Astro Lesson #26:
she.sells.style.sheets.by.the.sea.shore

Well, would you believe it - what's this?

Pathetic, isn't it .... just wait til we catch that Grrl!!! Hmmmm - what's this tucked inside her gravity boots? Guess this will have to do for now ...

 

how.much.do.i.charge.thee?.let.me.count.the.ways

"You wanna charge WHAT for a website? You gotta be kidding me! It doesn't cost me half that for my color brochures!"

Sound familiar? Today Retrogrrl will examine the differences between the medium of print and the medium of the web in an effort to educate the masses (that's you) about the move to multimedia.

on.the.drawing.board

When planning a company brochure the preparation stage is highly important. Considerations include color, layout, content, editing - but also 'who are the readers', 'what is the purpose of this publication', 'is it user-friendly', 'how many pages are involved', 'do you include contact numbers' and so on.

"So? The web's the same really, isn't it? What's the big deal?" Well, it is and it isn't, so let's have a look and work out where your money might really be going.

knock.knock.who's.there?

As the proprietor of the Handy Dandy Gadget and Widget Store, you commission Percy the Printer to prepare a full color sales brochure. Being rather on the fussy side, you spend a lot of time driving poor Percy mad with all your requests, getting the finished product just the way YOU want it to look. You hire spotty nephew Norbert and his trusty BMX bicycle to deliver the goods to all the neighbourhood letter boxes. And rope in Aunty Gladys to answer the phones as they ring-ting-aling with orders and enquiries, (she doesn't need a wage - you can fob her off with a few widgets at the end of the day ... )

Apart from making sure the Handy Dandy catalogue fits inside the majority of letter boxes, you can be 99% assured that everyone will receive an exact same copy and will therefore all form the same fine opinion of Gadgets and Widgets (discounting those copies chewed by Rover the wonder dog)

On the internet - that figure can drop considerably unless some detailed precautions are taken by your friendly Webperson (Webmaster/mistress sounds much too pretentious don't ya think - and besides it always conjures up visions of whips and chains!)

We've mentioned them before so here's a short list :

Monitor size - you may possess a 17inch screen but your clients may all be stuck with 14's
Resolution - 800 x 600 might be nice, but how is a web page going to appear at 640 x 480 or even at higher resolutions?
Colors - Millions of colors are pretty, but what happens to those who live in the land of 256, how do you compensate for them? Browsers and operating systems also display colors differently - what can you do about it?
Browsers - It may take 2 to tango but the major players - Internet Explorer and Navigator don't Cha Cha very well together - each displays differently.
Modem speed - We can't all run on T1 connections - How do you make sure you are not alienating 14,400 / 28,800 users?

You may not know the answers to these questions, but a Webperson should - and will spend an awful lot of time constructing a web page with all of the above in mind. To make sure that as many people as possible view HandyDandy.com as it was intended and not in some weird manner. Retrogrrl points you to Cadet Lesson 15 for help with the above problems.

follow.the.yellow.brick.road

Here's a point. Unless Handy Dandy is a middle eastern company, the brochure will be read from left to right, pages turned to the latest widgets in logical sequence. An internet site has 'pages' too, but in order to keep potential customers on the straight and narrow, an intricate navigation system must be devised - all through the power of hyperlinks. Rather like a good road map, there needs to be a consistent navigation system - access to the home page at all times, access to a site map should someone pop in from the back door or get themselves confused as to where they are. Did you realise that not everyone will come in via the main home page? The beauty of the web is that a link can lead to a link can lead to a link .... if HandyDandy.com uses frames, this can become a little tricky. A Webperson must plan this navigation system carefully and ensure that all the links will bring the customers in from the cold.

a.picture's.worth.a.thousand.kilobytes

All those shiny, gleaming Widgets and Gadgets! How about some lovely color photo's, company logos and graphic examples to brighten up the catalogue - sure thing, just hand those pictures to Percy the Printer and he'll pop out a million of 'em. Yeah, and let's put them on the web page too - can never have enough pics to look at, can ya?

Uh uh - think again. Every single item on a web page travels from the host computer to the viewer's computer, magically floating down the phone lines. Any kind of graphic adds to the size of these downloading files, and so they must be used sparingly and they must be chemically treated in order to shrink their contents to an acceptable limit. This means converting to Jpeg or Gif format - something that can take time and a bit of trial and error to avoid reducing too much quality. Cadet Lesson 6 delves into this delightful topic.

And then there's the problem of aliasing/anti-aliasing and transparent Gifs : Many graphics will have to be created or re-created especially for the web page - whether they are logo's, graphical headlines, image maps or animations.

you.want.it.where?

HTML - hypertext markup language - was never designed as a layout tool. Bits and bobs can't be cut and pasted in the same way as in, say, Publisher or WordPerfect - sometimes tables and frames are incorporated and so must be purpose 'built' for the occasion. All sorts of tricks are used by Webpersons in placing graphics and text in meaningful order - transparent spacer gifs, invisible text, alignment tags, whatever does the job best.

More often than not one particular browser stubbornly refuses to play nice and endless hours are spent tweaking and fiddling to arrive at a compromise. Thank goodness some nice webby people have gotten together to rein in these badly behaved browsers - pop over to WebStandards to see what they are up to.

leave.it.out

Some content may require revising for the web. Long screeds of text should be broken up into eye-friendly paragraphs and headings. Fonts may need rethinking - not everyone has access to the same ones as you do. Formatting will need to be be reapplied using HTML rather than wordprocessing techniques.

It's quite likely that severe editing may take place, an Edward Scissorhands snip-o-rama, to constrain text to web limitations - or simply to create a more appealing, readable site.

color.me.hippy

Serving all these ingredients on the one plate is fine, but they mustn't congeal into a sticky mess of hotchpotchiness, Dahlings. We must plan design as well as function, combining color and visual elements with navigation - no point having roast turkey without the vegetables and gravy. A good Webperson should have a splash of colorsense, a pinch of good taste and a dash of design.

coming.to.the.party

Well, that's it - HandyDandy.com is up and running and we can all sit back and have a cuppa and one of Aunty Gladys' scones. Nope - uh-uh, not yet. The web site needs to be cyber-advertised by submitting it to search engines, link pages, and net directories. Meta tags need to be composed so that people can 'find' Widgets and Gadgets when searching the web, and HandyDandy.com needs to be reasonably close to the top search results - other wise you'll never be found. More work for the weary Webperson.

keeping.up.appearances

Our friend Percy wipes his inky hands at night and goes home, thinking of his dinner and the new jobs that await him on the morrow. As spotty Norbert scrunches the freshly printed brochures inside letter boxes, they are just as quickly being thrown into the rubbish, sorry, recycling bin. Web developers on the other hand, are faced with the fact that their creation may exist on the net for years in some form or other. Who maintains these sites, with updated information, prices, dates? Sometimes this factor has to be built into the initial price as an ongoing maintenance fee.

the.tricky.stuff

Course, this is just basic site construction - if HandyDandy.com decides to branch out into Thingumybobs and Whatchamacallits it may be necessary to incorporate a searchable database. This requires access to CGI scripts and programming capabilities. How about some Javascript? Counters? Forms? Flash animation? Real Audio? Only your budget can hold you back.

what.you.don't.see.is.what.you.get

So the moral of the tale is this. Yes, HandyDandy.com may scrub up just like that sales brochure, or it may be completely different in style and content - but most of the work your Webperson has completed will be invisible, creating a seamless interface, a wonderland of links, graphics and information. Structure, Design and content must fade into the sunset hand in hand in hand, a menage a troi of integration and usability (damn, that's good! ReTroGrrl's been reading books again ...)

Strike a bargain for your company web page, sure - but before you go for an el cheapo fly by night Webperson, or attempt the task yourself, take the time to do some research - the net is an excellent resource about itself. View the source code on your favorite web pages and see the method behind the madness. The unseen, the mysterious, the gruesome .... oh, maybe not.

Ah. so much to learn, and so few light years to learn it all in. Begone now, to ponder upon these points and come back next time for a smattering of something new, something exciting, well - something else.