LIS 5315 Week 7

Week 7

Creating Web Sites ch. 13& 14:

Chapter 13-“Making money with your site”: Internet commerce is a huge industry. This chapter focuses on some things you will need to consider if you want to sell things online using your website. If you sell actual products, you need a virtual shopping cart so your customers can collect the items they wish to purchase, and you need a way to take payments – PayPal is a front runner in web transactions for small businesses.

The internet also offers other opportunities to make money by selling ad spaces on your website. Two popular affiliate programs are Google Adwords and Amazon Associates. Both these programs allow you to earn a small bit of cash when your site users click on their ads.

Chapter 14-“JavaScript & DHTML”: According to this chapter, JavaScript is a programming language which can be used to create interactive features on your website. JavaScript can be used to dynamically effect HTML, you can have text grow and shrink, have something happen when a user rolls the mouse over a certain area, use JavaScript to transform text into a special font that your user may not have on their computer, and many other things. JavaScript can help with forms and prevent someone from going any further until they complete certain sections. JavaScript can react to actions and do things when a user clicks on a picture etc. Modern browsers all recognize JavaScript, but it is possible for a user to turn off the JavaScript so one should make sure the website still looks okay if the JavaScript is disabled.

Principles of beautiful web design ch. 5:

Chapter 5-“Imagery”: There are many concerns dealing with imagery. One must consider file types, resolution, sources of photography, as well as artistic aspects. Any picture image (as opposed to text image file) on a website immediately draws the viewer in and gets them to consider the content. You want images to be: relevant, interesting, and appealing visually.

One must find legitimate sources for any images one wants to use. The 3 options are: create it yourself, buy stock images, or hire a professional. Doing it yourself can be fun and possibly cheaper, but takes considerable time. Purchasing stock images can be expensive although not always. Free images are available but make sure your use falls within the guidelines.

Review the following websites:

I Love Typography (resource site) http://ilovetypography.com/

This truly is a website for those who love typography and fonts. There are pictures of fonts, photos of fonts in use (karmann ghia written on the side of the car uses a unique font), and lots and lots of links to articles about fonts. There are also many links to font shops (i.e. www.fontfont.com) where one can purchase fonts. There is an interesting article on “What the font” which is a website where you can upload an image of a font and it will try to identify it for you. You must save the font in question as an image and then upload it (see http://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/). This could be quite useful to someone in design who has seen the perfect font to use for a project but doesn’t know the name and thus can’t find where to purchase this font. Another interesting article is “So you want to create a font” by Alec Julien (10/22/2007) http://ilovetypography.com/2007/10/22/so-you-want-to-create-a-font-part-1/. This gives a quick review of several font editing programs available (one of which you must have), plus things to think about if you really want to get into designing your own fonts. Actually, it is quite interesting, and although I understand what serifs and kerning mean, I admit I forget what tildes and eths are.

I Love Typography: 15 Examples of Excellent Web Typography http://ilovetypography.com/2007/09/19/15-excellent-examples-of-web-typography/

This is part one of a two part article on examples of typography on websites. The author, Johno (this is a screen name from the comments and seems to be the author) has collected 15 websites which make “excellent use of type”. Part two will take a closer look at some of these sites. A List Apart (www.alistapart.com) is a site for people who make websites and is on the short list. Many of these sites are for font companies (Font Shop www.fontshop.com), professional designers or illustrators (Bear Skin Rug Shop- Kevin Cornell http://www.bearskinrug.co.uk/_store/). These are all really great sites and are just so much fun to look at because the images and fonts work so well together to create a wonderful overall style.

Typographica (Typography Journal and News) http://typographica.org/

Typographica is a journal of the typography world. It features news, reviews, commentary and such about fonts and typographic design. There is a book review of “Dangerous Curves” by Doyald Young, an interview with Cyrus Highsmith who is a designer at Font Bureau in Boston, and an article on favorite Typefaces of 2007. This is an annual review which invites 25 of the best graphic and type designers to pick their favorite font releases. Thirty typefaces are displayed in a thumbnail type image and one can click on that to get more details about that entry. I liked the Blaktur typeface by Ken Barber. It is reminiscent of the old blackletter typefaces but is modernized and slightly easier to read. Another favorite is Olicana by Nick Cooke. This is an attempt at mimicking someone writing with a quill pen and it comes with optional ink splotches one can apply to the text. It is fun and legible too. It really does simulate the flow of ink and would potentially be wonderful as added flair on a website—maybe for headings.

Microsoft Typography (resource site) http://www.microsoft.com/typography/default.mspx

This is a good source of typographic information produced by Microsoft. Their Typography group develops fonts and font technology and they have many resources for those interested in typography. Their site is very nicely laid out with main categories: About fonts, Resources, Developing Fonts, links/ news, and tools. They offer a free font property extension and a web embedding font tool. The Disagreeably Facetious Type Glossary (http://www.microsoft.com/typography/glossary/content.htm) is quite funny and enlightening too.

ABC Typography (virtual museum) http://abc.planet-typography.com/

This is a virtual museum of typography. There are 4 sections: classical typefaces (1480-1890), 20^th century typefaces, contemporary or modern typefaces, and unclassified or miscellaneous. This is a fascinating look at fonts over the centuries. It is quite easy to scroll through and pick fonts to view. The typeface is displayed and then it is used in a quote so you can see the same sentence in all the fonts. There is some brief background information about each font and then quick details such as when it was created, in which country, who the creator was, etc.

A List Apart: Typography (tutorials) http://www.alistapart.com/topics/design/typography/

This website is written for people who make websites. One of their topics is typography and they provide information such as how to size text using CSS, dynamic text replacement, or elastic design. As always, this is an excellent source for tutorials, articles, and answers to website design related issues.

TypoGraphic (history of type) http://www.rsub.com/typographic/

This website outlines the history of letters and typography as well as providing an anatomy of letterforms and a gallery. The studies section discusses legibility, spacing, type as image, and meaning. The aim is to illustrate the importance of typography and explore how it is used in the digital era. This provides important insight into the online use and value of type and typography.

Digital Magazine: CSS Typography (resource) http://www.digital-web.com/articles/css_typography/

This article from Digital Web Magazine by Garrett Dimon discusses typography and how CSS can be used to select type faces. Dimon also points out that there are other options including: font embedding, JavaScript, and image replacement technique. With CSS you can control not just the font types, but also the line-height and letter-spacing. One site mentioned it Typetester (http://typetester.maratz.com/). Typetester lines up 3 columns and allows you to choose different fonts to view in each. This allows you to test legibility and play with the size, alignment, word spacing, leading space, background color, and text color. This is an excellent way to help decide which fonts would work best for your site.

Noupe.com: CSS Tutorials http://www.noupe.com/css/using-css-to-fix-anything-20-common-bugs-and-fixes.html

This is a CSS tutorial from Noupe which addresses more than 20 common CSS bugs (usually related to IE) and ways to fix the problems. This is a handy site when trying to work out CSS issues.

DesignSnips (Examples of Good Web Design) http://designsnips.com/

This site collects examples of good web design and separates them into categories that can be browsed. Some categories are: depth effects, illustration, textures, hover effects, logos, navigation, typography, colors, breadcrumbs, banners, buttons, etc. This can be quite handy when developing a website as it provides inspiration and ideas that work.

LIS 5315 Week 6

Week 6

Creating Web Sites ch. 11& 12:

Chapter 11-“Attracting Visitors”. This chapter focuses on how to promote your website and ensure it is regularly indexed by search engines. Before you start promoting your site, make sure it is complete and is a good design. Try to have features that will keep people coming back. A discussion forum is a way to do this. Build a community by sharing links with similar minded folks. Update meta tags with a site description and key words. Submit your website to internet directories and search engines. To successfully climb the ranks you need statistics such as how many people visit your site and how long they stay.

Using reciprocal links is a good way to connect and get your website noticed. You agree to link to a site and they agree to link back to yours. In order to keep visitors coming back you need to have excellent content that changes regularly and in a noticeable manner. Updating once a month is not enough, it needs to be updated 2-3 times a week for a really popular site.

Web server logs provide the most detailed information about site visitors. It includes information such as: time visitor came, IP address, their browser, what site referred them, if they got any error messages, pages ignored, pages they liked, etc. These logs are much more detailed than the web traffic analysis that is offered by a web host. In order to use the web server log you must feed the data into a log analysis program. If you can’t do all this you can try a free hit counter service. Some are visible on the page and others are invisible. www.statcounter.com offers a free hit counter without an image.

Chapter 12-“letting visitors talk to you & each other”. For a site to really fit in and be popular you need to participate with your visitors. It is important to have a form of dialog. Discussion forums or chat boards help visitors keep coming back and this helps to establish a community. Get feedback from visitors about what they like and don’t like and fix your site accordingly. Make it so you can be contacted by having email links, or forms. Google groups offers a way of freely setting up a group for discussion which is easy to moderate.

Principles of beautiful web design ch. 4:

Chapter 4-“Typography”. Web design is all about communication and one of the main ways we communicate is by written word which is why typography is so important. We may not put much thought into it now, but creating a font or designing a single letter actually takes a great deal of thought. The angle of the curve, the thickness of a line, the amount of white or negative space –these are all important in letter design.

There are tons of fonts out there, but for a website all that matters is what your users have installed on their computer at the time (which of course you can’t know for sure). This can be quite limited so the font-family property of CSS is very handy. It allows you to choose your ideal font and then specify backups. For example, you might prefer Futura, but list Veranda, Arial and finally any sans-serif font. However, it is important to realize that if your ideal font is a drastic change from the backups (takes up significantly more or less space) it might drastically change how your website looks (tables and columns could be messed up, etc.). For this reason, it is best to preview how your website would look with the generic font also to make sure it still works. If it is vital to use a particular font, this can be done with an image file. This technique is often used for fancy lettered banners or headers.

Review the following websites:

Urban Dirty http://urbandirty.com/

This website offers free texture stock photos which are licensed under the creative commons license. There is an option to make a donation, but other than that the images are free, just mention that you got them from Urban Dirty. There is a search option where you can search for how a photo was tagged. Most of the options are cement, paint, wood, etc. The search is fairly rudimentary, but it does work.

Best Textures Flickr Group http://www.flickr.com/groups/564994@N20/

This is similar to Urban Dirty, but there is a greater variety of textures not just urban type textures. This is actually a
Flikr group which pools together themed photos and has discussions etc. You must join the group to add items, but not to view. The images all appear free, but some artists have their own statement (i.e. free but please credit me, etc.). There are also other Flickr Groups with texture images.

Torley Textures http://www.flickr.com/photos/torley/collections/72157594588432564/

This is another flikr site that offers textures. These are offered as free and are seamless so one can tile them easily without it showing. All of the textures offered in the Torley collection are 512x512 and are in lossless PNG format. One nice thing about this collection is that the textures are grouped in smaller collections by color. One is a collection of greens, another of pinks and reds, and another is black and white. This is helpful if you have an idea of what color scheme you want to use and are looking for some matching texture. The rest of the mini collections are not by color, but the smaller collections make it easier to browse through since they aren’t really searchable.

Deviant Art Textures http://browse.deviantart.com/resources/textures/

The direct link to browse textures did not work, I had to go to http://deviantart.com and then click browse or search myself. Under the collections option is a collection called Best Textures. These texture stock photos are quite wonderful and run a wide gamut of what is offered. Each artist has their own stipulations, but most artists allow you to use them for free if you credit them, or provide a link back to the image. Just doing a browse search for keyword texture will turn up many wonderful textures (especially the ones labeled “in Miscellaneous”), but some aren’t really textures by themselves. This is really a wonderful source for any art, and very good for inspiration for any artist.

Texture King http://www.textureking.com/

This is another good source for texture photo stock. It is a project by someone known as REH3design and seems to be somewhat up to date. The last update for the news and posted photos was 2 months ago. Some of the other texture sites were more frequently updated. Texture king has a nice broad category list to choose from: grunge, liquids, metals, miscellaneous, paint, plaster, plastic/ rubber, rust, stone/ rock, & wood/ plant. These are all wonderful selections but they are zip files so they take a few more clicks to download.

Grunge Textures http://www.grungetextures.com/

Grunge Textures is a site devoted to textures in the grunge category. All of their pictures are high resolution (2400 px x 1800 px minimum) in jpg format. They use creative commons licensing so the image are free for non-profit personal use as long as there is a link back to www.grungetextures.com. The categories for browsing and searching are reasonable and include: aircraft aluminum, concrete textures, graffiti & vandalism, metal textures, paper & cardboard, etc.

Grunge Style http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/29/grunge-style-in-modern-web-design/

This is a wonderful article on trends in web design and a special focus on grunge. The author does not see grunge becoming the major trend that web 2.0 design was. There are some examples of grunge type design. Some are more subtle than others, but all have a “worn” feel to them. This website also provides links to some free fonts that work in the grunge style. There are also links to texture sites and tutorials as well.

Photoshop Tutorials on Creating Textures http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-tutorials-textures/

This website offers a great collection of tutorials and guides on designing your own texture background in Photoshop. If you do not have Photoshop, you are not completely left out. The free graphic program Gimp, offers a version (gimpshop) that closely mimics Photoshop so you can use the tutorials ( www.gimpshop.com). Unfortunately that URL has been suspended. Another site which looks like it may offer downloads of gimpshop is http://thegimpshop.net/.

2007 Web Design Trends http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/2007-more-web-design-trends-and-cliches

This entry (dated 10 December, 2007), highlights 6 current trends in web design and provides links to examples. The trends include:

• Cute cartoons and mascots
• Swirls, drips & flourishes
• Broken borders
• Oversize RSS icons
• High-Texture designs
• Rich colours with dark grey background

Some of these trends I like, and others not so much. If they are used in a subtle way, even my “not favorite” trends aren’t bad, but when overdone, they could be disasters.

Web 2.0 Tutorials http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/03/10/web-20-tutorials-round-up/

This is another issue of smashing magazine which gathers several tutorials together. Most are basically Photoshop or Photoshop-based tutorials for making web graphics. This is great if you have Photoshop, but if not they are only mildly helpful. The Gimpshop is a possible alternative if you can find it.

Screen Resolutions Worldwide http://www.modernlifeisrubbish.co.uk/article/screen-resolutions-and-aspect-ratios-worldwide

This site provides a world view of screen resolution and aspect ratio (widescreen or not) tendencies. India had the lowest resolution with an average approximately 1024x768 (0.872 megapixels). Scandinavia and Central Europe had the highest resolutions with Switzerland averaging 1280x1024 (1.306 megapixels). The US, Denmark, Belgium and Italy are more likely to have widescreen monitors, whereas Russia does not and has vertical resolution available.

LIS 5315 Instruc. Graphics Week 1

Greetings!!

This is a weekly review of material (texts and website reviews) for a class project.

Library and Information Science (LIS) 5315 Instructional Graphics (University of South Florida-- USF) uses the following text books:

Beaird, J. (2007). The principles of beautiful web design. SitePoint.

MacDonald, M. (2005). Creating web sites: The missing manual. Pogue Press.

Robbins, J.N. (2007). Learning web design: A beginners guide to (x)html, style sheets, and graphics, 3rd ed. O’Reilly Media Inc.

Welcome to week one-

Creating Web Sites ch. 1, 2, & 17:

Chapters 1 and 2 provide a good overview of what the web is, what HTML is and key points to consider when contemplating designing a website. MacDonald mentions many types of websites and encourages one to think about which type one is looking for before starting the design. One must think of the type of website needed and the intended audience.

• Personal site: about you or something you did
• Online diary aka BLOG: personal website with frequent, diary or journal-like entries. Blog is short for web log.
• Resume site: this is a more professional, career building tool than the personal site.
• Topical site: a website on a topic; could be a hobby or interest such as music (or a particular group), an artist, food, etc.
• Event sites: these are often temporary or evolve into another type. They are designed to promote a happening such as a conference, wedding, graduation, etc.
• Promotion site: this could be similar to a resume site but used to promote a creation (new book, CD, etc).
• Small business/ commercial site: this category is probably a good percentage of the .com domain. This type of website is designed to sell a product and companies like paypal and yahoo can make it easier for a small business owner to set up a website with a “shopping cart” and to accept credit card payments.

Chapter 17 focuses on blogs (web logs). Blogs are a special type of web page. They are personal and reflect the author’s opinion but can cover a variety of topics (personal diary, hobbies, work-based, random musings, etc.). Blogs are usually organized in a chronological order, often with the most recent entry first. Unlike many web pages which can sit unchanged, blogs are frequently updated, sometimes hourly! Blogs can start a conversation by tying in other related blogs by links.

Types of blogs include:

• Hosted blog: user signs up with blog provider and fills out form to add entry. This is usually the easiest method for those new to blogging. See: MSN Spaces (http://spaces.msn.com), Radio UserLand (http://radio.userland.com), TypePad (http://typepad.com), Live Journal (www.livejournal.com), Xanga (www.xanga.com), etc.

• Self-hosted blog: the blogger has her/his own server and server software which they use. This provides the most flexibility but is also the most difficult.

• Remote weblog system: this is a combination of hosted blog and self-hosted blog. The user uses a blogging system from a blog provider but has a choice where the blog files are stored. See blogger (www.blogger.com), WebCrimson (www.webcrimson.com).

The rest of the chapter walks the reader through the steps of creating a blog using Blogger. The instructions are easy to follow and make it easy for anyone to get started.

Principles of Beautiful Web Design preface:

The preface does what a good preface should—it provides a nice overview of what is contained inside. The author, Beaird, compares remodeling a bathroom to designing a website:

• Good design means thinking about the relationships of all the elements and looking for balance.

• Good designs are timeless—classic designs work well again and again, they don’t use the latest fads and do-dads just to impress or because they can.

• Finishing touches are important. Just as curb appeal is important to a property, finishing touches can really make a website look and be well designed.

This is a shorter book which covers five basic topics: layout, color, texture, typography, and imagery. These are the elements that will need to be considered in designing a website.

Review the following websites:

Texts -

Principles of Beautiful Web Design site: http://www.principlesofbeautifulwebdesign.com/index.php

The site opened on a “CSS Naked Day” celebration with all the stylesheets removed. This is a neat way to demonstrate what CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) does, but may be a bit confusing for someone who never used or heard of CSS before. There is obviously a huge difference between the website without CSS and with the stylesheets and it is an excellent demonstration to open the site without CSS and experience the difference yourself.

The design for this page is great in that it is kept small. There is no need to scroll horizontally and only minimally in the vertical direction. This is done through some very neat coding which allows the information for the 5 topics (layout, color, texture, typography, and imagery) to appear in the same place on the page when the word is rolled over with the mouse. The added graphic arrows add to the whole presentation.

Creating Websites: The Missing Manual: http://missingmanuals.com/cds/creatingwstmm/

This site is not cluttered but full of information. The left side bar provides information about other “missing manual” books and allows searching. There is all information on blogs, newsletters, and contact information which is easy to find. The main section of the page is devoted to examples for various chapters from the Creating Websites book.

The upper right provides a neat search option by Safari. One can put a key word in and search for that topic in Creating Websites. I tried putting in “css” and got numerous results. This is a very handy and easy to use tool. Each chapter has numerous links to website for examples, or to download handy items. There is a list of browsers (in case one needs a new one), links ot free blog sites, and many more resources. This is a wonderful list of resources for someone new to web design.

Free design software –

Nvu: http://nvudev.com/index.php

Nvu (pronounced N-view) is an open source WYSIWYG web editor program. It is free to use, but does take donations. A WYSIWYG editor is a “What You See Is What You Get” type of editor much like MS Word or other word processing editors. You do not need to know HTML or CSS coding to use this type of editor, but it does help. Nvu has some nice features including:

• An integrated file management system- uses FTP to let you edit web pages directly from the site.

• Produces reliable HTML code to work with popular browsers: this implys that the code produced with work with the notoriously quirky yet popular Internet Explorer (IE) browsers.

• You can go from WYSIWYG to HTML editing just by clicking a tab

• You can work on multiple pages through the use of tabs

• Supports templates

• Works with Linux, MS windows, and Apple Macintosh

The Nvu website has screenshots, resources for developers, links to downloads, and very important for new users, a FAQ page. This page has links to learning to use Nvu to build a website, Demos on creating good websites using Nvu, and an area for questions about HTML or Websites.

Komposer: http://www.kompozer.net/

Komposer is another WYSIWYG web authoring program. Like Nvu it is free. In fact its list of features is almost identical to Nvu!

• Has integrated file management using FTP- log on to your website and edit the pages directly.

• HTML codes are reliable with most popular browsers- this (as with Nvu) implies that the codes will work with the ever popular but notoriously quirky IE browsers.

• Tabs allow you to go between WYSIWYG and HTML editors easily.

• Tabs are used to allow one to work on multiple pages easily.

• Supports templates, forms, tables, etc.

While the Kompozer site doesn’t have the blog information that the Nvu site has, it does give a more detailed description of the features such as CSS editor, color picker, and spell checker.

There is a reason Kompozer and Nvu are similar; Kompozer is a spinoff of Nvu and both thanks Daniel Glazman (Nvu creator) and says that Nvu is not being updated or fixed anymore whereas Kompozer is. Yet on the Nvu FAQ page, it states the Nvu project is still active. However, it says that Glazman is developing the next generation HTML editor which may mean that Nvu is NOT being updated, but a new editor is in the works.

All that being said, both seem to be good alternatives to more expensive tools such as Dreamweaver. I have used Kompozer a little bit and it works but one must be prepared to explore and figure out how everything works.

Gimp: http://www.gimp.org/

Gimp is a graphics program that is similar to Adobe Photoshop. Like Nvu and Kompozer, it is a free open source program. Like Photoshop, it allows for multiple layers and effects for photos. I have used this program very successfully, although I have barely touched the surface of what it can do.

With no experience using graphics programs, I relied heavily on Gimp’s help and tutorials. I found it simple to resize large photos to various sized for the web (which is mostly what I used it for). I also created some custom bullet points and buttons, and played with text graphics for a banner. Like Nvu and Kompozer, if one is to truly take advantage of what Gimp offers, one must spend time learning what it can do.

Tutorials –

Smashing Magazine - design magazine with helpful tutorials: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

This is a very busy website but seems to be kept under control by clear boundaries. The Right side column is quite wide and holds all the ads and sponsors. The Left side is the main content of the magazine. The navigation bar is way up at the top, but is clear and allows one to select main categories of interest, such as: graphics, showcases, inspiration, fonts, how-to, CSS, tutorials, etc.

Under the “tools” section there are several reviews of different code editors and WYSIWYG editors. This type of information can be very useful to someone new, or someone looking for a new tool to use who is not sure of all the free share ware options available.

Cutting Edge Design –

2Advanced Studios:

http://2advanced.com/

This is an amazing website that is almost like being in a movie or at least watching one. Navigating through this site made me feel transported to the future. The navigation bars and text seem to simulate an advanced computer/robot in a star trek/terminator way. A wonderful futuristic picture fills the screen while the majority of the navigation array is hidden until your mouse glides over it. When the mouse hovers, a whole transparent box drops down with many options clearly listed. One can look at projects (websites designed) by 2Advanced and just be amazed. This is obviously advanced, specialized work and is not appropriate for all situations. While I may enjoy the futuristic feel, the majority of library patrons may find it very hard to navigate a library online catalog (OPAC) if it looked like this. The navigation font is particularly small and many might have a hard time reading it.

FWA - Favorite Website Awards:

http://www.thefwa.com/

This is a compilation of award winning websites, newsletters, wallpaper, etc. The “winners” page has the entire FWA winners’ database from the beginning in 2000. The “Site Of The Day” (SOTD) is labeled with a yellow ribbon and the Site Of The Month (SOTM) winners have a maroon ribbon. Blue ribbons identify sites that won People’s Choice Awards or Site Of The Year awards. There are some very amazing sites, but most are games or flash stuff rather than informational. Some are a little of both, but most are commercial and are advertisements of some sort. It is a great example of what can be done online.

Web Pages that Suck:

http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

This website lists and has links to really bad websites. Some are bad because of color or general design issues and some are bad because of navigation issues. All of the “showcased” sites have comments which explain the issue. In some cases the link is to an archived site because the original has been removed (usually with good reason). I did notice that some of the links were to improved sites. It was interesting to see how a site was changed to make it work, however you can only judge the changed based on the screen shot image from the “bad design version”.

For someone new to web design, this is an interesting look at things to avoid doing. The worst websites of 2007 are categorized on the left side bar. The “top 10” for worst website and worst uses of web site navigation are first. There is also a category for worst nonprofit web site. The contenders for 2008 are listed below the “winners” of 2007. There are also some daily examples of bad design and a category for “biggest mistakes in web design 1995-2015”.

Blogs -

Blog@USF:

http://blog.usf.edu/

This is the USF official blog site for use by students with a mail.usf.edu account. One uses one’s net id to logon. The USF blog site is based on WordPress and has a digital photo album capability. It uses Feed Reader and can mesh with del.icio.us accounts and with flickr. Blog@USF uses Texturize for HTML markup.

Blogger:

https://www.blogger.com/start

Blogger is the blog site discussed in MacDonald’s Creating Web Sites. It started as a small company in 1999 and survived the dot com bust barely. They were doing well again and in 2002 Google made an offer to buy them. Blogger is now a small team within Google and it seems to be working well for them.

The main page has a logon area and an area to sign up. The main feature, though, is a walk through explanation of what a blog is and what blogger offers. Some typical features are templates, custom colors, and drag-and-drop page elements. Like other blog services one can also upload photos.

WordPress:

http://wordpress.com/

WordPress offers free blog hosting of public and private blogs. There are many themes to choose from and allows you to tag your posts (everybody love cataloging) so they can be found in the archives. WordPress has spell check options and allows photos to be uploaded easily. One can even embed videos (YouTube, Google, etc.).

Zoho Writer:

http://writer.zoho.com/jsp/home.jsp?serviceurl=%2Findex.do

This is an online word processor (think Google Docs) which allows collaborative editing of documents and online storage. You don’t need to worry about trying to save a document and then hope that the next computer you use has the software to open the files. All you need to do is go online and access all your documents. It even accepts imported files from MS Word, OpenOffice, HTML, RTF, etc.