Category — Blogging

I’m in the process of potentially redesigning this blog, and I came across an interesting study from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about line length and reading. This report states that while a long line of text increases reading speeds, people tend to prefer shorter lines. To borrow from the conclusion of the study:

Conclusion

The best available research suggests that users will read fastest if the line lengths are longer (up to 10 inches). If the line lengths are too short (e.g., two and a half inch columns), the line length probably will impede rapid reading. Users tend to prefer lines that are relatively short (about four inches).

While the study doesn’t go any further, I feel like it leaves me with a sort of conundrum. People prefer the shorter lines, but things like pictures, YouTube videos, etc. are best done with a larger content area. Then, add to this the desire for a multi-column design for a pleasing segregation of similar content, things become even more problematic.

Also to be considered:

1. Older PC’s have smaller resolutions
2. Most newer monitors are wide screen (because they can get more screens per sheet of material, equaling a lower cost)
3. Most newer machines have higher resolutions
4. Some people prefer a fluid center (grows as they increase the browser size)
5. A static width site provides better overall design options for visual impact

What’s the magic formula for a pleasing design with a flexible layout for varied content and overall ease of use for the reader? Who knows! There seems to be no general consensus. If you search the net, layouts are all over the place. Content is king, but the king’s accommodations are widely varied.

Three column, content to the left is a newer take on things, but it just seems a bit weird to me - does anyone ever look all the way to the right? Most major news companies go with the standard three column design with centered content, but then they have a ton of information that clutters up the flow, much to the detriment of conveying information in my opinion. Oh well, they are free, right?

Leaving the old standbys for a second, we can venture into the world of more free form site design. These sites are more focused on overall visual design and can look pretty cool. Unfortunately, they tend to primarily have highly static content - get it to look good once, and then never touch it again - or they at least feature visual content like pictures over text.

If I take the lessons that I learned with this current theme (forever captured here for the sake of posterity), I realize that there are a few things that I’m looking for in a new theme. First, is a wider column on the right. That small column, while helpful in keeping the overall width down, really cramps my style. It won’t hold a standard 120 pixel width banner and the type has to be so darn small to get things to fit. Second, I would like a larger content space to accommodate larger photos, but the line length study makes me second guess this desire. At a current 4.5 inches, my site is already past the 3 - 3.5 inch range that readers seem to prefer. And, lastly, I think I would like something a bit more light and open. The current design is a bit blocky and has more of a closed feel. Ideally, I’d like to see that open up a bit with some sections flowing into the general background.

Can I take all of that stuff into consideration and come up with a new design that is worth changing to? Honestly I don’t know. When I look at the themes of people who are a lot more talented that I am in the fields of programming and design, I really don’t see anything that is particularly compelling. The one thing I do know is this: when and if I find the right structure, I am certainly not above ripping it off! All with due props, of course…

web design, ease of use, blogging, optimal line length

Well, I’ve finally written my first widget for Wordpress.  Introducing Movie Widget!

I wanted a quick way to randomly display titles from my DVD collection on my blog.  I use Movie Collector to manage the collection, so I exported some XML from the program and started parsing it up.  Eventually, this little widget was born.

I mostly wrote this for myself (in fact, it started out as just custom code in my theme) but I’ve been wanting to try my hand at writing a widget for a while, so I figured I would widgetize the code.  Once it was a widget, I decided that widgets are made to be shared and that I should make it available to anyone else who happens to use both Movie Collector and Wordpress.

You can get the plugin here.

Wordpress Widget, Movie Collector, Collectorz

So, I was writing a post on how I was checking out Contribute CS3, but it didn’t go so well.

Adobe bills Contribute as

Adobe® Contribute® CS3 enables content authors to quickly and easily update existing websites and blogs while maintaining site integrity — with no technical expertise required.

A lofty goal to be sure. Honestly, I was very excited to try it. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to provide very much value add to the whole blogging experience.  To make matters worse, just as I was in the process of saying that it didn’t provide better:

• Writing experience
• Editing
• Spell checking
• or Previewing

when the program just up and pooped the bed.  Yup, just froze up on me.  In fact, here is a little pic of it doing just that.

Talk about disappointment!  Helpful blogging tool for the technically challenged?  I think not.  The thing didn’t even HAVE the word blog in the darn spell checker.  Need I say more?

And, while I’m at it, what’s so hard about writing a new post in WordPress, or MT or Blogger for that matter.   If for some crazy reason their WYSIWYG editors scare the pants off of some one, just use email submission.  Easy, quick and done from their email application of choice!

Still, I wish that Contribute had the chops to go the distance.  I think there is room for a tool of this nature - there’s a lot of space between Dreamweaver and Outlook.  Maybe CS4 will see a better incarnation.

PS - After the crap that I gave Contribute for not having Blog in the spell checking dictionary, WordPress doesn’t have its own name in the dictionary either…  Wow, I think that’s the first thing I’ve ever said about WordPress that can be construed as even remotely negative.  :)  Not bad for nearly 2 years!

CS3 Contribute, Blogging

This is a great little utility for encoding and decoding URLs.  It quickly turns gobbledygook like:

http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2Fmilowerx%2Falbumid%2F5123888780136287569%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt%3Drss%26authkey%3D5M3WrH3fEkY"

into something more useable like:

http://picasaweb.google.com/data/feed/api/
user/milowerx/albumid/5123888780136287569?
kind=photo&alt=rss&authkey=5M3WrH3fEkY

AND, vice-versa for using URL’s programmatically.

Hey!  Wow, two posts in one day…  I guess I should buy a lottery ticket or something.

UPDATE!

There is now a “better” way to embed Picasa slideshows in your Wordpress posts.

• A direct embed now works with WP (as of v2.6.2 AFIK). Check out this new post for some additional info.
• The easiest way, IMO, is to use my new plugin, Postcasa. All you have to do is put the Picasa RSS link between this simple shortcode, and the plugin does the rest.

Example:

[postcasa]http://MyRSSurl[/postcasa]

easily becomes:

Original Post

My brother wanted to put a Picasa slide show in his blog.  He can’t help it - he’s a big Google Fanboy. 

Anyway, after searching around and trying at least 8 different plug-ins to try and get this to work I finally came upon the correct secret mixture to make it work.

Some of the plug-ins that didn’t work had these problems:

• Plug-in hasn’t been updated in several WP versions
• Plug-in didn’t work properly with the latest version of Flash
• RSS based plug-ins couldn’t actually download the feed because:
  • Security didn’t allow getting the feed and storing it locally
  • The feed had changed since the plug-in was released and it made the parser barf
• It required activating PHP code in each post, which is a security nightmare, IMHO

Well, for those of you who have been banging your head on your keyboard trying to get this working, here is the key:

1. Run over and download Kimili, a great embedded flash plug-in.  Kudos to Michael Bester for excellent piece of work.  There are others like it, but this one is full featured and seems more stable than others that I’ve tried.  Upload and activate the plug-in.

2. Use the new Picasa embedded slide-show tool to generate the embedding code - for example:

<embed> type="application/x-shockwave-flash" flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0×000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F
milowerx%2Falbumid%2F5123888780136287569%3Fkind%3D
photo%26alt%3Drss%26authkey%3D5M3WrH3fEkY" src="http://picasaweb.google.com
/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" mce_src="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" height="267" width="400"> <embed>


3. Now for the “kinda” tricky part…  You need to translate that code into code for Kimili.  Fortunately, it really isn’t that hard.  Kimili uses the syntax:

[ kml_flashembed movie="filename.swf" height="250" width="400" / ]


and uses fvars to pass parameters to the embedded flash video.  The Picasa code uses the slideshow.swf file as the “movie” and everything that is in flashvars should be put into fvars.  Make sure that you leave out the type parameter but include the height, width and pluginspage.

4. The final translated code should look like this:

[ kml_flashembed movie="http://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" height="267" width="400" fvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&RGB=0×000000&feed=http%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F
milowerx%2Falbumid%2F5123888780136287569%3Fkind%3Dphoto%26alt
%3Drss%26authkey%3D5M3WrH3fEkY"
pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"/ ]

You can see the results of all this hard work here.

wordpress, Picasa, web development

They say that making several posts in a row with only a single picture and a few measly words of comment beneath is the Blogging equivalent of Al Sharpton’s presidential bids - you know that you’re out of the game, were probably never really in the game, yet for some sick, twisted reason you just can’t stop trying.

Ok, I admit it, “They” don’t say that at all - I just made it up, but it sounds about right to me.

There, now I’ve posted something more interesting than a darn picture.

Blogging, Al Sharpton

So, I just moved my Blog from one system to another hosting service, Dreamhost.  They are one of the best hosts I’ve ever worked with - and that is saying a LOT!  Its a Unix-Only hosting service, but has amazing prices and wonderful policies of automatic disk space and bandwidth growth built-in to their plans.

I’ve arranged a discount for anyone who wants to sign up with them - they are pretty cool about that kind of stuff.  You can use Promo Code: DHMILOCO or simply start surfin’ through this link to get the discount.  Its anywhere from $30 to $50 depending upon the package you pick.  Given some of their sales going on, you can actually get service for next to nothing with this promo code!

Since I’ve just changed hosts too, please let me know if you see anything not working with the Blog!  Thanks!