Web

That snazzy website your looking at took a while to make didn't it? What do you reckon? Maybe it took the developers a few months to make. Perhaps its taken them a few years of iterative development to create and perfect something more complex.

I am honoured, happy and excited to have been asked to speak at a Web Directions event, <a href="https://code13melb.webdirections.org/" target="_blank">Web Directions Code</a>, here in Melbourne on the 2nd and 3rd of May.

Over the past year I've been slowly building a list of gotchas, mistaken assumptions and potential slip ups that have hit projects I've been involved with several times, or seemed so blindingly obvious after the moment that they just had to be documented. This is one of the many articles I have that may grow over time as I discover more useful tidbits.

<p align="left">The speaker line ups and topics keep getting better for the Melbourne geek nights and tonight is no expection.<p align="left"><strong>Ophelie Lechat from Flippa talking about &quot;Tackling the scary content marketing beast&quot;</strong><br />I&#39;ve been doing some of this myself recently, so it was interesting to hear some more in depth on te topic from a commercial perpective, here&rsquo;s what I got out of the session:<ul><li>Content isn&rsquo;t just a blog</li><li>Have editorial calendars</li><li>Content strategy and marketing are best friends as the discipline helps attract seo and web traffic, this in turn reduces demand on customer support and partnerships. good for engagement.</li><li>Assess what content you already have. If it&#39;s not content it may be existing skills or assets.</li><li>Writing for your site can be empowering for team members</li><li>Don&rsquo;t be afraid of ghost and hired writers.</li><li>Decide what will you talk about and don&#39;t just talk to and about yourself. Identify what others don&#39;t do or do badly.</li><li>ebooks of collections of posts are a great marketing idea.</li><li>What to write about - questions that need answering, searches on your site. What conversations are people having elsewhere? If you get stuck, write an outline first.</li><li>Keep your content as short as possible, focus, end with engagement, what do users/readers want?</li></ul>

<p class="p1">I feel slightly cheeky writing much about the event as I didn&rsquo;t really end up doing very much and felt somewhat humbled and embarrassed by the other attendees.<p class="p1">Anyway, to start at the beginning.<p class="p1">HealthHack 2013 was a weekend hackfest solving problems that medical researchers face. HealthHack brought together medical researchers, bioinformaticians, software developers, data analysts, data visualisers and designers. Together, they created new software tools to analyse, visualise and communicate data.<p class="p1">Organised by a great team in a very welcoming atmosphere it was a surprisingly well attended event considering the niche topic.&nbsp;Read about the weekend and the winners here - <span class="s2"><a href="https://healthhackmelb.com">healthhackmelb.com</a><p class="p1">I turned up on Friday night and enjoyed being very well fed and watered and finally got to meet <a href="https://twitter.com/FCTweedie"><span class="s2">@FCTweedie</a> in the flesh after much mutual twitter stalking.<p class="p1">I listened to the problem statements and must admit it was all a little over my head. I come from a technical background and despite having studied &lsquo;proper programming&rsquo; at University it has been a very long time since I really did any and I realise my web work is very light really. Also the technical scientific nature of the problems was a little out of my depth, I vaguely understand what things like DNA are, but when it comes to reporting, analysing and visualising them, way out of my comfort zone.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Still, I found one talk spoke to me at a level I could understand, which was about visualising the quality of academic papers on particular subjects. Working a lot within content management systems, this seemed like an ideal fit to my skills, so I joined the team. However, mixing with a bunch of far superior programmers to me, it was immediately obvious that they had far more complex (and probably more appropriate) solutions in mind and I was a little lost again&hellip;<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">I meandered around for a bit watching what people where up to and went to see if the organisers needed any help, they didn&rsquo;t, but were incredibly nice to me about everything and we had a very interesting chat about Hack events in general, but I think that&rsquo;s a discussion for another blog post.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Great stuff and congratulations to all involved.

It seems as the year draws to an end, we&#39;re having some of the best talks! Damn Christmas&hellip;

When did you last use the references feature in Microsoft Word?

Another great 'What do you know' session from <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCwQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.webdirections.org%2F&ei=yw5CU5rLDcmdkgWC4oDoCA&usg=AFQjCNFVeqPXVmE57AS0EUr3fdd42psoPA&sig2=HXz7xVEu8XhKCcZjXcFpTg&bvm=bv.64125504,d.dGI" target="_blank">Web Directions</a>, lots of short talks, lots of short descriptions...

Not so long ago, many of us were satisfied handling deployment of our projects by uploading files via FTP to a web server. I was doing it myself until relatively recently and still do on occasion (don't tell anyone!). At some point in the past few years, demand for the services and features offered by web applications rose, team sizes grew and rapid iteration became the norm. The old methods for deploying became unstable, unreliable and (generally) untrusted. Read more

No application exists in isolation, in most cases it will frequently need to access external data and services to bring it to life. In this video we look at the principles of connecting to these services. We will cover the basics of APIs, REST and JSON in an Android app and play with some Marvel Super Heroes on the journey.

A Chrome extensions prime function is to interact and enhance a users' web pages and in this video we look at how to do this, building our first extension with a combination of HTML and JavaScript. This extension will replace all images in a SitePoint article with images of Super Heroes, bringing even more super powers to your browsing experience.

Chris Ward's interview with Sauce Labs takes a look at the acquisition of TestObject automated app testing service, SauceCon, and how to test the Internet of Things.

In this tutorial, we install IPFS and learn its basic commands.

InterPlanetary File System, also known as IPFS, is a peer to peer media protocol that means to make the web faster, safer, and open sourced. Right now we're in need of a system that has fast performance, continuous access to content, efficient data transfer, easy naming conventions, and low cost. Although IPFS is in its early stages, it can do all of these things.

American web accessibility standards are often top of mind for most developers, but the United Nations, European Union and many nations have their own laws and policies. Read more about how to develop international accessibility standards in this blog post.

In this era ruled by digital information, it’s vital to make sure that the internet’s vast wealth of knowledge is accessible to as many people as possible. This article explains how adherence to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, or WCAG, helps you get closer to that goal.

In this article, we'll define vision disabilities and talk about web development strategies for improving accessibility for users with visual impairments.

The web increasingly provides both a rich visual and audio experience. In this article, we'll define auditory disabilities and talk about web development strategies for improving accessibility for users with hearing impairment.

Designing for accessibility can make your website better for everyone. In this article, we'll define motor disabilities and talk about web development strategies for improving accessibility for users with a motor disability.

Kickstart turning your web pages into accessible web pages. Here are our 5 favorite resources for learning what you need to change and how to implement those changes.