Slashdot Mirror

• Mozilla
• Manufacturer drivers for all hardware (does this count?)
• Microsoft's Core Fonts (especially: Verdana and Andale Mono)
• something to open zipfiles if the version of Windows in question doesn't have Compressed Folders.
• Irfanview and/or Gimp
• PFE32. (If it were a system I were going to use, I'd go for NTEmacs instead.)
• Microsoft PowerToys and/or TweakUI. Windows isn't finished being installed until this is installed.
• The Java plugin from Sun
• Acrobat Reader
• OpenOffice

Hey, whaddayaknow, that's ten.

The public library where I work, for example, offers introductory classes, as well as books and instructional videos. Some of my course materiels are available here. A public library where your mom lives might have similar programs; it's worth checking. Also, school districts sometimes offer adult-ed programs that might prove interesting. Then there's usenet...

Here's one of mine, which demonstrates an unusual accessibility requirement (the soft tertiary colors -- my eyes are unusally sensitive to light; I CANNOT handle Evil Blinding Backgrounds or high contrast). It also demonstrates the left side panel full of launchers, drawers, and applets that I've grown to love. The only things on the bottom panel are the task list and the clock. If it matters, this is a Mandrake 9.2 system with Gnome (but I replaced Metacity with Sawfish (because I want features, darnit) and replaced Nautilus with nothing (because I do all my file management from the command line)). The top drawer (with the drawer icon) holds the foot menu and launchers for assorted utilities and configuration things. The next drawer down, the one with the gnome-terminal icon, holds launchers for gnome-terminal (with various terminal classes and commands -- e.g., one for MySQL, one that does ssh into the cgi server, one that does ssh into the router, and so on). The drawer below that holds launchers for browsers. Then you've got three launchers right on the panel because I use them a lot: OO, Gimp, Emacs. Below the blank space is the screenshot button, the run button, a drawer of audio stuff, a drawer of games, the show desktop button (which really I ought to remove; I never use it), the CPU, memory, and swap meters, and the log out button at the bottom, out of the way. (Does anyone else think the Gnome1 logout icon looked nicer, or is that just me?)

That Mozilla window has been open for some while; the first two tabs in particular have been open for a couple of weeks. This is typical.

One of the Emacs windows has eshell, which is running a telnet connection to the im2 multiplexer for the Perlmonks.org chatterbox. Another is Gnus. The third has open the Changes file for Net::Server::POP3, which is what I really ought to be working on instead of posting to slashdot.

Be sure to get a screenshot showing gdmflexiserver running with the Xnest option. That's a really cool feature. For bonus points, have a different desktop environment running inside the Xnest window than the one running outside it. Also try to get a shot from someone who uses ratpoison; there's no window manager more minimalist than that, especially when it comes to window decorations. Be certain to show off several interesting panel applets, especially if you can get one running in a tiny always-on-top panel. Get one showing something really cool being worked on in Gimp, too. And be sure to get an Enlightenment screenshot showing that weird dragbar thing about halfway up/down the screen. I don't personally like that, but it's innovative and different, and some people swear by it.

Regarding screen sizes: the same people who complain about small type will insist they need a small screen, that 18" is too large. They cannot coherently explain why smaller things are easier to see, but a large percentage of them insist on it, including almost everyone who wears bifocals. Many of them use 14" viewables and don't totally maximize the browser window.

In order to compensate for the small size of their screens, they will cut the resolution to 640x480, and I'm convinced they'd set it smaller than that if Windows would let them. Then on top of that they will only effectively use about half of the screen, saying that they can't see the top part, the bottom part, or whatever. The implication is that if this is your target market, your site needs to be usable at about 600x200. Whee. If you plan it right from the start, it is entirely possible to design a site that looks decent at that size and still scales and looks okay at much higher resolutions, but with bitmap-type graphics there are limits; it's going to look quite stretched at 1600x1200.

There are two ways around this: one is to make your graphics scale, and the other is to build your site mostly out of text, maybe using graphics for borders and backgrounds and stuff.

Making graphics scale *properly* means vector graphics. When you run across a vector graphics format with wide browser support please let me know, as I'd be very interested. As a kludge, you can use bitmapped graphics (PNG or whatever) and assign relative widths. I have done this once or twice (width="100%" in my case) in a pinch, but if you try it you will immediately see the problem. Depending on the graphic it might be okay for some things, but it's definitely not a general solution to the whole issue.

At this time, my recommendation for sites that need to scale well to different resolutions is to make heavy use of text and style sheets and use a few strategically-placed graphics to spruce things up without interfering too much with scalability. For example, a background graphic that can be tiled will accomodate different resolutions fairly well. Narrow borders that scale or repeat in one direction are another fine example. A medium-sized logo that can be centered at the top, above the rest of the content, may be designed such that it looks fine surrounded by varying amounts of whitespace. And so on.

As far as text, use the relative size attributes to make some text larger than the rest as necessary, but don't fix hard sizes, as some legacy browsers[1] then won't let the user scale the text; with relative sizes the browser will pick up and use the user's base font size.

Some of your layout problems can be lessened by use of alpha-channel transparency. This doesn't work with all browsers, though; it works with all browsers based on Mozilla.org code, recent versions of Opera, and possibly certain others, but not for example with old versions of Netscape. There is a kludge to make it work with some versions of MSIE, but this fails sometimes depending on the user's settings and in any case will not work with old versions of MSIE. If you are interested in pursuing alpha channel stuff, I have some examples up here: http://cgi.galion.lib.oh.us/test/ Especially see GPL-plus.html (for an example how how it helps layouts) and png-alpha/png-alpha-demo-hacked.html (for a demo of the transparency channel itself). There is also a really cool demo here, but that one has not been hacked to work with MSIE.

One final piece of advice: test your site at at least three resolutions, including 640x480 and 1280x1024.

[1] Notably Netscape 4 and all versions of MSIE.

Regarding screen sizes: the same people who complain about small type will insist they need a small screen, that 18" is too large. They cannot coherently explain why smaller things are easier to see, but a large percentage of them insist on it, including almost everyone who wears bifocals. Many of them use 14" viewables and don't totally maximize the browser window.

In order to compensate for the small size of their screens, they will cut the resolution to 640x480, and I'm convinced they'd set it smaller than that if Windows would let them. Then on top of that they will only effectively use about half of the screen, saying that they can't see the top part, the bottom part, or whatever. The implication is that if this is your target market, your site needs to be usable at about 600x200. Whee. If you plan it right from the start, it is entirely possible to design a site that looks decent at that size and still scales and looks okay at much higher resolutions, but with bitmap-type graphics there are limits; it's going to look quite stretched at 1600x1200.

There are two ways around this: one is to make your graphics scale, and the other is to build your site mostly out of text, maybe using graphics for borders and backgrounds and stuff.

Making graphics scale *properly* means vector graphics. When you run across a vector graphics format with wide browser support please let me know, as I'd be very interested. As a kludge, you can use bitmapped graphics (PNG or whatever) and assign relative widths. I have done this once or twice (width="100%" in my case) in a pinch, but if you try it you will immediately see the problem. Depending on the graphic it might be okay for some things, but it's definitely not a general solution to the whole issue.

At this time, my recommendation for sites that need to scale well to different resolutions is to make heavy use of text and style sheets and use a few strategically-placed graphics to spruce things up without interfering too much with scalability. For example, a background graphic that can be tiled will accomodate different resolutions fairly well. Narrow borders that scale or repeat in one direction are another fine example. A medium-sized logo that can be centered at the top, above the rest of the content, may be designed such that it looks fine surrounded by varying amounts of whitespace. And so on.

As far as text, use the relative size attributes to make some text larger than the rest as necessary, but don't fix hard sizes, as some legacy browsers[1] then won't let the user scale the text; with relative sizes the browser will pick up and use the user's base font size.

Some of your layout problems can be lessened by use of alpha-channel transparency. This doesn't work with all browsers, though; it works with all browsers based on Mozilla.org code, recent versions of Opera, and possibly certain others, but not for example with old versions of Netscape. There is a kludge to make it work with some versions of MSIE, but this fails sometimes depending on the user's settings and in any case will not work with old versions of MSIE. If you are interested in pursuing alpha channel stuff, I have some examples up here: http://cgi.galion.lib.oh.us/test/ Especially see GPL-plus.html (for an example how how it helps layouts) and png-alpha/png-alpha-demo-hacked.html (for a demo of the transparency channel itself). There is also a really cool demo here, but that one has not been hacked to work with MSIE.

One final piece of advice: test your site at at least three resolutions, including 640x480 and 1280x1024.

[1] Notably Netscape 4 and all versions of MSIE.

Regarding screen sizes: the same people who complain about small type will insist they need a small screen, that 18" is too large. They cannot coherently explain why smaller things are easier to see, but a large percentage of them insist on it, including almost everyone who wears bifocals. Many of them use 14" viewables and don't totally maximize the browser window.

In order to compensate for the small size of their screens, they will cut the resolution to 640x480, and I'm convinced they'd set it smaller than that if Windows would let them. Then on top of that they will only effectively use about half of the screen, saying that they can't see the top part, the bottom part, or whatever. The implication is that if this is your target market, your site needs to be usable at about 600x200. Whee. If you plan it right from the start, it is entirely possible to design a site that looks decent at that size and still scales and looks okay at much higher resolutions, but with bitmap-type graphics there are limits; it's going to look quite stretched at 1600x1200.

There are two ways around this: one is to make your graphics scale, and the other is to build your site mostly out of text, maybe using graphics for borders and backgrounds and stuff.

Making graphics scale *properly* means vector graphics. When you run across a vector graphics format with wide browser support please let me know, as I'd be very interested. As a kludge, you can use bitmapped graphics (PNG or whatever) and assign relative widths. I have done this once or twice (width="100%" in my case) in a pinch, but if you try it you will immediately see the problem. Depending on the graphic it might be okay for some things, but it's definitely not a general solution to the whole issue.

At this time, my recommendation for sites that need to scale well to different resolutions is to make heavy use of text and style sheets and use a few strategically-placed graphics to spruce things up without interfering too much with scalability. For example, a background graphic that can be tiled will accomodate different resolutions fairly well. Narrow borders that scale or repeat in one direction are another fine example. A medium-sized logo that can be centered at the top, above the rest of the content, may be designed such that it looks fine surrounded by varying amounts of whitespace. And so on.

As far as text, use the relative size attributes to make some text larger than the rest as necessary, but don't fix hard sizes, as some legacy browsers[1] then won't let the user scale the text; with relative sizes the browser will pick up and use the user's base font size.

Some of your layout problems can be lessened by use of alpha-channel transparency. This doesn't work with all browsers, though; it works with all browsers based on Mozilla.org code, recent versions of Opera, and possibly certain others, but not for example with old versions of Netscape. There is a kludge to make it work with some versions of MSIE, but this fails sometimes depending on the user's settings and in any case will not work with old versions of MSIE. If you are interested in pursuing alpha channel stuff, I have some examples up here: http://cgi.galion.lib.oh.us/test/ Especially see GPL-plus.html (for an example how how it helps layouts) and png-alpha/png-alpha-demo-hacked.html (for a demo of the transparency channel itself). There is also a really cool demo here, but that one has not been hacked to work with MSIE.

One final piece of advice: test your site at at least three resolutions, including 640x480 and 1280x1024.

[1] Notably Netscape 4 and all versions of MSIE.

I work at a public library, and part of my job is teaching introductory computer classes. Our most common _request_ is for "Basic Computer", but the people requesting this have no clue what they want to learn how to do, so you have to probe them a bit to see what they really want. Usually if you offer them some options ("Do you want to learn to type letters and papers and print them? Learn to surf the internet? Learn about email?") they'll be able to make a selection (or else they'll sign up for all of them, which is okay too). Once in a while you'll get somebody who insists those things are all too advanced, and they just want basic computer. This is a symptom that what they really want is help solving a specific problem or question they have and are embarrassed to ask about, because they don't know how to explain it.

Our most popular class is Introduction to the Internet, which mostly covers the www. My course materiels are here (though the materiel there is intended mainly as handouts, and since I try to make the classes at least somewhat interactive, so not everything can be covered in the handouts). These materiels won't be directly usable for your purposes, but you can use them as examples. I get positive comments from our patrons, and this is a fairly technophobic community. The Windows Basics and Introduction to Word Processing courses are also very popular. Surprisingly, the Searching the Internet class is much less popular; either my Introduction to the Internet gives them all they need in that direction, or else they're just scared off by the idea that it has a prerequisite and therefore must be advanced. (NOTE: under no circumstances offer a computer course with the word "Advanced" in the title, unless your target market consists of computer geeks. If you want to establish a series, go with Part A and Part B, or something like that.)

On a side note, you can win MAJOR brownie points with users by treating them as if they were intelligent, but maybe just computers aren't they're field of expertise. They're so accustomed to computer people treating them like dirt, they will almost worship you if you treat them well. You'll get free word-of-mouth advertising this way. We put announcements in several local papers, signs all over the library, and advertise on the radio, but over half of the people taking my courses were encouraged to do so by someone else who did previously.

One more piece of advice: Make a survey that fits easily on a single half-page, with multiple choice questions about what other courses people would be interested in taking if you offered them. Also have an "Other" choice where they can write something in (but most people won't). Encourage everyone who takes any of your courses to fill one out. This will help you know if there's a demand for something. We added the email class due to write-in votes on our eval forms, and it's been more popular than we otherwise would have imagined.

I've managed to verify that this works in Mac IE 5.0, but I can't seem to get it to work in either version of MSIE for Windows that I have access to at work (5.0 on Win98 or 6.0 on XP Home). Am I doing something wrong? Here's where I'm trying...

Like I said, IE6 on XP Home seems to do the same thing as IE5 on Win98, namely, ignore the hack. Does it work only in 5.5 and on the Mac, or am I applying it incorrectly?

There are also some layout issues with Mac IE 5, but I'll break those down into testcases separately another time. Right now I'm mainly interested in the PNG transparency.

I've managed to verify that this works in Mac IE 5.0, but I can't seem to get it to work in either version of MSIE for Windows that I have access to at work (5.0 on Win98 or 6.0 on XP Home). Am I doing something wrong? Here's where I'm trying...

Like I said, IE6 on XP Home seems to do the same thing as IE5 on Win98, namely, ignore the hack. Does it work only in 5.5 and on the Mac, or am I applying it incorrectly?

There are also some layout issues with Mac IE 5, but I'll break those down into testcases separately another time. Right now I'm mainly interested in the PNG transparency.

I've managed to verify that this works in Mac IE 5.0, but I can't seem to get it to work in either version of MSIE for Windows that I have access to at work (5.0 on Win98 or 6.0 on XP Home). Am I doing something wrong? Here's where I'm trying...

Like I said, IE6 on XP Home seems to do the same thing as IE5 on Win98, namely, ignore the hack. Does it work only in 5.5 and on the Mac, or am I applying it incorrectly?

There are also some layout issues with Mac IE 5, but I'll break those down into testcases separately another time. Right now I'm mainly interested in the PNG transparency.

I've managed to verify that this works in Mac IE 5.0, but I can't seem to get it to work in either version of MSIE for Windows that I have access to at work (5.0 on Win98 or 6.0 on XP Home). Am I doing something wrong? Here's where I'm trying...

Like I said, IE6 on XP Home seems to do the same thing as IE5 on Win98, namely, ignore the hack. Does it work only in 5.5 and on the Mac, or am I applying it incorrectly?

There are also some layout issues with Mac IE 5, but I'll break those down into testcases separately another time. Right now I'm mainly interested in the PNG transparency.

here is a screenshot showing the three fonts. The mono font looks pretty good as boldface in gnome-terminal. I could live with this as a replacement for Andale Mono. The serif font I basically don't care about, because I normally have very little use for serif fonts, but it's certainly better than Times New Roman, albeit arguably not as nice in some ways as Georgia. Like I said, it's really hard for me to say, because I'm just not a fan of serifs in general. The sans font is not as good IMO as Verdana or Adobe helvetica.

I've worked up an even better demonstration

http://adminsystem.galion.lib.oh.us/2002_06_14_154 824_shot.png
That's should make it a little easier for all the kids at home... :)
Then again, the link didn't work for me when I tried it.....Maybe /. hammered it and it needs some time...