What the Hell is XML?

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is the Eurodollar of web development. Both XML and the Euro bring order to chaos; both offer undeniable, wide-ranging benefits; both are poised, in 2002, to change the way we do things. Frankly, both scare the crap out of people. For web developers, 2002 is a time to conquer fears and take their first hands-on approach to XML. It's time to examine XML and realize the practical benefits that it can provide to web projects today. The bankers can fend for themselves.

Janisch, Troy. List Apart, A (2002). Design>Web Design>Information Design>XML

Where Does Web Bibliographies' Author Information Come From?  

Web pages cited with personal author identification in 12 longer Web bibliographies and a collection of 19 shorter Web bibliographies were investigated. With one exception, the personal author names could be matched in the visible text of the great majority of pages. Metatags (both for authors and for descriptions) and page titles rarely added any author information. In some cases, frames or inline graphics appeared to be the sources used. Somewhat more frequent probable sources were linked pages, such as home pages.

Craven, Timothy C. First Monday (2005). Articles>Web Design>Information Design

Where the Wireframes Are: Special Deliverable #3

A wireframe, as you probably know, describes the contents of a web page by illustrating a mock layout. Usually wireframes are rendered in some kind of drawing program, like Visio or Illustrator, but can also appear as bitmaps or even HTML. In his latest installment, Dan Brown, shows how the wireframe can transcend layout and work for all team members.

Brown, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2002). Articles>Information Design>Web Design

The Why and How of XML Data Islands

This article explains a useful way to embed data in an HTML document, and store it on the client, using XML. With XML becoming ever more pervasive and the client side implementation gaining a lot of ground, you will probably find yourself using this technique in many projects.

Krishnaswamy, Jayaram. Dev Articles (2006). Design>Web Design>Information Design>XML

Why Primary Navigation Must Die

Users mainly ignore primary navigation bars because the information featured is less relevant to their tasks.

Bohmann, Kristoffer. Bohmann Usability (2000). Design>Web Design>Information Design

Wiki-mania  

Wikipedia may be the biggest technical document ever created, but it and other Web 2.0 elements present challenges. Read about the popularity of Wikipedia, then let Intercom know about your professional experiences using wikis, blogs, and other Web 2.0 applications.

Intercom (2006). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Wikis

Wireframing With Patterns

Wireframes can comprise many different patterns, each of which is a discrete element that provides specific functionality and may include instructive copy, images, text fields, buttons, links, etcetera. Together, the patterns create a complete Web page. Of course, when wireframing in patterns, it always helps if there is a pre-existing library of patterns to draw from, but I have found that getting through the first wireframe reveals most of the reusable patterns.

Ellerby, Lindsay. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Information Design>Planning>Web Design

The Wisdom of Crowds Meets the Wisdom of Authors: How XML Enables the Semantic Web

Combining semantic markup with a granular authoring approach like DITA holds a lot of promise for content creators and consumers alike. Content becomes easy to define and even easier to discover. The combination also holds a lot of promise for the future of the Semantic Web itself. In fact, creating the Semantic Web might be as easy as authoring content in DITA.

Wlodarczyk, Paul. XML.org (2008). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>XML

Wise-Women

Wise-Women is a world-wide, online community of web designers, developers and programmers.

Wise-Women (2005). Organizations>Web Design>Information Design>Gender

Writing for the Web: It's a Different Page  

Bradbury offers suggestions on writing effective Web pages for those accustomed to producing content for the print medium.

Bradbury, S. Gayle. Intercom (2000). Design>Web Design>Information Design

Writing Smart Annotations

Now that you've figured out the navigation, placed the content, and figured out page flows, it's time to explain just what exactly that collection of 'Lorum ipsum' greeking, HTML widgets, and X-ed out boxes are, how they work, and how they meet the site goals.

Saffer, Dan. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Design>Web Design>Information Design

XFML Links

Links to various XFML related resources.

Van Dijck, Peter. XFML.org. Design>Web Design>Information Design>XFML

XML Data Binding

XML became an integral part of Microsoft's strategy around the time of Internet Explorer 4. IE4 was an XML-aware browser. As well as displaying HTML documents, it could also display XML documents through an inbuilt XML parser. Another part of IE4 was something known as the XML DSO (Data Source Object). The XML DSO allows you to manipulate primitive XML 'data islands' by binding (or attaching) the XML data to HTML presentation elements. The XML elements within Internet Explorer continue to be improved and added to with every new IE release.

Self, Tony. HyperWrite (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>Web Browsers

XML in Firefox 1.5, Part 1: Overview of XML Features

The open source Firefox Web browser continues to grow in popularity. Users like the security and convenience features it offers. Developers like the Firefox attention to standards compliance, inherited from its Mozilla roots. The most recent version, Firefox 1.5, comes with many features for XML developers, including XML parsing, XHTML, CSS, XSLT, SVG, XML Events in JavaScriptâ„¢, and XForms. Additional third-party extensions provide even more XML support. In this article, Uche Ogbuji provides an overview of XML features in Firefox 1.5.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>XML

XML in Firefox 1.5, Part 2: Basic XML Processing

This second article in the series, "XML in Firefox 1.5," focuses on basic XML processing. Firefox supports XML parsing, Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), and XSLT stylesheets.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>XML

XML Structures for Existing Databases

Relational databases are a mature technology, which, as they have evolved, have enabled users to model complex relationships between data that they need to store. In this chapter, we will see how to model some of the complex data structures that are stored in relational databases in XML documents. To do this, we will be looking at some database structures, and then creating content models using XML DTDs. We will also show some sample content for the data in XML to illustrate this. In the process, we will come up with a set of guidelines that will prove helpful when creating XML models for relational data.

Williams, Kevin, Michael Brundage, Patrick Dengler, Jeff Gabriel, Andy Hoskinson, Michael Kay, Thomas Maxwell, Marcelo Ochoa, Johnny Papa and Mohan Vanman. VBXML (2002). Design>Information Design>XML>Web Design

XML Topic Maps By the Book

Topic Maps provide a system for organizing information, and XML Topic Maps bring this system to the world of XML. In this article, Uche Ogbuji examines XML Topic Maps, introducing the technology in the course of reviewing a key book on the topic.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2003). Design>Web Design>Information Design>XML

Mapping Memory: Web Designer as Information Cartographer

The rise of the social web demands that we rethink our traditional role as builders of digital monuments, and turn our attention to the close observation of the spaces that our users are producing around us. It’s time for a new metaphor. Consider cartography.

Rester, Aaron. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design

An Introduction to RELAX NG

RELAX NG is not a capitalized misspelling of something you probably get to do all too rarely as a busy programmer and web designer. If you use XML to any great degree, you'll want to take a close look at it. It can help make your life as a web developer easier, allowing you to relax a little more.

McCullough, Peyton. Dev Articles (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>XML

Providing Options in RELAX NG

XML schemas don't have to be rigid. Sometimes, it's best to provide flexibility and allow the author of XML documents to make choices. In this second part of a three-part article, we'll make some modifications to the schema we created in the first part, and learn how to make some things optional.

McCullough, Peyton. Dev Articles (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>XML

Datatypes and More in RELAX NG

Welcome to the third part of a three-part series on RELAX NG. In this part, we will discuss datatypes, the grammar element, and creating named patterns.

McCullough, Peyton. Dev Articles (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>XML

The Joint Czech and Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library    

After the split of the Czechoslovak Republic into two republics in 1993 the idea of creating a common digital parliamentary library originated. The Czech Parliamentary Library started this project in 1995 and Slovakia joined in 2002. According to the agreement between of the two parliaments the joint digital library should in its complete shape contain the complete full texts of parliamentary prints (proposals, interpolations, explanations, decisions, invitations) and stenographical documents (shorthand writings) from 1848 until the present, in electronic form. The aim is to create and operate an automatic system of current and historical parliamentary documents. In 2000, the project was awarded the prestigious `Czech @' prize by the International Conference on Internet Use in Public Administration and Self-Government. The Joint Czech and Slovak Digital Parliamentary Library is now widely used in both countries.

Malackova, Eva and Karel Sosna. IFLA Journal (2007). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Case Studies

The Folksonomy Tag Cloud: When is it Useful?    

The weighted list, known popularly as a `tag cloud', has appeared on many popular folksonomy-based web-sites. Flickr, Delicious, Technorati and many others have all featured a tag cloud at some point in their history. However, it is unclear whether the tag cloud is actually useful as an aid to finding information. We conducted an experiment, giving participants the option of using a tag cloud or a traditional search interface to answer various questions. We found that where the information-seeking task required specific information, participants preferred the search interface. Conversely, where the information-seeking task was more general, participants preferred the tag cloud. While the tag cloud is not without value, it is not sufficient as the sole means of navigation for a folksonomy-based dataset.

Sinclair, James and Michael Cardew-Hall. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Metadata

Developing Trends and Challenges for the Information Industry Examined in the Context of the Online Information Conference    

This paper examines emerging trends in the information industry that are likely to be of interest to information professionals during 2008. These include web 2.0, enterprise 2.0, social networking, semantic web, risk management, user-generated content, universal search, crowdsourcing and new roles for information professionals.

Allen, Katherine. Business Information Review (2008). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Planning

Exploring the Emerging Intellectual Structure of Archival Studies Using Text Mining: 2001-2004    

Archival science, like other disciplines, is evolving into more specific interdisciplinary subfields. To determine this intellectual structure of archival science, the text mining method was used. The data were 432 articles from 2001 to 2004, and we produced 43 clusters of documents using the within-group average method in SPSS. Then we generated pathfinder networks of 43 clusters and grouped them into seven subject categories: digital libraries and digital archiving technologies, online resources and finding aids, archives and archivists, legal and political issues, electronic records and technical issues, records and information management, and e-mail and information professionals. Finally, these seven subject categories were merged into three sectors: digital library, archives and RIM (Business). This study describes dynamic change in the 2001—4 research themes from traditional single-subject areas to emerging, complex subject areas. These results also show that research areas in archival sciences have much growth potential and will continue to expand.

Lee, Jae Yun. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design>Web Design