Specials

Sausage Sizzler - Black Beauty

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Editorial June 21st 2002

G'day Sizzlers!

Thanks for all of your suggestions on roaming dial-up access. Suggestions ranged from AOL and Earthlink to more localized ISPs and 1-800 services. I have not had good experiences with AOL so I really doubt I will go with them, but I might give EarthLink or the 1-800 number services a shot.

Brian and I have finished building my new computer. It has a black case… and although I have never named a computer before… I have chosen “Black Beauty.” Possibly something to do with Chris’s influence?

Black Beauty is an AMD XP 1800+ with a nVidia G-Force4 MX440. It’s very fast and I am sure the 512Mb of DDR Ram helps. It also has a CD Writer and DVD drive along with the Romtec Drive switch, which still needs a couple of additional hard drives to be useful. The drives are on the way though!

If anyone wants me to go into more detail about Black Beauty, let me know. I will ask Brian if he can write up a 'how to' on the building process.

Keep on sizzling!

Nathan Allan
Sausage Sizzler Editor
editor@sausage.com

THREE DAY ONLY SPECIAL

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HTML Basics

Form Elements

This issue we look at another entry field type, the TEXT AREA. It is formatted a little differently from other INPUT types, and looks like this:

<textarea name="Comments" rows="4" cols="50">Enter your comments here</textarea>

Basically you would use a TEXT AREA to take comments, suggestions or for long answers to questions.

You can define the size of the text area by setting a value to the rows and column attributes. You can also name it or if you like, pre-fill it with a value.

Tip by Nathan Allan

SuperToolz

Norton Ghost 98/ME/NT4/2000/XP US$69.95

http://www.symantec.com/sabu/ghost/ghost_personal/
http://www.symantec.com/downloads/

I was lucky enough to get a copy of Norton AntiVirus and Norton Ghost with my new motherboard.

It is great for backing up your system exactly how it is at any moment. That way if your system has a major crash or failure you can bring it back to life without having to install everything again, and recovering all your data.

All your data is backed up using your CD Burner, creating bootable CDs. Very handy in the event of a system failure!

Review by Nathan Allan

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Sizzler Forum Spotlight

I started a discussion earlier this week on how people determine the width of their Web pages. There are so many things to take into account, so I asked what everyone is designing for these days.

Take a look at the discussion and learn some new techniques or add your own thoughts at:
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=540

Review by Nathan Allan

Gear Grinders

Who's in charge?

Very cool! I'm sitting in the doctor’s office with my wife (waiting) and using my PocketPC to write this week’s column. What a time saver!

Last week, a discussion focused on whether or not the designer is responsible for design AND content. One person wrote me to say that regardless of design quality, if grammar use is poor, the designer will be overlooked. This has prompted me to ask the following questions:

Who's in charge of reading up on the latest leaks, patches and protection? If the designer is responsible for design and content, is the designer ALSO responsible for server security? If the designer is to be capable of writing content, then why not be knowledgeable in how to secure it?

If my spelling and grammar are in question, maybe I shouldn't be securing a server. If a designer has taken the time to practice design and become proficient, how can the designer also have gone to journalism school? Experience has clearly shown me that authors for content-based sites have some sort of journalism degree. If this is the case, should the author also have a fine arts degree of some sort?

How many designers are able to SSH into a Linux box and operate the server via command line? Can they write shell scripts? Set up cronjobs? Is the web designer for a magazine publisher supposed to be skilled enough to fully administer a million-dollar +, 10-server cluster, load balanced, customized installation of Vignette?

A racecar driver knows how to drive his car to win the race but the pit crew fixes the broken stuff. They are a team. Shouldn't it be same for the Internet?

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the adage, "jack of all trades, master of none" applies to any scenario in which one person is responsible for all tasks.

Perhaps the appropriate question should be, ‘Is the designer responsible to be familiar with the content?’ Even that question seems irrelevant to me.

I am just full of questions. Share your answers and thoughts:
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=555

Discuss your experiences with Bram Leland Scolnick

Designed for Browsing

What's in a name? Choosing the ‘right’ one.

So here I am, building “the list.” I am willing to bet some of you are thinking, "What is WITH this guy and this ‘list’?" I was taught in design school that everything I do should be well thought out, well planned, and of course, well executed. In other words, I am trying to be thorough.

Since we are looking at all aspects of design and how content works within this picture, what about the domain name? Imagine how designing a site for Bob’s Hardware Planet and designing another for Misty’s Flower Pot would generate different designs.

Do you, as a web designer, help your customer(s) choose the "right" name? Do you, as a Web designer, have to work with what you get from a customer?

Rather than ramble on about this topic, I would very much like to see what you come up with.

The questions:

1. If you are designing the logo and site from scratch, how important is the name to this whole design equation?
2. How does the name affect your design and/or your design approach?
3. What other questions can you pose? I have tons. What are yours?

And as always, the running list.

1. Load time
2. Browser Compatibility (W3C)
3. Color usage
4. Page layout
5. Navigation
6. Overall Design
7. Use of images and text, and the balance
8. Accessibility
9. Use of frames
10. iFrames
11. CSS, JavaScript, and DHTML
12. Site Interactivity
13. Copyright Infringement
14. Grammar and Spelling
15. A well-defined objective of this site
16. Search-ability

Add your thoughts:
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=556

Discuss with Bram Leland Scolnick

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