Benefits of blogging

These are a number of rewards for blogging, both technical and social.

Some good Technical reasons for programmers, web developers, technical managers, publishers, and journalists to blog include:

• learn XHTML, you know - that little thing almost the entire web is made out of
• learn CSS, get a flair for making things in writing look beautiful/logical - not just sound beautiful/logical
• experience modern way of writing
• let someone else worry about doing the backups for a change
• build on the shoulders of giants, use their templates instead of building our own CSS and template language from scratch
• handy way of bookmarking things, with a bit more room to describe their context/meaning/significance
• information is in a standards-based format
• practice typing - so you can type faster
• practice spelling - so you make fewer spelling errors elsewhere
• improve your ability to take extra good advantage of other programs that use XHTML as their inner language
• increase your XML skill/experience

Some good Social reasons for programmers, web developers, technical managers, publishers, and journalists to blog include:

• meet new experts in whatever topic you blog about
• improve social skills
• learn better communicating: grammar, writing, spelling, logical argument
• learn to respond better to rhetoric
• write about things you are passionate about
• write about things you are not passionate about - for a change
• learn about new things, keep track of what you learn about those things
• socialize with friends; sharing ideas and relying information
• think more creatively
• focus on constructive ways of viewing things - and describe those things the best ways you can

The secret to a good-looking blog: Nice-looking CSS

Appearances in a weblog are made possible by good use of tag semantics. However, what actually manifests them, for the most part - is having good CSS rule definitions that the blog is using.

Here is one piece of CSS I find very handy in my weblog.

/** thick, gray revision bar */
blockquote {border-left: 6px solid gray; padding-left: 1em; margin-left: 1em; }

It makes sure that the snippets from other blogs I quote appear, well - like they are snippets quoted from other blogs.

The whole purpose of the blockquote XHTML element is to do just that: quote snippets of text and/or other information from another source.

Here is what it looks like:

We have nothing to fear,
but fear itself.

-Roosevelt

These are the times that try men's souls

The Shadow knows... !

One, two - buckle my shoe.
Three, four - out the door.
Five, six - pick up sticks...

If you are fancy, you can use the cite element, as I have done in the first case above, to cite your source by title and/or name. And, of course, you should use an a (anchor) tag to include a hyperlink to it if it is on the web someplace.

Another handy element, which I should include some CSS for is the code element.

Example:

for (Element element : document) {
    System.out.println(element);
}

The code element is handy for marking up Javascript and Java program listings, CSS rules, and so forth.

One thing I have not looked into doing yet is how to include snippets of HTML, XHTML, XML, and so forth really easily. I think I can do it by using a bang-CDATA directive - but I have not tried it yet. If it works, that would be easiest. Escaping scores of less-than and greater-than punctuation-marks and double-quotes is not my idea of fun, believe me.

Oh, here is another good trick. You should quote people - or do the air quotes thing by using the q (quote) element. You will love it! It takes the contents, the entire thing, and wraps it in question marks. Even people who know HTML/XHTML do not seem to know about this one.

In conjuction with the q element, you should be able to set up a CSS rule to improve the appearance of your quotes. You know those big, beautiful, exaggerated quotes that a lot of magazine websites and swarmy weblogs use? Well, you should be able to do the same effect using q elements - and a custom CSS 2.1 rule. (This particular template seems to come supplied with a rule that does that already - but only for the opening quotation mark.)

Just remember, not all web browsers are created equal when it comes to supporting the current CSS standard, 2.1. So you have to take that into account - either by trying it with a bunch of browsers, waiting until they are done, or using CSS tricks to create fallback rules or use some kind of browser brand/version sensing technique.

Anyway, those are some things you can do to enhance the readability - and correctness - of your blog.

Until next time, good-byte!

Technology and Techniques behind blogging

I want to start pulling together techniques, tools, technology, and tricks for bloggers to use.

Things that simplify the blogging task, eliminate drudgery, and add a little panache to the finished product greatly interest me.

Ways of collecting, analyzing, distilling, and present information are good in any environment. I think they can be applied nicely to the blogging environment.

Blogging is a way of recording what you are thinking at the moment, something you have just learned, something you have just done, and what is going on in the world at the moment.

The challenge, therefore - is to know what is going on at the moment that is interesting and germane to the topic of your blog, to ensure that you are doing interesting things, and to find ways to communicate these things in a way that is interesting.

And above all, it should be easy.

Blogs are like various things. They can be like a diary. They can be like a lab notebook. They can be like a news journal. We have all kept these things at one time or another.

Put too much time & effort into them and that log starts to become a burden. Before long, the log gets dropped.

Why? No time left to do the activity for which the blog is supposed to be preserving the benefits of doing!

Here are some questions:

• How many other people started a diary and then just dropped it because there was no benefit from it?
• How many people were taught to keep a news-reading journal in junior high school, and completely dropped the habit later because it did not seem to yield any benefits?
• How many people need a way to track what they are doing from week-to-week but get tired of writing it in notebooks that are too unwieldy once they have enough information in them to be useful?

I think there are some things that can be brought to bear in order to make blogging less of a burden. I think those things are worth writing about. That is what I will do here.