National Association of Government Webmasters

Presented by Zoe Gillenwater

The objective of this session will be to learn how to clean up existing pages for a minimum level of accessibility, for compliance with Section 508. Designers who are stuck with old sites lacking any accessibility features whatsoever are often overwhelmed when it comes to all the improvements they need to make. This session will teach designers which accessibility features to focus on for the greatest impact when doing a cleanup on an existing site. Designers will learn how to carry out these techniques on a per-page basis, as well as Dreamweaver tricks for making changes across the entire site and increasing efficiency. A basic knowledge of HTML and CSS is required, but the accessibility techniques themselves will be aimed at those inexperienced in accessibility.

Presented by Brett Williamson

This presentation on SharePoint will be most informative for those people that haven't implemented SharePoint in their organization, but have either been asked to look into it (to see what all the fuss is about) or want to learn more about the product from someone that has had hands on knowledge of it. We will examine this product from the perspective of the conservative shopper. This is not a technical overview of the product, rather a ground level investigation of its overall features and capabilities. There will be many demonstrations to support the integration of the SharePoint Standard product with Microsoft Office Suite 2007. In addition, we will examine many of the "Lessons Learned" from the implementation of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) in a government organization. Finally, there will be many resource materials made available to help you with your own research and investigation of this product after you've returned home from conference.

Presented by Marc Drummond

One of the key parts of designing or redesigning any web site is developing the actual design - from fonts and colors to the layout and menu systems - and presenting that design for approval and usability testing. One of the most useful tools in that process is developing an interactive prototype of the site design that shows how a few sample pages look and work without developing all the HTML, CSS, and supporting graphics necessary for the actual site template. Adobe CS3 offers a number of tools to help with this process, particularly Fireworks, which now has tools specifically designed for creating multi-page interactive prototypes that can be easily changed and used to export the actual graphics in the final site. We will also look at ways of developing thumbnails for site designs and testing different color schemes for a site's layout. With a good workflow, we'll design a site in four hours of less! This workshop will be conducted through demonstrations and files will be provided for users with Adobe CS3 to follow along, though this is not required.

Presented by Christine Martinez and Leslie Labreque

Yes, that's right, your Open Source gurus are back. We want to share all the secrets we have learned from using Joomla! If you have ever thought about using it or have had an interest in what it is capable of, then this is the course for you. We don't want to just tell you what it can do, we want you to see, test it out, and witness what it can do. You don't have to have programmer experience to use it, but if you do we can show you how far you can stretch it! This session will demonstrate: How to install Joomla!; Create a pure CSS custom template (tableless); Modify pre-existing templates; How to select, install and test components and modules for your site such as Calendaring, Forums, Weather, RSS Feeds, Photo Galleries and more; How to create custom modules; How to create custom 'fly-out' menus; Loading and Using Custom WYSIWYG editors; and User management.

Presented by Jon Gunderson

The objective of this seminar is for participants to understand how to improve the accessibility of web resources to people with disabilities using best practices web standards approach to implement Federal Section 508 standards and W3C WCAG accessibility guidelines. The workshop will present tools and techniques needed for implementing accessible design and the benefits of accessible design to everybody, including developers by creating web designs that are easier to create and maintain. The workshop will discuss how organizations can work together to improve the accessibility of purchased web resources and services using a collaboration model, and developing a common set of purchasing requirements. A number of free tools to support a best practices approach will be demonstrated and compared to commercial web accessibility tools.

Presented by Christopher Reed

Earlier this year, the latest version of Visual Studio was released. For web development, the free VS product is Visual Web Developer 2008 Express. In this session, we will use VWD 2008 along with the latest version of SQL Server Express to build a variety of web applications. We will focus on applications using the data controls, including the new ListView, the Membership API for ASP.NET, and ASP.NET AJAX. We will also review the latest additions to the ASP.NET environment.

Bill Brown

Ever heard of the web site, TheHolierGrail.com? Bill Brown was one of the first to crack "The Holy Grail of Web Design," a multi column layout using CSS. In this 4-hour session, Bill will cover:

Single Source Multi Column Layouts (The Holier Grail)
  - In-depth explanation of several single source, multicolumn layouts.
  - Step-by-step tutorial on construction and styling
  - Benefits and Pitfalls

Foundation
  - Is your HTML the "source" of your CSS trouble?
    (aka <B>ed and <BR>eakfast Pages)
    (avoiding "Cousin Jenny" website design)
  - Global reset style sheets

Styling for Javascript
  - External stylesheets
  - To class or not to class?

HTTP Requests
  - Stylesheet caching (use AND prevention)
  - How loading external stylesheets affects download time.

Rounded Corner Windows with/without Transparent Backgrounds
  - Using images to achieve rounded corners
  - Rounded corners without images

Sprite Backgrounds
  - Saving bandwidth and download time with sprites
  - Usage and explanation.

Simple Semantic Tabbing
  - Maximizing source and available html elements to achieve tabbing
  - Involves some discussion of JavaScript to achieve switching, etc.

Forms
  - Overview of accessible form styling techniques
  - Troublesome form elements

Tables
  - When (and why) tables aren't evil
  - Capitalizing on some slightly obscure table elements
  - Best practices

Lists and Menus
  - Problems with CSS Hover menus
  - Quick discussion of some common list styling issues
  - The little known DL/DT/DD

Style Families
  - Definition
  - Implementation
  - Style Switching

Image Replacement Techniques (and Hiding Text for Accessibility)
  - Concept
  - Methods
  - Pitfalls

Drop Shadows
  - Text shadowing
  - Image and box shadows with and without images

Media-Specific Styling
  - Specifying media
  - No more javascript or page reloads for printable pages!

Semantic vs. Pedantic
  - How to balance semantic source with desired styles
  - Page bloat vs browser constraints
            ...vs CSS limitations
            ...vs accessibility

Browser Support, Troubleshooting and Testing
  - Multiple IE's and IEs4Lin
  - Some common fixes to try when something isn't working
  - Known bugs and trouble with css hacks

CSS 3 Promises (and Problems)
  - Overview of some CSS 2 and CSS 3 selectors and other advancements
  - Problems with CSS 2 and CSS 3 selectors and other advancements

Custom Troubleshooting Session
  - Question and Answer Session
  - Guests are encouraged to bring troublesome snippets for discussion

Richard Weinberg

Introduce MySQL and PHP code and routines to build two to three fully functional applications that touch different aspects of automating web functions into the Government environment.

Applications that will developed during class:

(2 to 3 from the group below based on class time and goals. Code will be supplied for all):

1. An announcement/news/highlight system with a built in WYWIG web editor with time sensitive posts with auto-start and auto-expire
2. A document management system - Upload files with the ability to set the page they should be accessible from (using ftp upload).
3. A basic calendaring system, where posted events will show up as a highlighted 'day' on the calendar. In addition you will learn how to extract the events to use in a tabular format. This system will have with the ability to tag "important" events, which in turn display in a different color or be redirected to a special area.
4. A Link Management System
5. Code to retrieve row data in alternating colors or in a grid format for page legibility