Outsmarted by Google

Oh, no! It rendered my code! Well, if you really want to look at it, email me and I'll send it to you.

edawson@niu.edu

Google search boxes and other bits

This is going to be long and disorganized—I apologize in advance. Only read on if you were interested in the Google search box for your website.

Go to http://www.google.com/coop/cse/ to sign up for a customized search box. It is going to ask for your domain name—put in what you have so far (e.g., students.niu.edu/~z12345/engl) because you can always change it later. You’ll be able to go in and choose how you want it to look and get the code for that particular look. Don’t be intimidated! It’s not that bad!

For example, this is the source code for the Google search box at www.english.org:

Google Search

Web Site

I left in all the location information, i.e., tables and such. (Note that I did not create this code—there are some sloppy bits that I don’t approve of now that I see them, but it works anyway! I probably won’t go in to clean it up because I don’t want to fix something that isn’t broken, but I’m sure that after Eric’s lecture the other week we can all see some things that could be improved here.)

If you have any questions about how to make this work for you, I will do my best to help. The Google page should be pretty helpful, too, if you look around on it.

Here is a page that has some interesting & useful tips on this subject: http://www.askdavetaylor.com/how_can_i_add_a_google_search_box_to_my_web_site.html. I don’t recommend just copying their code and using it, because you’ll be missing out on bunches of perks, but I agree with them that their code is very clean and neat. You can always modify yours with this in mind.

Below the Google search box at www.english.org, you’ll notice the Adobe download information. If you will be using any .pdf files, it is a good idea to go to http://www.adobe.com/svg/license.html and apply for a license to use the Adobe logo so that your users can download the latest version of Acrobat and so that you can get little .pdf graphics to mark which links will open as .pdf files instead of other web pages. It is rather inconsiderate to create a link that opens to a file like this without somehow indicating it to the user—they don’t like those types of surprises.

Good luck and have fun! And please let me know if I've glossed over something so it doesn't make sense. It's already been a very long weekend for me!

The IA Job Title

I had to read this article for another class (I love cross-course learning!), and I thought it was relative to the conversations we had in class right before Spring Break about the job title "Information Architect." The article is "What do We Manage? A Survey of the Management Portfolios of Large Technical Communication Groups." (Technical Communication, Vol. 51, No. 1, February 2004)

The authors report that 27% of the organizations in their survey use IA or information designer as a job title, but it is important to note that the survey included only tech comm groups with 20 or more staff. New research may show different results!

Oops, sorry for the error.

I meant to write that I feel left out.

The Missing Audience

To my dismay, the authors seem to focus more heavily on individuals who build websites in collaboration with a group of specialists. Per our last class discussion, many people acknowledged that they had been the sole creators of websites while working for companies. The fact that Morville and Rosenfeld fail to address all the potential members of their audience, including the sole creator of a website is a little disconcerting. With the exception of a few people, most of the members of this class acknowledge that they are novice when it comes to building websites. It would be nice to read about ways in which the sole web developer could combine all the skills in chapters six through ten to create viable websites without the assistance of others.

By,
I feel lefted out!

Not on IA topic, but interesting.

Hi, everyone. Long time no blog. Thought I'd share.
My book review was on cyberactivism and how the internet can be used as a tool for political action. It seems that politicians are paying attention to that message. I ran across this
article and thought people would be interested to know that Myspace has gone political. It seems the candidates are using this networking resource to get the word out, organize, and plead for support. And we all thought Myspace was just for fun.

Sorry...I'm using Safari web browser and it won't let me hyperlink the URL...even with keyboard shortcuts. So here's the full address: http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,129987-c,currentevents/article.html

reading for this week's presentation

Sorry about the tardiness, but I just discovered this today. It's a reading - a tutorial - on information architecture. Just follow the recipe and you're there. Enjoy.

http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/design/site_building/tutorials/tutorial1.html