Notes

Stacey

The quest for the perfect CMS has been – and is – on many web designers’ agendas.

You only have to build a few static web sites before you realise that there are more effective ways of managing and updating content than editing HTML markup by hand.

A new girl in town, Stacey, offers a somewhat different solution to the content management conundrum. Rather than storing your web site content in a traditional database; the open source framework uses folders containing plain text files, images and other resources, which are used to populate the site.

Anthony Kolber, the author of Stacey, states:

The Stacey project is based around two simple ideals: 1. To remove the requirement of HTML knowledge to manage site content; and 2. To remove the requirement of PHP knowledge to edit HTML templates.

These ideals cut to the core of the dilemma this particular content management system faces: Who is it for?

In order to update content on the site, you don’t have to know any HTML, but you need to be able to use FTP and find your way around a not entirely transparent file system, understand key:value pairs and grasp the syntax of Markdown.

In order to edit the HTML templates, you don’t need PHP knowledge, but an understanding of boolean if statements, loops, variables and the context in which they operate is expected.

Although finding people who might fit these particular profiles might seem hard, there are numerous sites, proving that these people actually do exist, and some of them even have rather good, Stacey powered sites.

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HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions

Learn how to build hand-crafted web pages using well-structured XHTML and lean and efficient CSS. By embracing a web standards approach, HTML and CSS Web Standards Solutions enables you to create web sites that not only look great in all modern browsers, but are also accessible to a wide variety of audiences across a range of platforms - from those browsing on everyday computers, to those accessing the web on the latest, emerging mobile devices.

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The Authors

In addition to their role as lecturers in interactive design at the University of Ulster at Belfast, where they have been active in promoting a web standards-based curriculum, Christopher Murphy and Nicklas Persson are practicing designers and digital artists. Their work has featured in a variety of design books and magazines alongside numerous internationally respected designers and they are regular speakers at design conferences and workshops worldwide.

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