Oy, What a Day

• 8:30a UIC Digital Accessibility Expo (UIC Forum)
• 10:45a Prospective student tour (UIC SCE) - take pictures
• 12:00p Lunch and see 2nd Keynote at UIC DAE (UIC Forum)
• 2:00p Visit the folks at Partnership READ about video
• 3:00p Back at the OAR Office to check pictures of tour
• 5:30p Reference at DePaul
• 9:00p You can go home now...

Eric Meyer on What Makes Web Designers Special

Do people designing for the web need any special skills beyond a knowledge of Photoshop? The question comes up every once and a while. Here's what CSS Guru Eric Meyer has to say:

Designers need to know mark-up. They need to know HTML5. They need to be able to write CSS and understand web layout. And they need to have at least a decent grasp of what JavaScript does. I don't necessarily insist that everyone who ever touches the web be able to write their own web app by hand, but designers should understand how JavaScript works.

There are a lot of people who call themselves web designers who are really just designers who put their designs on the web. And there's nothing wrong with being just a designer. But they're not necessarily web designers. They're visual designers. There's a difference.

Springtime at UIC

It's that precious moment in Chicago when the trees start to bloom.

Net Neutrality Is Internet Freedom

What Fred said...

Place I Was Born in Now Up for Sale -- $2.6 Mil (Marked Down from $3.1)

Daddy had good tastes. The apartment at 155 W. Burton Pl. was his 'bachelor pad', designed by friend Sol Kogen, where he lived in the Fifties. At the time, he was owner of United Film & Recording Studio on Erie & St. Clair and producer/announcer of the German-language radio show, The Germania Broadcast.

I remember seeing a short film of the place. It was a duplex with my mother and grandmother waving from the 2nd floor. That's about all I remember -- by the time I was two we had already moved further north to Barry Ave. near Pine Grove. Note on the Kogens: One of the Kogen brothers was our first pediatrician. Another was our dentist.

[h/t mommy]

Happy 13th Birthday, WebDesign-L

"Happy 13th Birthday, WebDesign-L" -- that's how "List Mom" Steven Champeon titled his post reminding us that the hallowed Listserv for web designers and web developers that originally started way back in 1997 is now celebrating its 13th Birthday.

As he remarks, "the Web was smaller and the field of Web design smaller still". Anyone with even a passing interest in web development was a member of that list. That's where the original arguments about design, usability, web techniques and web standards were waged. Our skills and knowledge have progressed infinitely since then but part of the learning process was helped immeasurably by the community created on that ListServ. The good news is, that it's still going strong today.