weBLOG! do YOU?

Designing Compatible Blogs

As the web is considered to be a fluid medium, it is important for the blog to be viewable under all circumstances - with any browser or on any computer. Also it should look and function as close to the same way as possible. That is why it is advised to design for maximum compatibility.

Inevitably, choices will need to be made between compatibility and design. For example: whether to use or not to use flash animation as splash page. For it to run in all circumstances it is advised to test it extensively with many different browsers and computers. The work should be tested on both Macs and PCs.
Achieving a successful design requires inspiration, careful planning, and hard work. Besides this, of course, a few softwares are required. Here is a list of software that can be used for the various phases of the designing project:

Graphic Design

• Photoshop 7

• Adobe Illustrator 10

• Adobe LiveMotion

• Macromedia Flash 5

• Macromedia Fireworks MX

• Macromedia Freehand 10

• Graphic Converter

Web Page Construction

• Macromedia Dreamweaver MX

• BBEdit

• Lots of Trader Joe’s coffee

Details Of Other Blogging Tools and Add Ons are mentioned below:

Bloglinker.com
http://www.bloglinker.com/

blogLinker.com is a free tool for managing web links and increasing site traffic. It can be embedded anywhere in the web page and can be easily configured to fit the existing site design. Once a user is registered, a special code is provided to his webpage. The toll allows users to add websites to the list of links. If the site is already member of blogLinker, then its details will be listed. If the website you link to is also a member of blogLinker then user’s website will automatically appear in their list of links. This increasing the number of visitors to user’s site. One can even hide sites from the list. The sites hidden will be made aware of this and vice versa. Similarly, list entries can be edited or deleted. If a reciprocated link is deleted, the link to user’s site is deleted in return. In other words, a bunch of links cannot be added. People can add their site to user’s list by clicking a link at the bottom of the list in his webpage. The link will be reciprocated, further promoting the site. The look of the list can be customized. This is very easy to do; once blogLinker code is copied & pasted into your chosen web page, the user is directed to experiment with the look and feel. At the bottom of the ‘Format Your List’ page, there is a set of 16 drop-down lists. Each list corresponds to a feature of the blogLinker, such as header font color or text size/type etc. Either a value from the drop-down list can be selected or the required value can be entered directly into the input box, just below each drop-down list, allowing for maximum configurability. Click ‘Save Changes’ when ready. To test the changes done, simply reload the web page. User scan also display different lists with different categories required.

BlogSnob
http://blogsnob.idya.net/

BlogSnob is an experimental service for members of the blogging community. It enables users to tell everyone in the webspace about his or her blog thru simple textbased ads. It requires the users to insert a simple piece of code into their page. Every time someone views the site, a small text ad of another blog shows up on the page. BlogSnob is basically an ad exchange for Personal Blogs, where the ad is in the form of a Text Ad that blends into the site design. This way, it does not spoil all the hardwork a user has done in beautifying his site, but still serves its purpose. The software also allows a person to read many other beautiful, yet less popular blogs. Plus, a section called SnobJumping talks about sites, in general. User moderation is a way by which the users themselves help to keep the BlogSnob network clean, friendly and nice to surf through. Any member of blogsnob can simply check out sites randomly. If they find a site that interests them, they can talk about the site in the “Cool sites” board in the Forums. If the user’s made a really good discovery - that is a yet not popular but wonderful site, the site and the discoverer’s site are both rewarded with publicity on Snobjumping.