Official Blog
This weekend I’ll be visiting WordCamp Louisville for my second time and giving a presentation on “Laying the Proper Foundation for Plugin and Theme Development“. This talk is meant to help fledgling programmers, or at least those new to programming with WordPress, to learn a few basics like script and style enqueues, good code structure, and localization. The rest of the speaker lineup is really strong and I can’t wait to meet up with my fellow WordPress enthusiasts!
I’m excited to be going to WordCamp Las Vegas this weekend. I’ll be giving a presentation geared toward developers entitled Plugging into Plugins. This is a subject that I’ve been wanting to speak about for a while; we’ll be discussing what developers can do to make their plugins more extensible for other developers. What’s more fun than talking about plugins for 45 minutes?
I’ll be participating in WordCamp Los Angeles this weekend, where I’ll present my latest iteration of Enterprise Class WordPress, likely for the last time. While it’s a broad topic and talk, I’m hoping to present a trimmer version that leaves more room for conversation and engagement. Hope to see some familiar and meet some new faces in LA!
I’ll be speaking at WordCamp Baltimore this weekend, giving a designer oriented talk entitled How to Help a Developer Faithfully Realize Your WordPress Theme Design. We’ll cover essential WordPress theme components, a little bit of Photoshop etiquette, and explore what goes on in a developer’s head when they convert your lovely theme into an interactive reality. I’ll be joined at the conference by fellow 10up engineer Taylor Lovett, so be sure to say hi!
The Central Alabama Women’s Center (CAWBC) is a non profit that helps socially and economically disadvantaged women business owners build and grow their business. They conduct events and training sessions at locations in the Birmingham, Alabama area and often feature local experts in their field. Next Monday, I’ll be presenting the “Basics of an Online Presence”, covering topics like content, appearance, costs, SEO, e-commerce, and blogging. I’m looking forward to contributing to my community of like minded women!
Eric Mann Joins 10up
Eric Mann on
You probably don’t know me yet – let’s fix that. I’m the new guy from the Pacific Northwest who spends as much time writing code as I do happily lost in the woods. Be careful, because I’m just as likely to talk your ear off about jQuery and AJAX as I am high alpine backpacking.
I’ve been building websites recreationally for over a decade; professionally for 6 years. I’ve been working with WordPress since a friend bribed me with a ticket to WordCamp Portland 5 years ago. Since then, it’s become my favorite platform for both serious development and rapid prototyping. WordPress has been at the core of everything from corporate websites to Facebook apps to slideshows; I have yet to find something I can’t do with it!
For the past couple of years, though, my focus has been on polishing my skills in different software paradigms and languages. But I’ve never abandoned WordPress – I stay active by speaking at WordCamps, working with the core development team, and answering questions on the WordPress Stack Exchange.
Video & Discussion: Enterprise Class WordPress
Jake Goldman on
Enterprise Class WordPress is a look at what it means to tackle web projects for really big organizations using WordPress. The talk highlights tools and resources for enterprise implementations, marketing tactics and resources for pursuing large scale clients, and even takes a hard look at what our platform needs to do better (multilingual). Above all, it explores how we, as a community, can better pursue large businesses and make WordPress not just the #1 web publishing platform for small to medium sized organizations, but the #1 platform for large scale implementations.
Meaningful conversation and education about WordPress in enterprise is really critical for ushering in the next stage of WordPress’s growth, which is why I’ve taken this conversation to a few WordCamps in the last few months. I debuted the talk in Orange County, but the Boston version was the first to make it up to WordPress.tv. You can also see the standalone slides from the original version (which has evolved a bit).
This weekend will bring Zack and I to the Midwest, where we’ll be representing 10up at WordCamp Chicago. Not only are we excited to both be on semi-familiar stomping grounds, but we’ll be bringing you two brand new talks! Zack will be presenting “Grokking the WordPress Object Cache: Getting a Handle on the WP_Object_Cache Class“, an absolute must for developers and anybody else who cares about performance or the deeper innards of WordPress. I will be giving a talk entitled “How to Sneak Your Way Into Being a Rockstar WordPress Developer When Everyone Thinks You’re a Designer“, which, despite ironically being in the designer track, is about how I got involved with contributing to WordPress and how you can, too, whether or not you’re a developer-type. We’re excited to be at DePaul in the beautiful neighborhood of Lincoln Park, and we hope to see you there!
This weekend I’m heading to New Mexico for the first time for WordCamp Albuquerque. In addition to continuing the conversation about WordPress in enterprises, I’m looking forward to participating in a panel on Making a Living as a Designer or Developer with WordPress. Judging by the communication so far with speakers and attendees, this looks to be an incredibly well organized and planned camp. If you’re headed to Albuquerque, be sure to say hi this weekend!
Opening a new tab or window: usability considerations
Taylor Dewey on
Have you ever asked your web developer to open a link in a new tab or window? Generally, this is accomplished by adding a target="_blank" attribute to a link. Let’s consider the usability implications.
The rationale is almost always founded in a desire to keep the audience engaged with your content longer, or a concern about usability (for example, keeping the reader losing his or her bearings). The overwhelming finding from user experience researchers*, however, is that new windows/tabs should be avoided when simply opening new web pages. However, there are some appropriate use cases: opening a non-HTML document (web page) like a large image, video, audio, or other media, or to avoid interrupting an important linear process like a checkout. Even with these exceptions, however, there are friendlier alternatives like tool-tips and lightboxes.
In fact, the target="" attribute was actually deprecated (being phased out) from the HTML specifications until HTML5. As of HTML5, the W3C guidelines stipulate that it is no longer deprecated because it is deemed “useful in Web applications, e.g. in conjunction with iframe.”