| LED Digest 1836: FrontPage Doubters |
|
|
|
================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ................................................ July 9, 2004 Issue #1836 ................................................ .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Site Redesign Blues ==-- ~ John Smart --== Using Affiliate Services ==-- ~ Deke Hammel --== The End of Email as You Know It? ==-- ~ Peter D'Aprix ~ Simon McArdle ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Page Layout ==-- ~ Allan Gardyne --== Email & Browser Alternatives to MS ==-- ~ Moe Gordon ~ Frans Verhoef ~ Kent Crispin ===== CONTINUING ================================= From: John Smart Subject: Redesign blues Is FrontPage a "professional web authoring package"? I always thought it was a fun toy - excellent for family members and pretty good for small businesses doing their own sites, but that is about it. Unless they have improved it a fantastic amount since FrontPage 2002, it does have some serious limits. An example would be - one client did a site with front page - and I will agree that the site did look very professional, and had a nice layout. I had to work on the code because it was having a few problems. The code was filled with what I believe are "undo marks" - little tags that seem to mean nothing, but in the case of this site they almost doubled the file size! There were other issues - incorrect nesting, errors with the syntax for tables, and by far the biggest problem - too many font tags. Numerous lines of code read: <.font face="Verdana"><.font color="black"><.font size="2">some text<./font><./font><./font> Is this the end of the world? Goodness no. But these, among other reasons lead me to believe that FrontPage is not a Professional tool. To qualify this a little, I would like to point out that I am not a Microsoft hater. I won't use Microsoft web servers, I use Linux, but all my desktop PC's are Microsoft, and the office servers (with 1 exception) are also. I love Word (I tried open office for a while - most of it is great, but nothing in my experience is as good as Word! That said, I hate using word as an e-Mail authoring tool, but thanks to another LEDder, I don't have too anymore!!) Further, I appreciate that some of my problems may be due to incorrect settings in FrontPage - but these settings always seem to be incorrect in my version, and in the versions of my clients (I do not install the software for them). Maybe Microsoft will get it right eventually - Money seems to be getting usable, Word is, as I mentioned, wonderful, XP is very good. Perhaps FrontPage will get fixed soon too! John Smart, Technical Director InternetDesign.com - A Human Touch in a Digital World ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Deke Hammel Subject: Affiliates > My next question is how do I handle my overseas affiliates? > Do I send them a 1099? Their systems of taxation is very > different from ours. They don't have social security numbers. - Mary Lee LED 1834 As a general rule, you have to send out 1099-MISC for unincorporated affiliates who get $600 per year. However, if you're turning to a discussion list for expert tax advice, you're cruisin' for a bruisin'. You should have a good tax man who answers your questions. How do you know he's good? He'll be Enrolled with the IRS. (Some CPAs are good, but most are not tax specialists, and they are generally more expensive.) You can also get information straight from the horse's mouth. The irs.gov website has most forms and instructions online, and this time of year, you can quickly get answers to most questions by calling the IRS itself. Deke Hammel AmishHosting.com - just plain good hosting. ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Peter DAPRIX Subject: End of Email Dear Ed I think this is a very interesting topic and has wider implications than so far discussed (if I have not missed some editions). What it really comes down to first is identifying your visitor pool; who they are, what they want and how constrained they are regarding their computers, monitors, connection etc. for whatever reason. I have several client sites and some of my own up; some aimed at people who use their computers as their work tool like architects and others who will be home users. Some are both. What we designers often tend to forget is that in small to large organizations where the IT guys lock in the configurable options, the office user may not have the ability to change the resolution setting of their monitors regardless of how technically proficient they may be. So regardless of whether they have 15" or a 20" monitor, they still may be forced to use it on its default setting, or the setting set by the IT guys. So many home users still don't realize they can change the resolution setting on their computers and gain valuable monitor real estate. And that is just the resolution. Most default settings I have come across also set the color range to thousands not millions of colors even though the monitors can project in the millions. The difference can cause both solid colors and especially photographs to be shown in a highly degraded visual state especially if the designer did not use the 256 web safe colors. Having a tracking program what will provide the information of just what percentage of your visitors (I use www.hitmatic.com which is very cheap, found courtesy of the LED Digest, thank you) shows all this information as well as the operating systems, their versions, and a lot more besides. For example, it is very useful to know that a page is ranked 4th in popularity but visitors only stay on it for 10 seconds. So they want the information but they are obviously not finding it or the page is not loading fast enough. It red flags the page for redevelopment. To wind up, we designers need to focus less on our own tools, our own preferences and our own problems and focus more on catering to the visitors to our sites and what their needs and limitations are. If just may mean we can't use all the fancy latest toys that so captivate us and that we have to cater to much older systems and more fundamental computer settings and even those who don't have, don't want, can't afford or can't get broad band if we don't want to loose a significant percentage of potential customers. Peter D'Aprix peter, peterdaprix.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Simon McArdle Subject: End of Email Note to Kathy Wilson Anderson: Screen Resolution has NOTHING to do with screen size. I have a 22" monitor and my resolution is set to 800 x 600. Your stats package nor anyone else's can tell the size of a monitor. Regards, Simon McArdle http://thelogocompany.net ==== BILLBOARD ==================================== From: Allan Gardyne Subject: Page layout > I've just learned that I can make graphics "float" on a page, and > have the text wrap around it (no longer need to use tables!!!); but > is there a way to do the same kind of thing with a block of text? - Tom Anson, LED 1835 I'm not sure if this is the answer you're looking for, but you can create a small table and, for example, align it to the right and wrap text around it. In the following example, the AdSense code is in the table with other text wrapping around it: www.associateprograms.com/search/fool-spam-filters.shtml If there's a simpler solution, I'd love to see it. Allan Gardyne www.associateprograms.com ------- new post - new topic -------- From: Moe Gordon Subject: Email programs > ... what happens in a few years if I want to revert all my email > archives back to industry standard (suppose Opera disappears, > something better comes along, or Microsoft gets good)? - Richard Graham, LED 1835 Richard, I feel your apprehensions. Sometimes just knowing that I have thousands of archived emails is the only thing that gets me up in the morning! :) OK, sarcasm aside... In addition to co-owning a growing ecommerce company and serving as webmaster for several others, the collection of 'vitally' important emails stack up. I recently switched operating systems (OS9 -> OSX). I was able to bring over maybe two thirds of my email. Losing that third of my archive was a dark day. No doubt those were going to be the important ones. Two days later I was so busy replying to new email that I never missed those lost emails. You won't either. Welcome to our temporary culture. Moe Gordon, Co-Owner http://ebirdseed.com PS - tip for the LEDers: when you get your gmail account, set your email client to bcc 'you @ gmail.com' Voila - instant mindless archive of 'vitally' important emails. ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Frans Verhoef Subject: Email programs When you do not want to get stuck to a specific email client, you might consider switching over from POP to IMAP technology. This way your email remains physically on the server, and you can access with any email client that accepts IMAP (Outlook and Opera included). Added advantage is that you can access your email from everywhere on the world. Regards, Frans Verhoef ------- new post - same topic -------- From: Kent Crispin Subject: Email programs > The volume of users will always assure outlook archives > can be read by any future email program, - Richard Graham, LED 1835 This is not true now -- that is, it is not true that all current email programs can import Outlook archives. In fact, if the archives are compressed you may have great difficulty getting the email out of it at all. The safest way to preserve email archives is in a form as close to the wire protocol as possible, because then you can recover mail by effectively resending it. mbox format is good. Regards Kent Crispin ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "When I'm working on a problem, I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." - Richard Buckminster Fuller |
