After a long Easter break and a quick holiday I came across these few tools when getting back to the online world.
Name Bench is a perfect way to make your internet browsing experience just that little bit faster. If you’ve got 5 minutes to spare then head over to the Google Project Home and download your copy. It basically does a check of your current DNS settings and makes suggestions for you to improve them, and therefore your browsing speed.
EM Calculator – was discovered while I was trying to work out how to get the text size from a PSD into a working CSS markup. While there are arguments over the use of % vs em vs px when declaring sizes within your CSS file, this tool stays out of the argument and just gives you what you ask for.
Google Chrome Extensions – If you’re using Chrome you’ve probably downloaded either YSlow or Google Chrome Developer or another one of the MANY Chrome extensions available. It’s REALLY east to do some basic stuff, and if anyone comes up with some good examples they would like to share we’d be keen to hear about it.
Each month we’re looking to deliver talks around Web Standards, but we need your help to deliver exactly what you want.
Add a topic that you might want to learn more about and we’ll make sure that we line up someone to deliver a talk on the subject, or on the other hand if you’re passionate about something in particular and want to share it with the group let us know.
We’re changing the starting time for the first Meetup to 17:3017:00 and will finsih at 19:3018:00.
Welcome to the first Darwin Web Standards Meet Up.
I realised that after sending my initial email around to all of the Government Web Managers that the majority of the recipients won’t know what Darwin Web Standards is, or who is setting up this strange bizarre group.
My name is Justin Avery and I lived in Darwin for 27 years before packing a bag and attempting to travel around the world. Half way around I ran short of money and found myself working in London for a Web Agency. 3 years later I’ve returned back to Darwin again where I’ve started work again for another Web Agency in Australia.
While I was in the UK I took advantage of the many meetup groups that were on offer. HTML5, Ajax, Web, Web Standards, etc etc…… there was a group for just about every thing you could want to meet about.
The best thing about these meetups were that you were able to talk to people in the same field as you are in. You had the opportunity to ask questions, provide answers to other people questions, and most of all to discuss your own ideas and what you’ve been working on in the interwebs.
Now that I’m back in Darwin I wanted to try and kick off something similar by organising meetups with like minded individuals and form a network for everyone to share ideas and learn from each other.
Getting Started
It costs absolutely nothing to join. All you need to do is subscribe with this site and I’ll make sure you know about all the meetups that are coming up.
I’m running the meetups through http://www.meetup.com/Darwin-Web-Standards/ at the moment so you will need to sign up to that site as well to register your attendance (again, it costs nothing and only takes 1 minute 43 seconds). If Meetup.com becomes an issue down the line problem I’ll probably switch it across to EventBrite at a later date.
When is the first meetup?
The inaugural meetup will will be held at Shenannigans (although there is no formal finishing time, you can leave when you’re no longer having fun).
Where is the first meetup?
Shenannigans has offered us the back function room free of charge and will put on happy hour drinks for Darwin Web Standards members. We’ve got a big screen television that I will have a laptop hooked up to, and I hope that we will have a free wireless internet connection for anyone that wants to show off their current work or ask questions of the group.
What is the meetup format?
The first meetup will be very informal and just involve everyone meeting and introducing each other. I’ll run a very brief welcome introduction that will involve house keeping (toilets, drinks, food, topics, jobs) ask for any volunteers that want to get involved with the organising of the group and take a straw poll to see what kind of topics you would like to see covered, and a brief presentation by myself on some of the HTML5 semantic tags that you might look to use and why.
I’m also talking to Jon Allsopp who runs the Web Directions Conference to see if we can organise some speakers to come up and do some talks throughout the year, and also if we can get some free tickets to give away to http://www.webdirections.org/ or at least a discount to attend the event.
That’s all for now, but to wrap it up just a reminder to signup for the Darwin Web Standards email list, and visit the Meetup Group and register for the first meetup on the 13th April. Remember this is all about you and making sure that you learn more and see what others are trying to do, and give you a chance to show off what you’ve been doing.
Microdata
Darwin Web Standards Microdata Come down to the very first meetup for a few drinks and a chat and listen to a quick talk on microformats. When: —
Where: Shenannigans 69 Mitchell Street, Darwin, NT Category:Meetup
Each week we will be posting a few links of Easy Reading recommended reading.
The links won’t always be strictly within the realm of Web Standards, but they will always be informative. If you have any recommended Easy Reading, contact us through Twitter or Facebook.
This week we are looking at some tools that all us to take advantage of the HTML5 and CSS3 elements while still ensuring that Read the rest of this entry »
Next Meetup
Date:21st November 2012
Time: 17:00 - 19:30
Location:Back Room, Shenannigans
About:XMAS Party Time!
Register Now
