Category Archives: web

Tribute to Jobs

This is a stray away from my normal posts, but I do have to mention that Steve Jobs did in some part influence the livelihoods of many people, including technical communicators. It is important to note that some of the technology we currently use, cherish, and survive upon was built upon the genius of this forward-thinking visionary.

Without his crafty ingenuity, cult culture, sleek ideas, and a mantra for clean designs, we may not have an electronic and media environment that we have today. For example his NeXT machine was used by Tim Berners-Lee to create the internet; his valiant efforts saved a software company that turned into a major animation studio; his all-in-one machines introduced color and design to the pasty-white and plain boxed business machines that ran the corporate world; his portable music devices changed how people listened to and purchased music by the masses; his line of phones that set the mobile industry on fire; and his tablet devices have moved us away from the desktop and portable computer.

Jobs’ contribution is immense considering that he is an icon of popular culture renowned worldwide. How many geeks can claim that title? Besides bolstering the electronics, software, and media industries, he shared many great ideas with the rest of the world that as a result we are better off with.

Thank you for the wonderful machines that have your logo emblazoned on that millions use daily, they serve as a reminder of the innovative American spirit.

Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder, 1955-2011

WriteTechie Theme Change

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It never occurred to me that the color scheme for this blog on a computer browser was horrendous, until now. If you are one of the ones who has regularly visited this website since May 2011, I greatly appreciate your patronage!

As any proactive technical communicator does, they continuously improve and build upon their masterpieces. This is one of those times in which I hope that the new color scheme will be easier and far more comfortable to read. Originally, I chose the color scheme because it was a ready-made theme by WordPress. In fact, the theme that I use is the Pilcrow Theme, which is very similar to Twenty Ten and Twenty Eleven.

While I enjoy the elegant design and great photo, I want to update the header picture to reflect the field of technical communication. That will be a project on its own for the future to “continuously improve” my blog.

Below is a before and after comparison of WriteTechie for those who never witnessed the old theme colors.

WriteTechie - May to September 2011 - Theme Colors

WriteTechie - September 2011 - Theme Colors

The color change comes with a slight contrast enhancement. For example, the brown-colored theme had the same background color for the text and body. That can be a little frustrating when reading a long column of text because the text was swimming in a vast space of a solid color. It looked great at first back in May 2011, however, I believe the modified color scheme greatly improves readability. I chose a pale light color to contrast against the text background because I wanted something subtle and clean. Another improvement which the screen captures does not display is a return to blue-colored links instead of orange-colored links.

There are few more improvements I want to implement in the future and it’s a great exercise for me to share with you my thoughts on document design revisions, especially when it comes to changes on this blog.

What are your opinions? Think you might visit more often due to the theme improvements? Have a suggestion to make my site even better?

Social Promoting and Sharing

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I’ll take a page out of my social media life and point something out that was an obvious oversight on my part and a great story for anyone who wants to share information on the internet.

Where were the RSS/Share buttons on this blog?

Ben Woelk pointed out that I didn’t have easily accessible means to share the content that I publish. That was true because there was no RSS link anywhere on the site, neither a FeedBurner link, nor a link to send an email to a friend. Thanks to his suggestions, I added HTML to the right-column with RSS feed links and reviewed a couple of WordPress plugins to make sharing my blog easier.

I narrowed it down to a couple of plugins and I may flip/flop with two of them for a while until I am satisfied with the results (unless someone has a better plugin). The two WordPress plugins are AddToAny and AddThis. What I love about these two plugins are three characteristics: free, simple, and customizable.

Both plugins are free via the WordPress.org/plugins site, which have received numerous downloads and popular ratings. Each of these plugins work almost the same way; it displays buttons and links for sharing blog posts and pages to 300+ sites on the web. Some of the popular places to share information are Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, and Digg.

AddToAny and AddThis are simple to install and run. Through the WordPress Dashboard, I can instantly download the plugin and voila! Now my readers can share content with hundreds of websites should they choose so.

The last aspect that these plugins have is the ease in which I can personalize individual features such as visual display, custom icons, and links, without looking through the code and ripping it apart in order to make it show up a certain way. This makes it simple and easy to place buttons without destroying current theme layouts.

What does this mean for TCers? A lot. Consider using social sharing tools to drive more traffic to your sites. My example and thoughts are for WordPress, but there are similar social plugins for content management systems like Drupal and Joomla. These features are helpful because if you run a business, organization, or blog, any reader can share their interest in your products, services, wisdom, philosophy, or advice. Perhaps the next business or professional opportunity may arrive from a reader who came across your website that was shared on another site.