Comments on: DWWS Facebook group

By: Vos Virtual Network » DWWS FB Group One Year Celebration!

Vos Virtual Network » DWWS FB Group One Year Celebration! — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:49:53 +0000

[...] Back on November 2nd, 2007 – Jeffrey Zeldman wrote about the group in his blog. [...]

By: Web Design References: Standards, Guidelines and Patterns

Web Design References: Standards, Guidelines and Patterns — Mon, 12 May 2008 18:41:34 +0000

[...] Designing With Web Standards Group Facebook Group – Jeffery Zeldman [...]

By: John B

John B — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 09:58:57 +0000

Facebook groups are terribly uninteractive. Granted once you remember to check them every now and then, you can contribute with wall posts etc but there are no rss feeds, no email updates, nothing. It’s a vital element of any interactive community – being notified of any change. They just become invisible once you join. For, let’s say, ‘political movements’ they’re about as useful as online petitions. Until they fix that, Facebook groups will continue being used mostly for novelty based groups like “I secretly want to punch slow walking people in the back of the head”.

By: Rob Landry

Rob Landry — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 01:36:48 +0000

Join? OK, I’m in.

@Jake and @BillW: Yes, Facebook isn’t open, and that’s not perfect. On the other hand, it makes it drop-dead simple to easily connect w/other people in many ways (Case in point: I’m member #1216). So a good way for like minds to get in touch.

It shouldn’t be _the_ DWWS watering hole, but I’m glad it’s yet one more point of presence.

By: Jeffrey Zeldman

Jeffrey Zeldman — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:06:53 +0000

1,142 members as of Nov 7, 2007. Harvard University video posted. New threads begun. Come, join.

By: Jeffrey Zeldman

Jeffrey Zeldman — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 15:27:12 +0000

@Jake and @BillW: In September, I shared my assessment of Facebook. As I wrote then, the closed network aspect bothers me, too. Except on private intranets and development/ staging servers, web pages should be viewable, findable, and searchable by all. Facebook's pages are not. And any modern site or application, unless it is entirely Flash-based, should be semantically structured with web standards (and its authors should strive for validation). On these grounds as well, Facebook is far from perfect. All that said, Facebook is a great social network and it's where the people are (or where the smart ones are going, anyway). When Doug proposed creating a Designing With Web Standards group on Facebook, the potential good of such a group far outweighed the bad in my opinion. Yes, I could start a DWWS wiki and hope people come to it; but the Facebook group is a fait accompli, and it is already working. People are joining, they are getting excited about web standards again, they will hopefully share creative techniques, talk about other web standards books they like, encourage publishers (who belong to Facebook) to publish more good books about web standards, etc. etc. You may disagree with my reasons (and I will respect you for your principles), but I'm happy that Facebook, doing what it does well, is enabling standardistas to meet and exchange ideas.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:31:56 +0000

bill: As I noticed above, it looks like the choice of Facebook instead of something a bit more open was more a case of seeing who would join in the first place. If it turns out that there are people there who would do things besides for just joining to show support for it and actually create content & such, even better.

In the meantime, it does make me feel like going and getting a facebook account myself, once I’m home and can reasonably do such things.

By: Ashley

Ashley — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:04:52 +0000

Just joined — and participated. Finally, a Facebook group I can actually do something with!

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 20:12:33 +0000

I teach Web Publishing at Moore College here in Philadelphia and I use a portion of your book along with some or Eric Meyer’s stuff when teaching my course.

By: Bill W.

Bill W. — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 19:01:21 +0000

I’m dissappointed to see Facebook as the defacto choice for a group like this. I think DWWS deserves better. I think the group deserves to be open to major search engines. I think the group deserves to be easily accessible to everyone — even those who don’t have Facebook accounts.

This really seems like a bad idea for DWWS. Ideally you want a place where web developers can easily access the information on the site. Facebook is a “members only” kind of site. For all practical purposes, only those who are part of the “club” of Facebook will only ever stumble across it.

For Pete’s sake, DWWS developers should be able to create their own network for developers to interact in!

By: Jake

Jake — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:02:24 +0000

Nice idea but… Facebook is a proprietary environment, and doesn’t this go against the very ethos of Web Standards? (though I am smarting somewhat because Facebook kicked me off for using my nom d’internet rather than my given name!)

By: Will Kessel

Will Kessel — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:00:38 +0000

Similarly, Eric Meyer just wrote a nice post about the mentality of how people tend to think in a binary pattern, then tend to side with one issue or another as a form of self-identification. The "hey, I'm with it" attitude followed by a lack of action, I think, is actually far more common than most people realize -- hence Jeffrey's excellent post. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out. I'll be keeping an eye on this one, too.

By: Tanner Christensen

Tanner Christensen — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:59:33 +0000

Interesting observation Jeffrey. It seems like this type of “label yourself, but don’t act” attitude is the popular thing to do these days. At least such attitudes strengthen the appeal of real iniatives such as A List Apart.

By: Jeffrey Zeldman

Jeffrey Zeldman — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 16:31:22 +0000

As of Sunday morning, Nov 4, 2007, there are 801 members. I've just started a new, and I hope uplifting, topic: "Your favorite creative web standards techniques." What new possibilities has standards-based design opened your mind to? What techniques do you use, and why? Feel free to link to examples of your work. Read or contribute in the DWWS Facebook group.

By: Jason Ruan

Jason Ruan — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 08:34:49 +0000

Sounds good,i will signup.and wish you success.