Pemaquid Communications

Thanks to all who attended my presentation on CSS last night for techMaine’s Web Design User’s Group. No one threw rotten vegetables or experienced a bout of narcolepsy, which I took to be a good sign.

It was a bit challenging to prepare this presentation because:

1. I hadn’t put together a 2-hour presentation on the subject before
2. I didn’t know going in how much participants knew about CSS, so I covered a lot of ground, from the basics to some advanced sorcery
3. My partner in crime, Jen Ecker, (a.k.a. Dr. JEcker), had to bow out at the last minute due to a stomach bug, leaving me to do the whole 2-hour spiel (Jen sends her regrets and I’m glad to report she’s feeling much better today, though she remains disappointed that she missed out)

Fortunately, on the subject of Web design, I’m usually not at a loss for words.

Here’s the main point. Using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) is a better, more efficient way to design Web sites. It’s a lingua franca for the Web, along with that other 4-letter “word”, HTML.

CSS has “that same great taste, but it’s less filling“, meaning, you can make great looking sites w/a fraction of the markup. That leads to all kinds of benefits:

1. More Flexible Design
2. More sophisticated Design
3. Easier, quicker maintenance
4. Greater Accessibiilty
5. Better search engine ranking
6. Lower costs for bandwidth, server storage and redesigns

Jen and I have put up a CSS Quick Reference Guide we’re calling CSS 101. It’s here:
http://css.pemaquid.com/101/

Here is a list of some of the other resources we dug up for you. Use them in good health!

Online Resources

• A List Apart
• W3C - CSS
• W3 Schools - CSS Reference/Tutorials
• Position Is Everything
• CSS Zen Garden
• CSS Beauty
• Smashing Magazine (random article)

Books

• Bulletproof Web Design
• More Eric Meyer on CSS
• CSS Web Site Design
• Transcending CSS

Tools

• Firebug
• Web Developer Toolbar
• Colorzilla
• Internet Explorer Developer Toolbar

Gurus

• Dan Cederholm - www.simplebits.com
• Andy Clarke - www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk
• Eric Meyer - www.meyerweb.com
• Dave Shea - www.mezzoblue.com

Way back at the dawn of time - you know, 1998 - people gave lip service to something called the “New Economy”. Middlemen, it was forecast, would soon be “disintermediated” out of financial transactions as “commerce” became “e-commerce”.

Then the bubble popped, sock-puppet mascots became extinct, real estate companies continued to prosper, and everyone generally took their eyes off the business transformations underway. Recently, however, I was taking stock, and things are definitely changing, though perhaps in slow-mo. Let’s recap:

Encyclopedia salesmen? Gone. Wikipedia and Google rule. ‘Nuf said.

Newspapers? On life support. Readership is down sharply as consumers gain more comprehensive and convenient access to information online. Start writing the epitaph.

Record companies? Current business model is dying. When the cost of reproducing your product falls to zero, it’s hard to make money on album sales.

Real Estate agents? Their days are numbered. Their monopoly over home listings through the MLS Listing service, their key advantage - will end; it’s a matter of time (see Zillow).

You could even say that employers have less control over their employees - especially those who are tech-savvy. Workers who are wise in the ways of the Web can use their online connections to cobble together a decent living by utilizing their social network.

Last, but certainly not least, here’s the kicker I’ve been building up to: software. We’re all familiar with Open Source software these days. The idea is that when you open up your source code to a vast online array of collaborators - when you loosen control - you get better apps.

It seems to me we’re moving towards an Open Source World. As traditional business categories yield to the Information Age, it seems like people will get better information, more conveniently, and at a lower cost. That seems like a good thing to me.

It also seems inevitable.