Head Tale - Yet Another Librarian's Blog

If you're an OLA member, you might have received a copy of the 2007 SuperConference program in the mail today. If not, FIMS alum, Jennifer Cyr (aka Canuck Librarian) has a link to the conference program on her blog as well as some thoughts (Jen's on the conference planning committee.)

I was able to attend for a day and a half last year and it was a great experience that I'd highly recommend to anybody. This year's line-up looks great too. The keynote speaker is Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing, the world's most popular blog, and that's worth the price of admission right there. (He's also an award-winning science fiction author, a copyright activist and he happens to be Canadian to boot.) Beyond the keynote, there are always a lot of excellent sessions on all manner of library-related topics. Plus Jen mentions a FIMS reception which sounds like a great event too.

Last year, I took in the annual "Top Tech Trends" panel, a presentation by Michael Stephens on "the blog people" and a presentation on a major cross-Canada study of children's reading habits. I got to meet a whackload of people (including Jen), bumped into a bunch of people I knew from Saskatchewan and ended up hanging out with a mix of conference organizers, FIMS alumni and Saskies after a big party they had at the close of the day I was there.

Vendor relations is on the schedule for Winter semester and I know that last year, that class did a day trip in to take in the conference trade show. You get a reduced price to attend as a student but another option many FIMS students took advantage of was volunteering which gave them free admission to the conference (only on the day they volunteered I think but still enough to get into at least a session or two. I may be mistaken on what volunteering gets you.)

Someone asked me at the FIMS mixer if it was worth attending and if I haven't made it clear, I really think it is. One piece of advice - don't be afraid to just start talking to random strangers if you go. The conference will only be as useful as you make it but I think you get as much, if not more, from the chance to meet people as from the sessions.

Leave Comment | Permanent Link

Tips For Designing A Web Page

by Jason on Thu 09 Nov 2006 11:09 PM EST

Having done a lot of web site design over the years, I thought of doing a list like this in first semester right before our 505 web site assignment was due. I never got around to it. But now, having spent quite a bit of time in the last few weeks helping fellow students who are taking classes where they have to design web pages, I've been inspired to put this list together finally.

I'm not an expert in current web design technologies but did design quite a few web sites from 1997-2000. I think a lot of the fundamentals I learned then still apply today, especially for the 505 web site assignment which asks the students to build a basic, static web page.

Tips For Designing Web Pages
- name your home page "index.htm" or "index.html" so web browsers default to it instead of calling it "my site.html" or something similar which may lead to broken links or possibly even let people see your underlying directory structure (this is what happens at UWO)

- on that note, don't put spaces in any of the web page filenames on your site. If it's long or multiple words, call it "aboutme.htm" or "about-me.htm" or "about_me.htm" (I prefer to not use any dashes or underscores personally but if you do want to use one of these techniques to make your file names easier to read, dashes are better because they can still be seen in Word documents that automatically underline web site addresses.)

- same thing for the names of images ("myfriends.jpg" not "my friends.jpg")

- it's not essential but it's also a good idea to consistently use lower case for all filenames

- always use WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER="0" tags for your images

- don't use clip art images, especially for "e-mail me" or "under construction" notices

- even many people have high speed connections these days and it's not as much of an issue as say five or ten years ago, try to keep image file sizes small. Do this by scanning at 72dpi and resizing so that the actual dimensions of the page match the size you want it to be on your web page (ie. 200x200 pixels rather than putting a 1000x1000 pixel graphic in a 200x200 defined space.)

- don't use multiple fonts or fancy fonts on pages - stick with Times, Arial or Verdana.

- with that said, you can use different fonts for headings but it's best to create these as jpg image files so that the end user is guaranteed to see them as you intended (they might not have the "Trek69" font on their computer for instance)

- make sure important information goes "above the fold" (ie. without having to scroll down) on each page

- never make someone scroll left to right.

- don't put something about "This site best viewed at (resolution) or with (browser)" Your job as a web designer is to make a site that any browser on any platform can view consistently.

- have a good, well-thought out navigation system to the major sections of your site and always make sure you have a "Home" link on every page

- put dates on all pages and make sure you include the year too as "March 16" will mean nothing in two years.

- ideally your full contact information should be on every page but at a minimum, you should have an easy-to-find e-mail link for people to contact you.

- don't use background images

- as with books, black text on a white background is the best for readability

(I reserve the right to have broken any or all of these rules on both my previous web sites as well as my current ones!)

And just for a laugh, here's a column I wrote probably six years ago or so for my old job on the very same subject. At the time, part of my job was to prepare monthly profiles of our member publishers as well as authors, book reviews and an "advice column" on some topic related to publishing.

Funny to see how so many of the things I tried to do in web site design back then are things I try to do now. Some of the tips are crap though - I don't think anybody uses meta tags anymore and that thing about browser safe colours is pretty outdated. But I like that even then, I believed that a) content counted and b) hits didn't.

(And yes, I know I broke my own rule about putting a date on every page which is why I'm not exactly sure when I wrote the column.)

Comments (4) | Permanent Link

www.flickr.com

This is a Flickr badge showing public photos from shealisahammond. Make your own badge here.