A 'Shout-Out' for Dragon Blogger

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    Before I get into the meat of this post, I have some news to share.  It's all good stuff!

    First of all, I was offered a position in a tech support call centre yesterday.   I had to pass a number of tests of my IT and networking knowledge, plus a mock call scenario, in order to get the job.  I gladly accepted the job offer.  I'd be working on behalf of a major American ISP.   Well, Americans, at least some of your tech support jobs are being outsourced to Canada instead of India.   My 'Canadian' accent is more similar to an accent from Connecticut than an accent from Arkansas, but I have plenty of practice understanding Southern accents from talking to my dear half-sister Tori, who has spent enough of her life living in Florida and North Carolina  to sound like she's from there.   But yes, my accent is still generally Canadian (still some Londonish inflection exists from being raised by my father and grandmother), I don't really say 'oot and aboot', do I, eh?

     Anyway, my IT know-how and call centre experience got me the job, and it sounds like a pretty good one.  I start training on December 6th.   I will still be working on my freelance web design and blogging, I'm not giving anything up.   And KimCrawley.com will undergo a major overhaul in the next few weeks.  I'm going to change some of the colours to be easier on the eye, and make the site a portal for my blogging, too, not just my web design.  Plus, I'll change the colours of this blog to make it easier to read, as well.

    There's going to be no more Diary of a Lab Rat, I was withdrawn from the study, due to my low blood pressure.  But they paid me very decently for my participation!  I did most of my Christmas shopping in the past couple of days, all with 'lab rat' money.  Thank you, Kendle and Merck!   Oh, talking about Christmas, why don't you check out my Christmas Dos and Don'ts on Blogcritics?

   I'm also working on a website for my dad and stepmom, authors of The Women's Club.  See my Blogcritics interview of them here.  The website should be live in a couple of weeks.

   And, my Blogcritics articles are now being syndicated on the websites of major American newspapers!  Here's a link to my Ladies Who Love Coach Bags rant in the Seattle Post Intelligencer.   I'm also a featured writer in Google News.  Google News keeps an updated list of some of my articles here.

   I'm sorry for my delay of my ever popular 'Brief History of the Web' series, I hope to continue with another part this weekend.

   In the meanwhile, this is the continuation of my 'Shout-Out' series, this time for Dragon Blogger.  The site is run by Justin Germino.  He also runs a few other great blogs and websites, you can check them out here.

   Dragon Blogger is an excellent source for technology and entertainment news.  Justin contributes most of the articles, but I also contribute original articles, and so do several other great bloggers.  

   I recommend that my dear readers bookmark Dragon Blogger, not just for my articles, but also for Justin's and for all the other great content on there.  The site is updated multiple times a day.

   If you'd like to follow my 'Shout-Out' series so far, here are my previous ones:

• A 'Shout-Out' for Feminists For Choice
• A 'Shout-Out' for Transgriot
• A 'Shout-Out' for Tony Moreira
• A 'Shout-Out- for Madeline Moore

   Look forward to more of my 'A Brief History of the Web' series, soon.  Plus, I have more articles planned for Dragon Blogger and Blogcritics.

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A Brief History of the Web- Part eight...

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   Here it is, the much awaited part eight of my 'A Brief History of the Web' series.   I've been super busy, between the lab, Blogcritics and Dragon Blogger, but I apologize for the delay.


   Here's your opportunity to catch up with the series, my most popular to date:

• Part one
• Part two
• Part three
• Part four
• Part five
• Part six
• Part seven

   In this part, we return to the browser wars.


   In the 1990s, the fight was between Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer.  Netscape's browser debuted in 1994, and IE debuted in 1995.  People used to design web pages better for the standards of one browser or another.   Many web designers thought, if you're using Netscape, for instance, and their site says 'Best Viewed In Internet Explorer', you would of course click on the download link, and install IE just to view their website!  Of course, their website was so awesome that you'd be compelled to do just that.  Well... no, not really.

Ha, I think this is the only time I'll ever use an animated GIF in this blog...

    As the year 2000 passed, Netscape quickly lost market share.   But, that wasn't the end for Netscape's Mozilla user agent string!


    Mozilla was originally a codename for Netscape Navigator.  As of 1994, the main web browser was Mosaic (see parts one and two) and Mozilla meant 'Mosaic Killer'.

  The Mozilla Organization was founded in 1998, by Netscape programmers, to create a successor to Netscape Navigator.   By 2003, it became a funded non-profit organization renamed the Mozilla Foundation.

   In 1998, the source code behind the Netscape Communicator suite was released open source under the new Netscape Public License.  The first web browser to come out of the new Mozilla project was Phoenix 0.1,  released in September 2002, but only as a binary for testing.

This image, and the other browser shots here are courtesy of Wikipedia

   The first publicly available version was Firefox 1.0, in late 2004.  They couldn't use the Phoenix name,    a company named Phoenix Technologies weren't very happy.  So then, Mozilla tried the name Firebird, but the Firebird Database Server wasn't happy with that either.   Firefox was the next option, and the one that stuck.


   Here's what that very first public version, Mozilla Firefox 1.0 looked like:

    As Firefox 2 and 3 were released, the browser quickly gained market share, taking a major bite out of IE.   The browser wars were changed, forever.


  Firefox was the browser to introduce tabbed browsing, something I would've loved to have as a teenager in the 1990s.   I used to run multiple browsers, so that I could enjoy a web page while waiting for another to DOWNLOAD.   It was kind of taxing for a system using 128 MB RAM.   Ah, those were the days.


   Opera, which didn't gain major market share, but has a significant sliver of the pie (about 4%), was actually introduced in December 1996 by Norway's Opera Software.   They are now up to an initial alpha release of 11.

   Aside from Opera's relatively lean code, what also sets Opera apart is their focus on accessibility.  Options include having key commands for all actions, mouse gesturing, and voice control.  


   Apple entered the browser wars a lot later than Microsoft did.  Their Safari browser publicly debuted in January 2003, and became the default web browser for Mac OS X 10.3 'Panther'.   Before Safari, the web browser most frequently used on Macs was the Mac version of IE.  Microsoft no longer supports a Mac version of their browser, so IE now only runs in Windows OSes.

   Safari is now up to 5.0.2.  It's a pretty good browser, it works really well with HTML5 and CSS3.   They started a Windows version in 2007.  The main reason why I wouldn't recommend Safari is because it's Crapple!  (See Why I'll never spend a dime on Apple products...)   There's no version of Safari for GNU/Linux OSes like the one I'm using, as Apple likes to pretend that Linux distros don't exist.  I could run Safari for Windows in Wine, but why would I want to?


   My 'A Brief History of the Web' will continue soon.  Until then, I have lots more in store for you!











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Blogcritics Rerun: How to Become a Web Designer

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   Wow, now that I'm back home from the lab, today I've had a lot of work to catch up on.  I've mainly been writing my second article for eHow.com.  Demand Media's guidelines are very strict.  Beyond that, I have to write those articles in third person, and like an instruction manual.  This blog, and everywhere else I write, I'm in very opinionated first person!  But, I understand why eHow.com's format is the way it is.   But, it takes a lot more work for me to write for them than anywhere else.  As I get better accustomed to Demand's formats, I'll get faster, though.

   So, yes, I'm back in Stoney Creek now, and I'm perfectly fine.  I will find out if I'm to return to Kendle in Toronto in the next week or so.  I'll keep you posted.  

  In the meanwhile, I have a lot of plans for this blog, also, including continuing my 'A Brief History of the Web' series very soon.

  But, today I want to post here, but do it relatively quickly.  I may not republish all of my Blogcritics articles, but I may republish some after a couple of weeks have gone by.

   This article was very popular and well received- How to Become a Web Designer, my Blogcritics debut from October 12th.

   ___________________________________________________________________

   Web design can be an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. It’s a trade that combines technical skills with creative ability. If you feel comfortable with computer technology and you enjoy creating documents, web design can be a great way to combine the two interests.


   That being said, it’s always overwhelming to consider learning a new skill. Before learning how to become a web designer, you should ask yourself, “Should I become a web designer?”


   I’ve been learning web design since I was ten years old, in 1994. I now do a lot of web design for myself and for some small business clients. There have been plenty of pleasures, but also plenty of frustrations. If you’re considering becoming a web designer, there are some things you should keep in mind.


   If you have a lot of time to devote to learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Photoshop, it’s possible to learn the basics in a couple of months. Be ready to spend some money on manuals, books, and applications.


  No matter how you decide to learn web design and how you decide to enter the field, some people have better potential to become web designers than others.
When you’re programming, even if you’re using a simple language like HTML and using a helpful application like Dreamweaver, you’re going to encounter some frustrations. Sometimes, when I create an HTML document, I spend a lot more time making corrections and problem solving than doing fun stuff. Are you prepared to spend a lot of time testing and making little changes? No matter how you approach web design, tedium can’t be completely avoided. If you’re easily frustrated and discouraged, web design might not be for you.


   Unless web design is going to be just a hobby for you, you will have clients you have to work with. Sometimes clients have a lot of specific expectations. Some clients have experience with web design themselves, but others may demand things without knowing the technical limitations involved. Before you start any project for clients, it’s best to have a thorough conversation with them about what they want and what they need. That can save you a lot of time. How would you like to spend weeks developing a website, only to discover that your client wants completely different fonts, colors, graphics, site organization and content? If you’re going to get into designing web pages for other people, you’re going to have to be ready to make a lot of compromises and take a lot of criticism. Are you ready for that?

   Finally, ask yourself if you have the time and energy to promote yourself. If you want to be hired by a web design firm, in addition to learning skills and possibly obtaining certifications, you’ve also got to be ready to pound the pavement with your resume and portfolio. It might take you over a year to find a job. Be ready to attend a lot of job interviews, and possibly get a lot of rejections.


   If you’re going to become a freelancer, like I am, you’ve really got to devote a lot of energy to self-promotion. Set up a website, preferably with your own domain. Be ready to spend some money on advertising. Spend a lot of time promoting your services with social media – Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, and so on. Scan classified ads, particularly online classifieds. Print business cards and distribute them wherever you can. Use your connections and word-of-mouth to your advantage. Tell everyone you know that you’re a web designer, and maybe someone knows someone who could be your first client. Sometimes I spend more time promoting myself than I do actually doing the work itself.


   If you’re ready to spend a little bit of money, do a lot of tedious work, take some criticism, and do a lot of self-promotion, then web design may be the field for you.
First, you’ve got to start the learning process. If you enjoy classroom instruction and having teachers, sign up for some web design and graphic design courses through your local community college. If you’d rather start learning on your own, buy some good books, look at the source codes of the web pages you visit, and go through some online tutorials. Even if you’re going to start learning web design in a school setting, be prepared to do a lot of learning in your free time, as well.


   It’s important to learn HTML, especially HTML5. Learn Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), up to CSS3. JavaScript, possibly some server side scripting languages, and Flash are very useful, too. Don’t forget to learn how to use Photoshop. If you don’t have the money to buy Photoshop right away, start by downloading some free graphic design programs like Paint.Net and GIMP. You can learn some of the basics of graphic design that way, and possibly be better prepared when you finally buy the most recent version of Photoshop.

   These days, people access the web in more ways than were ever possible before. When you’re web designing, you not only want to make your web pages work in multiple browsers, but also on multiple devices. Even basic cell phones can access the web today, not just smart phones such as BlackBerrys and iPhones. Even some video game playing devices like the Sony PSP and Nintendo DSi have web browsers. Web surfers could be using tiny screens or enormous screens. They could be using a variety of different browsers and versions of browsers. Users may have completely different plug-ins and fonts; Adobe Flash is a browser plug-in, for instance. When you’re learning web design, try surfing the web in as many ways as you can.


   There are many helpful resources for learning web design online, and there are many helpful online tools for web designers, many of which I use.


   The W3C is an excellent place to start. They're the non-profit organization founded by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who started the World Wide Web. The W3C sets standards for HTML, XML and CSS. In addition to information about coding languages and standards, they have handy tools to validate your code.


HTML Goodies has a lot of excellent tutorials and articles.


HTML Station has a lot of great instruction, code boxes, color help and demonstrations. Be sure to check it out.


   I’ve learned a lot so far, but I’m always learning more, and I’ll always be a student of web design and media technology. As technology advances, things change. There’ll always be new programming languages and applications. Learning is a constant process.


   Web design has been an engaging experience for me, and if you decide to get into it yourself, I hope you take it seriously and have a lot of fun.

   ____________________________________________________________

   Be sure to frequent my page on Blogcritics, all of my BC articles are original, and I may only republish some of them here.  Also, check out the many other excellent writers on the Blogcritics website!

   There's a lot more to look forward to in the near future.  See you there, and here!

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A Brief History of the Web- Part seven...

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  To my dear readers, I apologize for the delay of part seven.  The one downside of my recent popularity on the blogging scene, and having to write articles for a number of major commercial websites, now including eHow.com, is that my time is a more precious commodity.

  I will not give up on this blog, and the maximum time between posts here should be about two days.

  My 'A Brief History of the Web' series is among my most popular work, and I aim to please!

   Make sure you read any parts you may have missed, first:

•  Part one...
• Part two...
•  Part three...
•   Part four...
•   Part five...
•   Part six...

  So, there have been some major successes on the web, and the one I'm focusing on in this post is still a huge player, if not the HUGEST player, today.

   Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.  They were PhD students at Stanford University.  They first met in 1995.   The following year, they created a search engine called BackRub, for the use of Stanford students and faculty.

1996 BackRub screenshot, courtesy of blogoscoped.com

   BackRub- at old URL http://backrub.stanford.edu, don't try it now, you'll get a 404, became very popular on Stanford's campus.  It soon grew to a point that Stanford decided their bandwidth couldn't handle it anymore.

   Now, if Stanford were clairvoyant, they would have invested money into giving BackRub more bandwidth somewhere else, but they didn't.  Obviously, that was but a minor hurdle for Page and Brin.

The very first screenshot of Google, from 1997.  This page was still hosted at backrub.stanford.edu.

     So, they started Google, in 1997, technically speaking.  'Google' is a play on the word googol, which in mathematical terms, means 1 plus 100 zeros, a number I won't bother to type out here.  The name was intended to represent the nearly infinite number of web pages that can be found by Google.

From 1998, finally using the google.com domain.  This is the very first appearance of Google's colourful logo.  Soon afterward, the font was changed slightly, and the exclamation mark was dropped.  No more pretending to be like Yahoo!

  

  Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote Page and Brin a cheque for $100,000.  I'm sure Andy doesn't regret it now.   PC Magazine soon made Google their favourite search engine in their list of 100 Favorite Websites, toward the end of 1998.

   Throughout the very end of the 1990s and the first few years of the 2000s, Google grew at a shocking pace.

   By 2000, Google launched in a number of different European languages.

A quick evolution of the Google logo, courtesy of amitbhawani.com

 

 As pretty much all of us know, Google is famous for doing fancy stuff to their logo on special occasions, or for special reasons.  Here's the very first 'doodle' logo, for New Year's, 2000:

  Then, they did Groundhog Day and Valentine's Day.  Next up was St. Patrick's Day.

   Below are some more interesting 'doodles', done in the year 2000:

                  

Summer Olympics 2000, in Sydney

Hey, here's Halloween 2000, and today is Halloween 2010!

Yes, the skating penguins are a culture neutral 'Happy Holidays' graphic, but is this really a nod to us Linux freaks?

  In recent years, Google's 'doodles' have caught on so much that they've had the permission of the owners of major intellectual property to use their entertainment properties.

  And recently, they've gotten REALLY creative.  Here are some Google 'doodles' that are really abstract:

To commemorate Louis Braille, the inventor of Braille, a way for the blind to read by touch.

A barcode, pure and simple.

Celebrating Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse code. 

  And some more very interesting 'doodles':

Tetris!  There was a time that my father couldn't get enough of the game...

UNIX date: 1234567890

Tetsuwan Atomu, otherwise known as Astro Boy, for us Osamu Tezuka loving otaku...

A jazz fan like myself must tip my hat to Dizzy Gillespie!

Commemorating the 'gogol', how apropos...

Getting warm and fuzzy with Norman Rockwell

How many decibel places have we determined of pi, yet?

A Doodle4Google competition winner from 2008, Germany's Mai Dao Ngoc

In honour of Eric Carle

September 9th, 2009's 09/09/09 09:09:09

Her Majesty the Queen visits Google's HQ

   And Google has even done some pretty cool interactive stuff, with video and Adobe Flash.

  

  This video logo celebrated John Lennon's recent 70th birthday.  See Remembering John Lennon: An Objective View for my thoughts on the man.

  This logo is playable!

   The above is a .png graphic, but you may play the Google Pacman Doodle here: google.com/pacman

  And finally, for my 'doodle gallery', anyway, here's today's 'doodle', using Scooby Doo to celebrate Halloween 2010:

   It's done in Flash, and each 'paw' brings you to another frame in the picture story.

   Anyway, enough of that for now!

  We all know that Google has expended far beyond web search.  I use a number of different Google services, such as THIS blogging format and host, Blogger.com.  Most blogs hosted here are yourblogname.blogspot.com.  Google bought Blogger by buying Pyra Labs in February 2003.  When I create the RSS feed for this blog, I use Google's acquired Feedburner.com.  Please subscribe to it here, you'll be in good company!  http://feeds.feedburner.com/kimcrawleycom-BrightIdeas  Google's biggest moneymaker is AdWords/AdSense, and I make a little bit of money by running ads on this blog, as well as a share of the revenue from Google ads on my articles at Blogcritics and Dragon Blogger.  According to my legal agreement, I may not click on my own ads- I wouldn't even consider it.  I'm not even allowed to say, "please click on my ads!"  I also use AdSense to promote my web design services at KimCrawley.com.  Soon, my domain will lead to an index page promoting my OVERALL online content freelancing services, including web design, graphic design, and article writing/journalism/blogging.  My web design website will simply be hosted there, right now my domain and index.html simply leads to my web design site.

  Google offers a plethora of other services, and even has excellent browsers, closed source Chrome and open source Chronium.  Google's Android OS is used on more and more smartphones, it's still a much better smartphone OS than what Apple uses for their iPhone.  But, Apple sucks overall, anyway, see Why I'll never spend a dime on Apple...  Microsoft has done poorly in the area of smartphone OSes, and hence all of the recent promotion of Windows 7 Mobile.  At least they're not Palm.  And I can't forget my home province hero, RIM, the creator of the BlackBerry.

  Anyway, I digress.  If things keep going at this pace, my ass will be tattooed with 'property of Google'.  I'm not a Google 'fanboy', (I'm more of a FOSS/Linux 'fangirl', if you can't tell) but I'm certainly in awe of their success, I'm even using their services AS I TYPE.   Will Google ever become a corporate disaster story?  Or will they be 'blue chip' for decades or even centuries?  Only time will tell.

  I will do my best to publish parts eight and nine while I'm in the pharmaceutical lab from 5:00pm tomorrow to the morning of Thursday the 4th.  Obviously, I plan to post the first part of Diary of a Lab Rat tomorrow, too, writing about my experiences.

  Friday, I'll be attending my very first 2600 meeting.  I will also be bringing my Ubuntu netbook there.  I expect to be the least knowledgeable person there, by far.   I study IT, and I'm learning programming, but I'm REALLY green.  So, I hope to make some new friends who can teach me stuff, even indirectly.  I certainly have a lot of respect for the hacking community.  I may be blogging about those meetings, too, but only publishing stuff that isn't confidential.  (Hackers are NOT criminals, crackers are.  But even at some Oprah book club meeting, some matters may be confidential.)

  When I have time, I'll change the colour scheme of this blog for better readability.  It'll be a time consuming process, and I'm stubborn about it.  I love black and fushia so damn much! 

   I'm very busy with Blogcritics, Dragon Blogger, and Demand Media/eHow.com as well.  You'll be reading lots more of me, folks!

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