Thank You. I read your comments with great care several times. I like
your writing style. It is much like mine in that you take the time to put
meat in your sandwich. I chewed on said meat (content) until I had extracted
as much of your wisdom as I could before swallowing. There's still lots left
on my plate, though, so bear with me -- I'm closing on a deadline to get
to work and have to put the rest in the fridge for now. <g>
Thank you kindly. I noted that you had a considered and thoughtful
style of writing yourself. I've never thought of my style as "chewable with
high meat content", however :) I do try to be clear, and avoid "best consumed
before" limitations.
Your comment that I've published my web material with the mindset of
pen and paper was very insightful. I'll be mulling on this for several days
to come.
It's not unusual. New media are usually used with "old" mindsets
by a great majority for a long time. Overall, significant changes tend to
occur discretely in terms of new user generations, rather than incrementally
with the same users. (There is/was a whole generation of office computer
workers for instance who never got used to using click&point with mice,
just as there was a whole generation of people who never got used to the
idea of telephones for personal conversations. Lots more examples are possible.)
Of course individual users can adapt, that's not the issue, it's that it
takes a conscious effort to transcend the mindset and the assumptions that
go with it, and most won't do that.
I'm not sure whether this is something I need to bridge, or something
that needs a new approach in thinking.
It's mostly the internalized realization that no matter what you
do in terms of layout, it will never, but never, render
exactly the way you see it on your screen. Different viewer
software (versions) on different platforms will, apart from obvious constraints
such as screen size, resolution, color palette, installed typefaces, and
current window size, also have varying interpretations and implementations
of rendering (visualization of html content tags). Furthermore, much rendering
can be customized by the user (e.g. Jerry who sets a much larger font-size
as default), or even turned off altogether. That, in essence, is part of
the point with html and content-tagging, that you need not be very concerned
about how the rendering is implemented in individual cases.
This is what allows automated indexing and information "mining". It also
allows e.g. voice-synthesis reading of text (for blind users) with "correct
emphasis" and other voice cues determined by the tags. "Incorrectly" tagged
text will therefore often leave them clueless.
The bottom line is that there is nothing intrinsically "wrong" with
nice visual layouts, but it must be done from a reasonably consistent
content point of view. Examples: font-sizing instead of
H1..H4 for headers is wrong, because font-sizing is a purely visual tagging
(font-tags do not convey "heading"). For blind users, this would mean that
they would never realize a particular line of text was a heading, because
the software could then not cue them to this. In the same way, EMphasis (content)
is better than Italic (visual) to convey "stress", and STRONG (content) is
better than just Bold (visual). B and I are however still useful in "visual
cueing", in the sense that it does allow some limited control of visual
rendering, "tweaking" so to speak, so that you can "suggest" that STRONG
be rendered as Bold by combining both tags, or conversely, add Bold to EMphasis
instead.
Strictly speaking, most people will use word-processor tags incorrectly
as well, with little understanding of how templates and style tagging of
whole paragraphs should work. WYSIWYG, though it hides the messy details
and lets you concentrate on simply writing, as implemented unfortunately
also obstructs insight into tagging functionality. With paper printout, on
the other hand, the visual end result is most often what counts, there being
little "content" information that survives. Even though most documents today
live on digital media with the "content" tags still alive, it is still the
visual impression that people go by. This is the mindset we inherit to the
web, and it is strongly evident in all the so-called "tutorials" on purely
visual "cool" web design that are out there.
I'm as new and as inexperienced as they come when it comes to anything
to do with this project I've undertaken, but as I noted to Bob, it is so
far very rewarding and just the kind of steep learning curve my personality
leans toward. As daunting as it may be at times, it is insight like yours
that drives me forward.
Minor correction: it is your insight that drives
you forward. All I can do is provide pointers based on your comments and
questions.
I'm beginning to think my MS'ness comes more from habit and experience
than informed choice. But to change my tools at this point would throw my
whole being into complete and utter chaos.
Like it or not, the shape of computing and interfaces has to a large
extent been shaped by MS (even though many concepts have not
originated with MS). By all means use the tools that you
find comfortable, but do also try to learn their pros and cons, strengths
and weaknesses, features and limitations, so that your use is an informed
one. This consideration is true of all tools, and of course one's grasp of
the tools will always be more or less imperfect.
Specific to web tools, you must develop a sense of the basics of
html tagging so that you can on occasion go to the raw html and move or adjust
tags manually. (Re tools: Aolpress for example easily allows raw edit, and
in addition formats the html with indentations that makes visual inspection
easier.) This awareness should include an understanding that some html-tags
are proprietary to particular software and not part of the general HTML standard,
and should therefore be avoided. It should also include awareness of the
current web-navigation conventions and user expectations to guide selection
of appropriate link design/layout.
Hopefully this year I will be able to find the resources to set up
a Linux box and explore some new horizons. I like the concept of Open Source
and choice. Very much.
So do I, and I expect in due time to have several Linux systems
up and running. Everything is a question of time, and I am somewhat constrained
by having to maintain a certain compatibility with clients for document files.
This mandates that I run the current version Office, which is why I sit with
NT. On the other hand, I am drifting in the direction of keeping as much
as possible as (correctly tagged) html, rtf and just plain text. Now and
then I do legacy imports (converting older material to e.g. rtf or html)
and cross-platform experiments, and it is interesting how much can be done
as long as one can stay out of the more proprietary formats. With the proper
tools, I am discovering that much original writing can now be done in html
format, allowing for very effective crosslinking and notetaking, and only
later imported into the necessary submission format. Most of this kind of
work is essentially platform-independent, except perhaps for that last step,
and thus ensures a longer lifetime for the archived material.
I do very much look forward to reading your personal insights/daynotes.
But work calls soon and it will have to wait until later tonight.
That's the joy of Internet, email and web: fully asynchronous and
stateless, it awaits _your_ convenience. (Unlike for example the
telephone.)
I am contemplating at this stage collecting some html basics and "web insight"
on some pages somewhere, probably the business domain since it sort of ties
in with my facilitation profile. I will then place a link here to this material.
and on