Composition and Usability

Since the advent of the Web, we've seen a myriad of design schemas evolve--from the simple navigation/content style of site to the cluttered portal. And as this evolution has progressed, so did the war between UI designers and usability experts. On one side, there are usability experts who want to make every website look exactly like Yahoo because users know Yahoo and so they will automatically know how to use the site. On the other side, there are UI designers who want to design entire sites in Flash and Shockwave just because it's cool. Overly dramatic? Well, yes, maybe a little--but it's not entirely a false analysis. Many UI designers that work with usability folk complain that their creativity is hampered, whereas many usability gurus complain that designers are confusing a site's user with their visual semantics. But are the goals of UI designers and the usability folk that far apart?

Cecil, Richard F. Digital Web Magazine (2000). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Semantic

Fieldsets, Legends and Screen Readers

The grouping and labelling of thematically related controls within a form is an important aspect of providing semantic information so users can understand and complete a form successfully. Differences in quality and implementation of support across user agents can hamper some users' ability to benefit from this information. This must not be taken as disincentive to developers, as the benefits of using these elements outweighs the negatives. But it is clear that some assistive technology vendors need to improve implementation of HTML features that enhance accessibility, so their users can gain the most benefit.

Lemon, Gez. Paciello Group, The (2007). Articles>Web Design>Accessibility>Semantic

Hypermedia and the Semantic Web: A Research Agenda  

Until recently, the Semantic Web was little more than a name for the next-generation Web infrastructure as envisioned by its inventor, Tim Berners-Lee. With the introduction of XML and RDF, and new developments such as RDF Schema and DAML+OIL, the Semantic Web is rapidly taking shape. This paper gives an overview of the state-of-the-art in Semantic Web technology, the key relationships with traditional hypermedia research, and a comprehensive reference list to various sets of literature (hypertext, Web and Semantic Web). A research agenda describes the open research issues in the development of the Semantic Web from the perspective of hypermedia research.

van Ossenbruggen, Jacco, Lynda Hardman and Lloyd Rutledge. Journal of Digital Information (2003). Articles>Web Design>Metadata>Semantic

I Know What You Mean!   

According to experts, the Semantic Web, an enhancement of the conventional web, is paving the way for new functionalities in future, web-based applications. The possible scenarios that we could face are reminiscent of fiction and cinema, where you just need to think of the question for which we are seeking answers. An invisible assistant would then perform the search.

Sieber, Tanja and Bartz, Wolfgang. tekom (2006). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Semantic

The Semantic Web, Taking Form

The Semantic Web is a conceptual information space in which the resources identified by URIs can be processed by machines. It operates on the principles of 'partial understanding' and 'inference' (being able to infer new knowledge of terms from data that you already understand), and hence evolution and transformation. Because the URIs are being used to represent the resources, systems can grow on a globally decentralized basis, similar to hypertext documentation systems on the early WWW.

Palmer, Sean B. InfoMesh (2001). Articles>Web Design>Semantic>Metadata

Web Standards Checklist

The term web standards can mean different things to different people. For some, it is 'table-free sites', for others it is 'using valid code'. However, web standards are much broader than that. A site built to web standards should adhere to standards (HTML, XHTML, XML, CSS, XSLT, DOM, MathML, SVG etc) and pursue best practices (valid code, accessible code, semantically correct code, user-friendly URLs etc). In other words, a site built to web standards should ideally be lean, clean, CSS-based, accessible, usable and search engine friendly.

Weakley, Russ. Max Design (2004). Articles>Web Design>Standards>Semantic

The Semantic Web, Syllogism, and Worldview

The W3C's Semantic Web project has been described in many ways over the last few years: an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, a place where machines can analyze all the data on the Web, even a Web in which machine reasoning will be ubiquitous and devastatingly powerful. The problem with descriptions this general, however, is that they don't answer the obvious question: What is the Semantic Web good for? The simple answer is this: The Semantic Web is a machine for creating syllogisms.

Shirky, Clay. Shirky.com (2003). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Semantic

Towards Seamless Knowledge: Integrating Public Sector Portals

The more connected our computer systems become, the more we realise how *disconnected* our information really is. Disconnectedness is not new; it is simply far more apparent nowadays: so much so that it underpins a renewed quest for ways to integrate information - and knowledge. One aspect of this is the focus on information integration within large organizations. Another is the spread of portals whose task is not so much to provide information directly as to provide consolidated, indirect access to information that resides elsewhere. In the public sector, in particular, portals have sprung up like mushrooms over the last 3-4 years.

Pepper, Steve. IDEAlliance (2004). Articles>Web Design>Government>Semantic

Building and Managing Personalized Semantic Portals  

This paper presents a semantic portal, SEMPort, which provides better user support with personalized views, semantic navigation, ontology-based search and three different kinds of semantic hyperlinks. Distributed content editing and provision is supplied for the maintenance of the contents in real-time. As a case study, SEMPort is tested on the Course Modules Web Page (CMWP) of the School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS).

Şah, M. and W. Hall. WWW 2007 (2007). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Semantic

The Value of Semantic Tags

So what's wrong with using <b>, <i>, and <tt>, anyway? What's so useful about identifying things as menu items, APIs, or filenames? Here's the list of reasons that surfaced at the recent 2008 DITA/CMS Conference. What are your thoughts?

Armstrong, Eric. Sun Microsystems (2008). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Semantic

Top Five Web Trends of 2009: Structured Data

The first major Web trend we're looking at is Structured Data. In prior presentations, this has sometimes been referred to under the umbrella term of 'Semantic Web'. However the way 2009 has panned out so far, it's become clear that this trend is much more than the Semantic Web. In this post, we'll analyze the developments in Structured Data this year and provide you with 3 product examples: OpenCalais, Google, and Wolfram Alpha.

MacManus, Richard. ReadWriteWeb (2009). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Semantic