blogging category

Andy Budd slides about blogging

Hi all!, I've been examining, those Andy Budd slides about blogging history and it's benefits on business, it's pretty nice and understandable for non-technical people especially business people.

November 22, 2006, 8:05 AM TrackBack 0

VOX another masterpiece from Six Apart

VOX logoStarting your own blog has never been easier with VOX, in a minute you can choose from over 150 designs that reflects almost all personalities and subjects, you can insert photos, audio & videos very easily, you can upload photos or insert them from Flickr, photobucket or iStockphoto, you can choose to hide your post from public letting your family and friends only to read it.

You can say VOX is a lot like blogger but more friendly with the user and more compatible with other apps like Flickr, Amazon, YouTube, and above all it's more stylish, go on join or explore VOX.

October 28, 2006, 3:44 PM TrackBack 0

More meaningful writings

As you already may know I read dozens of posts and comments every day, unfortunately I noticed that most of them could be more meaningful if they just wrap parts of there text by some simple tags, here are some important tags that writers often miss:

Emphasis

Some times there is more important text that needs to be highlighted, to specify some text as more important wrap it with <em> like this This text is <em>important</em>. Or even more important wrap it with <strong> like this I just got <strong> married</strong> infact I did.

Emphasis usually represented as italic for <em> & bold for <strong> but take care don't use those tags for there visual representation use them only for there meanings and avoid using <i> & <b>.

Abbreviations & acronyms

An abbreviation is a group of letters taken from one word to brief it, like the world abbreviation could be abbreviated as abbr or from more than one word like the word HyperText Markup Language could be abbreviated as HTML.

Acronyms are type of abbreviations it's the first letters of a group of words like National Aeronautics and Space Administration its acronym is NASA.

To indicate abbreviations wrap your abbreviation with <abbr> like this <abbr>HTML</abbr> now you indicated that HTML is an abbreviation but you could push it more and indicate the abbreviation long form by adding a title attribute like this <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> now if you hovered with the mouse over the abbreviation the long form will be shown in a tooltip, the same for acronyms <acronym title="North Atlantic Treaty Organisation">NATO</acronym>

Quotations & citations

A quotation which could also be named a quote indicates part of others speeches or writings like Beauty in design is not only about that which can be seen, but also that which can't be seen. said by Douglas Bowman it's done by wrapping the quoted text by <q> like this <q>This text is quoted</q> a cite attribute could be added to indicate the URL which this quote is from like <q cite="http://www.quoted.com/q/">This text is quoted</q>.

If the quoted text is a whole paragraph or more than one <blockquote> should be used instead of <q> like this

<blockquote><p>To explain web standards we have to mention first that web design isn't just designing a beautiful interface but behind this interface is a structural markup like HTML, XHTML, presentational language like CSS and DOM based scripts like ECMA script.</p></blockquote> notice that you have to wrap your paragraph with <p> inside the <blockquote>

And ofcoure it could be used with more than one paragraph as the following,

<blockquote><p>Not at all as you can see in this site CSS can make beautiful interface designs with all the benefits that we mentioned here, in fact any design can be redesigned with CSS to be standards compliant.</p> <p>Speaking of CSS beauty we must mention the CSS zen garden project that proves to every body how beautiful is pure CSS layouts. It is one XHTML page and this same page can be changed by only pointing to other CSS file there is over 600 CSS files submitted from designers all over the world. Switch designs from the right panel and be inspired.</p></blockquote>

It will appear usually like this but without the left border the text will be indented only.

Not at all as you can see in this site CSS can make beautiful interface designs with all the benefits that we mentioned here, in fact any design can be redesigned with CSS to be standards compliant.

Speaking of CSS beauty we must mention the CSS zen garden project that proves to every body how beautiful is pure CSS layouts. It is one XHTML page and this same page can be changed by only pointing to other CSS file there is over 600 CSS files submitted from designers all over the world. Switch designs from the right panel and be inspired.

To define a citation or a reference to another source use <cite> like in the previous example <q>Beauty in design is not only about that which can be seen, but also that which can't be seen.</q> said by <cite>Douglas Bowman</cite>, citations usually represented as italic.

If you want to specify a URL to a citation just wrap it with the <a> tag and add the attribute href like this <a href="http://www.citations.com/"><cite>cited content</cite></a>

Code

To indicate a code wrap with <code> like this <code>This is a code</code> and it's usually represented just as the previous example in the courier font.

Deleting & inserting

Maybe this issue will be hard for some of you to apply but when you provide a permalink to your post readers must trust that this permalink will last forever and that its content will not be changed so that they could link to it in there posts, well this issue is for bloggers not commenters to update the content of a post you have to use the tag <del> if you want to delete something and <ins> if you want to insert something like for example Madagascar is a very nice <del>Disney</del> <ins>DreamWorks</ins> movie usually it will be shown like this Madagascar is a very nice Disney DreamWorks movie.

In brief

Here are all the tags we mentioned and there functions in brief.

Good luck with your more meaningful writings,

August 24, 2006, 10:07 AM TrackBack 0

iWeb generated code is crap

Well as I expected the code generated from iWeb is really crap, I searched a lot for any examples of iWeb generated pages but I failed, but now the first pages are showing up, and I'm sorry to say that they're crap, check the source code of those examples or disable there CSS and see how they look, Todd Dominey has describe it as not that good & BusinessLogs describe it as awful.

I'm sorry Apple I always trust you and adore your products but this app was a disappointment to me. I can't imagine how a company like Apple in 2006 still use those old school ways, I hope they fix this mistake in new releases but for now I don't advice any one to start a blog with iWeb, just go with Blogger it's way better and it's easy too.

January 13, 2006, 7:03 AM Comments 1 TrackBack 0

Blogging for all

Well I was searching the web and I saw a lot of blogs with one or two posts with old dates. I was thinking why do they stop what stops them, and I thought of writing this post to encourage every body on blogging and describe some miss-understanding about blogging and even about comments.

First of all you don't have to write the perfect post there is no problem if your post has some spelling or grammar mistakes or has some scrambled thoughts that is not perfectly organized. Just write as you write when you are chatting with a close friend.

Don't expect all your readers to like all your posts, you just have to post your thoughts without hurting anybody or giving wrong information if you get out of those two, then your post is perfect.

Why blog?

I see blogging as a big part of education you post technical posts in your field and some body comment it so you learn from this comments, even non-technical posts that should be the majority of posts will also educate you, you know only thinking of a post and starting to organize your thoughts to write it, is useful and will increase your knowledge about this thing you're posting about, it also will improve your language and your communication skills.

So now what are you waiting for go start blogging.

And please leave me a comment any comment let's see what you could come up with, maybe you are not that good in English or you don't know much about blogging and what I'm talking about, but sure your comment will reflect your opinion and your thought in that post and in that blog in general.

Here is an example of a blogger who know how to do it right but he prefer not to, because he want to write about what he believes in not just impress his readers.

December 11, 2005, 2:22 AM Comments 1 TrackBack 1

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