Archive for December 2002

From a favorite email list, now you can have your very own project timeline

How to Build a Web Page in 25 Steps

1. Download a piece of Web authoring software ~ 20 minutes.

2. Think about what you want to write on your Web page ~ 6 weeks.

3. Download the same piece of Web authoring software, because they have released 3 new versions since the first time you downloaded it ~ 20 minutes.

4. Decide to just steal some images and awards to put on your site ~ 1 minute.

5. Visit sites to find images and awards, find 5 of them that you like ~ 4 days.

6. Run setup of your Web authoring software. After it fails, download it again ~ 25 minutes.

7. Run setup again, boot the software, click all toolbar buttons to see what they do ~ 15 minutes.

8. View the source of others’ pages, steal some, change a few words here and there ~ 4 hours.

9. Preview your Web page using the Web Authoring software ~ 1 minute.

10. Try to horizontally line up two related images ~ 6 hours.

11. Remove one of the images ~ 10 seconds.

12. Set the text’s font color to the same color as your background, wonder why all your text is gone ~ 4 hours.

13. Download a counter from your ISP ~ 4 minutes.

14. Try to figure out why your counter reads "You are visitor number 16.3 E10&quot’ ~ 3 hours.

15. Put 4 blank lines between two lines of text ~ 8 hours.

16. Fine-tune the text, then prepare to load your Web page on your ISP ~ 40 minutes.

17. Accidentally delete your complete web page ~ 1 second.

18. Recreate your web page ~ 2 days.

19. Try to figure out how to load your Web page onto your ISP’s server ~ 3 weeks.

20. Call a patient friend to find out about FTP ~ 30 minutes.

21. Download FTP software ~ 10 minutes.

22. Call your friend again ~ 15 minutes.

23. Upload your web page to your ISP’s server ~ 10 minutes.

24. Connect to your site on the web ~ 1 minute.

25. Repeat any and all of the previous steps ~ eternity.

Business 2.0 – How To Succeed in 2003 is a gallery of advice from the best in their fields including Michael Dell, Tina Brown, Dean Kamen, and even Kathy Ireland (yes, the girl with the body).

Jeremy Anwyl hit the nail on the head with his Build a Better Website advice.

Christopher Schmitt, author of Designing CSS Web Pages, has written a tutorial for changing your headlines from drab to awe in Making Headlines With CSS.

Remember Googlefight? Meet SpellWeb, which is Spellfight version of Googlefight. Find out if "Email" or "E-mail" is more popular. Alas, capitalization makes no difference since it’s not case sensitive.

The point here is not to argue over which way to spell electronic mail is correct, but to see which is being used more often. Therefore, if I am in control of a Web site’s style sheet, I’d want to go with the one that’s more popular so it’ll show up more often in search engine results.

Surprisingly, "Email" or "E-mail" are not too far apart in the results. Once again, it’s a toss up!

Even though "Web site" is two words, you can check that one out against "website."

Darn shame that we can’t check for capitalization, a frequent problem with Web-related words.

Kenneth Tibbets has written a thorough review on Opera 7 at Webreference. The review covers five basics: JavaScript gotchas, NodeLists, style gotchas, keyPress events, and display and scrollTo gotchas.

I typed a long ramble about processes sparked by an email from Steve Pilgrim. Today, I went to go post it through my PDA (big mistake) and lost it all. So @#($* @#$(* about it.

Instead of rewriting the rambles, I’ll direct you to Digital Web Magazine‘s new topic for December: IA Navigation. Starts with an excerpt from Christina Wodtke‘s book and an interview (my last one for DW as I move behind the scenes into the role of managing editor) with Lou Rosenfield and Peter Morville, authors of the Polar Bear book.

The Gnome Knows is a case study from New Architect that explores the leap into paid newsletters.

In Improve Usability and Double Your Return on Investment, Jakob Nielsen says, “There are two big areas of improvement that would double customers’ ability to effectively use the design, thus doubling the company’s benefits from offering the features to the customers. The application must be better integrated with the website, and the Macromedia Flash design must more closely follow the principles for effective graphical user interfaces.”

Just took care of my assigned gift receiver as part of the fun Secret Santa project. This is my second year participating and it’s wonderful doing something for someone with whom I am not acquainted. No revealing who the good kid is until the present has arrived.

“Taxonomies have recently emerged from the quiet backwaters of biology, book indexing, and library science into the corporate limelight. They are supposed to be the silver bullets that will help users find the needle in the intranet haystack, reduce ‘friction’ in electronic commerce, facilitate scientific research, and promote global collaboration. But before this can happen, practitioners need to dispel the myths and confusion, created in part by the multi-disciplinary nature of the task and the hype surrounding content.” [Link Digital Web Magazine]