Weekly Round-up ~ Oct 9, 09 Edition

Every Friday, we recap our articles and round up other useful articles we read during the week on web design, development and Gov2.0. We hope you find them helpful. If you have article links you’d like to share, please post in the comment section.

ClearType☆Press

• A Comprehensive Test Strategy for Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8

  We show you how to install multiple, legitimate versions of IE to speed up testing by taking advantage of two no-cost products available from Microsoft: Virtual PC and Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Images. When we’re done, you’ll be able to confidently test in IE6, IE7 and IE8.

• The State of Government Web Sites

  Are government websites doing all they can to best serve the public? In this introductory post, we take a look at the state of the government sites, and areas in which they can be improved.

From Elsewhere

• The Myth of the Page Fold

  Putting page content “Above the Fold” was proposed by Jakob Nielsen back in 1997. It made sense back then, since many users were new to the internet and frequent usage of computers. However 12 years later, “Above the Fold” is still being used as a reason to cram everything on the screen, making websites cluttered and user unfriendly.

• Typography & Fonts Cheat Sheets & Quick Reference Pages

  Web content is mostly text, that’s why proper use of typography is very important. Good typography enhance readability and the elegance of the site.

• Becoming a Font Embedding Master

  A great article by Jonathan Snook, looking into CSS3’s @font-face and other way to embed modern fonts.

• Fighting the @font-face FOUT – Quicken the load time

  Ok, you’ve gotten your fonts working. Paul shows us how to load them quickly to prevent the “flash of unstyled text.”

• Questions (and Answers!) About the Federal Register

  Carl Malamud, founder of Public.Resource.Org: “imagine my surprise when I got a call from the White House saying they were making Raymond Mosley, Director of the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) and Michael L. Wash, the Chief Information Officer of the Government Printing Office (GPO) available just in case there were any technical questions from the net.” Wonderful.

• Turn Any Web Form Into a Powerful Wizard with jQuery

  Let’s face it, no one likes to fill out long forms both online and offline. But sometimes they’re necessary. Janko has a good tutorial on how to divide a long web form into a wizard format by using jQuery.

• 10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines

  Dmitry writes an excellent article usability best practices. Many good points to consider when tweaking or launching your next site.

• The History and Evolution of Social Media

  Social media precedes Myspace. It’s been around for quite sometime even before the internet as we know it today. This article definitely brings back some memory.

• A Sampling of EPA Social Media

  When it comes to Social Media usage for government agencies, EPA is definitely in the forefront. In this article, Jeffrey Levy, the web director of EPA talks about how his agency uses different social media outlets to reach out and converse with the general public.

• Revamped Recovery.gov Web site Review

  Recovery.gov recently re-launched. How is this 9 million dollar site doing? Some interesting reviews.

• Policy Database via Social Media Governance

  A good resource on social media policy by various organizations.

• BC Budget Visualizations – DIY Transparency & Local Government

  Jer Thorp writes “about data visualization, open government and accountability” with useful data visualizations showing “how the cuts to arts funding stacked up against the rest of the spending reductions” and concluding with “a video capture from the visualization tool in action, showing some of the interface and transitions between states“:

  (via information aesthetics)

Photo by blprnt_van / CC BY 2.0

2 Comments, please share your thoughts!

1

Bob Johnson Oct 14 2009

Link the chart; can’t read it

2

David ☆editor☆ Oct 14 2009

@Bob: Thanks, it’s fixed. (It points to the same page as the last item in the post: BC Budget Visualizations – DIY Transparency & Local Government.)

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