To educate, inform, inspire

Working Connections 2015

May 27, 2015 - Technology , Travel , Web - by Mark - No Comments

I had the great honor of teaching at Working Connections in Springfield, Illinois during the week of May 18 – 22. This is a great event for community college faculty and staff. You have the ability to network with peers from throughout the state. I renewed friendships with many and […]

Creating a new WordPress site

May 20, 2015 - Security , Web - by Mark - 2 Comments

Some time ago, I posted basic information about securing your WordPress sites. Given that post has not been updated since 2012, I thought it was time. Rather than just re-hash the existing information, I decided to take a slightly different approach. I recently saw the need to create a new […]

2015 Illinois Web Design Contest – the code

May 6, 2015 - Learning , Web , WOW - by Mark - No Comments

I previously discussed the Illinois web design contest at a high level. I thought it would be important to also focus a bit on the code and related design aspects of the sites. Note that these comments are my own and do not represent the observations of any judges in […]

2015 Illinois Web Design Contest

April 29, 2015 - Learning , Web , WOW - by Mark - No Comments

I had the great opportunity to supervise the Illinois Web Design contest in Springfield on April 23 – 24, 2015. As always, our contest focuses on professionalism (we are WebProfessionals.org after all), current web design job skills, and industry best practices to help students be better prepared to enter the […]

Tagged: Web Design Contest

Adobe Slate

April 15, 2015 - Adobe , Web - by Mark - No Comments

Adobe recently released a new iPad only app focused on creating content. One can then view this content in browsers on any Internet connected device. The content is displayed in a manner appropriate for that device. The app is called Slate (I placed the logo below). The tag line “Make […]

Adobe Comp CC

April 8, 2015 - Adobe , Web - by Mark - 2 Comments

Adobe recently released a new app for the iPad – Comp CC. In many ways, this app reminds me of Adobe Proto. There are a number of differences. The most important is that one can create low fidelity wireframes or much more detailed mock-ups of a web site, print document […]

Web Vulnerability Scanners

February 25, 2015 - Security , Web - by Mark - No Comments

One of the many classes I teach is CMWEB 270 – Web Application Security. I thought it might be helpful to readers to review a couple of the tools one can use to automatically scan for website vulnerabilities. I consider it good practice to use a number of tools. Obviously, […]

Book review – guide to creating dynamic websites

January 14, 2015 - Web - by Mark - No Comments

The January 2015 issue of Choice Magazine published my review of Nixon, Robin. Learning PHP, MySQL, JavaScript, CSS & HTML5: a step-by-step guide to creating dynamic Websites. 3rd ed. O’Reilly, 2014. 700p index ISBN 9781491949467 pbk, $49.99. Given that many readers of this blog may be interested in this book […]

What is web design?

December 31, 2014 - Technology , Web - by Mark - 4 Comments

I recently watched a new course on lynda.com – Mapping the modern web design process by Morten Rand-Hendriksen. In the initial chapter of the course, he makes an interesting observation. His thesis is that the term “web design” is evolving into an all encompassing term to cover the majority of […]

PhoneGap Build

December 10, 2014 - Adobe , Mobile Apps , Web - by Mark - No Comments

I have made a number of weblog posts on PhoneGap, PhoneGap Build and Dreamweaver in the past (just use the search box on this page and look for PhoneGap to see those entries). However, there have been a number of changes to the default templates with the release of Dreamweaver […]

Teaching a MOOC – results

November 12, 2014 - Adobe , Learning , Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

Now that the web design MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) is concluded, I wanted to share some final thoughts. I also thought it would be appropriate to indicate overall success rates.

Teaching a MOOC

October 29, 2014 - Adobe , Technology , Web - by Mark - 2 Comments

I had the opportunity (and unique honor) to teach a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) on Web Design recently. [Actually, the course is still in progress as final assignments are due on Nov. 2, 2014.] I wanted to share some observations and insights about the process as well as the […]

2014 National Web Design Contest – part 2

July 9, 2014 - Web - by Mark - No Comments

As I mentioned last week, we held our annual national web design contest in Kansas City in late June. We had competitions for both high school students and post-secondary students. This year, we had representatives from 35 states. All had to win first place in their state competition to participate […]

2014 National Web Design Contest

July 2, 2014 - Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

I had the great honor of supervising our WebProfessionals.org national web design contest in Kansas City (June 24-27, 2014). We held separate contests for high schools and post-secondary schools. This year, we had representatives from a total of 35 states. Congratulations to the winners and to all who participated. Everyone […]

CSS Shack

June 25, 2014 - Technology , Web - by Mark - No Comments

I recently became aware of the CSS Shack project and thought it might be useful for readers of this blog. As I understand it, CSS Shack is available both as a desktop application (for Windows and Linux) and as a Chrome browser extension. I decided to focus on the latter […]