Lotusphere online
Lotusphere online has been available for several days. Although I’ve still not been sent an email informing me that it’s live (just like last year), unlike last year my email and confirmation number work. A number of features are created using XPage technology and this is the first application I’ve seen that uses this functionality. I’ve mentioned that I’m concerned that XPages will provide Domino designers with tools that they might use that caused them to embed an accessibility time-bomb into their company’s intranets. So I thought I’d take a brief look at how accessible this IBM site is and knocked up a quick video walk through.
Is the price of flexibility, complexity?
Since I’m now paying for hosting, I’m starting to install some of the open source systems to borrow good practice in my own work. Usually when I have an idea for a new feature, I work out my approach and then investigate similar systems to see how they’ve approached the same problem but I rarely install the software to see how they work in practice. Media Temple, my hosting company provide a handy one-click install for some useful software such as WordPress and Drupal, an open source ‘community’ platform. So along with Drupal, I’ve installed Joomla, an open source CMS. Working within a University, the skill-base of staff varies dramatically. I’ve always taken the view that anything we develop should be no more complex than using an email form and should replicate approaches staff will develop through their day to day use of the computer. So creating resources on StudyNet is basically as comples as writing an…
Mock-up tool
If you are and have a habit of producing very quick and rough mock-ups with a pen an a piece of paper (or maybe occasionally using an Table PC), then you might be interested in Balsamiq Mockups. This is an Adobe Air application that allows you to paste together quick mockups by dragging and dropping pre-defined templates onto a work area, such as a browser window, menu bar, image holder, etc. It’s a really simple idea and works really well Source: Interface Matters