Genealogy Computer Tips & Tutorials

This tutorial comes under the heading of “Why didn’t I think of that?” I design FREE CSS layout templates for use by the genealogy community or anyone for that matter. When I post them, I usually use filler content so you can see what the page would look like with content instead of just blank. Once the template is finished, I head on over to http://www.lipsum.com/ enter the number of paragraphs I want or the list items, press the Generate Lorem Ipsum button, copy the text in the browser window, and then paste it into my page in Expression Web template that I am using as the example. Time consuming but it works.

Then I came across Creating a “content” snippet, a tutorial by Anna Ullrich which gives step by step directions for creating a code snippet for inserting the dummy text in Expression Web. What a time-saver. Can you think of other things to use it for? Thank you Anna!

In my wanderings around the Internet tonight, I came across an article by Chris Coyier called What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like.

I have an addiction. I can’t help but view source on every nice looking website I see. It’s like if you had x-ray glasses that allowed you to see any person you ever saw in their underwear at will. How could you not?

It’s just so tempting to see if a beautiful website is built with beautiful code as well, or if it’s beauty if only skin-deep. Code? Beautiful? Sure. After all, Code is Art. This is just HTML, so it can’t be quite as intricate and elegant as a dynamic language, but it still bears the brush strokes of it’s creator and there is craftsmanship abound.

Since I also have this addiction, I thought I would share his article with with you. He makes a number of points:

• DOCTYPE Properly Declared
• Tidy Head Section
• Body IDed
• Semantically Clean Menu
• Main Div for all Page Content
• Common Content INCLUDED
• Code is Tabbed into Sections
• Proper Ending Tags
• Hierarchy of Header Tags
• Content, Content, Content
• No Styling

He includes a neat graphic image and you can download the entire thing in pdf format. Check out What Beautiful HTML Code Looks Like and see what YOU think.

Just released Volume II of Expression Web Tips Ebook containing 26 brand new tips for using Expression Web written by Tina Clarke, Microsoft MVP - FrontPage. Tina is also the owner of the Any Expression Web Tips Ezine which brings these tips to you weekly.

If you miss any of the tips in the ezine, there is no archives and the tips are not resent, however you can obtain them now without waiting and worrying if you are going to miss an Original Expression Web Tip by buying the Any Expression Web Tips Ebook Vol ll for just $7.00.. The ebook is filled with 26 EW Tips all original and comes complete with a bonus Expression Web Query with Tip 49.

Volume I of the Expression Web Tips is also available at the price of $7.00 or you can purchase both Volume I and Volume II for $13.00.

The Interactive Buttons feature in Expression Web generates simple button images and JavaScript for you, and lets you select the font properties, size, color, and interactive behavior for your buttons. Instead of fooling with images and all that script, you can get the same results with HTML and CSS? Read Interactive buttons - a better way using CSS. This is a step-by-step tutorial with screenshots.

A question I hear quite often on the genealogy mailing lists is “How can I get Google to find my site?” Susan Emerson has just written another great article Search Engine Friendly Design.

When looking into having a website created for your business or how you can improve your existing website’s results through the search engines you will often hear and see the buzz words “Search engine friendly”.

The article contains things to watch out for like fancy javascript menu, flash and splash pages. Those of us who design sites for genealogy, or for a non profit or just for our own hobbies need to follow these tips for search engine friendly design as much as businesses do. Thanks Susan for some great tips.

Have you thought about upgrading to Microsoft’s new web editor Expression Web? When it was first released, you had to have a version of FrontPage in order to qualify for the upgrade price. If you have any of the programs listed below, you now qualify for the $99. competitive price. Quite a savings.

You qualify if you are the owner of:

• Microsoft FrontPage (any version)
• Microsoft Office (any version)
• Adobe/Macromedia Creative Suite (any version)
• Adobe/Macromedia Dreamweaver (any version)
• Adobe/Macromedia Flash or Director (any version)
• Adobe GoLive (any version)

For more info see: http://www.microsoft.com/Expression/products/retail.aspx?key=web

You can also download a free trial of Expression Web.

Make sure that you obtain and use the product key or your trial will end before the full 60 day trial period.

Web Album Generator F*ree Software

Someone on the FreePages Mailing List recommended Web Album Generator as free software to make web albums and photo galleries from your digital photographs. Curious, I decided to check it out as genealogists use lots of image files in working on their website. It is probably the first program I have tried that actually created code that validated on the first try. Kudos, to Mark McIntyre the programs creator.

According to the website, Web Album Generator or WAG for short, the features include:

• Automatic thumbnail creation
• Photograph resizing / resampling
• Photograph rotation NEW!
• Type titles and captions in any language NEW!
• Customizable photo album presentation
• Drag and drop image support
• Add captions and titles for each photo
• No knowledge of HTML required
• XHTML 1.0 Strict and CSS 2.0 compliant
• Super-Amazingly easy to use

I have to agree it is a super easy program to use and the code is clean and validates. The program even generates an external style sheet. You can view a sample album created with WAG.

For the full tutorial and how to integrate your album into an existing site created with Expression Web visit the Web Album Generator section of Genealogy Web Creations.

Once you have installed your wordpress blog and it is working as it should, it is time to think about what theme you will use. Remember, not all themes are created equal. For me, this was the hardest choice. I wanted the theme I chose to:

• Validate out-of-the-box or, at the least, have very few errors or warnings
• Have a fluid layout so that it would resize with no scrollbar at 800×600 resolution
• Was easy to customize the style sheet

Lorelle vonFossen has an article Choosing a WordPress Theme on her WordPress Blog that I can highly recommend. There are lots of free themes out there or you may choose to buy one of the premium themes or even have one custom designed for you.

I found most of the features I was looking for in the theme I choose, Misty Look by Sadish Bala. However the header image did not reflect what the subject of my blog was about so I went looking for a new header image. In searching, I found Free Web Page Headers where I found exactly what I was looking for. I changed the colors in the style sheet to reflect the colors of my new header and made a slight adjustment in the widths so that the page resized to 800×600 yet still looked good at higher resolutions. Make sure you check your chosen theme in more than one browser and at more than one resolution.

If you are a new user to Expression Web and tried to use any of the “in box” templates provided as part of the program, you will find that

1. All of the templates use absolute positioning
2. All of the templates create folders for each section
3. All of the templates use two separate style sheets

Absolute positioned elements are fragile and can break easily. Cheryl Wise, Microsoft MVP Expression Web has taken each of the personal and organization templates included with Expression Web and restructured the site so that every folder has a default html page and folders that are highly unlikely to ever include more than one page have been deleted with their single page moved to the root section of the website. She has made these Updated Expression Web “in box” Templates available for F*REE download along with quite a few other templates.

I was busy updating my website Genealogy Web Creations when I came across a resource I just had to share. Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers is a book by Sarah Horton. This book is a primer - a simple and concise introduction to the fundamentals and basic principles about designing accessible and usable websites.

You can read Digital Magazine’s Review of the book here:
http://www.digital-web.com/articles/access_by_design/

And one from Web Reference here:
http://www.webreference.com/reviews/access_by_design/

And you can access the full html version of Access by Design from Universal Usability.