Very Advanced Tools!

Nop! Not for beginners.

Everyone in this whole world has seen a Save, Print, or Email icon/button. So if you can read an article on a news portal does that mean that you’re stupid enough to not know what those icons or buttons mean for an article?

ITP.net , a leading publisher in Dubai calls those tools which are Article tools Advanced Tools. Advanced tools?

I read another post at FlipBlogSpot today that got fire comming out of my ears, I quite don’t understand why Technologists and Marketers take end-users and customers as stupid beings? Middle East is no stupid place nor contains stupid people. I agree the market was a virgin once which is not the case anymore, so don’t abuse it please!

Back to the Advanced Tools. What was the designer thinking while writing such a title for a well known toolset? I tried to put it in all the circles possible, it just don’t fit anywhere. I’m trying to find out who would make the call for such a title; the copy editor, the designer, the hacker, or maybe the CEO himself. That’s a shame. Give the power to users and always think of your audiance as informed, a rule of thumb in communication!.

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Why TXP rules?

I’m writing this after a discussion at Serdal’s blog about Blogware where MS.Ohjiooj asked me to write a review on features available in Textpattern aka TXP.

It’s beautiful, body and soul

It’s systematic, designed with information design and structure in mind which is translated by a clean interface at the admin panel separating Content & Presentation which ties our thinking about separating XHTML from CSS.

Dashboard is the master peice in TXP. Very simple and minimal to it’s maximum with four main tabs which are literaly Content, Presentation, Admin, and View Site.

The charming model

Content section of the dashboard is specialized for the content and its organization. Presentation section is for dealing with lieteraly presentation layer which is the templates, CSS, and TXP tags.

Content could be articles, images, files, links and comments in which all could be organized by categories(tags). One of the most imporant features is the article writing form. Its supports a language which is very easy and nice to use which is Textile. You could easily install a WYSIWIG plug-in if you needed, but the richness lies in the simplicity of Textile language. In addition to that you could use either TXP or PHP code even inside an article body. You got no limitations on this, wide open for you to relax and do what you want. Like every other Blogware it comes with Custom Fields too where you could add extra additions to the way you write your articles.

Presentation could be section, page, form, or style. Sections are logical grouping of content as in actual grouping which is different than categorising; where categorising means taxonomy terms assigning to content for easier search and recognition. An article could go under only one section but many categories(currently only two categories but you still could install a plug-in to extend that). e.g. you could have a section called About and have any number of pages(artices) under it, say me, site, bio, or whatever. Every section can have its own template(page) and CSS stylesheet. This is an amazing feature! That means you’re not limited by using the same template on all the pages prizoned by the sidebar, and the other columns in Wordpress. Total freedom on the layout side. Page(template) is the pages templates, literaly HTML mixed with TXP tags, Forms, and even PHP if you wanted. The advantage is that you get to have a neat clean HTML template where no curly codes are written in it. Instead, you’d write TXP tags which are a translation of Textpattern API in use in the application. You could write your own set of TXP tags which are called Forms. If that wasn’t satisfying you you could always use PHP and if you wanted more TXP tags than the built-in ones, then you have a list of quality components.

Forms, the TXP tags formings. As explained above it’s simply a tagged language or tags that could have your own attributes and your own content. You don’t need to learn this language if you don’t want to go down to hardcore coding. Just use the code generator tools and you’r ready to go. You click on some links/buttons and your code is generated for you.

CSS, it’s a CSS editor. Very handy one if you know what you can do with it. Edits all the selectors and groups in a very organized way or you could switch to text mode to edit it yourself.

You got the grip (giving power to people)

So you want to write an article but you want a portion of your own selection to be taken as the excerpt or brief for article listings. You got that! TXP gives you the freedom to insert your own excerpt picked by you intead of trimming after some n^th character.

You can specify a different caption for your Comments link while writing an article. e.g. if you’re writing an article about a website you could make the label of your comment button show “now show me your favorite website” or ” what you have to say about it” or just keep it as “comment” which is what I do. This element is called comment invitation

Writing on cafe walls

I ain’t no real blogger at least untill now since my blogging experience began back in November 2005 so I’ve been playing around with TXP for around 4 months to be concise. I got my hands on TXP after I tested and ran Movable Type & Wordpress and read about Expression Engine.

Since I’m new to this whole blogging I guess I might be missing some features because I don’t use or need them. May be a more experienced blogger could have a different view on my take.

Resources & useful links

• Textpattern’s Home
• Plug-ins
• Templates
• Great Templates
• Textile
• TXP Resources
• Textbook
• TXP Magazine
• TXP vs. Wordpress

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But where do we fit?

In the haze of what we follow in different workflows engaged in design & development of websites one usualy gets to think am I doing the right thing? Most of the time, yes would be a good answer but for many of us it’s kind of a nobody-to-follow or an uncovered maze. You know what I’m talking about?

System Analysis & Design

I took this very exciting course in college. It was called System Analysis for business. It had definitions for designers, developers, architects and so on in software & solution making circle. Not forgetting how close web-dev is to that it’s still not so clear.

Corny & Cheesy job-titles

Everyone on the web makes up a new job-title and goes on with it. I heard of User Experience Architect, Graphics Optimizer, Web Optimizer and Design Analyst. I mean, what’s up?

So when they call you web-designer or web-developer next time, how can you define what you do exactly? Let’s say you go meet the clients too; are you gonna’ call yourself Account Exec too?

What I wanna’ say over here is that we web-people or the people who make websites are still not recognized and our what-you-do answers are quite unknown for many. Did we mention how web-designers & web-developers are getting closer to each other and how much the line is shrinking between both? It’s kind of becomming web-designers and graphic-designers well, mostly.

Where’s my ground?

In the process of making software-solution for business it is recomanded that Business-Analysts do the research and the studies on the business-logics of the software. How is it done in the web world? I’m not talking web-applications that do business processes; I’m talking web-showcases and branding campains. Is it kind of an advertising school/market knowledge? That’s what I want to know. I’m still confused. Now add some interaction to that and some more information. Now what happens? now instead of Marketing execs we get CIOs or PRs?

Get where I’m throwing at? I just think there’s still no solid model for doing this job. I again am learning that. Well, it’s not a matured market where everyone has a different perception on what the web can bring to a business specialy the small/medium sized companies.

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Zombie? Join the club

I’m staying in the same day over and over again, every time I look at the time it’s just some 5, 6 hours later. Is earth turning faster or maybe I’m too slow that I feel everything else is fast? Gotta’ check my RPMs.

On the cyber side and the WWW I’m just shocked how fast things started moving. After the introduction of AJaX and social-networking applications and collaborative apps; everything seems to be going on very fast that it is no more trackable by me. I miss more than half of my RSS feeds everyday. What is it really? It’s too, too fast. Web2.0 was a real boost. Now I started really hating this term, it just speeded up the whole thing–made it hard to live with.

I admit, I’m terrified! In a way it’s very discouraging, not that I’m loosing ground nor giving up. The whole part of the issue is that the whole ball game has become more of info-finding rather than feeling your atmosphere. It’s like if you don’t know about the next Flickr or BackPack you’re a little off the map. Navigating is hard in a city full of omni lights, ain’t it? Add to that many amplified voices and daily fish-market-style company acquirings.

Why should you loose grip?

Well, what confuses me is that I’m in a position that am running a startup-business and finding my region(ME) being totaly different than the Global tech and media market. People are building solutions outside this region. Huge media agencies and high profile experts are fooling people by tagging open-source apps under their own tags and selling them under their own brands.

The balance

Imagine you’re tracking the latest hapenings and trying to kope up with all the changes and adapt and you find that your market or at least your target-market is bloated by tricky sales-execs who sell crap for gold.

This shows me one thing; this market is still not a matured one but it is a ripe one indeed. Lack of awareness of the hapennings and the quality of the people who sell IT, Media services, and Creative solutions is relatively low, which makes me sad.

So how am I going to live a little slower?

I can’t come up with an answer now, sure will be the subject of the next post.

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on Turning 25

I’m turning 25 in 14 days, on February 20^th 2006. I review the year leaving behind every birthday I get older. This time instead of evaluating myself, acheivements and growth I guess I’ll take it as a milestone. I’ll take it as a 25% progress in a loading bar

dotone=24; dotone++

I remember the worst year-leaving for me was my 21^st birthday. I don’t know why but turning 20 didn’t mean leaving the teen label behind, 21^st did! When I turned 21, I remember how depressed I was that I started thinking what have I done with my life so far? did I reach even close to any goal? That was so depressin’, never go there if you could.

24 was a fruitful year, yea it was. After a year of full-time working I got back to college and got me a degree finally, July 21^st2005. 24 is the year of Login Innovations for me. Yea, indeed. 25 is the year I’ll see Login Innovations rising high and making our dreams look brighter.

What does this age signify? I really don’t know. Most of the people I know are married way before 25 or at least engaged. I’m neither. Well, fate, no! not fate I guess it’s too early for me specialy after my last rel.

What else could it be, hmm a milestone for something cool like hmm man I can’t come up with anything?

You know what? I’m tagging people now. Let’em share something may be I could understand. Who to tag?

I’m tagging Serdal, Sabbah, Tololy, and Saudi Jeans. How did you feel/will feel or what does 25 signify as an age for you?

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New version: Happy users & Sad Designers

Microsoft announced the availability of IE7 Beta 2 to public on Jan 31 2006. What does that mean for end-users? What am I as a designer going to get? I listed some of the issues I’d face and some goodies I’ll enjoy using in IE7. Here they are.

An addition to the long list

This major version update of IE is a dramatic one. It’s not a face-lift! It’s a make-over. I mean this makes it an extra browser in the list of browsers out there in use; IE6 comes from a different race and to convert the user base until the release of Vista Final and until the adaption of Vista we’re having 2 IEs; a 6 and a 7.

For a designer, it means another browser to test against, another time-hungry task added to the list. Don’t forget that new work arounds and hacks would be developed soon. So in addition to the hacks used for IE6 some new work-around hacks will show up soon.

So if you test against FF, IE6, and Opera then you’re ending up with IE7 at the end of the list. Even if you have an ideal solution for x-browser testing –IE7 is awaiting you.

Features, Options, and more Sugar

Many goodies were added, my favorite in IE7 b2 is Tabbing and RSS reading. Other than that it’s just a MS version of FF in my eyes –interface-wise.

Well as an end-user who lives on surfing I’d be glad to use IE7, really since it is the default browser in Win and it is really charming to have IE back and fighting back. The reasons that a Win user would like to use IE in favor of other browsers is perhaps the integration with the Windows Explorer in terms of File Management and View and the Address bar integra.

The point, while all the goodies would make sense for users the most it’s going to be a pain for x-browser designers until it is streamlined and the userbase of the IE6 convert to IE7 sometime next year? May be? But hey, it ain’t that bad Mac-IE is out of the game so we’re even I guess

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