Fresh and Crispy

The Tipping Point

2012-05-09T13:13:08Z

Early on this term I decided that HTML5 had reached sufficient traction to make it worth changing the flavour of HTML to be covered in my two modules EG-146 and EG-259. Now it seems that the media is starting to support my decision. As reported in this week’s HTML5 Weekly (Issue #37 – May 9, 2012) the BBC had a Business News Report on the Rise of HTML5 and in the same issue, there’s a link to an article on why (newspaper and magazine) publishers don’t like apps which rather echoes my view expressed earlier this year. (Having tried and failed to tweet a link to that very article from the Google iPad App, my opinion has hardened.)

Postscript: EG-259 students should also checkout Polyfills for the Pragmatist.

new links 05/08/2012

2012-05-08T00:40:20Z

Guide to HTML5 Boilerplate for Rails Developers

This is a guide to HTML5 Boilerplate for Rails developers. Like Rails on the server side or “backend”, HTML5 Boilerplate provides structure and conventions for setting up HTML5, CSS3 styles, and Javascript for front-end development. It is a popular starting point for many front-end developers. However, some aspects of HTML5 Boilerplate are not useful for Rails projects. Sorting through the HTML5 Boilerplate documentation to find what’s useful for Rails can be confusing. This article lists each component of HTML5 Boilerplate and identifies its usefulness for Rails applications.

tags: tutorial railsapps html5 boilerplate html5 boilerplate web.development rails
Rails Default Application Layout for HTML5

Rails Default Application Layout for HTML5. Shows how to set up a default application layout with navigation links, messages for alerts and notices, and CSS styling. Second in a series

tags: tutorial railsapps html5 boilerplate html5 boilerplate rails web.development
Rails Tutorial for Devise with RSpec and Cucumber

First in a series

tags: tutorial railsapps web.development cucumber rspec devise

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

new links 04/21/2012

2012-04-21T00:40:38Z

Understanding The Password « family coding

@codecademy comes to the rescue when my son’s e-mail account is hacked! http://t.co/bQD7uYne #codeyear

tags: codeyear
TEDxMuskegon — Maria Andersen — Recipe for Free Range Learning – YouTube

Carve out 20 minutes and listen to @busynessgirl’s TEDx talk on free range learning: http://t.co/sXHmlrWb #eLearning

tags: eLearning
Assessment Marking and Feedback using iPad, iAnnotate, and Dropbox | ELEVATE@UCS

Assessment Marking and Feedback using iPad, iAnnotate, and Dropbox http://t.co/6ROdNUbY
Forget the business case, open online courses are about learning | Higher Education Network | Guardian Professional

RT @GdnHigherEd: NEW: Forget the business case, open online courses are about learning http://t.co/4m0T9Wqi

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

new links 03/03/2012

2012-03-03T00:43:00Z

Beyond marks: new tools to visualise student engagement via social networks | Badge | Research in Learning Technology

RT @hopkinsdavid: Reading @jobadge and @ajcann : “New tools to visualise student engagement via social networks” http://t.co/mfqGzooU

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

The Trouble with Apps

2012-02-08T12:47:22Z

Here’s the thing. You take your tablet PC to lunch with the intention of reading the latest on the RSS feeds. You open your news reader, you like an article, you want to share. One option is twitter. You try it, but the embedded web browser doesn’t know your twitter password. You open the article in the browser, and it doesn’t either. The app that does, the official twitter app, is not available as an option for tweeting.

Compare this with the experience on a web browser. It remembers your twitter login details because there’s a cookie set. Sharing a link from Google Reader is simply a matter of pressing “tweet this”. Bang, it’s gone.

Am I the only one who thinks that having multiple, separate web browsers, each with their own cookie stores (the App Model) as opposed to the single ubiquitous web browser with a single shared cookie store and unlimited available apps, is a retrograde step?

Reminds me of the nightmare of cut-and-paste between applications on MS-DOS!

Why can’t tablet PCs do this? Is Google Chrome OS (apparently just a browser as operating system) better?

Firefox 10 Adds New Developer Tools

2012-02-05T12:15:40Z

In my courses on Web Design, EG-146, EG-153, EG-259 and EG-253 I have long advocated the use of Firebug as must-install developer tool. Over recent years, Google’s Chrome Browser, Apple’s Safari, Opera and even the new Internet Explorer have built developer tools into their standard browser offering. In Firefox 10, released on 31st January 2012, Firefox has finally built-in developer tools too, and they look pretty slick. And more is to come in Firefox 11 to be released in March. Here’s a short video introduction and you can read more in Developer Tools in Firefox Aurora 10 and in An Overview of Firefox Developer Tools and Firefox 10 Arrives with New Dev Tools and Full-Screen API.

Welcome ICCT Class of 2012

2012-02-02T14:28:22Z

Welcome to the blogging exercise ICCT class of 2011. Please leave the link to your new blog in the comments.

my bookmarks 02/02/2012

2012-02-02T00:42:56Z

Dive Into HTML5

Mark Pilgrim wrote Dive Into Python (bookmarked elsewhere in this collection) and here he is writing an emerging O’Reilly Book called “HTML5: up and running” which will be released in a similar way … in paper with on-line version available under Creative Commons. It is now being maintained by the community.

tags: html5 book free online mark.pilgrim dive.in eg-259 tutorial ebook html resources eg-146 eg-153
A long digression into how browsers handle unknown elements

Part of Chapter 3 or Mark Pilgrim’s “Dive into HTML5″ that discusses how browsers handle unknown elements that introduces a JavaScript fix that will enable Internet Explorer to build the correct DOM from an HTML5 document which will enable the new element to be styled and accessed by JavaScript.

tags: html5 element fix javascript mark.pilgrim diveintohtml5 eg-259
How Did We Get Here? – Dive Into HTML5

Chapter 1 of “Dive into HTML5″ the on-line version of Mark Pilgrim’s book that will eventually be published as HTML5: Up and Running by Google Press to be published by O’Reilly. I’ve linked this because it’s a very nice potted history of how HTML came to be.

tags: eg-259 eg-146 web standards html xhtml mime mark.pilgrim diveintohtml5 html5
Detecting HTML5 Features – Dive Into HTML5

Chapter 2 of Mark Pilgrim’s book. This one is interesting in that it is both a discussion on how you might, as a web developer, use JavaScript to detect your customer’s browser support for the new HTML5 features, as well as, at the same time, using these/

tags: example testbed browser html5 javascript detection html webdev tutorial reference book mark.pilgrim diveintohtml5 modenizr eg-259

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

my bookmarks 01/27/2012

2012-01-27T00:41:38Z

BBC – WebWise – a beginner’s guide to using the internet

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Chris Hall (@chris_hall) passed on this recommendation from one of his students: BBC WebWise. This is a beginner’s course aimed at adults who are new to computers and the internet. It has a very wide brief which seems to be the closest to TONIC in it’s range of topics. Very high-quality resources as well as you’d expect from the BBC. Although not a direct replacement, WebWise was the best alternative that I have come across so far, and is the one I will be using with my EG-152 class this year (I will be linking to the Internet Detective and OU Safari too).

tags: eg-153 digital literacy beginners guides internet web digital library online safety tutorial bbc webwise education guide resources for:swansealearninglab TONIC replacements
Welcome to SAFARI

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Sam Oakley (@rscsam) also suggested SAFARI “a guided expedition through the information world.” This resource was developed by the Open University (OU) and looks like a comprehensive tutorial on accessing, finding and reviewing information – and not just from the Internet. The recommended time to work through the examples is 10-13.5 hours. TONIC was much more of a beginners guide to the internet but Safari looks an excellent resource for students embarking on a research project.

tags: eg-353 sr-311 eg-153 safari digital literacy TONIC replacements howto reseach web information_literacy research studyskills tutorials tutorial for:swansealearninglab e-learning
Internet Detective

I asked for suggestions for a replacement for Netskills TONIC and Sam Oakley (@rscsam) suggested the Internet Detective (developed by the University of Bristol and Manchester Metropolitan University from an original tutorial by Marianne Peereboom. Though launched in 2006 it doesn’t appear to have been updated since 2009. TONIC was about the internet generally though, not just research.

tags: howto internet TONIC replacements digital literacy reseach web eg-153 for:swansealearninglab tutorials website evaluation research education critical_thinking tutorial detective

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

my bookmarks 01/21/2012

2012-01-21T00:41:10Z

Tutorial: Case Study with Html5 + CSS3 | Abduzeedo | Graphic Design Inspiration and Photoshop Tutorials

“Last month I did a talk at the Campus Party, one of the biggest technology events of the world, talking about Fireworks, HTML5 and CSS3. It was very nice, the receptivity of the audience was sensational, and thinking that many of you would also like to see the contents of the workshop, so decided to write a full case study and share here on the blog.”

tags: tutorial eg-259 html5 css3 case study tutorials resources webdesign casestudy

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.