[thelist] Review of Web and print publishing

[Reda]

Review of Web and Print Publishing
http://rsdesigns.com/

Thursday, 10 August, 2000

A Message to Web Designers: If It Ain't Broke, Don't Fix It (nytimes.com)
By JEFFREY SELINGO. When Salon.com revamped its Web site in May, 
readers greeted it with hundreds of e-mail complaints. They 
criticized the horizontal scrolling, the small type and the headlines 
that no longer linked directly to articles. Within days, Salon's 
editor, David Talbot, posted a note to readers saying, "You win!" and 
the site reverted to some of its old design.

Dreamweaver Ultradev Review (webtechniques.com) and Features (macromedia.com).
Macromedia Dreamweaver UltraDev is a new product designed to let you 
quickly connect Web pages to databases, preview live data in the 
workspace with Live Data Preview, and easily add server-side logic, 
navigation, and interactivity.

Web sites are locking out the disabled (cnn.com)
In recent years, the physical world has adapted to the needs of the 
disabled. But of more than 30 major shopping, search, auction, news, 
and financial Web sites contacted, only a handful admitted any 
interest in -- much less any action taken toward -- tailoring the 
sites for accessibility.

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)
Mission: The W3C's commitment to lead the Web to its full potential 
includes promoting a high degree of usability for people with 
disabilities. The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), in coordination 
with organizations around the world, is pursuing accessibility of the 
Web through five primary areas of work: technology, guidelines, 
tools, education & outreach, and research & development.

Wednesday, 9 August 2000

Digital workflow: managing the process (Journal of Electronic Publishing)
By LINDA BEEBE and BARBARA MEYERS. In the last half-century, however, 
the pace of change in printing and publishing technology has become 
dynamic. Now changes in technology come about in a matter of years, 
sometimes even months. And with those changes, the steps in the 
process of publication may now be controlled, tracked, and subsumed 
into one continuous electronic system often called digital workflow.

The journalist in the chat room (Journal of Electronic Publishing)
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG. Scholarly publishers hoping to add new 
interactive features to their Web sites would do well to look to the 
live chat sessions run by major on-line newspapers. The following 
analysis of one newspaper's on-line chat events is provided as a way 
for academic publishers to think about how such a feature could 
enliven scholarly publishing.

Separating Body from Soul (webtechniques.com)
By Michael Floyd. XML was supposed to change the face of publishing, 
but has it become a wolf in sheep's clothing? Michael shows you how 
to look past the hype and get started with the reality.

Migrating from HTML to XML (webtechniques.com)
By Peter Fischer. Wouldn't you know it? HTML is quickly becoming a 
legacy format and you're about to be stuck with thousands of legacy 
documents. Relax, Peter has the tools to help you convert to XML with 
ease.

Monday, 7 August 2000

Errors and Typos: Are There More Online? (mediainfo.com)
By Steve Outing. It's a commonly held belief that Web news sites 
contain more errors than printed news publications. This is a topic 
that arises periodically on the Internet discussion lists that I host 
(Online-News and Online-Writing), and the prevailing complaint you 
hear is that online news sites are sloppier than printed newspapers 
and news magazines...

Large Print Books: I Can See Clearly Now (publishersweekly.com)

By Lucinda Dyer. With major houses seeing the bigger picture, 
large-print publishing is experiencing significant growth and renewed 
importance What do publishers envision as they peer into the future? 
These days, what many of them behold is...16-point type. With one 
American turning 50 every seven minutes and 13.5 million Americans 
over 45 already having trouble reading the small print on everything 
from menus to the yellow pages, the large-print book is finally 
coming into its own.

A milestone for SVG (MacWEEK.com)

By Stephen Beale. The Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format reached a 
major milestone earlier this week when the Worldwide Web Consortium 
(W3C) released the SVG specification as a "candidate recommendation." 
The W3C, which governs HTML, XML and other Web standards, is now 
inviting developers to implement the format and report any unforeseen 
issues back to the organization, said Chris Lilley, who chairs the 
W3C's SVG working group.