ITS Web Services

Tired of compromising your beautiful designs or being forced to find work-arounds that don’t work when using transparent PNGs? There is a way… By invoking the CSS behavior found in this script you can add decent PNG support to IE5.5+ on Windows with no changes to your website HTML source code. And since this method uses CSS “behaviors,” a custom Microsoft extension to CSS, it will not affect any other browsers like Mozilla and Opera which already implement good PNG support.

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Remember the first time you saw a little web site icon pop up in your browser’s address bar? It was like, “Cool! How did they do that?” Fast forward to 2008 and with the most recent software update for the iPhone, users can save bookmark icons (webclips) to their phone’s desktop. Fortunately, it takes even less time than creating a “favicon.ico” image and you never have to worry about it strange disappearances (IE 6). It’s as simple as creating a 57×57 .png and uploading to your server’s root. Name the file apple-touch-icon.png. Don’t forget to add the rounded border and glassy effect necessary for Apple aesthetic goodness.

When James Karl Buck was detained at an anti-government rally in Mahalla, Egypt, he got the diplomatic cogs turning with a simple message via his cell phone to Twitter: “Arrested.”

Over the next several hours, Buck was able to update friends and family using the micro-blogging site, some of whom then transposed his messages to other blogs of their own. Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, told CNN that there have been more and more stories of people using the service during natural disasters. In Buck’s case, the speed at which news of his situation was disseminated led to his school hiring a lawyer on his behalf. Less than 24 hours after his arrest, he left the station with another one word blog entry: “Free.”

Read the whole story at CNN.com.

Christine Kent’s article, “Fifteen tips for making any document look and read better,” on Ragan.com caught my eye today as a great article for all writers - from beginner to expert. I see a lot of articles out there about writing tips and how-to’s, but I think this one really encapsulates not only the tips, but also the reasons why. The tricks that good writers use are always designed to make their story easier to read and more interesting.

From University Business:

1. Define strategic goals.
2. Do your homework.
3. Don’t forget ADA and web standards.
4. Put on your project manager hat.
5. Spend quality time with your content.
6. Invite feedback, but refrain from doing a redesign by democracy or by committee.
7. Don’t forget to test as you redesign.
8. Get a CMS when you redesign.
9. Embrace incremental redesigns (rather than redesigning every two or three years).
10. Don’t worry.

(Hat tip: Audrey)