My answer to that question is yes, these days. Editing lots of blogs are a lot easier using a desktop blogging application, although there are limitations to it. If you’re curious about what I’m using, check out Blogging Software for Mac Users over at Devlounge.
So are you using a desktop application to blog? Which one, and why?
You might remember that I bashed b5media for their general themes, and the lack of blog profiling in them, quite some time ago? If you don’t, then read up!
Anyway, they manage to lay their hands on the excellent videogame blog Siliconera, which wasn’t in the b5media template of course. It is now.
Luckily, this theme update to the gaming blog is well done, and a great example of having a general template adapted to the blog in question. Sure, there are things that could do with some polish, but I think it does Siliconera justice. more
Indie music site Pitchfork will launch a music web TV channel (or whatever you want to call it) on April 7. The splash page for this channel is great:
Microsoft has launched the Internet Explorer 8 Beta “for Developers and Designers”. I’m too busy to take it for a spin myself at the moment, so I’ll just settle for the online commentary for now.
A nice follow up to the rendering news earlier this week.
Have you tested it? How does your design work with it?
Good news! Microsoft have decided to make the standards compliant mode in Internet Explorer 8 the default setting! This means we won’t have to do IE specific tags to let the browser know that we want it to display in standards mode.
The what now? Default rendering modes? What? Ina Fried explains:
With IE8, Microsoft plans to have three rendering modes: the new standards-compliant mode, the IE7 rendering engine, as well as an option for displaying older Web sites. Because of the default shift, Web sites that want IE8 to use its IE7 engine will have to add a tag to their site’s code.
Word has it we’ll get an IE8 beta in a few months time. Maybe IE8 will be what finally kills IE6? Hardly.
There are 29 categories on Wisdump today. 7 of them have 5 posts or less associated, 13 have got less than 20 posts. Several are completely redundant, probably great ideas when Scrivs ran the show, but the Wisdump I took over last year neither was nor is his playground. Categories like 9rules had its place back then, but today it’s a mere archive of Scrivs writing about his project.
Which brings me to which categories next Wisdump should have?
In my mind, you should always keep the number of categories to a minimum. It makes things easier for you, and it opens up opportunities for special styling, branding, things like that. Tags have effectively replaced the categories when it comes to show exactly what something is about, now categories are meant for sorting, and tags does the pinpointing.
ProBlogger’s got a post up by Suzanne Falter-Barns, basically retelling Andy Wibbels’ opinions on why blogs have killed conventional websites in a 13 point list. In other words, the question they’re asking – have blogs killed conventional websites? – i rhetorical to say the least.
The answer, being yes they have, obviously, is also wrong.
No, blogs haven’t killed conventional websites.
New publishing platforms have, on the other hand, killed the need for a webmaster hacking HTML code to update. Some people use blog software or bloggish news sections to get this effect, while others still have the same old conventional layout on their websites, just utilizing modern CMS platform to manage it.
Andy and Suzanne, you’re not talking about blogs killing conventional websites, you’re talking about modern platforms killing the need for a HTML hacking webmaster.
Apples and oranges, anyone?
I’ve finally decided which design I’ll work with for the next version of Wisdump:
This post over at The Blog Herald got me thinking. It’s about geotagging posts, which means showing people where you are on a map.
Why? Well, sometimes it might be relevant to see where in the world you were when you published a post, especially if you’re doing a travel-focused blog.
However, do you really want people to know where you are? Tabloids in Sweden ran a story on burglars using blogs to find out who was on vacation, and then broke into their houses. While that might happen for sure, I believe this particular story was a way to scare people into buying issues, reading about those scary blog things.
That being said, being at least a bit anonymous is what a lot of people find appealing with blogs.
Would you consider geotagging your blog posts?
Matt Harzewski of Webmaster-Source asks if Internet Explorer 5 is dead, and does a nice little bullet list of things that have happened since 1998 (which is funny since IE5 launched in 1999, which he also notes).
9 years is serious time for a web browser. There is no excuse for IE5 to exist anymore.
Luckily, it just about doesn’t. On my Swedish sites I’ve got 0% IE5 visitors, and on the international ones it’s below 0.15%.
In other words, IE5 is dead. Now please kill IE6. Thank you.
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