Vos Virtual Network

Here’s a Rap (or Hip-Hop) song that all about following web standards, and search engine optimization (SEO).

It’s called “Design Coding”

Here’s an excerpt from the lyrics…

make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
remove font type, font color and font size
no background colors, keep your coding real neat

tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
better results with xml and css
now you making progress, a lil closer to success
describe your doctype so the browser can relate
make sure you do it great or it won’t validate

check in all browsers, I do it directly
gotta make sure that it renders correctly

Tags: design, music, rap, SEO, style, validation, video, Web Standards

Show your support for web standards and accessibility. Please join us on Monday, November 26, 2007 in celebrating Blue Beanie Day.

Monday, November 26, 2007 is the day thousands of Standardistas (people who support web standards) will wear a Blue Beanie to show their support for accessible, semantic web content.

It’s easy to show your support for web design done right. Don a Blue Beanie and snap a photo. Then on November 26, switch your profile picture in Facebook and post your photo to the Blue Beanie Day photo pool on Flickr.

Next Steps:

1. Make a personal commitment to fight Web Standards Apathy. Show solidarity with the Standardistas on November 26th, 2007.
2. Buy, beg, or borrow a Blue Beanie (blue hat or cap, even a black or grey one will do in a pinch.)
3. Take a photo of yourself wearing the Blue Beanie. Or take a cool group photo of you and your friends wearing Blue Beanies.
4. Post your photo, or photos to Facebook, Flickr, and other social networks on November 26th, 2007. Remember to switch your Facebook profile photo that day. While you’re at it, switch all your social network profile photos. Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, iLike, Pownce, you name it.
5. Promote Blue Beanie Day in your blog or wiki starting today, and tell all your friends to get ready for Blue Beanie Day. Start by inviting all your Facebook friends to this event.

Check the Blue Beanie Day event notification on Facebook to see more Blue Beanie heads and to make a comment or ask questions.

Tags: beanie, blogs, facebook, flickr, Standardistas, twitter, Web Standards

Quick update. The DWWS group on Facebook is now over 1100 members — in less than 2 weeks. Members are from more than 45 different countries. Everyone is talking about Web Standards.

Update (11-Apr-2008): the  DWWS group  is now over 3000 members.

Tags: book, DWWS, facebook, group, social network, Web Standards

Last Saturday, I started a Designing With Web Standards group on Facebook. You might be familiar with the book, by Jeffrey Zeldman, Designing With Web Standards. I’m happy to report that (as of this writing) over 600 members have joined in the first week, from all over the world.

Members are from the following countries, or regions: Australia, Belgium, Belize, Canada, China, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Guatemala, Haiti, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Israel, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Singapore, Slovenia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, UK, USA, Venezuela, etc.

Please join us as we are talk about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, ECMA-script web standards in the Facebook discussion forum.

Tags: book, CSS, facebook, HTML, Web Standards

Quick summary of guidelines for writing better HTML:

1. Six points for creating better markup - by Roger Johansson
2. Twenty-one guidelines for improving HTML - by Garret Dimon
3. Thirty-seven steps to Perfect Markup

Tags: guidelines, How To, HTML, markup, tags, Web Standards

Mark Pilgrim has some pointers on accessibility.

Tags: accessibility, guidelines, How To

Started reading Zeldman’s Designing With Web Standards, 2nd Edition today… More about this later…

Tags: CSS, How To, Web Standards