Just when I was about to brag about having hidden the design of this site from Netscape 4.7, it appears that my new funky backdrop has cost me at least one reader:
Have you ever stopped reading or cut down on your reading of a weblog because they changed the design? Radio Free Blogistan, one of the first Salon blogs, used to have a spare, plain design. I used to read it quite often — lots of good stuff about the world of weblogs. But now that they've switched to one of those busy, choppy, non-scrolling backgrounds, it's hard for me to look at.Hmm, that's disconcerting. Maybe I need to take a poll.
- Go back to some very plain design
- Offer multiple stylesheets-with-cookies
- Just tone down (fade, blur) the background patterns
- Some other option I'm overlooking?
I welcome feedback on this issue.
categories: fireweaver metablog
4:07:53 PM 
say what []
Got one more query for you if you don't mind. For some reason, my page is no longer showing up on the "Updated Weblogs" page, although it does show up on referrals and rankings. I've been tuning a bit and it's possible I deleted something but I don't think so. I also compared my html for the homepage against a backup I have and I didn't see anything obviously out of whack.I'm guessing maybe it's this bit:
<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript"><!-- var imageUrl = "http://rcs.salon.com/weblogStats/count.gif"; var imageTag = "<img src=\"" + imageUrl + "?group=default&usernum=1111&referer=" + escape (document.referrer) + "" height="1" width="1">";
document.write (imageTag);
//--></script>but that's just a guess. Does any Radio expert want to confirm or correct?
categories: radioactive
2:27:38 PM say what []
I don't have much more than the press release for this:
Macromedia and Course Technology will develop a co-branded series of multimedia and web-design content and curriculum specifically created for students and teachers in the K-12 and higher education markets. This series, which will be available in eight languages, integrates Macromedia's subject-matter expertise with Course Technology's innovative approach to educational publishing.
categories: fireweaver
12:50:14 PM say what []
12:40:19 PM say what []
What I finally figured out was that removing those files from the category folders forced the categories to resume using the master templates stored in the root /www/ folder.
If I do customize the categories in the future (such as giving the KM category a more business-like design or featuring different blogrolls specific to each category's topic), then I'll be back at trying to maintain multiple template files, but for now simplicity rules the realm.
categories: salonika knowhow metablog radioactive
12:21:17 PM say what []
(Via blogroot/blogpopuli.blog) KMpings is a collection of Knowledge Management TrackBack pings.
The site offers instructions on how to ping it with or without Movable Type. This should be a good one-stop shopping info source regarding knowledge management.
11:09:45 AM say what []
After speculating that one of the precursors of blogs was the ubiquitous .plan files of the early Unix-heavy Internet, Cruftbox has posted a roundup of sites that linked to the theory:
I was also surprised to see links from two places I had never heard of before, Weblog Bookwatch and All Consuming. Both sites appears to scan weblogs looking for links about specific books. In this case, I think it was the fact that I linked to both Rebecca Blood's book, The Weblog Handbook and Matt Haughey's book, We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, that I popped up on those site.Is Matt Haughey the most prominent author of We Blog? I ask this because he was quoted in the Times today and because Cruft refers to him as the singular author of the book, when as far as I can tell it was an equal collaboration with Meg and PB.
It's an interesting concept to have meta-blogs that automatically scan for various bits of data and synthesize an analysis of what people are posting. After many false starts, perhaps the age of intelligent agents is upon us.
categories: memewatch metablog
10:57:18 AM say what []
A Frog in the Valley (a French weblog) links to a post about a new glasshaus book on content management systems:
Book Excerpt: Content Management Systems The case in favor of Content Management is argued in this excerpt from the glasshaus title, "Content Management Systems." Included are discussions defining what CMS is, why it is needed, and more importantly, why it can be so difficult to implement. [Via WebReference News]I'll have to look at this book. I've spent years evangelizing on this subject. Content management is frequently handled as an afterthought, folded in with site admin, designed like a boilerrooom or janitor's closet. All the emphasis frequently goes on the "face" of the website: cool design, smart navigation, usability.
All very important. But a major "user" of any site is whoever has to update the content, and the user interface on the content admin site of most sites is abysmal. Six months after the launch when everyone realizes what a pain in the ass it is to get new content up in a timely manner, the CMS retrofit project finally begins.
categories: fireweaver knowhow
10:39:45 AM say what []
For the quickdraw file: With B back from her writing retreat I'm in full domestic mode this morning, grinding coffee beans, squeezing oranges, and making up some oatmeal from steel cut oats. She's reading the New York Times and calling out interesting copy ("Bush calls for more logging to prevent wildfires," etc.). She notices in the Circuits section an article about the "Blog Nation." (Does the Times run a blog article every day now?)
More or less simultaneously, Salon blogger Charly Z sends me an electronic link to the same article, which is mostly about blog search engines and other ways of hunting for blogs and related blogs:
"The number of Weblogs is just so numerous that these grass-roots organizational sites are a necessity — otherwise, you'd never find new blogs among the deluge," said Matthew Haughey, co-author of the new book We Blog: Publishing Online With Weblogs (John Wiley & Sons).Nice to see the We Blog folks getting the go-to calls.
categories: salonika memewatch metablog
9:59:33 AM say what []
B has Netscape 4.7 for the Mac on her iBook, so I took a look at this site there that way. It looks like ass! How embarassing! It doesn't look so hot on Internet Explorer 5.1 either.
To give my editor friend an idea of how out of date they are, there's a meme in the blogosphere that says "Internet Explorer 5.1 is the Netscape 4.7 of a new generation."
Still I seem to recall some cockamamie hacks that will at least make the design degrade more effectively for nonstandard browsers, so I'm going to look into that. First stop, A List Apart, next stop Meyerweb, then glish.com.
Dropping by ALA and searching for Netscape turns up an article called "Why Don't You Code for Netscape?" in which Zeldman explains why backwards-compatability ain't all that:
Q. Your website looks nice in Internet Explorer 6, but really bad in Netscape 4.7. Is this the type of web page design that you are recommending to your readers? The worst problem is that it doesn’t even look like the same page!But I still want to make my editors happy....
...
As a web designer, it’s important to me that my site not only look good in both browsers, but that all readers will see the same design and formatting.
Please explain the logic of designing only for one browser.
Cordially,
[Name withheld]
A. Thanks for writing. We don’t design for only one browser. We design for all browsers and devices by authoring to W3C recommendations including XHTML 1.0 Transitional and Cascading Style Sheets.
As a result, A List Apart displays properly in Opera 5, Opera 6, MSIE5, MSIE5.5, MSIE6, Netscape 6, and Mozilla, while its text is available to any browser or Internet device, from Netscape 1.0 to Palm Pilots and web phones.
The logic of authoring to W3C recommendations, instead of to the quirks of old, non–standards–compliant browsers (be they Netscape’s or Microsoft’s or anyone else’s) is explained in these places:A List Apart uses The Web Standards Project’s Method 2: Invisible Object to make its text available to any browser or device, even if that browser or device does not support CSS or other web standards used in crafting the site’s simple design.
- The Style Guide of the Branch Libraries of The New York Public Library
- To Hell With Bad Browsers here at ALA
- The Web Standards Project’s Upgrade Campaign: Developer Tips
categories: fireweaver metablog
9:26:25 AM say what []
