Archive for October 2003

This is not the title of a creative Halloween costume. It’s a blog for children’s librarians, but as a fan of children’s literature I love the nuggets in the blog. Mrs. Rabbitt must’ve been destined to be a librarian as that is really her name. The blog has quotes from books, links, author news, and more.

Tomorrow is Halloween in the US and Dia de Los Muertos in Mexico. Happy October 31st should cover everyone. For those who see it as pumpkins, witches, and ghosts, there’s plenty of Halloween clipart for the taking.

Download Jack-O-Lantern stencils from Carving Pumpkins and Attack of the Zombie Pumpkins. Don’t fret, there are cute ones like Taz, Sponge Bob, Homer Simpson (betcha thought you’d never hear Homer and cute in the same sentence) and a horse. The site also has step-by-step instructions on how to carve. The carving kits and stencils have made pumpkin carving a breeze. I did a few characters from Peanuts and they actually looked good! Me, the non-artist, did something I liked and I never like my stuff. [Link: Researchbuzz]

The mother of newspapers (or one of anyway) is using a New Headline Typeface. The font that is becoming the star is Cheltenham.

Also, enjoy a Flash movie on Behind the Typeface in VH1 style. [Link: Tara]

Unbelievable. I want to make one thing clear before providing an update on my McAfee adventures. I didn’t buy McAfee v8.0 because of the rebate. McAfee came with my computer (and it took many calls to Dell’s tech support and McAfee’s to get it working as they pointed fingers at each other.) and I just renewed.

Anyway, I reported the rebate didn’t work out. So, it was time to take the next step. Refund. I emailed McAfee twice and didn’t hear. Then I found a link on Digital River’s site about online purchases and sent an email. There, I finally got a response and the refund is pending. We’ll see if they actually give me credit.

THEN, McAfee support finally responded to my original refund request… YESTERDAY. The refund request started on October 20. I shot an email to Art Matin, President of McAfee Security. One of his people replied for him, so we’ll see where it goes.

Links to previous McAfee entries:
Day 1
Day 2
Leftover files
Rebates… NOT

While growing up, I have never paid (OK, I admit it’s my mom who does the buying – thanks, Mom.) more than $40 for tennis shoes. That’s almost an impossible thing to do today. Furthermore, the many brands, features, and styles available make the decision-making process harder. Apply that to the more technical subject of Web sites and it’s scary.

Whether the economy is strong or in a slump, there’s always a company with a shrinking budget that requires cutting funds for the IT and other departments. Furthermore, companies are creating a standard budget for their Web sites like any other portion of their business and they don’t get the outrageous amounts of money like those who did in the ’90s. With much of the cost going towards hardware and networking, Web managers are stuck with the short straw and have to make do with the little resources they have available.

With the availability of quality free or low cost software and guidance from Web Design on a $hoestring, these Web sites can survive and even thrive. Doing things on the cheap isn’t limited to software as project management, team involvement, content, and technologies have an equal hand in building a successful site.

While the most of the advice is common sense, Bickner offers a few tricks most people even tech-savvy ones may not consider. For instance, many shy away from CMSes (content management systems) because of their high price tag. Disregarding CMS is a mistake with the viable and affordable solutions available, but it doesn’t mean going shopping and just looking at the price tags without paying attention to the features. The process is similar to purchasing a computer in that it’s important to determine what features are needed before shopping. “Content Management on a Tight Budget” describes the features to consider and offers suggestions for bargains.

It’s tempting to skip user testing and save the bucks, don’t do it. Use the suggested workarounds for conducting tests without sacrificing cost and quality. Layout, markup, and images may not sound like something to worry about when under a tight budget. However, it’s how they’re used that can make the difference when it comes to bandwidth costs.

The process of designing sites is like shopping for shoes; try on the shoes you like and go with whatever is a good fit. When it gets to be too much to figure it out go to a backup resource for support. In the case of Web sites, Web Design on a $hoestring is the comfy arch support.

VITAL STATISTICS:
TITLE: Web Design on a $hoestring
AUTHOR: Carrie Bickner
PUBLISHER: New Riders
PUBLICATION DATE: October 2003
ISBN: 0735713286
FORMAT: Paperback
PAGES: 215
PRICE: US$24.99

eHelp Corporation, the makers of RoboHelp and other Robo products has joined the Macromedia family. This is a good marriage since RoboDemo makes it easy to create Flash how-to style presentations. Ironically, I tried out RoboDemo for the first time today because I’ve moved into a position where I’m a tech writer using RoboHelp and RoboDemo.

This is just not my month. First McAfee and now RoboHelp. For some reason RoboHelp didn’t install properly on my work PC. The work PC doesn’t get much exercise in terms of dealing with lots of downloaded programs since it’s verbotten at el company.

Scroll. Don’t scroll. Stop that. I use the wheel on the top of my mouse all the time to scroll down Web pages just like Grok explains in his latest missive. I’ve make the same mistake described in the article. Though, I know it is *my* mistake, sites can take a few steps to prepare for it and keep the customer feeling she is always right.

Oh, and if a customer screws up something on the form, for goodness sake, don’t make the customer fill in everything again by having the form go blank. Just help her find her way to the forgotten items. The site will be less likely to lose or frustrate the customer.

Project Management should be known as Project Disorganization. How often has a process completed on time, on budget, and with quality? Anyone who has seen a project do all three, send me an email. I want to hear about it.

Digital Web led the way to the Project Management Process by Phil Wolff. He divided the process into three parts: Project Initiation, Project Control, Project Closure.

I work on the process team in a software development organization at a major teleco where project management plays a big role. We’re responsible for helping the organization get standards and processes in place based on best practices (don’t you hate that buzz word?) in software development. Many of the tasks covered in Phil’s process are covered in my shop. Nice work! Now, I’d like to see it in action.

McAfee’s rebate company is not honoring its rebates. It claims I didn’t enclose one item in the rebate mail and I verified with the checklist and fine print that I did submit all that was asked. I have copies of them, yet they’re telling me to resubmit it. This is the second time I’ve ran into problems with McAfee rebates. I’m going to stop here because I am so angry that I can’t see straight. It all began here.

The person writing this has been fortunate enough to be your tour guide of the Web Design Reference Guide. Enjoy a new article every week and get the latest on the interactive blog.

Expect tips and instruction for designing, building, and maintaining a Web site. Also keep up with current trends in usability, accessibility, scripting, Web standards, and design.

Ick, they had to put the intro to the guide with that eight-legged creature on top of it. Meryl don’t like ‘em. Meryl scweamish.