Genealogy Computer Tips & Tutorials

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.

Today I received an e-mail touting a new book and website hosting service that I consider not only spam but very poor advice for budding website designers and genealogists. My friend Tina Clarke wrote about it on her blog Bad Practices, Spam and Irate Web Designers.

After reading parts of their material and the methods they suggest using, I shudder to think of how many genealogists will buy the book and follow their advice for designing a website.

I echo Tina’s closing statement:

“. . . .the owners of this book and site sent the email to the wrong two people who feel strongly about valid and accessible code. (My good friend Pat Geary also received this email). Hence this post from two irate web designers.”

Continue Reading »

For your Christmas enjoyment, I’ve just added three new templates to the Template Collection at Genealogy Web Creations. The Christmas Templates are written with XHTML coding and use an external style sheet. The package includes the three templates, the style sheet, all images and a dynamic web template for use with FrontPage 2003 and Expression Web in zipped format. Merry Christmas from Genealogy Web Creations.

A favicon is a small, 16×16 image that is shown inside the browser’s location bar and bookmark menu when your site is called up.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia -

A favicon (short for ‘favorites icon’), also known as a website icon, a page icon or an urlicon, is an icon associated with a particular website or webpage. A web designer can create such an icon, and many recent web browsers can then make use of them. Browsers that support favicons may display them in the browser’s URL bar, next to the site’s name in lists of bookmarks, and next to the page’s title in a tabbed document interface.

Some samples include the W for the Wikipedia site, G for the Google site, and a small tree for my own genealogy website.

You can create your own favicon with your graphics program or use one of the on-line generators.

Dynamic Drive Favicon Generator

Once you have created your favicon, save it to your website on your hard drive. You will then need to add it to your website on the server.

1. Upload the file (favicon.ico) to your site. Verify That it is actually there by typing http://mysite.com/favicon.ico in the browser’s location, where “mysite.com” is your site’s address.
2. Insert the code shown below in the HEAD section of your pages.
   <link rel=”shortcut icon” href=”favicon.ico” />
3. Your favicon may not appear immediately after you’ve completed the above two steps.

It’s as simple as that. Make sure you you add the code to pages in another directory, that you adjust the path of the url.

Tis the season to entertain and make merry and Cheryl Wise of by-expression.com is offering a Christmas Party Template for you to download. The dynamic web template and the images are free for you to use. She does urge you, to make a donation in whatever amount you feel comfortable with to VetDogs to help provide seeing eye and other service dogs to veterans who need them. Visit her site to view and download this first in a series of seasonal templates.

Have you been searching for a website template you can use to design your genealogy website? There are lots of free templates out there, some specific for genealogy, some not. Some of these are free and some are not. Most free templates require a linkback to the site offering them. REMEMBER: All templates are NOT created equal.

Before you start using a template you have downloaded, the very first thing I do is to validate it. It is much easier to correct coding before you start adding your own content than after you are finished. Make sure you understand enough html coding and css (cascading style sheets) to fix or change things that might go wrong. The majority of free templates come with NO technical support.

I have created a series of templates you can use for your genealogy website available for FREE download at Genealogy Web Creations. They are all css based layouts with the exception of one that uses tables. Each of them validates “out of the box.”

This is just one of the templates available.

If you have questions or need help, feel free to contact me. If you use any of the templates a linkback would be appreciated but is not required.