Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft is committed to building a better web with with a redesigned MIX Online and its horde of interesting resources, from articles to web development tools to delightful goodies.
We’ve all been guilty of bashing Microsoft for several different reasons, but now is a great time to give it a second (or a hundredth) chance. After all, it’s Christmas!
Articles and Opinions
Let’s start with readable sources on MIX Online, the Articles and Opinions sections. Skim through them and you’ll get a good sense that MIX Online shaping up to be a reputable web design source that’s passionate about web standards, user experience, and best practices. Read Nishant Kothary’s walkthrough of the site redesign, transforming moleskine sketches to a cool community running on their new CMS platform (more on that later).
Oxite
Oxite seems to have all the magic keywords you’d want in a CMS: it’s open source, extensible, and standards-compliant. Whether you want to put up a new blog or a full-blown website, you might want to try Oxite.
One of the most exciting things we’ve seen as a result of the Oxite launch, is renewed attention to “standards first, markup first” functionality across the board. While the other engines don’t claim to be focused on “standards first”, you can fully expect that some will be tweaked soon to encourage and support professional front-end web engineering best practices. The positive feedback from those of you doing “standards first, markup first” development has been encouraging, and will undoubtedly influence all of us who build platforms.
Oomph
Oomph makes building, discovering, and styling Microformats a more pleasant experience. View Microformats-powered sites with the Internet Explorer add-on, add contact hCard information using the Windows Live Writer plug-in, and grab some CSS styles for your own pages.
Descry
Descry is an upcoming tool that will help interpret massive amounts of data through visualization.
A Website Named Desire
A Website Named Desire not exactly a MIX Online product, but an interesting offshoot nonetheless. It’s the virtual version of this 25×33″ print that depicts the complex process of building a website. Want!
Originally posted on December 26, 2008 @ 10:18 pm