Category Archives: Design

One choice, two lists

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I have been listing a bunch of stuff on Craig’s list this week. I have been fascinated by the screen below.

List view on Craislist

Should we just have a choice to list as owner or list as dealer?

Why is the list really long and include two apparent sub-categories for each category? Why not ask the question: Is the lister a dealer or an owner? Then ask the lister what category they are going to list the item in?

DOIs and URLs same or different?

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A document’s DOI (http://www.doi.org/ or on Wikipedia under Digital Object Identifier) is an important part of the citation of a document [1] Chelsea Lee. 21 September 2009. A DOI Primer. APA Style Blog. http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/a-doi-primer.html [Accessed: 10 April 2011] [Link] . Many style sheets allow for just the DOI of a paper as the citation. Because DOIs are unique they can act as URIs which are resolvable and look like URLs [2] Dion Almaer. 23 November 2007. URI vs. URL: What’s the difference?. Ajaxian. http://ajaxian.com/archives/uri-vs-url-whats-the-difference. [Accessed: 10 April 2012] [Link] . However, a DOI is different than a URL for where a digital object might be located. It might be well argued that a DOI should be tracked in the metadata schemes of archives which collect language and linguistic data.
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References

References
↑1 Chelsea Lee. 21 September 2009. A DOI Primer. APA Style Blog. http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2009/09/a-doi-primer.html [Accessed: 10 April 2011] [Link]
↑2 Dion Almaer. 23 November 2007. URI vs. URL: What’s the difference?. Ajaxian. http://ajaxian.com/archives/uri-vs-url-whats-the-difference. [Accessed: 10 April 2012] [Link]

Innovation and Missions

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My father-in-law, who is in his 80’s started reading the recently released biography on Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson [1] Walter Isaacson. 2011. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster. 656 pages. .

Steve Jobs Book Cover

Steve Jobs - by Walter Isaacson - Image used from BigScreenAnimation

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References

References
↑1 Walter Isaacson. 2011. Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster. 656 pages.

Presenting Audio and Video on the Web

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I have been trying to find out what is the best way to present audio on the web. This led me to look at how to present video too. I do not have any conclusions on the matter. But I have been looking at HTML5 and not using javascript or Flash. Because my platform (CMS) is WordPress, Continue reading →

The Social Benefits of a Public Roadmap

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ACF To-do list

Roadmap for development for the Advanced Custom Fields plugin for WordPress.

I am working with a team to redo a rather large NGOIt is worth noting that there are different flavors of NGOs. This particular NGO is also a non-profit charity and also a volunteer organization (most of the staff are volunteers). Not all NGOs fit this category, though I do make some assumptions in this post as if all NGOs do fit this characterization. website (both the NGO and the website are large). One of the questions through the process is How do we “dismantle a huge 1995 era website” and replace it with a “modern CMS system”? The new CMS of course is going to have to be phased in as its detailed features are built out. The social challenge is that if something which is not meeting the organizational (NGO’s) needs is replaced with something else which also appears to not meet the organizational needs then the people within the organization (the spectators, not the people directly involved with the website project) have a tendency to think that the newly launched product is a flop. The bottom line is that there is a general loss of confidence in the development and implementation team. In my particular context this often means that when people loose confidence in a development or implementation team that they stop expecting great things and start looking for other “more suitable” solutions. One way to combat this loss of confidence is to address the the people (and their concerns) who are watching the phased role-out. One part of that engagement strategy can be to do use a public Roadmap. Continue reading →

From Folksonomies to Taxonomies with Linguistic Metadata

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This post is a open draft! It might be updated at any time... But was last updated on at .

Metadata is very important - Everyone agrees. However, there is some discussion when it comes to how to develop metadata and also how to ensure that the metadata is accurate. Taxonomies are limited vocabularies (a set number of items) where each term has a predefined definition. A folksonomy is a vocabulary where people, usually users of data, assign their own useful words or metadata to an item. Folksonomies are like taxonomies in that they are both sets but are unlike taxonomies in the sense that they are an open set where taxonomies are closed sets.

An example of a taxonomy might be the colors of a traffic light: Red, Yellow, and Green. If this were a folksonomy people might suggest also the colors of Amber, Orange, Blue-Green and Blue. These additional terms may be accurate to some viewers of traffic lights or in some cases but they do not fit the stereo-typical model for what are the colors of traffic lights.
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Types of Linguistic Maps: The Mapping of linguistic Features and Researcher Interactivity

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A couple of years ago I had a chance meeting with a cartographer in North Dakota. It was interesting because he asked us (a group of linguists) What is a language or linguistic map? So, I grabbed a few examples and put them into a brief for him. This past January at the LSA meeting in Portland, Oregon, I had several interesting conversations with the folks at the LL-Map Project under Linguists’ List. It occurred to me that such a presentation of various kinds of language maps might be useful to a larger audience. So this will be a bit unpolished but should show a wide selection of language and linguistic based maps, and in the last section I will also talk a bit about interactive maps. Continue reading →

Developing an understanding on how multi-lingual content needs to work on sil.org

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Over the last few weeks I have been contemplating how multi-lingual content could work on sil.org. (I have had several helpful conversations to direct my thinking.)

As I understand the situation there is basically three ways which multi-lingual content could work.

First let me say that there is a difference between, multi-lingual content, multi-lingual taxonomies, and multi-lingual menu structures. We are talking about content here, not menu and navigation structures or taxonimies. Facebook has probably presented the best framework to date for utilizing on the power crowds to translate navigation structures. [1] Nico Vera. 11 February 2008. ¡Bienvenidos a Facebook en Español!. The Facebook Blog. https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10005792130 [Accessed: 5 March 2012] In just under two years they added over 70 languages to Facebook. However, Facebook has had some bumps along the way as DropBox points out in their post talking about their experience in translating their products and services. [2] Dan Wheeler. 18 April 2011. Translating Dropbox. http://tech.dropbox.com/?p=1 [Accessed: 5 March 2011]

  • Use a mechanism which shows all the available languages for content and highlights which ones are available to the user. Zotero has an implementation of this on their support forums.
    Zotero language options

    Zotero language options

  • Basically create a subsite for each language and then only show which pages have content in that language. Wikipedia does this. Wikipedia has a menu on the left side with links to articles with this same title in other languages. Only languages which have an article started in them on that title are shown in the menu.
    SIL International in English

    SIL International in English

    Other Pages in other languages may not show the same content.

    Other Pages in other languages may not show the same content.

  • Finally, create a cascading structure for each page or content area. So there is a primary language and a secondary language or a tertiary, or a quaternary language etc. based on the browser language of choice with country IP playing a secondary role. If there is no page for the primary language then the next in preference will show. This last option has been preferred by some because if an organization wants to present content to a user, then obviously, it would be in the users’ primary language. But if the content is not available in the primary language then the organization would want to still let the user know that the content exists in another language.

It would also be good to understand the concepts used in Drupal 7 (and Drupal 8) for multi-lingual content. There are several resources which I have found helpful:

  1. Localized and Multi-Lingual Content in Drupal 7 [3]Karen Stevenson. 17 November 2011. Localized and Multi-Lingual Content in Drupal 7. Lullabot Ideas. http://www.lullabot.com/articles/localized-and-multi-lingual-content-drupal-7 [Accessed: 5 March … Continue reading
  2. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems (part 4) – Node translation [4]Gábor Hojtsy. 31 January 2011. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems (part 4) – Node translation. … Continue reading
  3. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems compilation [5] Gábor Hojtsy. 5 May 2011. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems compilation. http://hojtsy.hu/multilingual-drupal7 [Accessed: 5 March 2011]
  4. Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative [6] Gábor Hojtsy. 26 January 2012. Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative. http://hojtsy.hu/d8mi [Accessed: 5 March 2011]

It would appear that from this list of resources that Drupal’s default behavior is more in line with part two of the three examples given above.

References

References
↑1 Nico Vera. 11 February 2008. ¡Bienvenidos a Facebook en Español!. The Facebook Blog. https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=10005792130 [Accessed: 5 March 2012]
↑2 Dan Wheeler. 18 April 2011. Translating Dropbox. http://tech.dropbox.com/?p=1 [Accessed: 5 March 2011]
↑3 Karen Stevenson. 17 November 2011. Localized and Multi-Lingual Content in Drupal 7. Lullabot Ideas. http://www.lullabot.com/articles/localized-and-multi-lingual-content-drupal-7 [Accessed: 5 March 2011]
↑4 Gábor Hojtsy. 31 January 2011. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems (part 4) – Node translation. http://hojtsy.hu/blog/2011-jan-31/drupal-7039s-new-multilingual-systems-part-4-node-translation [Accessed: 5 March 2011]
↑5 Gábor Hojtsy. 5 May 2011. Drupal 7’s new multilingual systems compilation. http://hojtsy.hu/multilingual-drupal7 [Accessed: 5 March 2011]
↑6 Gábor Hojtsy. 26 January 2012. Drupal 8 Multilingual Initiative. http://hojtsy.hu/d8mi [Accessed: 5 March 2011]

World Map Navigation

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For one of the web projects I am working in we have been throwing around the idea of having a world map as a navigation element. Each country would then be clickable. This kind of navigation has been done with hyperlinked bitmaps like the LL-Map project.

LL-Map Bitmap

LL-Map Bitmap

Or with flash like the Joshua project.
Joshua Project Front page with Map

Joshua Project Front page with World Map

I have not seen any implementations in HTML5 canvas or in SVG. It occurs to me that these technologies could be used. I am not deeply familiar with either technology. So I did some googling.
I found some interesting articles on the matter.

  • Performance of SVG vs. Canvas [1] Boris Smus. 19 January 2009. Performance of Canvas versus SVG. http://smus.com/canvas-vs-svg-performance [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]
  • How to Choose Between Canvas and SVG [2] Patrick Dengler. 28 September 2011. How to Choose Between Canvas and SVG. http://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-choose-between-canvas-and-svg/#fbid=6CJz-eeIXxl [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]
  • SVG or Canvas? Сhoosing between the two [3] Mihai Sucan. 4 February 2010. SVG or Canvas? Сhoosing between the two. http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/svg-or-canvas-choosing-between-the-two/. [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]
  • CanVG: Using Canvas to render SVG files [4] 29 March 2010. CanVG: Using Canvas to render SVG files. http://ajaxian.com/archives/canvg-using-canvas-to-render-svg-files [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]

I am not sure that I have any answers but this is my thought towards the problem space.

There is one map of languages I have found which deserves to be mentioned. I am not sure of the technology used but it seems it would be either of these methods. It is the map of the Languages of California hosted at Berkeley.

California Languages Map

California Languages Map

References

References
↑1 Boris Smus. 19 January 2009. Performance of Canvas versus SVG. http://smus.com/canvas-vs-svg-performance [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]
↑2 Patrick Dengler. 28 September 2011. How to Choose Between Canvas and SVG. http://www.sitepoint.com/how-to-choose-between-canvas-and-svg/#fbid=6CJz-eeIXxl [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]
↑3 Mihai Sucan. 4 February 2010. SVG or Canvas? Сhoosing between the two. http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/svg-or-canvas-choosing-between-the-two/. [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]
↑4 29 March 2010. CanVG: Using Canvas to render SVG files. http://ajaxian.com/archives/canvg-using-canvas-to-render-svg-files [Link] [Accessed: 4 March 2012]