Category: Technical

Technical issues around social media. For the geekier-minded.

Web [en]

I’ve just discovered All My FAQs. All My FAQs is a wiki, which means that the website is big Perl script driven by the contributions of an open community. For example, anybody can modify any page or even create new ones.

I usually believe that anarchy cannot be productive, but maybe the wiki is a counter-example. It shouldn’t work, but it does!

I’m also very much aware that some areas of the web turn out to be collections of collections of links, or FAQs to FAQs. Is there any way out of this? Most of the time, the information is there – it is just useless because people cannot get at it. When a list of “pointers” gets exhaustive enough, it also starts getting too big and confusing. I guess there are some information architecture issues at hand.

Pompage [en]

Le projet pompage.net n’est pas mort, rassurez-vous. Seulement, avec les examens et tout le reste, j’avance péniblement dans la traduction du deuxième article à  paraître (et en plus, il n’est pas facile – c’est moi qui vous le dis).

L’éternel problème pour la traduction, c’est que les personnes qui ont les compétences linguistiques et techniques pour la faire sont par ailleurs sur-occupés… C’est mal fait, le monde, non? Si jamais vous vous sentez d’attaque, n’hésitez pas, les Pompeurs Associés ont grandement besoin de bénévoles prêts à  mettre quelques coups de pioche dans cette sacrée barrière linguistique.

En attendant, j’ai déniché pour vous Praktica, qui semble être une ressource prometteuse, même si le design actuel n’est pas trop sympathique pour les pauvres qui naviguent en 800×600… Je n’ai pas encore eu le temps d’explorer à  fond, mais allez y faire un tour et dites-moi ce que vous en pensez! (Mais oui, vous savez, il y a ce petit lien juste ici, dessous, qui vous permet de vous exprimer… vous ne l’aviez pas oublié, quand même?)

Web [en]

Do take the time to explore the latest issue of Digital Web: simplicity. My “twin brother” has contributed a precious tutorial on site planning.

At ALA this week, a piece on Microsoft’s Smart Tags. A rather long read, but complete and interesting.

Love The W3C [en]

The article “How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the W3C” by Erika Meyer prompts me to go for a little trip down A List Apart memory lane, to point you to some of the first articles I read there.

Here is a little gem extracted from the ALA Back Issues:

Dr. Strangeglobe: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The W3C.

For those interested in my personal history, it was through one of Erika Meyer‘s sites (Mombomb) that I discovered Jeffrey Zeldman. In Defense of Web Diaries is the first ALA article I ever read (followed closely by The Day the Browser Died).

Editors and Standards [en]

I know the article has been out for a while, but it’s worth reading through: To Hell With Bad Editors.
A well-felt article on the damage done to the web by (particularly) WYSIWYG editors. Read it even if you use a WYSIWYG editor and you’re convinced you’re doing the right thing.

Oh, and if you are so inclined, CodeBitch has written a few lines about the aptitude of human beings to learn HTML. Yes, I have what you need: HTML Express tutorial.

Happy coding!