Archive for September 2003

IIS. No, Apache. No, IIS. Enough. IIS vs. Apache, Looking Beyond the Rhetoric compares the two servers in rhetorical fashion with a few tables for visuals. As a tech editor of an upcoming book, I’ve been playing with both and have had fun doing it. As for meryl.net, it uses Apache. [Link: Webreference]

It was bound to happen that a software developer for handheld devices come up with a program for kids. This is not the first thing I’ve seen aimed at kids as I’ve reviewed a few PalmOS games in the past.

PDA Playground isn’t for kids who have a PDA, but rather for adults who have one and need to get their kids ages 3 to 7 years to stop saying, “Are we there yet?&#148 or “I’m bored!”

When my daughter played those kid games I had on the PalmOS, I worried she would mess other things up by accident. This program turns the PDA into a kid zone until you exit with a password. The line is drawn, here’s the kid’s playground and the restricted area, do not pass without password.

I still won’t trust my 4-year-old with this because I fear he’ll beat the screen till it’s full of scratches or worse, ink (yeah, he would). On the other hand, I would’ve trusted my oldest with it when she was that age, but she is too old for the games.

Yes, another new version of Dreamweaver has been released. As much as I hate (or rather my wallet does) frequent releases, I’ve seen the release and it looks good. The interface is blue, but more user-friendly than plain old MX. If you are using Dreamweaver 4 or less, I recommend the upgrade.

Those on MX, the upgrade depends on your needs, how often you use Dreamweaver, etc. Take a look at the upgrade guide and see what you think. It has greater CSS support, which is a big step forward.

Read the GnomeReview of Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest.

Lockergnome Webmaster Weekly has step-by-step instructions on RSS. You may have been hearing a lot about it, but it doesn’t make much sense until you try it. See if this tutorial does the trick.

Also in this issue is my review of Google Hacks by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest.

Listamatic provides examples of creating lists and navigation bars using CSS.

While on the topic of CSS, Douglas Bowman wrote, “Making the Absolute, Relative” based on a question he received on the Adaptive Path redesign he did.

Speaking of absolute and relative, Shirley wrote an easy-to-understand tutorial on how to relative archive URLs (a problem I’ve had that I just shrugged off by using absolute URLs) in MovableType.

[Links: Webreference]

OK, this is self-serving, but seriously… some of you may want to see two older Palms that are up for sale and still work! I hadn’t touched them in years and was amazed. US Robotics Palm Pilot 5000 and 3Com Palm III are posted. The m100 will be posted later (I had to go to bed sometime!) and there’s a Cassiopeia for Pocket PC fans.

I had forgotten to post a review of Speed Up Your Site is a must-have for every designer and webmaster’s library. This should be on your desk, not the bookshelf because books on the bookshelf aren’t used as much as those within arm’s length.

Many people learn by example. When reading documentation explaining the features of functionality, it doesn’t always make sense until seeing it in action. For instance, in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) line-height is explained as:

{
line-height:
   normal|npx|n%|…;
}

That isn’t going to make much sense to many of you even if you know CSS. What if I gave you an example of:

{
line-height: 150%;
}

Obviously, the 150% is represented by n% where n is the number. This command is telling the Web page to add spacing of about 1.5 lines.

Designing Websites for Every Audience starts with a chapter on usability with a focus on understanding users and the principles of usability. That’s the only lecture of the book and the rest is case studies.

The book has 25 case studies sorted by user goals, which include learners, shoppers, connection-seekers, transactors, business browsers, and fun-seekers. Each case study covers the old site and the transition to the new design. Essentially, a before and after, which is popular these days with interior design TV programs.

The case study pages are easy to scan. Every one has the company information, site information, users with their goals and tasks, goals of the redesign, and pictures. Benum uses a variety of Web sites for the case studies and discusses the problems with the old design. Then, she analyzes the new design explaining the common traps that have been disposed of and the action taken to improve the user experience.

The pages are colorful including color screenshots of the designs. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Some of the side notes have a color background with black font making it hard to read, but this is the only negative thing in the book.

We have plenty of excellent books on how to improve the user experience when designing Web pages, but there are few that guide you through actual examples. Any Web designer who learns by example should have this one on the desk for referencing when working on a redesign.

VITAL STATISTICS:
TITLE: Designing Websites for Every Audience
AUTHOR: Ilise Benun
PUBLISHER: How Design Books
PUBLICATION DATE: January 2003
ISBN: 158180301X
FORMAT: Paperback
PAGES: 144
PRICE: USD: 34.99
CDN: 46.09
UK: 24.99

Head Gnomie, Chris Pirillo, has been encouraging Lockergnome readers to drop the email newsletter and instead subscribe through RSS because many of the enewsetters were bouncing into the spam box or not even reaching subscribers because of the ISP preventing them from reaching their inboxes.

Steve Outing has written more on the topic in With E-mail Dying, RSS Offers Alternative as well as InternetNews.

I’ve been familiar with RSS ever since I played with Dave Winer’s Radio UserLand back in late 2001. Thanks to him, I learned about RSS and its power. I believe he started the news aggregator wave. I used Radio for about a year and liked its aggregator. The only reason I stopped using it is because I couldn’t use all of its powerful features and pay full price since I already established my blog with Movable Type and prefer it for blogging purposes.

Anyway, RSS is a great tool and it has a big and bright future ahead. But, does it replace eNewsletters? Not right now. Though, I’m using Feeddemon from the ever-talented Nick Bradbury and feeding it a ton of XML, RSS, and RDF links… I only check it a few times a week… and that’s only for a few resources out of the over hundreds in it. But, when I get a subscribed enewsletter in my emailbox, I read it every time. In other words, I can be as lazy as I wanna be and it’ll come to me. If I have to go to Feeddemon or another news reader, I might not ever see it because I am too busy and getting sidetracked by other things. Plus, there are so many news feeds, it is impossible to scan them all.

Putting on Freud cap, “And so what do you think?”