New Forum Launched! Options

[cre8pc]

A new forum has been added, underneath the Web Site Hospital. It's the brainchild of Barry Welford, with input from some of the moderators. It was our answer to what we saw as a huge demand for help with certain design concerns by the web development community.

It's called Cross-browser Device Assessment Panel (CDAP). The purpose of this new forum is similar to the Web Site Hospital that we've had for years. Members will have the ability to do online testing and get feedback and solutions for improvements and repairs.

The key to this new forum is involvement by peers and experts. The new forum has many "stickies" that contain resources, tools and other forms of assistance. The forum itself is designed for ongoing input and review. Those in the community who want to share their skills and knowledge with accessibility, browser issues, CSS, etc. will have plenty of opportunities to do so.

The press release is set for official release on March 7.

For additional info: Submission Guidance

[Tangaroa]

This is why I love the Forums so much...constant improvement (amongst other things of course)! I believe it is a good idea to bring all those Cross-Browser questions together in one forums. This way new visitors (and of course the regular members) will find their way to the right answers concerning cross-browser development.

Again a big plus for the Moderators and the Forums in general!

Rgds

T.

[praveen]

OMG!! More forums to browse through

[Tim]

Barry has been working on this behind the scenes for quite awhile, and it's great to see it come to life.

Thanks for all your hard work, Barry

[eKstreme]

Very interesting idea. I like it very much. Congrats and well done!

By the way, praveen, don't browse forums, just use the new posts search. Saves time

[bwelford]

Thanks indeed, guys and gals. In a sense it was a labor of love, since I meet so many people who are completely unaware of what is going on around them. I've even seen one website that is completely correct in Internet Explorer and shows only a black screen in Firefox and Opera. Perhaps I can recount a story to illustrate the point I want to make.

Off Topic

I was always amused by the television programmes about Leo Buscaglia, the Love professor from USCA. He was into relationships and self. He was a great lover of leaves. For one lecture, he put a leaf on every student's desk before the lecture. Of course the students came in and most cleaned off the leaf from their desk. He then got them to think about the leaf and of course the clean-desk freeks had to sheepishly retrieve their leaves. He then pointed out the miraculous nature and beauty in every one of the billions of leaves that are around us. ..

I think most people think no more about other people and what browser/device combination they may be using than those students did about the leaves. We tend to assume that the other person sees what we see. It's never, ever true.

Most regulars here are aware of this. Perhaps 5% of all Internet users are aware in the sense that they are constantly watching out where they may get tripped up. If we can bump that 5% up to say 6%, or 8% or more by having this Forum, then I think we can all be very pleased.

[praveen]

Very interesting idea. I like it very much. Congrats and well done!

By the way, praveen, don't browse forums, just use the new posts search. Saves time

thats what i tend to do most of the time. but once in a while just go to the forums in search of something specific

thanks for the Suggestion though

[cre8pc]

I, too, would like to thank Barry for driving this forward and not giving up. Liz, our Blog Editor, jumped on it as well and the two of them really had a passion for this project, which has been in the works for awhile. Adrian, and others, were the voices of reason and why, and this helped flesh out the kinks.

I can't take any credit whatsoever. I'm the "ad lady" these days...trying to LEARN how to generate revenue here. We're not used to actually earning money, ha ha. But, knowing we can pay for ourselves and do more things, such as pay for press releases, is cool. All I did for this new forum was play Indian Chief and push some official buttons.

I would direct all questions to Barry and/or Liz, for your guides to this new forum and ways to enhance it and make it the useful tool it is hoped it can be for the Community.

As always, we thank you all in the Cre8 Community for your support.

[AbleReach]

Mr. Bwelford is The Man. His dedication and high standards have been an inspiration to observe, as he brought this forum from idea to roll-out.


Elizabeth

[bwelford]

I hate it when people get all mushy.

Thanks for the kind words, folks, but Elizabeth deserves a large part of the credit for opening my eyes to some of the mobile and accessible issues. I'd like to mention too that the whole admin/moderation team deserves credit. We've really tried to carve out as clearly as we can a slice of 'stuff' that was already rolling along. This was so that it was easier for people to grasp the concept and hopefully encourage some new visitors we haven't seen before. The same collegial spirit that is evident 'out front' is present even more so in the back. There were sometimes differences of opinion as we attempted to do the surgery and we'll continue to tweak and refine boundaries to make the process as efficient as we can.

However all that has been developed so far is an infrastructure. This will be a success or failure to the extent the Cre8asite community finds this a useful innovation and gets involved. So please use it. Also if you have access to particular browser/device combinations that are somewhat less common, then please take a look in there from time to time and see if someone is asking for the kind of help you can give.