Leo Klein's blog

For some reason -- maybe to see if I still had an email account with NYU -- I moseyed on over to NYU's email page for maybe the first time in years. Miraculously, I could still log in and more miraculously still, they had switched over to Gmail and had included some really ancient emails from me going back to the mid-to-late 90's.

Here's a gem from 1997 telling the Grad Adviser from NYU's History Dept. that I was dumping him in favor of the far more attractive "Multimedia" Program at NYU's 'Interactive Telecommunications Program" (ITP):

Dear Mr. W*:

You were assigned as my adviser, so I guess you're the one to whom I should address this message.

[read more...]

Okay, so here are the slides from my presentation on Responsive Web Design that I gave today at the UIC Webmasters Brownbag. It's not the longest thing in the world -- I was only supposed to talk for 30 minutes but ended up going the whole hour. The group was great -- very engaged and asking a whole lot of good questions.

While preparing for next week's presentation on Responsive Design, I tried to recall my original uneasiness over the phone app frenzy. You remember -- that short painful period only a few months ago when either you were developing a phone app version of your site or you just weren't serious. You thought it silly? So did I. But it took me a second to remember why. I mean, this was before Responsive Web Design had registered as a possible solution. So why the initial uneasiness? And then of course I remembered: the notion that your average user was going to download a separate app for every site -- the equivalent of taking your collection of bookmarks and downloading a separate program for each -- was a complete absurdity. Thank God, we're beyond that. It's history.

Some systems have a reputation for being simple, such as WordPress, but only as long as your needs are simple. The moment you need some high falutin' customization -- say, in this article, limiting access to blog posts to certain individuals -- things become way more complicated. I mean, you'd never have to go through this level of complexity in Drupal just to get to the same point. In fact, in Drupal, the capability is built in.

Limiting The Visibility Of Posts In WordPress Via Usernames

Controlling who is able to view a post is a simple task once the system is established. Limiting access to certain users has several applications, such as enabling a design studio to distribute artwork to its various clients, or enabling a small school to arrange for homework to be posted online using a cheap and easy solution.

Gearing up for a presentation on 'Responsive Web Design' that I'll be giving at the UIC Webmaster Brownbag next week. From the official announcement:

UIC Web Professionals,

Join us for a discussion about Responsive Web Design on Thursday, February 2, noon - 1 p.m. Leo Klein, Coordinator for Web Communications in the Office of Admissions and Records, will discuss Responsive Web Design as a significant development in how we approach web design -- what's got us to this point, the need to design for various platforms from PCs to tablets and smartphones. The session will include discussion of key topics including Media Queries and Mobile First.

Audience: all levels. Also, experience and thoughts from others on this subject is encouraged and highly appreciated.

Not much fun at the moment. Working on a big web design project (with a deadline).

Ethan Marcotte on the inadvisability of setting up a purely mobile site:

"...Fragmenting our content across different 'device-optimized' experiences is a losing proposition, or at least an unsustainable one. As the past few years have shown us, we simply can't compete with the pace of technology. Are we going to create a custom experience for every new browser or device that appears?"

Old pal from the Wonderful Guise, Stew and his band had a concert at the Space in Evanston. I got there a little late because I had reference at DePaul but we got together after the thing and hanged out at Bar Louis till they kicked us out.

Current Cites for November 2011 is out! You can find the issue here...

I've got two 'cites' this month: one on Libraries moving to Drupal and another on the use (or non-use as the case may be) of Library Subject Guides by college students.

Can it be called research when these are the results?

The analysis revealed that Facebook offers a dynamic environment for academic libraries to cultivate relationships with students. Libraries present information through status messages which suggest who they are and what they do. In addition to being informational, libraries attempt to engage and establish rapport with students through Facebook. The university setting not only creates a context for messages, but also offers a mutual set of experiences and values shared by libraries and students.