skin.

June 14: One of my regulars calls and asks me just to “put up an under construction notice” and re-do their site.

June 17: One of my other regulars emails to let me know they’re flying someone in to ‘revisit’ their site.

June 18: I ask for an extra week of vacation from my full time day job and consider raising my hourly rate.

Forming form guidelines

Stephanie — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 00:36:49 +0000

Who knew web design could be so… academic?

Since I got back from @media I’ve been hard at work on a set of guidelines which ideally will one day guide the interaction and styling of all forms on the myriad of BCIT web applications though right now will only be applied to anything in the ‘public web’ look and feel. I don’t think I’ve done this much research since I finished university.

Here’s a bit more information on my quibble with FireFox: the bug report and ensuing argument. Some one who knows what they’re doing should probably read the CSS3 proposals to see if this can be avoided in the future.
Also, sadly, I’m down to my last two chocolates from See’s in San Francisco.

If you can’t say something nicely…

Stephanie — Tue, 08 May 2007 07:37:04 +0000

I have lots to say but trouble finding the time and words to say it.

Blog posts I hope to make in the next two weeks:

Taking credit where credit is due – in response to a discussion about women in IT at zeldman.com.
My thoughts on the hiring process and the job market and why I do what I do where I do for the pay I get.
Some of the steps we’re taking to convert our templates from tables within tables within tables to just… one table, well it’s an improvement.
Highlights of our presentation at CADE and my thoughts on the rest of the conference.

Until then, if you think of yourself as a web designer – go take A List Apart’s Web Designer survey.

Styling Our Style Sheets

Stephanie — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:15:26 +0000

I’ve been wanting to seriously redo some of the HTML and CSS behind the BCIT site since I came on board here almost a year ago.

Well, I get my wish. We’re going to take some baby steps towards semantic HTML and CSS (POSH if you like) and despite my aversion to being in charge, I’m leading the project.

As a first step I’m trying to write a CSS coding style guide. I can’t necessarily clean up the current mess but I can try to stop any new ones from being made ;)

What I want to do is develop guidelines for:

if and how style definitions should be divided between multiple style sheets
what order style definitions should be listed in (I currently put all my tag definitions at the top of documents and then place my id and class definitions beneath them in the order they’re anticipated to appear on the page)
naming conventions for ids and classes
commenting conventions
what order properties should be arranged within definitions
if and when we should use shorthand properties
formatting guidelines

So far my research has turned up very few examples to help me with the development. This somewhat out dated post is the best I’ve found so far. Part of my problem is that searching for a style guide for CSS is just coming up with guides to styling with CSS.

Do you work with a CSS coding style guide or know any good resources for developing one?

I’m presenting at a conference!

Stephanie — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 22:01:53 +0000

One of the projects I’ve worked on at BCIT is Catt-Trax2. The website is for Danny Catt who is traveling through South America and Antarctica exploring conservation and sustainability issues and talking to the people in those regions working with those issues daily. He’s taking photos, video, and sound clips of this journey and blogging about his experiences. I helped architect the website and did some design and implementation work on it. We have fun stuff like a Google Maps mashup showing his route too.

The project manager for the project is an Instructional Development Coordinator named Terry Fuller who has done an excellent job pushing the team to give their most while restraining Danny’s overwhelming enthusiasm to keep the project in scope.

She’s asked me to co-present about the project at a conference for distance educators that is happening in Winnipeg in May. I’ve applied for funding to go with her. Our names are already on the website, so I hope I get the funding :)