Category: Professional

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teamwork

Two weeks ago I wrote about generalizing vs specializing, or being a general specialist, or the changing nature of specialization in re web design. I’ve had an evolution of my thought about this because of my new job, wherein I am a specialist, but on a generalist sort of team. Which means I’ve also been thinking about teams.

In all the years I’ve been doing web development, this is the first time that I’ve ever been on a team of web developers. I should caveat that by saying that I had an assistant at Pierce, and worked loosely on web-ish projects with other departments at both TwinStar and Pierce. This feels significantly different: I am on a Web Team, my boss is a web developer, and the other full-time team member is a web designer. We each have areas of expertise, mostly related to our job descriptions, but there’s some fairly strong overlaps, and we speak a common language.

I guess we’re still in what the organization development types call the “norming” phase, where we work out who does what when, processes, lingo, what normal behavior looks like. Which is maybe complicated by all following each other on Twitter? I don’t know. Not to get into too much detail — because to some extent I’m trying to hold to the rule I worked out with my boss at Pierce way back when — but I feel pretty good about it. Anxious, of course, because social anxiety is my middle name (or something), but not more than my personal baseline of fretting about interpersonal relationships.

Again, just looking at myself, I find that I’m challenged by having to “share” — to realize that decision-making is different on a team like this, to know what I should do and what I don’t need to take responsibility for, to be explicit in communicating decisions and processes. As C has noticed a few times, I tend to take things in and then want to go off and hide and do something all alone before talking about it at all. (Introvert!) And it very often works well for me, but sometimes it’s counterproductive in this situation.

And The Web Team is not my only team here. I’m also working on a cross-departmental team, building a fairly significant product for the college community, where we actually work together in the same room one morning a week. I always dread it on some level, because that amount of real-time collaboration is exhausting. (So very introvert.) On the other hand, we’re doing something interesting and important, and the other team members are smart, engaged, and very knowledgeable about the college. And that Venn diagram is very different from the one that would describe the Web Team’s skills, so I can work on different things in different ways. So I get done with the cowork time (as I have just now) and feel like I’ve done something interesting and useful.

No conclusions about all of this just yet. Simply: teams!

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On specializing & generalizing

The last Squirrel & Moose podcast reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to write about for a few weeks now, in so much as talking about workflow (I’m a code-in-Firebug person too, BTW, when it comes to CSS*) leads to thinking about workflow in the broader sense, and in so much as that it’s a topic Dylan & I have talked about off and on for years now.

My title at my current job (6 months yesterday!) includes the word “specialist,” which feels weird considering how much being a generalist has been part of my professional identity. I like have a broad range of skills, not being stuck in a tiny niche. And if it had been anywhere but working at Evergreen, with Susan, I would have been really hesitant to go into a specialized role.

But I have realized a few things; thinking back on my almost 15 years** creating websites (13 paid, 12 full-time), being a generalist seems to have shifted — or the scope of “web work” has increased, or something.

I like to tell the story of how I got my one and only raise at Pierce: they were doing an evaluation of all the “administrative exempt” positions (think of the Bobs in Office Space), and I had to revise the job description I was hired with. The list of things I was doing was twice as long as the list of what I was hired to do. Something similar happened when I helped write a job description for hiring my replacement at TwinStar: a significant expansion of duties.

Only some of that is my unfortunate tendency to get enthusiastic about more things than I have time or energy for — most of it was just new things that happened in those years. Social media of various sorts, email marketing, AdWords, content management systems, and just plain higher expectations of what ought to be on the web.

It got to the point where it was just too broad for me, and I was spread too thin over things outside of my strengths.

So on some level, being a specialist is a bit of a relief. It was much the same way when I got my first full-time web job; I was coming from a position where I worked on the website, supervised a secretary, organized events, ran a speakers’ bureau, and did a little bit of print design. Going to the web WAS specializing. Sometimes it’s just nice to be able to say that someone else has the strengths to do X really well (on the one hand), or when X is something I dislike or that’s problematic for me, that X is not actually my responsibility (on the other).

I’m also lucky enough to be on a team where I can use my broader skillset when it makes sense, and not just the things I was hired to do. I credit my boss for being open to that, and to some extent also the environment of Evergreen. Or perhaps I should say that I find the environment to be empowering in keeping the spirit of a generalist, even as I do some specializing.

So I guess overall I’d say I’m ok with being a “specialist,” more so than I would have thought.

I don’t have time right now, but I do also want to write about the experience of being on a web team for the first time, and the experience of being in a new team where we’re all working out how we work together. Soon! (Hopefully.)

* Just yesterday told someone that not having access to Firebug was like having someone chop off my arm, as far as getting stuff done.

** First started playing around with HTML in about February 1998, with the happy confluence of a cubicle neighbor who “did web stuff” where I worked, C’s first new computer, and IIRC, our first Internet access at home. Has it really been that long?!

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external data

since I saw Dave going in to the titanium/mobile app session, I thought I’d check out this.

“world adult kickball association”? and that’s the site he works on. kickball.com, 60k visitors/day.

going to be high level. [would like the front lights to be low so I can actually see his slides] – not going to talk about what to do once it’s in drupal, or about geodata, or about twitter or facebook connect, or about D6 or D8.

two options: migration – moving the data from whatever into Drupal, which is a habit in the Drupal community – or reading & leaving the data where it is.

do you have access to the database? if not, then more likely to be *reading* vs migrating.

is the data a moving target? if often changing, leave it outside. otherwise can add a lot of overhead.

quantity of data?

is the data “drupally”?

[and I start to appreciate where Dave’s at, even if he’s not always great at explaining how he got to that POV.]

migrating: two “and a half” options –

1) Feeds module. Lots of formats, UI-driven. (o look, it’s Dave Reid.) Altho I’ll admit that I still find the Feeds module somewhat baffling. Someday…. Huh: Feeds Tamper. Cleaning up data, breaking apart fields, etc. Feeds Image Grabber, downloads & attaches images in data pulled by Feeds. Feeds Readability Parser, tries to work out the title of the page and the content, stripping ads & navigation, etc. Lots more parsers!

2) Migrate! “there are a lot of times when you need a sledgehammer” – slide with link to denver presentation “migrate workflow” – has lots of options. (oh, is that the one I used to use to grab spreadsheets of stuff? (branches, mortgage staff, business members, etc)) Migrate Extras, covers a lot of major modules.

deciding: non-sql data, you’ll probably prefer Feeds. more complex the data, more likely to want Migrate. [no, wait, I was using Node Import, which I loved to pieces, and for which there will not be a D7 version. it was so SIMPLE.]

[also: HUNGRY. Should have had breakfast.]

If you’re thinking about custom code, just extend Migrate instead.

Exposing data to Views.

(which makes me think Forena is just an insane idea altogether.)

Views API is well documented.

hook_views_api — array with the version.

some weird stuff if you’re trying to read D6 data on a D7 site.

hook_views_data

“you’re not going to have a good time”

set up the database info in settings.php

defining the node table programmatically, so it doesn’t flip out about it not being a nodes table? ok, I think I hit the point where I don’t actually know enough. but damn this is just so much more DRUPAL. the only question is how to get this to a UI that admin computing doesn’t freak out about. all that code is about getting around namespace collisions when having one drupal get data from another drupal.

create in the UI or in code? I still don’t really understand what he’s actually doing.

It would be interesting to write a Banner Views module. He does talk about if you have non-Drupal external data, then you’ll need to write external code…which I guess is where Forena comes in.

discussion about getting users from external sources, which is something I don’t need to worry about, since we have that CAS module. also: not my problem.

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Style tiles with drupal

all the code is at github.com/abelb/drupal_styletiles/ (works with education clients!)

funnymonkey, does distros for education.

interior designer mood boards…all the way to pinterest.

styletil.es

need to ask Susan if she wants me or Justin to do this for OARS.

adjectives technique didn’t work with stakeholders on one of her projects.

Foundation – a frame work – SASS.

Again: SASS or LESS?

grids, with modular scale typography. also responsive layout stuff. she likes it for prototyping. there’s a theme that uses foundation. Twitter Bootstrap : Less :: Zurb Foundation : SASS?

style guide module. ORLY.

First email on Monday: Amy G, Erik, Justin, Dave: SASS or Less? Pros and cons? Any dependencies? WP templates or Drupal themes?

She likes the D7 Zen theme.

Oh, that grid class system is actually easy to read and understand, ie “five columns offset-by-two” — I’m impressed.

[What frameworks, if any, use em-based grids?]

she’s using sublime text 2. (how do these tools work for coda 2?) oh, the color declarations in the scss show with the actual color in the background. nice touch. damn, I need to get better w/keyboard shortcuts in coda & oxygen.

I wonder if it would be possible to describe our existing site as a style tile setup. (Clunky as it is.) And then in theory we could gradually change them. Same deal with my.e.e.

She’s just awesome…kinda fun to watch her work through ideas & opinions as she talks.

I would really like to find some decent developer tools for this tablet. Never did find a code editor that I really really liked.

typecast app for doing typography in the browser. send to Justin ASAP.

“I tried to thank the guy on Twitter, but he doesn’t tweet at all.”

sassy buttons – jaredhardy.com/sassy-buttons/ — cute!

csshat.com for turning photoshop layer styles to css3. daaaamn. ($30)

question about mixins degrading gracefully? pretty standard? sounds like it does all the combos to get as close as possible.

Sass vs. LESS

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Drupal in higher ed, a modular approach

I have plots & daydreams….

This room is about packed. Huh.

Sort of a vendor presentation from ImageX Media, their major emphasis is higher ed.

OpenEDU – not a ready-to-go product. (OpenScholar? OpenAcademy?) its features can be added on to other distributions, or can be used as a framework. (Portland State is their flagship client, met one of their devs this morning.) Multi-site: can do in a variety of ways, will come back to that. It can be used ala carte or as a set.

framework/features that “complement marketing initiatives” — “enroll, engage, retain” — ah, so they get that!

(fwiw, looks like OpenAcademy is focused on a department website model, which totally doesn’t work for us.)

“surfing the tension between control and freedom”

maintaining core brand while allowing unique identity of individual units.

multisite with full template customization, or a flexible site-wide theme with consistent elements, configurable options. options they can pick while working on a page.

it sort of looks like the panel layout picker. I like that A LOT.

content sharing options. (we could move all the non-academic users from WP into Drupal) — created a stand-alone syndication server for that sharing. innnnteresting. gets at the “picker” idea that I’ve been worrying over with embedding offering descriptions, news, events, profiles.

single sign-on – integrates with CAS. nice. is that related to the one that Dave works on? can then apply additional roles/permissions and have that spread out among other sites, and also granularity site-to-site.

oh, this is a very talky presentation. getting restless. time for knitting?

is this only available through them, with their services? (as the guy next to me has in his notes: “giant sales pitch…but not a bad one”)

modules they’ve released or are releasing: single sign-on, openedu helper, programs & courses, link block

they’re working on getting a shareable enhanced administration toolset. which is good, because that is what I see as the biggest stumbling block.

alfresco document management — plays nicely with drupal?

probably should not be trying to learn a new technique (knitting) while in a presentation. I just got restless. :\

their syndication setup is based on Services module. innnnteresting. loads images from the syndication server/site, not locally to the client (dept, whatever) site. clever clever clever.

I bet it would be crazy spendy to have them come get us switched over to Drupal. wonder what all our options are.

looking at the afternoon’s sessions. might see what the BoFs are for the first two after lunch; I know what I want for the last one.

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Responsive Web Design

Yep, back to this again. Conference blogging! Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit, this time, which long-time readers will know that I have been to this event several times…technically every time. It’s back in Seattle again, which is nice because it’s technically commute-able from my house, although a loooong commute. Last night I actually came up early & visited with Kat, who I haven’t seen in ages. (So long that both of our old kitties have died since the last time we saw each other.)

But now I’m here, and already I’ve seen a bunch of people I know, which is lovely.

First up, a presentation on responsive web design in Drupal, by a guy on the Omega theme team.

To be covered, pitfalls dealing with: images, menus, layouts (will this work?), CSS (not too much detail, but some high-level stuff), performance.

(Wifi is being weird here….)

max-width 100% on images, keeps everything from going outside of its containing box, even if width is set bigger than screen.

Adaptive Image Module? doesn’t use it. Sets a cookie with browser width, to get the right size image. which does weird things when rotating screen, apparently.

high dpi screens of various sorts.1px = 4 retina pixels. (wtf?) large but optimized is still large. retina.js – lazy load of high resolution images, only if high res screen. prefers using css3 to draw stuff instead of images: the obvious stuff, gradients, transparencies, borders, etc. (buttons!) ok, he’s sorta talking about the REALLY obvious stuff.

some weird snobby moments about browsers.

responsive as a moment for rethinking menus and how to get people to the info they need.

oh, superfish. I’ve used superfish about a zillion times. and now superfish can tell if you’re touch or hover. I think I’m in love.

he does two menus: one for desktop, one for mobile. (altho i was really frustrated with the pnwds summit site’s mobile menu, because I couldn’t find schedule link IN THE MENU. hrm.) but the js for how it was done in this case will be in the notes.

jquery “slidetoggle”?

display suite module. includes block as a field? ood for more complex sites. define gridsets. advanced layout stuff.

breakpoint selection… I still think that we might get something interesting with ems, better than all this pixels stuff. I think he’s on the wrong track with the px stuff. but yes, use floats creatively. (again, that’s some of the wildly obvious stuff.)

damn I just want to completely redesign my.e.e. Or at least borrow Justin’s brain for a week to get started.

“.tpls”? template files.

work with, not against, designer — then again, happily, our designer is all about the mobile. 🙂

Sass. “broke all my bad habits” (would that help with trying to keep track of css in cascade? and what about Less? which one did Amy G want to get into?)

grid classes in display suite? something to look into.

mediaquery.js – change layout completely, moving the actual html around. (huh.)

sleepy.

performance.

aaaaand the browser on my tablet is being crashy. #ironyalert

know your audience. [PLEASE STOP SAYING UTILIZE.]

background images/image sprites. someone else suggests using svg, not image sprites. and then the issue of printing, and what happens when all the images disappear? :\

display suite vs delta module in omega? (well, for one thing, delta is going away) whoooosh, that went right over my head.

omega 4 is a complete rewrite. well. focused on performance. all sass, all the time. have to learn that if you want to use omega.

[hungry. sleepy. should’ve gotten coffee & pastry or something.]

I wonder if we could leverage sass into some of the weird forena stuff. also, Dave said something about trying to integrate Views & Forena. which might allow for some interesting directions.

[twitter bootstrap is Less? if Erik’s expertise is with bootstrap, then we might be leaning Less. is there another theme system that’s more Less-friendly?]

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Atlanta trip wrapup, part the first

I’m going to do a separate post, quite likely on my work blog, about all the things I learned, want to try, etc. For that I want to be someplace where I can have my tablet sitting next to my work computer so I can look at my notes while I write my wrapup.

But I kinda want to write about the trip itself. I realized shortly before I left that this is the first time I’ve been on a plane since SxSW 2009; the first time I’ve been to the south; my first new place outside the northwest since the first time I went to SxSW; my first time in the Eastern time zone since a training I went to in Boston in…? 1999 maybe? It was for a CRM-type system we were installing at United Way. Why yes, I am a homebody.

Flying still pretty much sucks. Getting to the airport from Olympia is a hassle; this time I took the airport shuttle (another first), which meant leaving the house at 3:45am to catch an 8am flight. Since I had a D&D game the night before, I ended up staying up with C, cleaning, finishing my packing, and watching Zoolander. Twice. Because it’s that awesome. Going through security with both a tablet (mine) and a laptop (work’s) was a bit crazy. I had so many bins. Both ways security was not all that horrible, although the whole idea of it just rubs me entirely the wrong way. No backscatter for me, by the way, just X-ray.

I used the airline’s app to get my boarding pass on my phone. I’ll admit that I find the whole thing still sort of magical; and it was nice to have one less thing to carry. Also, fabulous use of QR codes, which get mocked a lot.

But flying itself is tiring, noisy, and crowded. (Also sort of miraculous, when you think about it.) I’ve been in a window seat near the back both times; to Atlanta the whole row was full — the whole plane was full — and it was awkward being crammed in there; on the way home (I’m in the air now) I have a row to myself, although on the other side of the aisle is a woman traveling with her toddler. That poor kid; spent most of the climb to cruising altitude FREAKING THE HELL OUT.

The tablet has been fabulous through this whole trip. I really appreciate the WordPress Android app, and keep wondering what similar options are available for Drupal. There’s two parts of it: a simple interface (if I want I can go to full-screen writing) and local drafts. I’m writing a blog post on an airplane! Ok, there’s actually wifi on the plane, but it’s $13, which is just silly. So I’m writing a local draft, which I’ll probably publish later this evening, and it’s as simple as changing the status and saving again. Besides the plane, it’s nice when conference center wifi is flaky, as it so often is. I just wish I could have used it with my work blog, but the authentication didn’t work. 🙁 I’m pretty sure I know why, and it makes sense, but it’s a bummer. I love the smallness and versatility of this tablet, with the keyboard for all my note-taking, and then taking it off to read on the plane. I took my work laptop, in case I wanted to try to get any work done, and other than for going through airport security, I think I only took it out once, and that was to work on an Excel spreadsheet. I even checked my email on this thing…altho Outlook in the browser is horrible, it was good enough for skimming through to make sure nothing had exploded.

As for Atlanta…the gracious thing to say is that it was not generally my cup of tea. Some of that was probably the neighborhood around my hotel and the conference center, on the edge of Georgia Tech. It felt dead. Part of it was disorientation: I swear that every time I had to make a choice of which direction to go, I picked the wrong one. Every time. Thank goodness for Maps on my phone. Then again, much the same thing happened when I rented a car in Rochester, NY for HighEdWeb, way back when. Got completely lost twice in the space of about 15 minutes. And a lot of it was the weather. The temperature was about the same as Olympia; we’ve been having lovely September late summer/pre-fall, so upper 70s, low 80s. But the humidity! Which I know is a cliche, but damn, apparently there’s a reason for that. It just felt horrible. We got some thunderstorms, including a tornado watch, and luckily I only once got caught in a few raindrops. It was especially disconcerting to look out the window at overcast, and my brain isn’t expecting anything much warmer than low/mid-60s, but then to go outside and just melt. Bleh.

It did clear up Tuesday afternoon, just in time for the conference to be over, so I took the MARTA out to Decatur. Originally, the idea was to go buy some yarn and knitting needles. I brought a project with me, and ended up doing so much knitting on the plane & in sessions that I (finally!) got to a point where I had to stop. I have to decide whether to put buttons or snaps on this tablet sleeve I’ve been working on erratically since January, and until I’ve got something in hand, I don’t want to either finish it out flat or make buttonholes. I was pretty sure I’d want knitting for the plane ride. So I looked up knitting shops around Atlanta, and the one closest to a MARTA stop was in Decatur. And then I saw on the map that there was a Batdorf & Bronson coffeeshop like three doors down, so that seemed like fate. (B&B is an Oly institution, and the only other place that they have a roastery & cafe is in Atlanta. I don’t know why.) I’m glad I took the trip. It got me out of the tiny dull loop between the hotel and the conference center; the weather was finally manageable, and Decatur itself was quite nice. I found a lovely inexpensive yarn. The barista at B&B had gone to Evergreen for a year, and he also made a fabulous mocha, plus recommended a good place for dinner. That turned out to be incredibly delicious. (Joel’s on Ponce de Leon, FWIW.) There were quite a few cute quirky shops, an old courthouse & Civil War cannon, and music playing on a plaza. I came home at sunset, and by then the weather was pleasant, and I was in a much better mood.

What else?

That whole staying up all night on Saturday thing ended up mitigating the jet lag; it was like a full reset. I just wish I’d taken a nap Saturday afternoon. (We had a great game, I think mostly because I spent the whole day reading & writing & prepping.)

The hotel was swanky. I loved the bathroom, but found the abundance of overly fussy (?) doormen a little unnerving. Dude, I can open the door myself; I don’t need four guys greeting me and opening the door.

I sort of want to write about what I observed re: black/white, but I don’t quite know how or even whether to address it. In some ways it reminded me of L.A., only more so.

There was an Interface/FLOR (carpet tiles!) showroom close by, and I dropped in out of curiosity. Alas, it was their commercial showroom, but the woman at the reception desk was delightful. So friendly and engaging, plus she gave me the latest catalog, and it looks like now they have residential showrooms in both Seattle and Portland.

I don’t know that I have much more to say about it at the moment, halfway through my flight home. I’m very much looking forward to being back in Olympia.

[edit: written Weds, ended up not getting this posted until Friday morning]

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vassar lessons learned

webdesign.vassar.edu

“sample site”

staffing: director, assistant director (& partner in computing), 4 designers, one developer

“condensed core” in cascade. they do use includes for (some?) navigation so they can make system-wide changes w/out republishing all.

they do custom designs for every site. but at the same time, they’re working on the content in the sample site design in cascade.

they post about projects on their blog.

Communications “site” is assets outside Cascade, plus “Secure”, plus “Internal”, plus site-specific — would do it differently, only two sites, if they did it over.

“Announcements” go to database publish. How odd. I guess this is where I’d look at setting up a WordPress and having a block to include.

Regions in sets of 3: pre, actual, post.

PHP server variables. Where we’ve done weird things with the folder.

Man, everybody uses index blocks for navigation.

[system-view:internal] -> “you won’t see this here but it’ll be on the live site”
[system-view:external] -> some php stuff

They don’t use workflow or publish sets.

Publish everything to a database “CMS Audit”, but they call it “Leave this checked” so people leave it checked. 🙂

Their announcements are organized by year in every site, but they’re published to a database.

Override URL (for links directly to other sites) — that’s intriguing.

It’s all very tidy.

server variables in the htaccess file. how curious.

They do everything on its own domain (english.vassar, etc), and then something quirky for testing.

“Template” is only visible to web team, basically a style guide.

They use PHP to include little bits of catalog, etc., with that internal bit having a note explaining what’s happening. (This seems a lot like what we have in various places.) I’m not sure how I feel about that. Common block of typical business hours. Would that work for us?

reporting – since everything is also written to mysql, all the reporting comes from there. also includes history of redesigns.

gets an email every day of what pages were published, by site, highlighting what’s new, oh hey with a link directly to the CMS!

why secure site for common assets: was particular for a specific project.

their alum site is both Cascade & Harris, together. will have to ask her about that. secure site, then, is to avoid mixed content errors.

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OxygenXML

and Justin’s doppelganger is here again! So weird.

well of course the longbeard (like Oakwright quality) is running this session. and of course he works at UCDavis.

law school has separate instance of cascade.

“loving Cascade”?

Maslow’s law: hammer/nail.

another person who uses Cascade to push content to campus display screens. huh.

what IS coming in 7.2? Ah, he’s going to mention some of the examples where new features obviate oXygen tricks.

that’s the 2nd batman garment I’ve seen here today.

can edit the format & see what objects you want to preview it against, in newer version of cascade. Sweet.

unit testing for xslt? one of those topics I’ve really wanted to figure out.

tool in oxygen to make WSDL more readable

bsf.jar (beans scripting foundation), allows languages to use other languages? ok, like JS in XSLT — the date formatter. which I really like. get version 2.4 from commons.apache.org/bsf

/OxygenXMLEditor/lib – that’s where to put bsf.jar — should fix some of the things that haven’t worked in oxygen that DO work in cascade.

this is basically what I’ve been doing to get things set up! (feeling pretty good about myself)

live coding stuff.

had no idea about the diff tools: directories & files.

how does oxygen deal with html5 — since it’s so loosey-goosey with structure?

sleeeeeepy.

feeling sort of proud of myself: been doing this, what, 3 1/2 months? and I’ve worked out so much of this basically on my own, once I got the recommendation to use oxygen.

see, I knew that using index blocks for navigation was the way to go! otoh, I know Susan is right, and that it’ll take some training etc on our end to get editors doing it right.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING OF. (a single checkbox in the metadata set to decide whether to include in nav.) In 7.2 the builder for dynamic metadata is not going to suck quite so much. (more like the data def builder.)

If you load a DTD, then editing will be context-aware. Sexy. For building those dynamic metadata items (where I’ve just been copy/pasting samples from the HH KB) – thank goodness next version won’t be necessary. (when is that next version coming)

Default to not including in nav, which seems like the more sane choice.

Random thought: in theory you could create a link asset and add IT to the nav, which would probably make that a more consious decision.

outline view. (under the project file list)

ctrl+shift+i does prettifying (I’ve been using a Coda plugin!)

“transformation scenarios”? I’m not seeing the little xml > xsl dropdown thing that I use. XSL engines. Did I do that in some other setting?

FO Processing to do PDF.

Oh, add XHTML to a default thru the scenarios?

XSLT/XQuery input – shows a tree of the XML that’s being transformed. Click and drag into the xsl file?! DAMN. Also with the context-awareness. So all this requires setting up the transformation scenario? But seriously.

Skipping to something “nifty” 🙂 — in site definition, include class “footnote” – how the heck does that work?

Numbering for footnotes via JS inside XSL. Not quite sure I’m following, altho I think if I saw the code for a while it would click. I bet this would be sweet for grouping too.

q: handling includes: he has two different include tags, one local and one for on the server, whichever commented out that he’s not using. a little bit chunky, but not horrible.

showed the debug, so just running to where the cursor is, to figure out a fragment.

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Calendars

No knitting for me in this session. (Current project is at a stage where I have to stop.)

What kind of calendar info is kept in Banner?

He uses web services to auto-publish & update. YES.

Good URLs.

Does create a lot of pages in Cascade.

Ah, they have room schedules, every room on campus? O.o

Homepage has little date block with key calendars, in month layout.

They use banner for most of their scheduling. Interesting. So I’d need to find the R25 equivalents.

Full list for each day, then links to every room. Holy moley.

Also a weekly daybook type schedule with rooms.

Oooh, also a building map.

They really have pretty much every form of calendar layout you could imagine, often broken out by category.

Also faculty schedules. O.o

Wait, did he just say that they used this stuff to power digital signage?

Ok, now get to HOW…

C’mon….

(Really wishing for knitting.)

Yep, digital signage. And a wayfinding app…er, kiosk?

All the input for all the feeds is in banner.

Feed blocks for each of the (three) feeds.

I can so totally do this, if I can get stuff out of R25 and/or figure out how to send stuff from Drupal to Cascade.

Choosing the tool: grouping/recurrance really does require Velocity. (dammit. altho not surprised.) but basic stuff, no recurring: XSLT.

Block with data definition. So blocks instead of pages?

I’m not really following *how* he’s doing this. 🙁 And I’m tired.

Wait, what? This seems a bit convoluted. Forget that: WAY convoluted.

What I really want to see is what the web services code looks like.

I’m sleepy, and I’m ready to get back to work, to try doing some of this stuff.

Wish I’d gone to the workflows session the last time, I heard really good things about it.

Looks like the rain is going to have passed through by the time we get out, so I’m 95% sure I’m going to take bus/train out to Decatur to go to a yarn store, B&B (!), and maybe get dinner, if I can do all that before it gets *too* dark.

All his stuff is on github.com/ericepps/cascade-calendar

Hm. He’s writing CSS in Velocity? I don’t even.