WIPA is an organisation that brings Australian Web professionals together to exchange ideas, participate in debate, advance education and promote ethical practice.

If you are a Website Designer and have a few spare minutes it would be worth filling in the survey.

Apple knows more about “clean” design than anybody, right? So why do Macs, iPods, iBooks and the rest of their product range contain hazardous substances that other companies have abandoned?

www.greenmyapple.org

Melbourne Massive is the ultimate social/networking event for Melbourne’s web community — a massive end-of-year function that brings together graphic artists, code monkeys, content writers, project managers, interface designers, information architects and other web professionals. And best of all, attendance to Melbourne Massive is free!

Make yourself useful on the 14th of November 2006.

Celebrate usability around the world.

WordCamp is a 1-day conference for WordPress users and developers.

It will be very nerdy but I should learn a lot.

But before we lather our websites with audio, video and other bandwidth intense items we need to understand what broadband means.

In Australia where i’m from they ABS says broadband is:

“An ‘always on’ Internet connection with an access speed equal to or greater than 256kbps.”

Obviously a connection running at 256kbps with a monthly download limit of 500mb per month is going to have a different experience than someone with 24,000kbps/20gb. However as far as the ABS is concerned these users are one and the same. We can’t expect the ABS to supply us with accurate breakdowns of the exact the speeds people are browsing but we can expect website designers to know when and how to use rich media.

I am all for rich media having a stronger presence on the Web but I do think we need to be careful how and when we use it.

We have to be mindful that:

• Many connections that are considered broadband are actually quite slow
• We can’t be sure what speeds people are browsing. It could be anywhere between 56kbs and 28,000kbs
• When you put rich media on your website it must be unobtrusive by letting the user choose if they want to see it. Eg. Don’t put a 4mb Flash or Quicktime file on your homepage
• Because you can add rich media does it mean you should? Often text will communicate the message far quicker and more effectively than video or audio.

A colleague told me that his boss wants at least 1000 videos on their website in the next 18 months. When I asked about the strategy to implement such an expensive task I was told there was none other than they wanted to support the needs of broadband users.

Obviously ABS stats will not be an accurate reflection of your website’ stats. Make sure you check your website’s stats to see how people are using your website.

Some ABS reports for further reading.

Other than me of course.

Xylescope has been designed and developed for looking underneath the surface of web pages as you surf the web – it couldn’t be easier. Using Xylescope you can look forward to analysing complex CSS designs with incredible ease and experimenting with third-party sites, without having to download them onto your own computer first.

Xylescope – very handy indeed.

“One of the fundamental properties of the Web is the fact that it is just one space, and its a consensual space. It should be independent of the hardware you use. It should be independent of the software you use or the operating system its running on. It should also be independent of what culture you’re in, or whether your’e writing a wonderful, carefully edited document, or whether youre scribbling something on the back of the proverbial envelope. And it should be independent of what language you’re using, what character set, whether your letters go up and down, left to right, or right to left. Also, people should be able to access that information even if they have disabilities. At W3C we call this concept one Web for anyone, everywhere, on anything.”

Tim Berners-Lee