Month: December 2004

If one of your New Year’s Resolutions is to read a self-help book then look no further than Al and Laura Ries’ “The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding.”

Yes it is out of print, but you can buy it used – or do what I did, rented it on Audio Cassette for two 2 hour car drives. I didn’t agree with all of it, but there’s lots of useful information and concepts that apply to how and why your church website is an entirely different kettle of fish than your church’s hardcopy newsletter and/or on-air radio ministry.

In the mean time, I’d like to extend a healthy and prosperous 2005 to all of the HYCW cult members (and members to be). May all your pages Google and may all your links optimize to the top.

P.S. it also appears the authors (father and daugther) have put out an updated version entitled “The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding” … I’m linking up the audio version because it’s something you can listen to on and off … over and over again as you drive to work (or church).

Popups are the spawn of satan … in fact say so much in ‘the Book‘ … most of the time. Like medicinal marijuana for terminally ill cancer patients who have an adversion to morphine, pop-ups do have some rare, legitimate utility for things like calendar widgets for date-related form entries and/or disclaimer type information. Which is why I’ve linked an article by Elise Bauer entitled “How To Make a Pop-up Window” that shows how to do it right – especially for those of us who like to right click.

Sometimes you might want to link to a popup window from your Movable Type weblog. For example you can make your About page a popup instead of a separate page. Although using the target=”blank” attribute in a hyperlink can generate a new page, using javascript commands for popups will give you more control over the appearance and location of the popup.

Can I have an ‘Amen!?’ Or at least a partial head knod, for while I’m no fan of the target=”_blank” attribute, I do like the idea of giving the users more control of their destiny when it comes to popup windows. This is especially true for those of us slugging it out with the way ASP.Net uses, or should I say abuses Javascript to launch popups and other such controls.

If you’re not sure what I mean you can view a popup of my very first post/press release one of two ways.

• Left click on it and you get a popup
• Right Click on it and you can open a new browser Window (or tab for you hip, cool FireFox users)

It is the ability to right click and do things like open window, tabs, create bookmarks and/or save linkable content that makes Elise’s example so valuable — at least to me — of course your mileage may vary.