I just launched a site that I’ve been working on for a couple months for KnowledgeWorks Foundation, a new initiative called Ohio Education Matters. The site sets out to inform the public about the state of education in Ohio, and to a lesser degree, the rest of the country.

My duties included designing the site, as well as setting up the Drupal 6 instance that makes up the meat and potatoes of the site.  Some aspects of Drupal were less than ideal for what the site needed, but it all worked out in the end.

Check it out, and enjoy!

Been a while since I’ve posted (sorry about that), but I had to rant about this annoying little process.

So I have this freshly installed Windows XP virtual machine and I needed to install a PDF reader. I used to use Foxit Reader, but I always have problems with the toolbars staying arranged in the right places, so that’s out.  So I headed to Adobe’s site to get their reader.  Immediately, I noticed that the installer package contains Acrobat.com running on top of Adobe AIR (which I don’t have installed, so it’s nice enough to do that for me, too).  Seriously?  I just want the damn PDF reader.  So I suck it up and click “OK”.

What happens next is what really blew my mind. I get prompted by Firefox to install the “Adobe Download Manager”. Download Manager?  Seriously? I’ve already got a download manager…it’s called Firefox.  So I dig a little deeper to see why they’re using this.  In their FAQ, they say they’re using to “allow you to pause and resume large downloads”.  Large downloads, huh?  Like a 40mb PDF reader? Bottom line here, is whatever happened to just clicking a link that says “download”?

I guess it was inevitable, given how their install processes for the Creative Suite programs have gotten out-of-hand.  But seriously, all those hoops to just get a PDF reader?  On my Mac at work, I can use Quick Look by hitting Space on a PDF icon and instantly  see the PDF.  Instantly, no splash screen for the reader, just the PDF, open right in front of me in a fraction of a second.  Just sayin’…

Oh well, Adobe’s slowly going the Microsoft route, and I guess there’s nothing that can be done about it.

In the world of accessible text replacement for web apps, one technique reigns supreme: sIFR.  Using a combination of Flash and Javascript, sIFR combs your markup and looks for elements you specify, replacing them with small Flash movies, to allow you to use non-standard fonts in your app.  For examples, look no further than this blog.  Post titles and the header on the home page use the technique to enable the use of Rockwell (a font that ships with MS Office 2003).But I digress, you didn’t come here to learn about sIFR – there are better places to do such things. You came to take part in the heated debate about the correct pronunciation of the acronym.  Some of my coworkers and I have nearly come to fisticuffs over the proper pronunciation, so why not join in on the fun?

Here’s the deal: I believe it is pronounced with a short “i”, a la “sift”.  Some of my coworkers believe it is pronounced with a long “i”, a la “site”.  Phonetically, they’re saying “cipher”. Obviously, I am correct.  My reasoning: the “I” in sIFR stands for Inman (soft “i”), as in scalable Inman Flash Replacement, because Shaun Inman initially developed the technology. Also, I believe the pronunciation of the first letter of each word in an acronym should be maintained, if it results in an easily spoken acronym.  For example – NASA arguably rolls off the tongue a little more easily than nay-say.  You can see my point.  Their sole reason: “cipher” sounds cooler.  Shenanigans, I say.

So now it’s time to hopefully get a collective opinion on the matter.  What say you, fellow geeks?