Finally got a chance to work on more of the tutorials. Hoping to finish up the blogger one by the end of the weekend and the other ones in the next week or so.
Chapter 8 in the blogger videos shows you the basic editors and html editor. Its nice to have the html editor so if anything funky is going on, you can fix it if you are familiar with html. I think its a good idea for most online users to have some basic knowledge of html as a lot of online discussion groups I have been on uses some form of html coding (usually basic). I think its a great idea to keep an eye on any professional groups and sites online to keep up with the latest info other then blogs. For example HOW Magazine, a graphic design magazine, has a whole online community that helps each other out with design questions or critiques or just a general chat section. Also in Chapter 8, the tutorial shows that you can specify if you want your post to have comments or not which is a great feature if you don't want any feedback. Another nice feature is being able to place a hyperlink to go along with your title.
Chapter 9 goes over how the change your fonts, the different font sizes, color and style. The author suggests to stick with the basic default, which is fine, but I think if you have a professional site, to follow the similar standards you have there. Also discussed in this chapter is how to link text within your post, how to align (left, center, right, justified) your text and creating lists such as bullets. All these features are familiar, so no problems following along.
Chapter 10 starts off with how to add images to your post. I have done this so no problems there. When placing images, you can place an actual webpage url or browse for a photo on your computer.To keep things easier, if you have a site your blog is linked with, you can create an image folder just for blogger that you create an upload path for. Web standards and practices are brought up, one area that is important for accessibility issues is the alt text feature. In this html feature, you write a description which helps people who can't read hear what they are reading.
In chapter 11, the author goes on about privacy issues and the different features blogger gives you for your privacy levels. You can choose to put your full name, an image, audio clips, location, gender, etc. You can also put in extended info such as interests you have, info about you, fav music & books, etc. Chapter 12, discusses how to test comments and also features such as pings. Pings give you a notification when you make posts –weblogs.com get a notice when you make a post.
With blogger.com you can create a team blog. Benefits of a team blog as discussed in Chapter 13, is that businesses can create a blog with multiple authors, one being an administrator (You can give this power to more then one person). This is a feature I could see beneficial for my full time job to get feedback from the community about the many events and also ways to share photos. Chapter 14 shows ways you can manipulate your blogger template with html and style sheets. Can't wait to play with that in the future. You can also add on to the template such as adding categories like favorite links.
A new feature in blogger is audio blogger. One cool feature is you can dial a # (specified in audio blogger setup) and leave a voice message to your blog. This can be helpful to someone who is blind such as the author shows in Chapter 15. Chapter 16 goes over multiple places you can get some questions answered. There is also a blogger.com newsletter, called Knowledge (blogger.com/knowledge). There is also a page setup for more issues and info for developers. The final Chapter, goes over some more advanced issues such as where to look for template tags. Another are discussed is add-ons where a list is provided for add-ons such as photo albums.
I was happy to hear them discuss different blogger options such as word press. I was actually going to bring that up in class to see if Ken knew what it was all about. I read about it on my many design sites and blogs I read several times a week.
Over all, I am excited to be using blogger.com. As mentioned on an earlier post, I almost started using it when it first came around but never got to it. Can't wait to get a proffesional/personal blog working.
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