O, love! O paradox divine! ’Tis fidelity towards an object that ceaselessly adjustments. We requested ALA’s readers (and some invited consultants) what they love right now about that repository of our mutual affection, the online. Herewith, a handful of their loving replies.
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…although laying out with CSS will be troublesome and brain-stressing typically, it’s nonetheless far extra highly effective than utilizing tables, and many others. and I can’t consider others on the market can not see that! My plan? To take over the world, spin it backwards in time like Superman, and dispose of tables all collectively.
What I like in regards to the Net is all the things: the nice, the unhealthy and the ugly. The great makes me happy with my fellow women and men who’ve created the nice. The unhealthy evokes me to study extra and present others tips on how to create the nice, to one of the best of my skills. The ugly is what I feel is nothing however a diamond within the tough (iWeb for instance), one thing that wants sharpening (and plenty of it) however which has potential. The ugly thus additionally represents the evolutionary nature of the Net, how issues have to be improved upon repeatedly and the way it is a studying course of for every one.
I like: the mixed energy and ease of Ruby on Rails, making net utility growth an actual pleasure!
Ryan Ballantyne, scholar / net developer ♥ #section5
The DOM (and manipulating it with JavaScript), the flexibleness of CSS
Darren Brean, net developer ♥ #section6
Extensions to customize Firefox. Surf cams. Desktop widgets equivalent to Konfabulator. Large quantities of free/open supply purposes. Assist boards. Giant quantities of free mail house (i.e. GMail, Yahoo!).
RSS: Nice use of present expertise, and doubtless probably the most profitable use of XHTML so far. The power to herald info from acknowledged sources (e.g. ALA) into your personal website, actually empowers common web site homeowners to broaden the providers/usefulness of their websites.
Flash 8: Haven’t seen it actually used but (tech/webcam examples are nice tho!) however the prospects of some actually cool stuff actually will get me excited.
AJAX: Nice, the power of making cross-browser, server unbiased instruments makes me drool… so long as safety points are managed, it is a nice step for the online.
With the ability to absolutely customise our net experiences these days. From search engines like google and yahoo to picture galleries. The place will it finish?
Assembly the authors of among the net normal blogs on the market within the flesh! e.g. Dave Shea, Jeremy Keith.
With the ability to save time doing stuff (purchasing, dev. or downloading) on the net in the course of the week, to have time to chill out within the current world on the weekend.
…the best way the online is being crafted lovingly by all builders/designers who care about their code, together with me!
Robin Cawser, scholar ♥ #section9
Studying Joshuaink.com. That net requirements have gotten extra widespread.
Google video.
It is a user-centered, user-created index of movies which I wish to suppose will turn into one thing corresponding to the Library of Congress. Presently there are tons of of hours of interviews from the American Academy of Tv with everybody from Mr. Rogers to Michael J. Fox. And simply as many skateboarding accidents.
Looking out the index jogs my memory of the outdated days of simply typing phrases right into a search engine and following them the place ever they might take me. I imply come on. Significantly.
final.fm. I can have my very own streaming radio station? I can discover mates with comparable music pursuits? And I can do it with subsequent to no effort? Rad!
blogger.com. My sensible and hilarious mates can publish their concepts wherever and any time. They usually don’t should ask me for assist anymore. Phew!
flickr, del.icio.us, and many others. The social net is fairly thrilling. Again when the Web was invented (which is identical day that I found it in 1995), everybody thought it was going to be the good freedom-maker—anybody might publish something! We got here to understand that (a) firms personal the web and (b) the Net was being over run by each firm pondering it wanted a web site. It was all e-commerce on a regular basis. Properly, we’re again with easy-to-use instruments that enable customers to be publishers, for actual this time.
Tagging. Tagging is again. Folksonomy is sensible. Put the facility within the fingers of the individuals.
Sean Curtis, net developer ♥ #section12
Tables are useless, AJAX ain’t new,
CSS is good, A Checklist Aside is just too.
I like the quantity of properly laid out CSS websites which can be popping up in every single place. I like the entire weblog factor (WordPress has executed wonders). I like the superb new issues occurring with AJAX. I like how Microsoft are at the very least placing some effort into fixing among the well-known IE CSS bugs. Lastly I like websites equivalent to ALA, Easy Bits, PositionIsEverything, Snook.ca and CSSZenBeauty (which actually received me over for CSS).
Nicola D’Agostino, journalist, translator, occasional print and net designer and musician ♥ #section13
What I like: the numerous instruments which can be found, each as software program and sources/providers on-line. The voices of those that combat hype with irony. Net Archive, Google Cache and those that attempt to protect the shifting sands of the world vast net.
I like the ubiquity of the online and its ease of sharing info.
The vitality. An outstanding quantity of expertise and concepts are pouring into the online proper now; electrifying it in a means that hasn’t been felt because the late ’90s. It’s such a improbable medium to be working in.
I proceed to be smitten with Flickr, however I’ve observed one thing troubling about my relationship with it. Out of the blue, solely occasions which can be captured in pictures I’m posting there appear actual, whereas others, relegated to reside quietly on my arduous drive, appear invalidated, nearly as in the event that they didn’t occur. Though this phenomenon is kind of fascinating, it’s additionally a bit unsettling.
I additionally discovered myself falling for The New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest and its addictive counterpart The New Yorker Cartoon Anti-Caption Contest.
I like the ever-improving technique of archiving that now allow guests to sift content material not solely by date however by subject, and associated subject. I like the convenience of propagation on the net, with providers equivalent to Flickr and del.icio.us that department past weblogs and off hyperlink lists to supply interactive, community-built databases of knowledge, pictures, artwork. I nonetheless love one of many highest points of the weblog growth—push-button publishing that allows individuals of all walks of life to get “on the market” and be heard—and I like the range of matters (peoples, and many others.) which can be open to me through the web.
Charles Gordon, net guide ♥ #section18
Requirements do appear to be making some headway. Lastly. New, clear, revolutionary stuff like Google Maps. .NET 2.0 with the ability to render clear HTML (in case you keep away from many of the controls). eCommerce websites with massive, beneficiant, detailed pictures of their merchandise (and don’t take too many clicks to convey them up).
Now, and since my first growth workout routines in 1995, the Web has allured me with its most potential of common communication. The spoken (or learn) phrase transcends mere tales and turns into a tangible factor in which you will palpably work into the tradition and day by day lives of your viewers. I’m not a cornerstone on this course of—not even a visual level within the time line—however like everybody else, I sculpt a mannequin by which a number of others’ views are impressed. My imaginative and prescient right now is extra mature than that of 1995, and but I’m nonetheless a baby within the scheme of what’s to return.
Independents self-starting initiatives all around the world. Self-publishing books, venturing into kewl merch, creating occasions and reveals. Totally having fun with the ever increasing canvas of alternatives for designers to precise.
I’m from China. So English is second language. Excuse my poor English firstly.
Secondly, I ought to say that Google is a superb firm. The online service offered by Google is so fast, efficient and clear that I can’t bear my ardour to it.
So I vote Google as finest net service supplier.
Katie Keenan, net designer ♥ #section22
I like with the ability to discover the reply to nearly any query on the net!
Just lately there’s a higher assist of CSS by most web browsers. This helps encourage net designers to make their websites standards-compliant.
The combination and flexibility of initiatives for the online. XHTML, CSS, XML, RSS, Flash, FLV.
RSS is superb, it helps preserve us knowledgeable of the most recent information on web pages (equivalent to the good RSS feed from ALA).
James King, software program engineering scholar / bar supervisor ♥ #section24
The truth that there’s something good that’s new to search out every single day (I exploit StumbleUpon with Firefox). The sense of a worldwide neighborhood, with on the spot communication.
The liberty I, and others, get to create lovely designs for web sites. Additionally, viewing different peoples designs.
The truth that even with utterly free speech, the web is generally a pleasant place.
Porn :p I’m a man!
Hermann Klinke, developer ♥ #section25
Free schooling and free beneficial content material (textual content, books, video and audio).
Richard Lawson, net / intranet utility developer ♥ #section26
Present accessibility motion and basic drive to allow content material to be accessed in a constant and pleasant method by all people utilizing all completely different instruments.
The popularity of the online by many within the enterprise world as greater than a complicated newspaper, recognising its collaboration and true interactive nature. “It’s not simply an IVR with photos”.
I like that designers are getting out from behind Photoshop and creating their very own merchandise and their very own product companies. Constructing a enterprise isn’t straightforward, however merchandise crafted with love and experience are making the world a greater place.
There’s a plethora of knowledge on the net, and for individuals who know tips on how to discover it, you’ll shortly understand simply how a lot simpler this makes many issues in your life. Though the validity of that info could come into query, your capability to analysis the details is simply as prudent as while you make a journey to the library (don’t take all the things at face worth).
Michelle O’Reilly, net designer ♥ #section29
Number one: I like seeing clear CSS pushed web pages that are consumer and bandwidth pleasant—e.g. www.blogger.com, alistapart.com.
Quantity 2: I like once I see Flash used appropriately!
A number of communication channels: for these which can be prepared to embrace the online, necessary info will be delivered with virtually no delay.
Revenue: each my employment and my enterprise are web-centric.
Luuk Platschorre, net designer / artwork director ♥ #section31
I like the online for pace. Immediate gratification of any info I need. Any lunch-conversation about no matter subject leads to a Google-session to search out the solutions to the questions raised. This at all times stirs up new and fascinating details and figures.
Then once more I like the online for bringing me to individuals who suppose alike: websites that do provide (or need to provide) secure storage of content material “ceaselessly”. New actions in the direction of upgrading the worth of content material. The longer term is beginning on the net… !
The individuals. It’s all in regards to the individuals. I’ve met so many good, gifted, inspirational individuals through the Net, with out that I’m undecided the place I’d be right now.
Thanks, net: your expertise has turn into so low cost and highly effective that it’s enabling me to enter a longtime, brick-and-mortar business (e-book publishing) with out a whole lot of funding and heartache. And since you hate middlemen a lot, you’ll additionally assist my new enterprise to get pleasure from nice margins by way of direct gross sales. Heat, moist kisses from me to you.
Nicolas Schudel, digital media designer ♥ #section34
That Javascript is rising from the useless and is getting used to create higher web pages, and never simply popups.
That the Business now has some “hotshot” names to name their very own. The one man I can keep in mind from the nineties was Nielsen and he was boring then.
Collective Intelligence.
That I can discover a film evaluation from my mobile phone.
That I can see an image of my home.
That I can inform my boss that he’s flawed.
That I can reward my boss.
That I can monitor a flight.
That I should purchase flowers. Enterprise playing cards. A e-book. Or just about something.
That I can watch Homestar Runner with my son.That I can e mail an image to Flickr and have all my mates see it inside minutes of me taking it.
That I can organize a celebration in London, a metropolis I had by no means been to earlier than, and have 120 individuals present up.
That I can learn what everybody thinks from an government at GM to a mannequin in Paris to a guitarist within the Kingston Trio.
That I’ll by no means have the ability to go to all of it or do all of it.
What do I like in regards to the net? Anyone can have a voice. It simply takes one individual with one thing to say to make an enormous distinction. The entire world is having a dialogue at a spherical desk. All people is an professional. Training, social standing, location, race, gender, et cetera are utterly irrelevant. All that issues are ideas and concepts.
Not merely an ideological utopian imaginative and prescient, we’re already dwelling this actuality. Blogs should not merely a brand new development in advertising and journalism, however the starting of a elementary shift in the best way the world interacts. We, the individuals, run the world. We’re rising much less reliant on authorities and large enterprise to get issues executed and are doing issues ourselves. Collectively, we are able to do something, and no one can cease us.
In spite of everything these years, it’s true: I nonetheless love the online. 2006 will present that it’s going to at all times be in regards to the people: past the code, the hype and the acronyms.
Prasanna Srivatsav, pc science scholar ♥ #section38
It’s an exquisite and fast medium to share our data of the world and the issues round us. Increasingly accessible and helpful net pages developing on a regular basis. Requirements being adhered to to create engaging pages that make you need to revisit them. Designs so amazingly gorgeous that they make you are feeling such as you’re studying from a e-book.
I don’t should resort to the library every time I need to discover about one thing. I might simply use a search engine. And I get much more opinions as an alternative of the opinion of a single individual.
I can hearken to net radio broadcasts at CD high quality by simply logging on to a web site. I can keep in contact with all my mates and discuss to all of them on the identical time although we could be hundreds of miles aside.
Google, Wikipedia, Orkut, and the BBC are merely a listing aside.
Paul Williams
, net guide / senior developer ♥
I like the passion and the hopeful feeling I get when speaking/chatting/and many others. in regards to the ’internet. There are such a lot of new concepts bouncing round and folks developing with new ones on a regular basis that I really feel I can’t sustain—however that could be a good factor!
Specifically, I’m loving AJAX and What Google and others are doing with it, and Ruby on Rails—simply blows me away.
Properly designed understated web sites with helpful and dynamic content material who’ve made the trouble to adjust to net requirements.
Websites that show properly and cargo quick on my handheld.
Properly written content material that’s satisfying and academic to learn.
Distinctive layouts which can be refreshingly easy but efficient, they make a artistic assertion, however dont sacrifice usability on a number of gadgets with their bizarre positioning.