September 11, 2002
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/
Vincent Flanders -- vincent9@gte.net
Table of Contents
Yes, that’s right. Here’s an opportunity to take a free, online
HTML course courtesy of the University of Washington.
Hopefully, most of you can code HTML, but there are a lot of WYSIWYG folks out
there who might think the <HR> tag means “the Human Resources department
will be contacted.” If you don’t know HTML you really need to know
how to get down and dirty with some code. FrontPage folks, I’m talking
to you.
As the course description states:
“Once you have completed this OpenUW course, you should be able to:
Create simple HTML pages
Control font size and color
Link HTML pages together “
Why are they doing this? It’s called the “Heroin approach.” They’ll give you a free taste, but the serious stuff is going to cost you. UW (pronounced “U-dub”) wants you to sign up for their other, more in-depth, *paid* courses. Get it? Very clever, if you ask me.
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/ddd/freecourse.html
They also offer free classes in
Business communications
Energy, diet, and weight
World War II
Greek Mythology
And they offer many other courses.
C-Font Professional – Free, but requests local postcard
C-Font Pro is tool that was developed as a way to manage fonts; to include system, printer, and currently uninstalled fonts. This font viewer lets you view installed system fonts, printer fonts, and a special mode where you select a directory and view the fonts in that directory
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/ddd/freesoft.html
Accessibility is the new buzzword. Can people with disabilities view and use your site? Here are some interesting bookmarklets for Internet Explorer that will let you:
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/ddd/508.html
Online Spell Checker
Most blog software and some e-mail software don’t offer a spell checker. I’ll show you an online one you can use.
META Helper
While I find black text on an olive green background difficult to read and ugly to look at, it’s an interesting online application. As the page states:
“This tool will assist you in creating META tags for your site. Meta tags are important in that they are most often used to provide information to search engine spiders and occasionally to perform various HTTP functions, such as a refresh or redirect.”
I’m not sure how important META tags are today for search engines -- the TITLE tag is infinitely more important -- but it never hurts to use them.
Both links are at:
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/ddd/online.html
There are a lot of great books out there. Here are some that are recommended:
Dreamweaver MX PHP Web Development
By Gareth Downes-Powell, Tim Green, Bruno Mairlot
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904151116/vincentflanders/refnosim/
Flash MX: Graphics, Animation, and Interactivity
By James L. Mohler
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0766842061/vincentflanders/refnosim/
Photoshop 7 Down and Dirty Tricks
by Scott Kelby
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735712379/vincentflanders/refnosim/
Inside Photoshop 7
by Gary David Bouton, et al.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0735712417/vincentflanders/ref=nosim/
Photoshop - Most Wanted” Effects and Design Tips
by Smith and Ward
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1903450551/vincentflanders/refnosim/
“We Blog” -- Paul Bausch, et al.
Chapter 3 -- Navigating the Blog Universe
Chapter 8 – Using Blogs in Business
“Inside Photoshop 7” – Gary David Bouton
“Photoshop 7 - Most Wanted” Effects and Design Tips”,
by Smith and Ward
Chapter 11, Lines and Grids
“Photoshop 7 Tips and Techniques” – Wendy Willard
Chapter 1, Customizing Photoshop for Web Design”
“Photoshop 7 The Complete Reference” – by Laurie
Ullrich
Chapter 1, “Getting to Know Photoshop: What it Does Best and What’s
New in Photoshop 7”
Links can be found at:
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/ddd/bookchapters.html
You know I can’t use every badly designed site that is submitted. Here’s the latest batch.
These Web sites are ones that visitors thought were examples of bad Web design.
You can check them out at
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/uthink.html
If you subscribe to the e-mail version of the Daily Design Disaster, you'll receive the links by the mail and they stay active for at least two weeks instead of the two days on this Web page. You can read them at your leisure. Right now, there's 16-days worth available if you had subscribed. Make sure you subscribe to the mailing lists:
http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/oemprov30/public/subscribe.php
It's a 3.3Mb PDF file. On certain systems it looks like nothing is happening. You'll have to wait until the whole file loads -- it could take a while. The alternative is to right click the link and save it to your hard disk.
ftp://ftp.sybex.com/4020/4020ch04.pdf
If you find the WPTS newsletter useful, feel free to forward it to someone who might also find it useful.
----- End of Newsletter -----
Copyright (c)2002 by Flanders Enterprises and Vincent Flanders All rights reserved.
Kind regards,
Vincent Flanders
e-mail: vincent9@gte.net
Check out http://www.fixingyourwebsite.com/speeches.html
for a speaker who won't bore you.