ishimmer.net

What is web standards?

Not a lot of us have heard of web standards. To be honest, I myself can’t even fully grasp its meaning. But simply put, it’s a standard way for web designers (or anyone) to build websites. It’s just like how there is a common unspoken standard of how a magazine should be published - the font type, the way the model should be put at the cover page. Web standards when done properly, a website can be applied across most browsers (FireFox, IE, Netscape, Opera, to name a few).

I am not a web designer nor someone who is keeping myself abreast with all the latest web development. When Nick asked the company who is interested to attend the Singapore Web Standards Group meetup, I felt that this will be a good chance for me to learn more about web designing and so I decided to attend.

Stepping into RGS’s AVA room was definintely frightening. All eyes were on you. And you immediately realised that this meetup is an exclusive one. I think it is due to the nature of the meetup, geeks attract geeks. =) I seriously felt a bit intimidated, mainly because I know I don’t know much about web standards.

But luckily the talk by Lucian was an easy one. Not so much on codings, more of explaining why we should advocate web standards, and apply it onto our websites.

Separate “Content”, “Presentation” and “Behaviour” will do your work faster and more efficiently!

For a starter, CSS Zen Garden is a good site to go to. And I am recommending this to anyone who has interest in web designing. I am playing around with it too! Although I can hardly get myself to sit down and finalise on a design I would like to do. *grin*

Other useful sites:

• Web Standards Project
• W3C
• WebSG - for Singapore interest group

I am definitely looking forward to have more similar meet ups to widen my knowledge. On my side, I will be sure to learn more so that I won’t feel stupid.

onnchai casually asked me about my new year resolutions. To satisfy his thirst to tease me, I shall put some of the easily-achievable-if-I-plonk-myself-down-to-do-it resolutions here.

1. To further develop my site to accommodate more sections and not only a blog. To be conceptualised soon. Watch out for my 1st anniversary of setting-up-my-own-domain on 15th Feb!
2. To try out web-designing (a proper one) for my ASEAN community portal.
3. To read a book a month. Lots of books bought and stashed in my shelf. To name a few, there are Freakonomics, The Tipping Point, The World is Flat and Lord of The Rings.
4. To have a healthy lifestyle, at least a jog or swim every week.
5. To learn at least a new skill by end of year.

What are yours? Name 5! And I am starting a tag! *grin*

You are tagged! Justin, Uzyn, Andrew, Ding Ying, Gerald, Lihe, Jiin Joo, Nick and Sis! Come on, give me some face and reply ok? Hehe.

Source: The Calvin and Hobbes Searchable Database

Got tagged by Uzyn. Although it’s a bit too late now for me to reply his tag, I will do so nonetheless because this is my FIRST tag! Let’s get it started then!

Let’s get down to some (real simple) rules first.

What YOU can do is simply create a new post on your blog, but CUT AND PASTE the list I have below, and then ADD any blogs you feel aren’t getting their due either. It can be 1 blog, or a hundred(or none if you simply want to repost the same list), but the idea is, find those great blogs that, for whatever reason, you feel aren’t getting their due, link-wise. Then after you leave your post, the next blogger will do the same thing, cut and paste YOUR list, and add THEIR blogs to the list, then repost it. Add the same instructions in your post that the next blogger should cut and paste YOUR list, and add any blogs they feel should be on it to THEIR list. The list will get increasingly long, and all the blogs will get a sort of reverse ‘pyramid-affect’ of link-love.

The list on uzyn’s site is: Shotgun Marketing Blog, BrandSizzle, bizsolutionsplus, Customers Rock!, Being Peter Kim, Presentation Zen, Dmitry Linkov, aialone, John Wagner, Nick Rice, Design Sojourn, Frozen Puck, The Sartorialist, Small Surfaces, Africa Unchained, Perspective, gDiapers, Bob Sutton, BubbleDesign, Accure’s Carpark, Uzyn, Sparklette, Cuteable, Design East, Design Milk, Design Asides, Fugly Designs, Geekette, Gem Sty, i-Eye, Bjorn Lee, IDAsia.org, Niblettes, Pluit Solutions, reBang, sgEntrepreneurs, Signs and Wonders, Wifi Cat, Sumajin Blog, Technogad, The Foo Logs, Uniquely the Epitome, Aen Direct, Sek Ling, Cobalt Paladin, Daphne Loo, Sweska, Gratisvibes, U-Fong, Linda Chua, Xiao Luo, Whippleworld, Lih Shin, Shimmer and Chuan Zhi.

Damn, I’m getting tired already, but I am going to persevere. Since I am replying to this tag after such a long time, most probably the blogs that I list here would have gotten their deserved exposure. Well anyway, here they are: Cupcake Bakeshop, Education in Malaysia, Kiddley, Swissmiss, Simply Recipes, Jiin Joo and Nick.

Ok, I am super tired already.

Time to check out those featured blogs. =)