A good amount of chatter in the Twitterverse is always reserved for the naysayers that question cross-browser compatibility, “but does it work in IE?” “does it require a browser prefix?”, etc. This session wasn’t tailored to answer those questions; cross-browser compatibility issues are obvious when dealing with a(n) new/upcoming web standard.

This was a great session for anyone interested in learning why relational databases are being replaced with more robust ways of storing data. This was not an extremely technical session, so if you are already working with document-oriented databases you probably are aware of this content.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The #1 reason for a delayed site launch is usually because there is a delay in having all of the content created, approved, gathered and delivered. It's just one of those things that always seems much easier than it really is. So clients and web teams usually don't pay as much attention to it as they should. Especially early on in the process.

Sure, they know what kind of content will go on the site pretty early on. It wouldn't be possible to complete the site structure without knowing that. But knowing that there will be a "What We Do" page, and having final copy for that page are two completely different things.

So how do you make this process easier?

'Satori' is the state of sudden indescribable enlightenment in Zen Buddhism.
Indescribable perplexity is the constant state of a Joomla! newbie.

"What's the difference between a component and a module?" "Why is my module not showing up on this page?" "Why are there so many HTML tables?" "Why are there question marks in my HTML?"

Questions that seem so trivial to me now had my head spinning and my mouse clicking through folders and files of Matrix-like code. Much like learning anything else, though, taking a step back to understand what I was looking at helped straighten out the learning curve.

I've found that there are two things that need to be understood to truly get your toes wet in the Joomla! pool.

Developing a website for your organization, whether it is a new project or a redesign, can be a huge undertaking. And a very important one. Because so many different elements come into play throughout the process, it can also take a lot longer than expected to get a website launched. Below are 5 things clients can do on their end, to make sure that the project goes smoothly and stays on track.

We are working on a site that uses the Joomla! page class suffix parameter on each menu item to change the design (through CSS) of each page. In this case each section/page of the site is defined by a specific color.

As part of the design we made the menu item rollovers and drop down menus match the color of the page's background/accent color. This could easily be done in the CSS by targeting the unique "item" class that is added to every menu item as such:

By now I’m sure that a good number of you have heard of Foursquare, Gowalla and the growth of location-based social networks. It seems I can't check my email lately without finding at least one blog post or article related to location-based networks in my inbox.

Location-based social networks (LBSNs) are a trend that marketers and business owners should keep an eye on. Thanks to the rapid growth in the use of mobile devices, consumers are now going online whether they’re at the office or at the grocery store. Just the other day I was having dinner with four friends and at one point we realized that every single one of us had updated our Facebook, Foursquare and/or Twitter status during dinner.

JDay West 2010 at eBay town hall in San Jose, CA, Andrew Eddie gave the conference an overview of the state of the upcoming release of Joomla! 1.6. He also fielded question regarding the new ACL (access control level), nested categories, and more unified parameters for components, modules and plugins.

When I say RYAN you say OZIMEK! A motivational keynote by Ryan Ozimek, President of Open Source Matters, gave everyone an overview of the state of Joomla's financials, legals and more.

Ron Severdia got us all thinking about how we can make the Joomla! UX (user experience) better and keep it in mind when designing and building sites and extensions.

Community Leadership Team member, Paul Orwig sent a strong call to arms for everyone to take action in the Joomla! community. He gave ways to get involved, resources and more than a few reasons to step up.

The big announcement by Louis at Joomla! Day West 2010 was the separation of the Joomla! CMS and the Joomla! Framework. He explained why the separation was beneficial to growing Joomla! development, features and functionality.

Unfortunately I ran out of space on the camera, so this video is very short and only covers around the first 5 minutes of Luis' keynote.

Arron announced the release of the latest version of MooTools 1.3. He also showed some powerful tools to help debug and troubleshoot JavaScript.

As you probably know the Joomla! framework has a built in system message/notification system that provides users with various UI feedback messages such as errors, warnings and success.

We have put these Joomla! system messages in a modal window.

For those of you who want to listen to the audio of last week's show, a link is below...

Listen to audio of show here.

We are happy to announce that we have launched a shiny new website for the Women’s Refugee Commission. The redesigned site went live last Thursday, and was unveiled during their annual Voices of Courage Luncheon in New York City. We are now excited to share with all of you!

The Women’s Refugee Commission is a non-profit organization that advocates for laws, policies and programs to improve the lives and protect the rights of refugee and internally displaced women, children and young people. The organization, a subdivision of the International Rescue Committee, was founded over 20 years ago and today, their web presence plays a larger role in building awareness and raising donations.

As some of you may know, yesterday I helped launch a photo campaign for Latism (Latinos in Social Media), an organization I am very proud to be a part of. The title of the campaign - “I am Latino2”.

The news has been buzzing about the issues surrounding Arizona and the issue of racial profiling. Latism, which is an online home for many Latinos, decided that they needed to address this and show solidarity among the Latino community. This campaign is not about politics, rather about support and pride in the Latino culture.