Daily Thoughts

Ellery Queen (left), American mystery writer, and James Yaffe

Daily Thoughts

Cory Doctorow: Writing In The Age of Distraction http://www.locusmag.com/Features/2009/01/cory-doctorow-writing-in-age-of.html

Today was interesting. We had two rounds of meetings with local service agencies; one at 10 a.m. and one at 2 p.m. We talked about the services which are available at our library, and gave a variety of handouts to the visiting agencies. The agencies wanted a variety of improvements. They would like a service to fill out government forms; a map of the library, and many other improvements.

We had coffee, tea, fruit, and some pastries. I ended up speaking twice about the service brochure which I wrote with my colleague. This is the first time it has been shown to the public. It is a work in progress right now. I think I did fine with it. I am not that used to doing community outreach.

Something I noticed while we were working on the design of the new services brochure in Microsoft Publisher is that working on this blog has considerably changed my sense of design. Looking at lots of blogs gives you an idea of which two and three column pages work well. You end up reading lots of two and three column documents if you follow blogs. I think that it has improved my basic editing skills considerably.

Manipulating text boxes has become much easier in microsoft documents because of how blogs are broken up into discreet bites. I had previously designed flyers in Microsoft Word, but this is the first time I am using publisher to create documents. I am looking forward to further training in how to use publisher to create documents. So far, I have worked on bookmarks, 5 1/2 by 8 1/2 inch pages, flyers, and brochures. I think I might try and design a business card in publisher on card stock.

I had a chance to finish reading The Shadow of the Scorpion by Neal Asher on the way home. I will begin writing a review tomorrow. The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism by Geoff Nicholson came in for me to read. I once again have to many books to read. It has become a habit now that I have began writing about books that I have several to read.

Many books after reading the first chapter cease appealing to me. I find this happens more and more as I read more. Learning about grammar, editing, and reviewing changes your view on books considerably.

Don't Make Me Think A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability, Second Edition, Steve Krug-- Review

Don't Make Me Think A Common Sense Approach To Web Usability, Second Edition, Steve Krug-- Review

Don't Make Me Think is a book about web usability. Usability is basically how easy it is too efficiently use a website. It tests how to make a website easier for the average visitor.

This book gives you insights into how to make a website easy to use. The first principle is to make your website as obvious as possible. For example, if the visitor is looking for employment information, it should use the most obvious words to describe employment like jobs or resume.

The other point it makes is that people don't read websites they do magazines or books, they scan through a website quickly. Most people do not want to scroll through screens of information. They want to go to the first place which gives them relevant information. They are seeking "satisficing", that is the place where they will get the information they need, not the best information.

Steve Krug describes how a website is more like a billboard than a magazine. The title should be prominently displayed on all the pages, and there should be a link back to the home page on every page. The most important piece of information on the web page should be the most visible.

Links should be obviously shown as links. This is why I usually put the full url in my blog posts for sites that you can visit.

Steve Krug quotes from The Elements of Style, "Omit needless words." He further says you must eliminate happy talk, marketing talk, and jargon from your site. People do not have very much patience on the internet.

There are some interesting concepts described about how people find things. He has many diagrams on how people seek out to buy things on the web. These diagrams explain how to make the experience quicker and easier. He also describes how to create a visual trail for the user on a web site. This often called "breadcrumbs." At times this gets a bit complex.

There is also a description of the basic elements of a homepage for a business. This book is mostly focused on business and professional websites, not the home user. It often describes how a development team in a business would build or test a website. This is my first experience with this kind of material.

Some of the elements in a professional homepage are search functionality, timely content, and shortcuts. He mentions that the title of websites should have a catchy tagline attached to them. This should explain exactly what the website is about.

The final chapters are how to do usability testing in a very inexpensive manner. He describes the basic setup with a camcorder, cabling, computers, and screen capture software. Then he tells how you can test a website with small groups of people to see whether or not it is easy for them to use. I understood the majority of this. However, it is not something I am planning on doing immediately.

Immediately after the cheap usability testing, he gives an outline of the context of what generates goodwill and bad will in a website. For example, some of the elements which generate goodwill are making it easy to recover from errors, putting in printer friendly pages, and knowing what the main thing people want in your website then implementing it.

The last few pages have several books which he recommends you read to improve your web site usability. Some of them look quite interesting. I may order several of them for my library. There is an index in the back of the book as well.

The book is illustrated in full color. There are pictures on almost every page. The artwork is pleasant to look and relevant to the content of the book. The book itself is designed so it is easy to read. The author claims you should be able to read through the book in about two hours. It took me three hours with several interruptions.

This book is very basic. It gives you an idea of what web usability is. I think it is helpful for basic tips on how to improve a website. The material is not advanced or complicated. It is the kind of thing you can read in an afternoon. This is a beginners book. If you already have advanced usability skills, it might not help.

Hot Text Web Writing That Works-- Jonathan and Lisa Price-- Review

Hot Text, Web Writing That Works by Jonathan and Lisa Price is a book about how to write for the internet. Writing on the internet is very different than writing in print. Print has a much higher resolution for lettering and is much easier to look at. Web pages are somewhat fuzzy and indistinct. People read 25% slower on the web than on the printed page.

Readers are also not very patient with websites. Most don't want to have scroll down through multiple screens. They want to read everything on the first screen most of the time. Long articles are often not appreciated.

Because it is harder to read, many people want to have their information up front. You need to summarize what you are writing about at the beginning not the end. You also need headings for your subjects which clearly describe what you are writing about.

The focus is on immediacy. Paragraphs need to be short and to the point. The authors give numerous examples of how to reduce the amount of verbiage while writing. The point is to shorten your words, tighten your paragraphs and arrange your headings so people can understand quickly what you are writing about.

In addition, unlike a printed page, a website page is viewed as an object. There are also images and links embedded in each page. Most people want to see images with their text illustrating what the website is about. Links should be short and easy to read. Also, long lists should be broken up into bullet points if possible.

The point of this book is to make your writing more readable and usable for the internet. The book focuses on business and marketing writing. How to write a proper faq, customer service page, checkout for credit cards, and design a blog are discussed.

This book will help you write cleaner copy and create clarity in your thinking when you are writing on the internet. I thought it was quite useful to read. I think you will too.

Changing The Fonts and Background, Ordering Computer Books

Changing Fonts And Background

I changed the fonts and background color to make my sidebar more visible. Someone recently complained about the way my blog looked. It was not readable enough. I hope this looks much better. The links were hard to see.

Ordering Computer Books

I spent more time ordering computer books today. I spoke with the person in charge of the Cybercorner where people can sign up to use the computers for free. She told me that she thought that the Complete Idiots Guides and The For Dummies series of books were about the right speed for our library. She also mentioned that we needed a lot of very basic books on computers: email, PCs, internet, computer repair, routers, ebay, windows vista, and digital photography. There were not a whole lot of books on routers. I always try and get input from other staff members when I am doing ordering lists.

I also spent a bit of time going through the current computer books to see if there were any publishers imprints I had missed. There was a series called The Absolute Beginners Guides which covered basic issues with computing. As part of looking, I discarded a few of the computer guides.

We cannot discard a lot of the older books because of the problem of legacy computing. What happens is that some businesses keep their old software for many years and do not upgrade it. The stores stop selling the older books about computers, but the businesses still maintain the older systems. We get questions about Windows 95, SAP, Wordstar, DBase IV, and similar systems which can no longer be purchased in the bookstores. The library becomes the de facto repository for books on legacy programs.

I took a few minutes to look at PC Magazine and Computers In Libraries. Computers In libraries had two interesting books listed, The Accidental Webmaster by Julie Stills, and Social Software In Libraries by Meredith Farkas. There were a few gadgets that I had forgotten to consider in PC Magazine, the Smart Phone, Blackberry, and Palm devices.

While I was looking at Amazon and plugging in various categories, I also came across another interesting book, The Future of the Internet And How To Stop It by Jonathan Ziffrain. It is a fascinating title, but I don't think we are going to stop the internet any time soon.