| A PIECE OF MY MIND:
Be a web survivor(tm:) In our last episode,
Ramona was stranded on the desert island with just a few folks in swimsuits, a camera crew, and a gaggle of giant satellite uplinks.Will Ramona be forced to eat a rat? Will Ramona learn to use a blow gun? Will Ramona be able to turn her new-found and probably short-lived fame into a living wage in the real "rat race?" If you're in North America, then you can't help but know about a TV show called "Survivor" where some people compete on a desert island for a million dollars. Survivor has
made the once invincible (yet always stupid and boring) game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" seem about as exciting as waiting for a clock's hour hand to move. This brings home the point that money is not as inherently exciting as people in swimwear frolicking on the beach. If you've watched the show, then you know Ramona was already kicked off the island by her fellow tribespeople. Now that she's back in so-called civilization, Ramona's real
survival test begins. She has to figure out how to take her fifteen minutes of fame and wring some money out of it. "www.ramona-survives.com" is available, and she could sell everything from e-book memoirs of her days in the sun, to tasty bug casserole recipes, to "Ramona™'s actual "Survivor™ Sand from the actual Survivor™ beach." The trouble is, Ramona missed her opportunity. If she'd been really savvy, she'd have tattooed her URL on her arm before
she landed on the island. Then it would have appeared to tens of millions of people every week. (The nice thing about tattooing your URL is that as long as you can shell out 35 clams a year, you know it won't looked dated, like an old flame's name.) And who knows, she could have made a million, even if she didn't win that on the show. So how can you
take advantage of all this Internet stuff? The first step is to figure out everything you can possibly do with what you have. It's sticking your URL on everything you can. Put it on your car (I saw www.cabinetguy.com
on a truck when I was stuck in traffic and I still remember it and look at the publicity he's getting right now!). Cut your URL into your crew cut and into your pet's coat. Call your dog "Dog Com" and get some good publicity for www.youandyourdog.com (it's available!) just for the price of a haircut!It's giving away free fonts and graphics on your site to friends who tell their friends—hey, I know this one works! http://friends.efuse.com :)You see, the Internet is just as wild, untamed and competitive as a desert island. The good part is that it's a lot closer to big bags of M&Ms (your own personal dessert island). So don't think of your web site as just some pages floating around in the cyber-sea. Think of them as your personal island, the place
you can stake your claim, have your say, and show the world what a survivor you are. Let your web site be a key to survival in everyday life. If you think of your site as a part of your survival—it's going to be a lot more interesting for you, your visitors, and your future. Daniel Will-Harris, editor, www.efuse.com
Word-Wise Workflow
I know, you think you can type (kind-of) and that's all you need to know about putting text on your web site. Wrong-o-mundi! While Web building programs like NetObjects Fusion are great tools, they're not word processing programs. If you want to type some text into them now and then, that's fine, but when it comes time to really write and edit articles, you need a word processing
program—and you need to know how to use it efficiently. I'll explain how to use your word processor's templates and styles to speed your writing and formatting (and to clean up your contributors' articles). I'll also cover some basic editing techniques that help make your site easier to read. I know, it doesn't sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but taking a little time to learn how to do it right will save you hours, days, weeks, who knows, maybe even years in the long run.
Read all about it. Before, During (X6) And After
The topic: The Software Factory is neither a factory nor do they manufacture software. So what are they and what do they do? Discuss amongst yourselves... better yet, read all about it in Gary Priester's latest Web site redesign, "Manufacturing a Redesign for the Software Factory." See the before and after and the six (count 'em 6) designs in-between. Structure: Creating A Framework For Your Words Underneath all good writing is a strong structure. You may
not see it, but it's there. I know, the word "structure"—to new writers especially—can sound like a quick way to make something dull. It's the teacher at school who makes you diagram sentences and create outlines. But a strong framework simply allows you to more effectively communicate what you want to say. It even makes writing easier because you have a path to follow as you write. Chris Meeks explains how. NetObjects Fusion 4 for $49! I know from first-hand experience that NetObjects Fusion 4.0 is the simplest, most efficient way to build and maintain a
web site. It's what I use to build eFuse.com.If you've got a credit card, you can download NetObjects Fusion from the web for JUST $49 in the US, and $59 around the world! That's the best price ever—for the best software. At this price, you can save more money in the first day you use it than it cost. To buy it now in the US, click here.Outside the US click here
Covering Your Assets In Netobjects Fusion A reader wrote:I created a folder called webgraphics, for my graphics. This was on drive D, whereas my NetObjects Fusion files are on drive C. I was compulsive this afternoon and, on the D drive, inserted a space between "web" and "graphics." About an hour later, I went into NetObjects Fusion and noticed my .gifs had disappeared . Where did they go?
I replied: When you add a graphic, NetObjects Fusion doesn't copy the graphic, or store it in its NOD file. It links to the graphic (the way HTML does). So if you have graphics in one folder, and you rename (or move or delete) that folder, NetObjects Fusion can't, of course, know where the file has gone. If you do this, you can go into Assets and choose Assets/Verify all Assets and when files are missing NetObjects Fusion will ask you to tell it where they are. If
entire directories are missing, it will ask for a new directory and look there for all graphics that were in the missing directory. It works well, even if it is well hidden. TIP: The best thing to do is to put all your graphics (and any other assets, such as sound files or PDF files) for a site in the "assets" directory of that site. Every NetObjects Fusion file has a series of folders. If your site is called "mysite" then it's in a directory called "mysite" and under that is a directory
called "assets"—that's where your graphics (and PDF files and any files belonging to the site) should go. You can create subfolders under the assets directory, too, if you want. That can make it easier to keep track of your graphics when there are a ton of them. You can also create a shortcut to the assets directory in your Windows Explorer, then just drop files onto the shortcut to put them into the assets directory.
Make a Template: If your files are all over the place, the simplest way to consolidate them is to "export to a template." Go to SiteView and choose File/Export to template. Then choose the directory where you want the template file to go. NetObjects Fusion will make a new directory with the site's name, and copy all necessary files
(including the style folders!) into the directories under it.There main difference between a template file (called .NFT for NetObjects Fusion Template) and a .NOD (NetObjects Document) file is that NFT files are more transportable. If you copy or move a .NOD file from drive C to drive D, it won't work properly because it will still be looking to drive C for its assets. If you move a NFT file (and all the folders under it), and
all your files are in assets folder, the NFT it will work, no matter what drive you put it on. If you get in the habit of putting a site's graphics in the assets folder, you'll always know where they are—and so will NetObjects Fusion. Back Me Up, Scotty OK, so your graphics and other important files are now in
your site's assets directory. One more advantage to that is it makes it easier to back up your site to a ZIP disk or CD or whatever you use. Just copy the site's directory and all its subdirectories and boom, you're backed up in a single step. (Remember, though, if you've backed up a NOD file and it's directories, you have to restore them to the same drive and directory for them to work.)I also recommend you export to a template on a regular basis, then back up that entire
template directory. That ensures that your style files are all there, too. Trust me on this one, I learned the hard way :) One more backup suggestion—I use www.connected.com which saves your files to a remote computer over the internet. It uses encryption so that even Connected can't
read your files. You can then restore them over the web, or have them send you a CD if you need it. It only backs up the changes, so even large files don't take long to update. It also makes it easier to find backed up files because you don't have to look on countless ZIPs and CDs. Don't wait and learn the hard way by losing a lot of work. People who don't make backups will lose something sooner or later. People who back up regularly sleep better at night! A crash avoidance system for your computer? Most Windows programs work best when you have plenty of Windows system resources available. When these resources get low, programs can become less reliable and crash.You can actually see that this is happening when your Windows Resource Meter (see more below) turns yellow, or worse, red.
When Windows crashes, the results in programs that manage many linked components, like NetObjects Fusion can be a problem. To prevent that, what I've done is to simply put the Windows Resource Meter in my System Tray. I'll explain how in a moment, and I watch it like a hawk. At the first sign of the Resource Meter turning yellow (peril ahead), I close a program. And when I'm shutting my system down and NOF is running, I close all other programs before closing NOF (to
free up the resources they've used). Since I began doing this (two months ago), I have yet to crash NOF (5.0!). The Resource Meter is usually located in C:\WINDOWS\RSRCMTR.EXE. If you drop a shortcut to it into your Windows Startup folder (C:\WINDOWS\START\STARTUP)
then it starts automatically each time you start windows, and will appear in your System Tray (the little rectangle in the lower right of your screen, near the clock).Thanks to Drew Morris for this tip! Hail To You, Neto U Need to learn about Web design, site planning and development, NetObjects Fusion, NetObjects Authoring Server, NetObjects Collage and connecting to Allaire Cold Fusion? NetObjects University is the place to learn about
these, and soon, database connectivity, Web marketing, HTML, XML and Java programming. Professional trainers, with real world Web development experience, teach NetObjects University courses. Each instructor brings a vast array of product and Web development knowledge to each course. Classes are offered nationwide and online registration is available by clicking here. Do Good With Just A Click Every time you do a web search at http://www.hungersearch.com, 3 cents are donated (by goto.com) to the United Nations World Food Program. That may not seem like a lot, but it can really add up. Trevor Lyman's smart idea lets you help others and help yourself, too, and it can serve as a model for something other non-profit organizations can do. Trevor will be writing an
explanation of how you can do this, too, in upcoming FuseLetters.Don't forget to continue to visit http://www.thehungersite.com/index.html once a day and click on the "Donate Free Food" button. When you do, a sponsoring corporation will make a donation to feed a
starving person for one day. You can do this once a day, and it costs nothing to you personally. And while you're in a helping spirit, sign the Hunger Site Petition to be delivered to the United Nations Security Council in October 2000. The petition urges the UN to dedicate more resources to the fight against global hunger. All you have to do is click on the link below to sign up - and don't forget to pass this e-mail along to all of your friends: http://www.thehungersite.com/rbt/THSPetition/h061322Just a few more clicks: Visit www.therainforestsite.com to help protect more rain forest land through the Nature Conservancy. And plant more trees at http://www.webreleaf.com/ and
https://www.amfor.org/newforms/treesself.php3 One Final Word I Hope you all survive this holiday weekend! Wear your seat belts!
editor,
http://www.eFuse.com
| |
Got fusion Questions? 