Category: content

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Community content engagement Google Publishing video

The joy of content creation (and the hazards of building in someone else’s sandbox)

AN INSPIRING STORY of content creation, which is also, although this particular tale ends happily, a warning about the hazards of building in someone else’s sandbox.

Stampylongnose? makes wonderful videos about Minecraft? (among other things) and is the first independent content creator in my young daughter’s world. She follows him like you followed your first favorite blogger.

In “1 Million Subscribers Special – From Then To Now,” he shares how he became an independent video producer on the web—how he lost everything when Google arbitrarily pulled the plug—and how the community that loved him, and one great Google admin, fought to restore his work.

“The independent content producer refuses to die.”

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content Content First content strategy Content-First Design

McGrane: Kill Your CMS

THE ERA of “desktop publishing” is over. Same goes for the era where we privilege the desktop web interface above all others. The tools we create to manage our content are vestiges of the desktop publishing revolution, where we tried to enable as much direct manipulation of content as possible. In a world where we have infinite possible outputs for our content, it’s time to move beyond tools that rely on visual styling to convey semantic meaning. If we want true separation of content from form, it has to start in the CMS.–Karen McGrane, WYSIWTF ? An A List Apart Column.

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conferences content copyright creativity Culture Design

Creative Commons turns 10

HARD TO BELIEVE, but it was ten years ago that I first heard Lawrence Lessig give a talk at SXSWi about an idea he had to save content from death by copyright law.

At the time, copyright law and digital creativity were at odds, and tens of thousands of cultural artifacts were disappearing from the commons because of the Mickey Mouse Protection Act, a copyright extension pushed through congress by the late Sonny Bono at the behest of the Disney corporation. Corey Doctorow, one of Lessig’s partners on the SXSW panel, memorably likened the destruction to the slow motion burning of the Library of Alexandria.

But Lessig had a plan. And, remarkably, it worked: “For a decade now, Creative Commons has made legal sharing and remixing easier for everyone. After ten years, it has become the default third way.”

Let’s help this good work continue. Please donate to Creative Commons if you can.

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content Content First content strategy Design

Design is Copy is Design

ART AND COPY have been joined at the hip since Bill Bernbach launched the creative revolution in the 1960s. But on the web, not so much.

It’s great that some of the brightest minds in our industry continue making the point that copy matters, and that “one of the most overlooked designers in any field is the copywriter.” But it’s sad that, whenever we make that point, the only examples we seem to come up with are 37signals and Apple. (Flickr used to be in there, too, but these days, sadly, nobody wants to talk about Flickr—even when they’re a canonical example of doing x right.)

Anyhoo: Great Design is Jargon-Free is another fine instance of a smart web person (in this case, the handsome and erudite Scott Berkun) making those points.

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content content strategy Design The Big Web Show

Big Web Show 78: Bloomstein on content strategy

IN EPISODE No. 78 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”), I interview Margot Bloomstein, author of Content Strategy at Work: Real-World Stories to Strengthen Every Interactive Engagement (Morgan Kaufmann, 2012), about her professional transition from design to content strategy; the vagaries of the consulting life; how mentoring and non-traditional academic backgrounds can fit into a web career; how to write a content strategy book for people who are not content strategists; and the beauties of Pittsburgh.

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A Book Apart A List Apart content Content First content strategy

Content Strategy for Mobile three ways from Sunday

IT’S A Karen McGrane world! Today, as A Book Apart unveils Karen McGrane’s amazing new Content Strategy for Mobile, the entirety of A List Apart Issue No. 364 is dedicated to Karen and her vision for future-friendly web content:

Uncle Sam Wants You (to Optimize Your Content for Mobile)

Thirty-one percent of Americans who access the internet from a mobile device say that’s the way they always or mostly go online. For this group, if your content doesn’t exist on mobile, it doesn’t exist at all. The U.S. government has responded with a broad initiative to make federal website content mobile-friendly. Karen McGrane explains why this matters—and what you can learn from it.

Your Content, Now Mobile

Making your content mobile-ready isn’t easy, but if you take the time now to examine your content and structure it for maximum flexibility and reuse, you’ll have stripped away all the bad, irrelevant bits, and be better prepared the next time a new gadget rolls around. This excerpt from Karen McGrane’s new book, Content Strategy for Mobile, will help you get started.

Help Hurricane Sandy relief efforts

Fifteen percent of sales of Karen McGrane’s Content Strategy for Mobile and other A Book Apart books sold today will go to the Red Cross in its effort to aid victims of Hurricane Sandy.

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business businessweek client management client services clients content Content First CSS3 Curation Dan Benjamin Design E-Books Ethan Marcotte findability Google Happy Cog™ HTML HTML5 Jeremy Keith Microsoft podcasts Publishing Real type on the web Redesigns Responsive Web Design Standards State of the Web The Big Web Show Usability User Experience UX Web Design Web Design History Web Standards Zeldman

Leo Laporte interviews JZ

IN EPISODE 63 of Triangulation, Leo Laporte, a gracious and knowledgeable podcaster/broadcaster straight outta Petaluma, CA, interviews Your Humble Narrator about web standards history, responsive web design, content first, the state of standards in a multi-device world, and why communists sometimes make lousy band managers.

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A List Apart Announcements business content editorial Happy Cog™ people

A List Apart news

Presenting Sara Wachter Boettcher, ALA’s new editor-in-chief.

WITH THE RELEASE on July 10, 2012 of the A List Apart Summer Reading Issue (a collection of favorite articles from 355 issues of the magazine), ALA’s editor-in-chief Krista Stevens has hung up her spurs and moved on.

Over six significant web years, Krista’s passion for great writing led to such extraordinary articles as More Meaningful Typography by Tim Brown, Orbital Content by Cameron Koczon, In Defense of Readers by Mandy Brown, Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte, and many others.

She helped ALA anticipate the important ideas in the rapidly changing fields of web design, web development, user experience, and content strategy, and continued the magazine’s tradition of pioneering and promoting best practices, while also broadening the kinds of stories we covered. Behind the scenes, she also updated our processes; coaxed the best work possible out of authors and staff; remembered birthdays and anticipated conflicts before feelings could get hurt; and more. She led us and mothered us, and she will be missed. You can follow Krista on Twitter, benefit from her user advocacy at Automattic, and continue to be enlightened by her via Contents Magazine. Thank you, Krista.

New editor-in-chief Sara Wachter Boettcher is a content strategist and writer who recently moved to Lancaster, PA, where she bucks the local Amish tradition by spending her days making, reading, and writing things on the web. She is the author of the upcoming Rosenfeld Media book Content Everywhere, a frequent conference speaker, and has contributed articles and essays to A List Apart (Future-Ready Content) and Contents (On Content and Curiosity).

Currently a consultant under her own shingle, Sara previously spent a half-dozen years working in agencies, mainly at Off Madison Ave, where she started as a web writer and became the director of interactive content and marketing strategy. Although her A List Apart editorship does not officially begin until August, Sara has already dived in behind the scenes. She is whip-smart and a pleasure to know.

Welcome, Sara!

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An Event Apart conferences content Content First HTML Responsive Web Design

Interacting Responsively (and Responsibly!)

AT AN EVENT APART Boston, “Scott Jehl discussed ways we can improve web performance by qualifying capabilities and being smart about how assets are loaded in browsers [and] shared a … new tools he helped create that can help address these issues.”

Enjoy Luke Wroblewski’s notes on Scott’s talk.

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apps Code content content strategy CSS Design HTML HTML5 W3C Web Design Web Design History Web Standards

Designing Apps With Web Standards (HTML is the API)

The Web OS is Already Here… Luke Wroblewski, November 8, 2011

Mobile First Responsive Web Design, Brad Frost, June, 2011

320 and up – prevents mobile devices from downloading desktop assets by using a tiny screen’s stylesheet as its starting point. Andy Clarke and Keith Clark.

Gridless, HTML5/CSS3 boilerplate for mobile-first, responsive designs “with beautiful typography”

HTML5 Boilerplate – 3.02, Feb. 19, 2012, Paul Irish ,Divya Manian, Shichuan, Matthias Bynens, Nicholas Gallagher

HTML5 Reset v 2, Tim Murtaugh, Mike Pick, 2011

CSS Reset, Eric Meyer, v 2.0b1, January 2011

Less Framework 4 – an adaptive CSS grid system, Joni Korpi (@lessframework)

Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte, 2011

Adaptive Web Design by Aaron Gustafson, 2011

Web Standards Curriculum – Opera

Getting Started With Sass by David Demaree, 2011, A List Apart

Dive into Responsive Prototyping with Foundation by Jonathan Smiley, A List Apart, 2012

Future-Ready Content Sara Wachter-Boettcher, February 28, 2012, A List Apart

For a Future Friendly Web Brad Frost, March 13, 2012, A List Apart

Orbital Content Cameron Koczon, April 19, 2011, A List Apart

Web standards win, Windows whimpers in 2012, Neil McAllister, InfoWorld, December 29, 2011

Thoughts on Flash – Steve Jobs, April, 2010

Did We Just Win the Web Standards Battle? ppk, July 2006

Web Standards: Wikipedia‘

The Web Standards Project: FAQ (updated), February 27, 2002

To Hell With Bad Browsers, A List Apart, 2001

The Web Standards Project: FAQ, 1998

The Web Standards Project: Mission, 1998

HTML5 at A List Apart

Mobile at A List Apart

Browsers at A List Apart

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A List Apart content content strategy Design

Web Governance: Becoming an Agent of Change – A List Apart

SHIPPING IS EASY, making real change is hard. To do meaningful web work, we need to educate clients on how their websites influence their business and the legal, regulatory, brand, and financial risks they face without strong web governance. Learn why web governance is important to us as web professionals and how to influence your clients to think carefully about how to align their websites to their business strategy. A List Apart: Articles: Web Governance: Becoming an Agent of Change.

Illustration by Kevin Cornell for A List Apart.

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Acclaim content content strategy Design Interviews

A Design Apart: Q&A with Jeffrey Zeldman | On Redesigns and the Inseparable Link Between Design and Content

“REDESIGNS REQUIRE STRATEGY, otherwise they are merely reskinning. We don’t do reskinning. We do strategic redesigns that help the people who use your website achieve their goals. Strategic redesign starts with research. The notion that a design is ‘dull’ and needs to be ‘freshened up’ by a ‘burst of creative inspiration’ reveals a lack of understanding of, and disrespect for, design.

via A Design Apart: Q&A with Jeffrey Zeldman | Sparksheet.

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content content strategy Design Usability User Experience UX

Dueling messages (or, content strategy matters)

“UPDATED SERVICE ADVISORY – EAST RIVER FERRY CAPACITY LIMITS – PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ,” the top banner on the East River Ferry’s website nervously advises. Immediately below this warning comes the gentle and slightly vacuous headline, “Relax. We’ll Get You There.” The two headlines tell contrasting stories that completely contradict each other. No print art director would place these two messages on the same page, let alone in such close proximity or with treatments that compete for the reader’s attention. Yet this is how we treat content on the web.

Elsewhere on the page, care has been taken. An interactive map! With rollovers! Be still, my heart.

But when it came time to determine a content strategy, no one was in charge (or the wrong people were). Instead of the kind of headline that actually works on the web, a committee approved a soft print advertising headline—the kind that might appear in a quarter-page ad in the back of the playbill for a regional theater company’s production of Guys and Dolls. No thought was given to how that headline would play if the ferry developed service problems. Apparently no substitute, contingency headline was created. And not much thought (if any) was given to how the design might change if a problem arose.

Thus at the last minute a slightly hysterical “over capacity” headline that makes the “Relax” headline look ridiculous was jammed on top of the primary headline, using design techniques that give the warning primacy of place, and add shrillness by using all caps, only to defeat their own urgency with a low-contrast teal-on-blue color scheme that is difficult for people with normal vision to read and may be invisible to people with certain kinds of color-blindness.

This is what we do. We have meetings, we reach consensus, we make templates, we approve inoffensive headlines and copy, and we fumble contingencies. Avoiding these problems is what content strategy and user experience design are all about.

Dueling messages | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

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An Event Apart conferences content content strategy

A Content Strategy Roadmap – An Event Apart

IN HER PRESENTATION at An Event Apart in Atlanta, GA 2011 Kristina Halvorson talked about how to integrate content strategy into a typical Web design worksflow. Here’s my notes from her talk: LukeW | An Event Apart: A Content Strategy Roadmap.

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An Event Apart Announcements Appearances apps Atlanta Authoring Best practices business cities client services clients Code Community Compatibility conferences content content strategy creativity CSS CSS3 Design Designers development editorial Education eric meyer events Fonts Formats glamorous Happy Cog™ HTML HTML5 Ideas industry Information architecture interface IXD Jeremy Keith Platforms Real type on the web Redesigns Responsive Web Design Scripting speaking spec Standards State of the Web The Profession Usability User Experience UX W3C Web Design Web Design History Web Standards webfonts webkit webtype work Working Zeldman

An Event Apart Atlanta 2011

YOU FIND ME ENSCONCED in the fabulous Buckhead, Atlanta Intercontinental Hotel, preparing to unleash An Event Apart Atlanta 2011, three days of design, code, and content strategy for people who make websites. Eric Meyer and I co-founded our traveling web conference in December, 2005; in 2006 we chose Atlanta for our second event, and it was the worst show we’ve ever done. We hosted at Turner Field, not realizing that half the audience would be forced to crane their necks around pillars if they wanted to see our speakers or the screen on which slides were projected.

Also not realizing that Turner Field’s promised contractual ability to deliver Wi-Fi was more theoretical than factual: the venue’s A/V guy spent the entire show trying to get an internet connection going. You could watch audience members twitchily check their laptops for email every fourteen seconds, then make the “no internet” face that is not unlike the face addicts make when the crack dealer is late, then check their laptops again.

The food was good, our speakers (including local hero Todd Dominey) had wise lessons to impart, and most attendees had a pretty good time, but Eric and I still shudder to remember everything that went wrong with that gig.

Not to jinx anything, but times have changed. We are now a major three-day event, thanks to a kick-ass staff and the wonderful community that has made this show its home. We thank you from the bottoms of our big grateful hearts.

I will see several hundred of you for the next three days. Those not attending may follow along: