A hands-on opportunity to play with some advanced CSS concepts. Bring your laptops and an open mind. We'll cover many of the current hot design techniques: multi-column layout, faux-column layout, advanced image replacement techniques, advanced list manipulation, rounded corner boxes, son-of-suckerfish dropdowns, cross-column pull-outs, CSS hacks, and customized CSS for alternate devices.
Presenter(s)
Today's website consumers demand a tremendous amount of flexibility, responsiveness and interactivity from the websites they visit. People have become used to Web applications like Facebook, GMail and Twitter which make heavy use of Web browser client-side programming in Javascript and interaction with Web services using the AJAX programming model. This workshop will teach you the basics of Web browser client-side programming using Web standards. We'll take a quick tour of HTTP, DOM, Javascript, XML and JSON, then jump in with hands-on exercises using the jQuery Javascript library, building up an interactive website utilizing AJAX Web services. You should come prepared with a laptop, your favorite text editor and the latest version of the Firefox Web browser. Before the conference we'll also provide a list of Firefox extensions you'll need to install. A familiarity with Javascript, DOM, XHTML, CSS and some client-side programming is necessary for this session.
This popular HighEdWeb workshop is a great way to start off the conference! Using some of the cornerstone topics in communications and public relations, this workshop examines the development of good Web content. The second half of the workshop looks at research techniques available for developing and assessing websites.
Learn how Seton Hall University (SHU) engaged consumers, students, faculty, and alumni to share and interact with its website via SHU Tube—a deceptively simple Web application that taps into the YouTube network enabling consumers to post videos online and become the greatest brand advocates of all. You'll hear a firsthand account of Seton Hall's journey to make its website as interactive as possible (with little to no cost) by leveraging its Web content management solution. SHU Tube videos proved five times more effective than other types of advertising, and Seton Hall improved its conversion rates by re-using video content throughout its site and sharing video content via any delivery channel (Web, smart phone, PDA, Facebook, etc.) Learn how SHU Tube helped build trusting and lasting relationships by providing true transparency to its organization, and a more authentic Web experience.
Google Analytics is a powerful, enterprise-ready Web analytics tool that provides actionable, data-supported insights into website performance. This tool, when leveraged correctly, can provide quantitative information pertaining to the success (or failure) of content, marketing campaigns, goal conversions, and site effectiveness. Because of its robust feature set and affordable price, Google Analytics has become one of the most widely used analytical applications in higher education. In turn -- as many institutions are experiencing shrinking budgets -- recruitment and retention activities are embracing advanced online strategies. In order to justify these strategies and to examine their success, a powerful and customizable Web analytics strategy must be adopted to calculate returns on investment. Such strategies can be created and thoroughly evaluated with Google Analytics. During this workshop, we will explore in great depth the terminology and features of Google Analytics that every Web manger, marketer, designer, and developer needs to understand in order to accurately gauge the effectiveness of his or her institution or department's website.
This workshop will cover the basics of developing Flash animation for the Web. We will be using Adobe Flash CS3 Professional to do some hands-on exercises that will show the student how to create animations, simple interactivity, and a video game. We will also cover such topics as Flash CS3's built-in accessibility features, managing symbols and instance, working with video, and publishing your flash movie. Attendants must bring a laptop with Adobe Flash CS3 Professional installed.
Negotiation is a basic skill. We do it every day, whether we think about it or not. Studying negotiation yields a toolbox of techniques one can draw upon to navigate everyday human interactions. As professionals, the goal is to get along, find agreement, and get what we need to get our jobs done. After all, command-and-control is for the business sector, and when are we Web people ever in charge? Returning again this year, this workshop is designed to cover some of the basic tools every negotiator should have, with several in-class scenarios to illustrate key points.
Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) brings exciting DHTML/AJAX and dynamic Flash applications to the desktop. Come to this session and hear from Romke and Nate, two energetic Flash platform developers that have created Flex and AIR apps, speak about AIR, Flex, and how it applies in an academic setting. This session will start with an overview of the AIR capabilities and speak to its potential for academic uses. It continues with demoing sample code for some of AIR's core feature set, and will touch on some advanced topics including mashups, tips on security, and what to watch out for when creating Javascript-based applications. Audience members are advised to have familiarity with Actionscript 3 and/or Flex MXML knowledge.
Communities become powerful by coming together. They accomplish big things and transform the way we live and communicate. Social media tools don’t work well in isolation—they become more powerful by coming together with other social media. Convergence, the optimal state, broadens the reach of social media sites, services, and technologies and is the fundamental goal of an effective social media marketing strategy. It drives traffic, expands communication, and connects smaller communities to the larger community of the social Web. Even though it can reach a large audience, traditional media is limited in comparison. Colleges and universities need smaller communities and larger communities, the local and the global. Social media convergence marketing is a natural fit for institutions seeking to build communities of engagement. This presentation defines and then walks through the principals and practice of social media convergence marketing, from optimizing websites to deploying parallel social media community-building tools to achieve recruiting, marketing, and fundraising goals.
Research has shown us how some sites, no matter what users are looking for, make it easy to always find the relevant information. Other sites, no matter how hard the users try, are too difficult and frustrating. In this workshop, Jared Spool will share the secret of designing sites rich in content, such that users are delighted and ready to return time after time. You'll learn how the content on your site emits "scent" and how to ensure users catch hold of it as they maneuver through your site's pages. At the end of this workshop, you'll know exactly what you need to do to greatly enhance the usability of your content-rich site. You’ll come away with the most up-to-the-minute research on how users actually navigate sites.
Designed for developers, this hands-on workshop will focus on building both Web and native applications for the iPhone OS platform. Learn the basics of Dashcode -- a powerful tool for building graphical user interfaces for iPhone Web apps using HTML and JavaScript -- and Xcode and Interface Builder -- tools for building native applications in Objective-C for the App Store. Attendees should have some familiarity with software development and are required to have signed up for the free iPhone Development program. See: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/start/register/. An Intel-based Macintosh with the latest version of the iPhone SDK / Xcode is required. See: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/development_tools/iphonesdk.html We will have some equipment available on a first come first served basis. An iPhone / iPod Touch is not required as we will be using the iPhone simulator for our testing.
This is an introduction to basic PHP 5 use with a focus on the power of dynamic pages in comparison to static HTML, including statement syntax, basic program logic statements, and data types. PHP will be used to create simple Web pages, and Zend Framework will be introduced and used to create forms.
Many of us have a love/hate relationship with server-side scripting languages. On one hand they are easy to learn and can get a basic job done quickly. On the other hand, concerns such as error checking, security, error handling, and tag soup also seem to come along with them. More and more it seems writing a maintainable and secure application in one of these languages is very challenging. Enter ASP.Net – designed to handle all of these challenges. For most Web developers, learning a new framework is daunting and besides, who has time? Yet the long-term payoffs can be well worth the effort. Objectives of the workshop include: building a basic data-driven Web application; separating a site into HTML templates, page layouts, and business logic; learning the basics of event-driven Web programming; preventing SQL injection and cross site scripting. Participants are expected to supply a Windows laptop with Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 (free download).
WordPress offers one of the easiest ways to give your users a full-featured site (not just a blog!) they can update on their own. This workshop goes from Installation 101 all the way to Applied Widget Theory and Special Topics in Theme Options. By the end of the day you'll understand how to install and maintain WordPress (on IIS or Apache), how to get the most out of its built-in features, and how to extend its CMS capabilities with themes and plugins. Basic knowledge of PHP is extremely helpful, but not required.
