I wasn’t really sure why if someone had a laptop and a desktop (or just a laptop) you’d want to bother with an iPad considering it’s app based and doesn’t have all the power and flexibility of a laptop.
The one thing that does look amazing about them though is the idea of iPad versions of books and magazines. I think the promo video showed a sports mag with video and audio incorporated and it looked amazing! Here’s another exampled that popped up on Twitter today by Penguin Books. I’m not sure if its just a concept but the idea it could be used for learning and for kids development is another reason it could be great!
I just hope that eventually, as other tablets get better (if they do!), people will be able to get these great apps on more than just the iPad. Don’t want Apple taking over the world!
Now, I’ve not worked in the industry as long many of the commenter’s and therefore I don’t have the depth of experience that many of them have, but I do have few things to say about the point.
I generally think that it’s more important that designers understand how to design for the digital platform properly, rather than being able to code HTML and CSS. Read the rest of this entry »
There’s been plenty of reviews of the Manchester leg of Speak The Web over the last week and I thought I’d say a few words about what I got out of the night.
All four speakers gave quality, relevant talks and I managed to take something away from all of them.
As you may or may not know I study Multimedia Computing at MMU and a few months ago I attended a Web Standards talk by Chris Mills from Opera. The talk was aimed at people who were new to, or had only a little understand of the topic but it was still quite informative and a big step forward for the MMU computing department.
Until the release of the Opera Web Standards Curriculum last week (and subsequent blog posts) the new curriculum had slipped my mind so I thought I would quickly stick out a post about it.
I haven’t had a full look at the curriculum but with just a quick scan I spotted the following articles:
The history of the Internet and the web, and the evolution of web standards.
The Web Standards model – HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
Information Architecture—planning out a web site.
Colour schemes and design mockups.
The basics of HTML
You can see that the content looks very promising and is something I’m hoping my university are supporting because I know how much further ahead in this game I would have been if I could have be taught some of this at uni.
I’m certainly going to look through the 23 articles released to date and see what I can gain and I think most web designers/developers should have a look too.
There must be literally hundreds of web design books on sale right now but I’m pretty sure that a lot of them aren’t always as good as they’re cracked up to be!
In light of this I’ve compiled a list of books, most of which I’ve been able to use, to hopefully help people make the right choice when choosing a decent book.
The majority of these books are great for people who are new to the industry or who want to learn about the principals of standards based design incorporating better usability and accessibility along the way.