Monthly Archive: July 2007

Awards: A Double-Edged Sword

Posted by Anna Belle on 31 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Volunteering

About six weeks ago I received our church’s Virginia Grantham Service Award. I was deeply touched, particularly by the incredible generosity with which it was given. I forget what our wonderful Board President, Ginger Brown, said, but I know it involved my web work and some other more difficult tasks I’ve had to do at church over the years.

Then consider the person the award is named after. Virginia is one of my heroines – a long-time (50 year?) member of the church, who has served steadfastly with kindness and humility. A minister once said Virginia is an angel. It makes sense to me. I think everybody loves her, probably because she loves everybody. She’s our church’s equivalent of a national treasure, so to have an award with her name on it? I shake my head in wonder.

And yet…. I have such reservations about awards at church. While it means the earth to me, still I question the wisdom of this practice. I know that people are hurt when their work is overlooked. It’s not that they are jealous of the people receiving the award. To the contrary — they’re happy for them. (At least that’s the case for those I talk with.) It’s more that it can affirm in one more way what they already were guessing – that their contribution is not valued. From what I know, our most valuable behind-the-scenes workers are particularly at risk when awards are being given.

I hear there are other faith traditions where volunteers aren’t even told thank you and that’s okay. I’m not sure how this works, but I think it has to do with an understanding that God sees, and your work is done for God. I love this approach, although I’m certain it wouldn’t work in Unitarian Universalist congregations.

Would that there were some way appreciation could be given in just the right amount – not too little as is so often the case, but not too much either. I don’t know what that would look like, and I don’t know how a church can extricate itself gracefully from giving awards. Do you?

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Why the iPhone Matters (a Lot) and What To Do About It (If Anything)

Posted by Anna Belle on 30 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Uncategorized

iPhone showing First UU Nashville home pageMy iPhone is now four weeks old, and, if it’s possible, I love it even more than when I first unboxed it. Each week I get a bit more proficient at its use, plus new sites and tools designed for it appear daily. Based on my experience and talking to others who have one (including a researcher adapting an iPhone to help sick children), I’m convinced this technology is not just an advance — it’s a breakthrough of the first magnitude.

Why the iPhone Matters So Very Much

It’s a tiny computer merged with a telephone. Thus I have a powerhouse in my pocket everywhere I go. The genius is in how beautifully Apple made such a powerful machine so small; in particular, it’s in how it feels and responds to touch. Its Applesque elegance is just icing on the cake.

For web developers and designers of all stripes, including those of us who tend church sites, the implication is obvious. We have to design or redesign our sites to optimize them for iPhones and their poorer cousins.

In the past, designing sites for cell phones and Blackberries was only a requirement for large or specialized sites; it was hardly a must for the rest of us. Sure, we’ve had geeks in our church who visited the site on their mobile devices in the past. But they were techies or business types who adapted easily to the end results, whatever they were. Typically they were surprised if it worked at all. Expectations were low.

What To Do

For sites like my church’s, the good news is that the expectations in this realm are still low. There’s no hurry to make our sites mobile-optimized. But the writing is on the wall. Expectations will change. Soon. My guess is within a year. To be clear, I’m speaking of the United States. The mobile market is markedly different in the rest of the world – particularly Europe and parts of Asia. There I suspect it’s been more important to design for mobile devices for some time now.

For now in the U.S., smart webbies will be taking this new reality into consideration. While we don’t need to drop everything, starting right now, I, for one, am thinking about our redesign – and I hope you are too. We were in the middle of a redesign in any event (a common enough reality), and it’s actually no big deal to do this.

I’m thinking about how best to make my church’s site work well on not just the usual suspects (the many faces of Internet Explorer, plus Firefox and Safari on a Mac), but also on generic web-enabled mobile devices and, of course, Safari on the iPhone.

The Specifics of Designing for the Mobile Web

I haven’t just been playing with my iPhone, tempting though that is. I’ve also spent quite a bit of time these last four weeks exploring the ins-and-outs of designing for them. That’s led me into the larger issue of designing for mobile devices. Here are the primary things I’ve learned:

  • Screen-size is 320 x 480 (or 480 by 320) pixels. While the iPhone shrinks pages beautifully, when you zoom in enough to read easily, on many pages you have to keep scrolling left-right – a big no-no in web design.
  • A finger is not a mouse or a stylus. It’s best to put padding around menu links particularly – otherwise you can easily press two links simultaneously or the wrong link.
  • Use columns and blocks of text. When you tap a site to zoom in, it will focus on blocks.
  • However, don’t make columns too wide.
  • Keep total file size way down. I bet a maximum of 50K (including graphics) is what to aim for. The web can be excruciatingly slow on ATT’s EGDE network. Most of the time I use the wireless connection and that’s peppy. But when it’s not available, and the iPhone switches to EDGE, connection speed goes down dramatically, and fluctuates even when you’re in the same place.
  • Neither Flash nor Java works (though it’s likely Flash will be supported soon).
  • JavaScript support is uneven.
  • Adhere as much as possible to W3C standards. More than ever, it’s important to separate both design and layout from content, so use CSS as it was meant to be used.

Since my church’s webbies have been good net citizens, and started to separate our content from design, it shouldn’t be that hard. Being graphics and Flash-heavy will no longer be an option, but that’s no hardship for us. We were already thinking clean and simple.

The big question for me remains: do I set a site up to sniff for iPhones, Blackberries and their kith and kin? My first thought was to use the CSS Media Type. That’s the clever way you can control the print version of your sites. While hardly any mobile devices seem to use the “handheld” media type, I thought the iPhone might. Foiled again. It doesn’t, and perhaps in its case this makes sense. Handhelds are defined as “typically small screen, monochrome, limited bandwidth.”

Nonetheless, it’s easy to do. See, for example, my simple PHP sniffer. This sort of detection makes it possible to automatically go to the mobile-optimized version of a site when you enter the primary web address.

Alternatively, do I give you a choice that you have to click on? Do I find a place for a link that says something like “Mobile Version”? That’s fairly popular lately and is often paired with a .mobi extension

Or is there a third way? Perhaps the site can sniff a handheld, but once there, it offers you a way to turn off the mobile look-and-feel? My guess is this third way is the best, though I’ve yet to see it done.

Whatever the answers to these questions, clearly planning for the iPhone and other handhelds now is the smart thing to do. So clean up your code and keep your ear to the virtual ground. The future has arrived.

Further Resources

Tools

Inspiration

iPhone Resources

Mobile Web Resources

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Technology As a Spiritual Practice?

Posted by Anna Belle on 27 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Web Reflections

PastorHacks has recently had a couple of noteworthy book excerpts on spirituality and technology. The author is focused on how disruptive technology can be, particularly to spirituality.

I don’t disagree with her points. However, I think she’s missing something that’s terribly important to those of us deeply involved in technology.

Technology and spirituality aren’t antithetical. In fact, it’s quite possible to have certain kinds of spiritual experiences when working with computers and the like. Granted, it’s not easy, nor is it commonplace. But I recall times when deep connections have been made that wouldn’t have been possible in a world without technology. And I think in particular of the hours where self is completely lost in coding and designing web pages.

Are these not spiritual experiences? Might not such focus be a mind state similar to that of artists and musicians absorbed in their work? For me it’s not the same as meditation or prayer, but I define spirituality more broadly than those two practices.

And I expect I define technology differently as well. For the author, it’s simply a tool of convenience. For me it’s that, but much more as well. For me it’s not about the machines per se; it’s about how I am in relation to them and the reality they create, be it telephone lines, photo software, etc., etc. Technology is the backbone of the web, and for me the web is a calling.

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The Impact of Blogging

Posted by Anna Belle on 25 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Housekeeping

I’m starting to learn there are blog-charged days – days where even if you’re not blogging, the ripple effect of your words is quite clear. Today was one of those.

First off, I heard from Vincent Flanders of Web Pages That Suck. He’d noticed my mention of him. Holy Toledo! In my web diva universe, he’s a super-star. He literally wrote the book on dreadful web design, and I’ve been reading his stuff for years.

If you haven’t visited his site, be sure to check it out. Chances are it will cure what ails you. It’s bound to make you feel better about whatever website (church or otherwise) you are coping with at the moment. And, if you’re like me, you’ll end up howling with laughter.

Then my most recent post (Firing a Client) elicited a couple of surprising results. I worried one of the people I’m currently working with. She was concerned I might mean her. I hadn’t realized she was reading my blog. Wow. Not only was it not about her, she’s the kind of client that makes me want to do more of this work. Witness her taking the time to read what I write.

In addition, Lizard Eater had an excellent comment about the same post. She suggested writing a contract, and she clearly delineated the particular perils of being a web volunteer, such as, “people assume that since they surf the internet, designing web pages can’t be that hard.” Amen to that. She’s so burned, though, I wonder if she’ll ever do this kind of work again.

I know she’s far from alone. Putting these two responses together, I realize that a page geared to clients with easy tips on how to work well with us webbies would be helpful. So I’ll pull one together in the next few days. If you have any suggestions for the list, just drop me a line or make a comment below.

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How to “Fire” a Client

Posted by Anna Belle on 24 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Volunteering

Have you ever had a web project you volunteered for turn bad? I certainly have. It can even happen after I’ve done all the right groundwork. Actually it’s inevitable for those of us who volunteer frequently. But I don’t think that should discourage you. It doesn’t happen that frequently and when it does, it’s a classic opportunity for growth.

Often the issue is scope creep. Those in control want more than they originally said they did. Or they might not like a design you’ve created and rather than working with you, they start telling you what you should do. Yet another type of rogue client will insist that you put absolutely everything willy-nilly on the home page. They won’t listen to reason, much less consider usability tests.

Whatever the specifics, you’ll know, because suddenly your enthusiasm will evaporate. You might even start to dread working on it, even though it’s just a volunteer job.

So what do you do? I’d say it’s time to (in the immortal words of a dear friend) “fire the client.”

Of course, you could confront the issue head-on. That sounds like the honorable thing to do. But it never, ever works in my experience when the issue is volunteering your web expertise. There are many people who don’t understand web work, but won’t admit it. They might be embarrassed, afraid or even ashamed that they know less than you. Of course, that’s silly. Alternatively they could be arrogant or one fruit loop shy of a full bowl. The particulars vary, but the end result is that they underestimate what’s required. Oddly enough they can simultaneously overestimate the difficulty of the whole project, no matter what you say to them. But both of those suggest they aren’t listening.

If they aren’t listening, then saying more won’t work. That’s why a direct confrontation isn’t a great strategy. Instead, I’ve discovered two techniques that are relatively easy and painless. While they won’t fix the website, they get you out.

Politely suggest that they find someone else. I learned this technique from a first-rate contract programmer. When clients go sour on him, first he’ll call someone like me and vent. Then he calls the client and tells them that clearly they need someone more talented than him. He says he’s sorry he wasn’t able to provide what they wanted. One time when he did this, the employer tried to find someone else, and quickly realized he wasn’t going to find anyone better. He returned with a greatly improved attitude.

Focus on the reality that you have limited time – again, politely. You’re a volunteer, so you have more say over your hours. In my most recent less-than-stellar experience, I told them that, due to circumstances, I could only give them eight more hours. That elicited a much-needed thank you. The person suddenly realized how much time I’d put in. She was typical in that she meant well. She just wasn’t the right person to be coordinating this work. I exited stage right, without burning bridges.

There are plenty of other places that can successfully use what you have to offer, so a graceful retreat rather than trying to fix the problem is best. And believe it or not, even though it’s only volunteer work, your reputation is at stake.

So those are my best strategies for when web volunteering gets rough. Do you have others? I’d love to hear.

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The Essentials for Enjoying Volunteer Web Work

Posted by Anna Belle on 23 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Volunteering

Lately I’ve been doing volunteer webmaster work beyond the four walls of my church. It’s still church-work – sometimes obviously so and sometimes not – but it’s for other good causes. After one less-than-stellar experience, I truly love doing this work.

What makes this possible? I’d say it comes down to two things: understanding why I do this work and then setting great boundaries.

Why Volunteer

Over and over I read that the key to happiness is helping others. That jives with my experience, but then there’s the question of whom do you help and how? At my church, a lot of emphasis is put on “justice work” – what other faiths might call charity or compassion. Some run soup kitchens, some do prison ministry, some work at under-served schools, and so on.

If you, like me, love many aspects of web work, then doing websites for such people is a natural way to help. There are so many wonderful organizations that have poor or non-existent sites. And you get to do what you love for a good cause. What could be better?

How to Volunteer

So that’s the theory. The reality, however, can be mixed. Working with people is messy. They’re not like computers. Computers may get frustrating, but they don’t have hidden agendas, negative emotions, etc., etc.

The key in my experience is to set up great boundaries. For example, at my church, Communications people are constantly telling others that the web staff just does the plumbing. We don’t provide the water, i.e. the content; we just channel it.

What this means is, in the earliest stages of volunteering on a website, get as much clarity as you can on exactly who will provide the content (including photos) and who will maintain it. Similarly, make sure that the people you will be working with have a good sense of your area of responsibility and expertise.

I’m constantly amazed at non-webmasters who will tell me what a good website needs. They typically fall into the classic trap of assuming what they like works for everyone. While I don’t pretend to know everything about websites, chances are I know a good deal more than they do about whatever the particular topic-at-hand is.

PDFs are a great example. I have lots of experience with when and how best to use PDFs. PDF is not (as some think) the devil’s handmaiden. Nor is it a format you can use for most of a website — though I’ve had people try to order me to do just that. (Typically they are caught in the print paradigm.)

A certain amount of explaining your position is fine, but if they can’t listen to you, then you need to get out. Fast. I don’t know what it is with such people, but sometimes they’ll go so far as to say that you’re being arrogant, stubborn and the like. Yikes. Of course, you want to avoid getting to that stage if you can. Volunteering is all well-and-good, but it doesn’t mean you have to tolerate such behavior.

Fortunately, in my experience, such people are increasingly in the minority. They used to be more common when the web was less understood. My rough estimate is that it’s now down to about one in three. Just be on your toes early on and don’t commit until you’re fairly certain you can work well together.

The last key boundary is to be clear on time. Figure out if and how your schedules can work together. Find out when they will provide you key content. And be realistic and forthright about your own time. I only volunteer to do small sites (say 30 or fewer pages). At the front end I say that I usually do volunteer work on weekends, so it will take a while. If my pace works for them, that’s great. If not, then they can look for someone else, and no harm is done.

Once you have your work lined up and boundaries delineated, then the fun starts. You get to tap into some amazing work, find out what’s really going on, discover what they love on the web, and stretch your skills to meet their needs. You’ll not only be creative, you’ll make friends and get to laugh together — and I bet you’ll make a difference in the world.

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links for 2007-07-21

Posted by delicious on 21 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Delicious

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Finding Stock Art for Your Congregation’s Website

Posted by Anna Belle on 19 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Church Websites, Graphics

A year ago, Church Marketing Sucks posited that Stock Photography Sucks. There was heated (and interesting) debate, plus a follow-up poll on how much congregations used it. The majority fell into the same camp as me: “We use original when we can and stock when we need to.”

Actually, I used to avoid stock photography at all costs. But then one day I found the perfect photo on a free stock art site — and moderated my stance. While I still don’t use it extensively, now I’m glad to have it in my toolbox and use it every so often. I don’t use it on critical parts of the sites I maintain, such as their home pages, but I do use it here and there — including on this blog.

Assuming some day you too will need it, here are my favorite free or inexpensive stock art sites. Enjoy. There are some real treasures to be found here.

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The GIMP: a Better Photoshop Alternative

Posted by Anna Belle on 19 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Church Websites, Graphics

The GIMPIn my quest for the best graphic resources for church webmasters, Scott Wells directed me to The GIMP (short for GNU Image Manipulation Program). 36 hours later I emerge – impressed, but wrung out – and with some significant reservations. My one sentence summary is if you can get it to run and overlook its geekiness, it’s a great alternative to Photoshop.

I’m hopeful Scott will blog about it, since it has so much potential for a major niche – i.e., those needing a good graphics program who can’t afford Photoshop. Meanwhile, here are my more detailed thoughts on it.

Installing the Blasted Thing

Installation woes are more than a stumbling block. They basically constitute a “No Entry” sign for the non-geek. I ended up trying to install it on three machines.

On a PC running XP I had to install something called “GTK+ 2 Runtime Environment” (heaven help mere mortals) before I could install the actual application. Then it gave me DLL warnings, which scared the daylights out of me. But it ran. And so far, all my other apps still seem to run (blessings on my stalwart Dell PC). The good news is, as I looked around, I started to fall in love. I found commands like “Zealous Cropping” and “Script-Fu.” I’m a pushover for articulate geeks, not to mention it may go beyond Photoshop in some areas.

Next up was a Mac running OSX 10.4 (Tiger). Forget it. There were, by my count, five different ways to install it – and none of them worked for a time-pressed diva like me. I spent what felt like an eternity dealing with the fact that I didn’t have something called X11 for Mac OSX. I found scads of advice to “just” retrieve it from my OSX installer disk. Well, like many other people I don’t have the OSX installer disk for that machine. Why Apple doesn’t just put the thing on the web for download evades me.

Machine number three was an eMac running OS 10.3 (Panther). By this time I was in high dudgeon and nothing was going to stop me. Who cared if my machines were permanently damaged by these weird pieces of software? Gentle reader – this is an ill-advised mind state for working with your computers. Pamper them. Don’t do as I do. Do as I say – and if you are concerned that software might damage your machine, trust your instincts.

In the end, thank heavens, it didn’t damage my trusty old eMac. In fact I got it to work. If you are running 10.3, you can download X11 here and then get the GIMP app itself from here. But be warned: just because you can successfully install it, that doesn’t mean it runs like other OSX software. You must first run X11, found in the Utilities folder of Applications (where it installs itself without telling you), and only then can you open the GIMP. After that be prepared for weirdness in the way it responds to both mouse and keyboard commands. For example, you have to use Control-Z (instead of Apple-Z) to undo a command.

How It Measures Up To Photoshop

Suffice it to say, I did put it through the paces of my six basic commands, but if you’ve gotten so far as to install the GIMP successfully, I suspect you won’t need my hand-holding to figure out how to do these things. Or maybe I’ll recover in a few days and give you the specifics. Or maybe Scott can.

The Cliff Notes version is that it does do all these things quite well, with the exception of “Save for Web,” which it does well (if obscurely) for jpegs and adequately for gifs.

All-in-All

I have the distinct impression the developers of GIMP are more interested in other geeks than they are in graphic artists or poor-as-church-mice webmasters. If you can get past the major barriers of installing and opening it, you will probably (like me) love it. That said, I certainly can’t use it in my professional life. Just the fact that it doesn’t do “Save for Web” seamlessly creates a workflow issue for me. But in my church web diva life? I think it’s such fun I may just use it routinely – in solidarity with others who can’t afford Photoshop. Maybe I can even influence the developers to pay attention to mere mortals. I suspect it would be a win/win.

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Picasa: a Photoshop Alternative?

Posted by Anna Belle on 18 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Church Websites, Graphics

Mr. Web Diva, who happens to be a first-rate photographer, has been using Google’s Picasa for a year or so now and has been quite happy with it. So I thought I’d try it out and see how it would work for my graphic needs as a church webmaster. Specifically I looked at how it would perform the same six functions I covered for Photoshop.

To begin with, I had to use his PC, because Picasa doesn’t run on Macs. I suppose Google’s logic is that Mac users have iPhoto, which covers much of the same territory. However, this in itself rules Picasa out for me. Nevertheless, for those of you on PCs who can’t afford Photoshop, I persevered. Here’s how Picasa performed on basic graphic needs for a church webmaster.

Rotate
To rotate a photo 90 degrees, you simply click the icon near the bottom of the screen. Small adjustments are done using the “Basic Fixes” tab and selecting “Straighten.” As is generally true of Picasa, it’s easy and intuitive.

Crop
Also under “Basic Fixes,” select “Crop.” If you then select the manual mode, you have as much control as in Photoshop.

Resize
Shrinking a photo is done at the point you save it. Click the “Export” button and then adjust with the “Image Size Options.” Unfortunately it only lets you adjust the longer side of the photo. In my example used for Photoshop, I’d have had to guess or do some serious arithmetic to figure out how to get the width to 180 pixels.

Save for Web
In the same export panel used for resizing, there is an “Image Quality” dropdown with five choices (including “Custom”). “Normal” seems to be what I would call web-optimized. “Custom” makes fine tuning possible, but it’s like Photoshop before version 5.5 – you’re flying blind; there is no preview.

Sharpen
If you have a fuzzy photo to start with, before you export it, select the “Effects” tab and then sharpen. Fine-tuning isn’t possible. Also, I gather when you resize a photo (during the export), Picasa automatically sharpens it for you.

Make a transparent background
Picasa is strictly a photo editor. It saves files as jpegs, not gifs, and so it can’t be used for a transparent background.

All-in-all, Picasa is wonderful for its intended purpose – photo management. It’s intuitive and you can’t beat the price. It particularly shines if you want to create a web photo album. However, no church webmaster (whether with PC or without) is going to be able to rely on Picasa for all of their graphic needs. It’s not a Photoshop replacement, nor is it meant to be.

The good news is that in the comments on my previous post, Scott and Lance both recommended GIMP, which is free and open-source. I know Scott and Lance and respect their opinions. GIMP runs on all major platforms, so next up I’m going to give it a whirl in hopes that it’s a better match.

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