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People occasionally accuse me of focusing too intensely on things like grammar, lexical choice or the tone of a message. But leave it to an oblivious journalist to show how this kind of intensity needs to be practiced. I was watching the local television news the other day. During the sports section, over a montage of passes from Drew Brees to various New Orleans Saints receivers, the sportscaster said, “And a Super Bowl win would give the struggling city of New Orleans a much needed lift.” Cringing, I shook my head in disbelief. He really said that? Here is a visual representation of New Orleans before the much needed lift from a Super Bowl win:
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Here in part 2 of my comments on the intercom article on Twitter as a tool for technical communicators, I will elaborate on Twitter as a conversational tool. My point in this post is that Twitter, like a conversation, has a perfect democracy of information. And I will explain two reasons this is not good for technical communication. |
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In the December issue of intercom, the Society for Technical Communication’s magazine, there was an article about using Twitter to facilitate technical communication. I feel the article is very informative, and I think that it is very important to address the new tools technical communicators can use. However, I have a bloated two-part post filled with thoughts on how Twitter is not a tool for technical communication, but a tool for conversation. Technical communicators can still use Twitter effectively, but should not think of Twitter as anything other than a simple conversational tool. For the sake of full disclosure, I must say that even the thought of Twitter causes a strange sense of creeping dread and revulsion in my gut: a combination of my own paranoia and the self-proclaimed significance others attribute to themselves. But this has actually caused me to think a little more deeply about Twitter and try to turn my feelings of distrust into meaningful arguments. Here in part 1 of 2, I would like to talk about the difference between conversation and technical communication. |
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I wish I came up with that title but I didn’t. It refers to the post I’m linking to right here. I don’t really have anything to add about this… I just wanted to give it a link. It’s a good read for anyone interested in leraning more about typography and the basics of serif vs. sans-serif. |
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Nightmare scenario: |
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Web safe: the name is slightly misleading. First because most modern browsers can display the millions of possible RGB colors. Second, and more important to this post, because the word safe carries a connotation that web-safe can’t quite live up to. Safe implies that everyone can equally use the colors without any adverse consequences. For the less than 1% of the population with certain types of color blindness, there are very real consequences. |
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I found this while browsing Reddit today. It is an excellent example of how important punctuation can be.
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Most people don’t use Adobe AIR apps. Many people don’t know what Adobe AIR is. I have only a vague understanding myself. There are probably all sorts of complex reasons that these situations exists, but one reason is the stigma surrounding the apps themselves. Most of them are, like widgets, pretty useless.
But it would be untrue to say that all of them are useless. Here are four that are actually quite useful.
1. Adobe Media Player
Probably the most common AIR app, this one is actually really useful. It is a great resource for tutorials and discussions on anything from lab color to green design to inspiration. The quality of most of the videos is good, and the speed of downloads and streams is also fairly good.
2. Adobe Shortcut App
Since time-saving techniques are dear to me, and Adobe doesn’t use any of the standard Mac keyboard shortcuts, this app is an invalueable resource. Divided by program, utilizing a search feature, and allowing you to make favorite shortcuts, this app can greatly decrease the time it takes to search out the shortcuts for those not-so-common-but-still-important-enough-to-use-every-once-in-a-while tasks.
3. Adobe Kuler
If you haven’t heard of Kuler, it is a equal parts social media and color scheme designer. It’s free to sign up at Adobe.com, where you can design a series of swatches that make a color scheme. However, the AIR app is a quick way to browse through popular color schemes that people are sharing. If you are stumped on complementary colors for a document, this is a great way pick other people’s brains.
4. Contrast-A
Ever wonder if a color-blind person will be able to read your snazzy catchphrase on its complementary-colored background? You should. And this app lets you check the colors of text-background combinations for brightness, color, and luminace contrasts. And all of the algorithms are based on WC3 standards. If your combination’s ratio is too low, it can generate visual thresholds on color palletes. This app is a must have for maintaining accesibility. You can even export the couplet to a PDF.
Most people don’t use Adobe AIR apps. Many people don’t know what Adobe AIR is. I have only a vague understanding myself. There are probably all sorts of complex reasons that these situations exist, but one reason is the stigma surrounding the apps themselves. Most of them are pretty useless. But it would be unfair to say that all of them are useless. Here are four that are actually quite useful. |
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Check out this slideshow of 10 unnecessary quotes. Sometimes those sly quotation marks can make all the difference The linked website pulled those images from The Blog of Unnecessary Quotation Marks, which is definitely worth checking out as well. |
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GotoFile>New Keyboard Shortcut: [command/ctrl + N]. This will open the New Document dialogue box.
Select ActionScript File from the Type: selection area. • Click the OK button to open the new file.
Note: You cannot manually draw any artwork in an .AS file. The only thing a .AS file contains is code.Adobe has made a concerted effort to turn ActionScript into a powerful language for all sorts of complex rich Internet applications; they have worked hard at making Flash Player a standard, their Adobe AIR Framework has become an interesting alternative to things like desktop widgets and browser-run online applications. But with all of the effort making ActionScript flexible and powerful enough to satisfy developers, they have alienated many entry-level designers. The learning curve for ActionScript 3.0 is significantly higher than that for ActionScript 2.0.
This tutorial will cover the basics of creating and linking the two files needed to access the full power of AS 3.0. This tutorial will not cover any of the functionality of ActionScript, and it will not explain any of the terminology. Its only purpose is to show how to begin setting up a Flash project. Keyboard shortcuts are shown with square brackets: [Macintosh keys first/PC keys second + OTHER KEYS IN UPPERCASE], menus are shown in italics, buttons are shown underlined, and code is shown in monospace.
Adobe has made a concerted effort to turn ActionScript into a powerful language for all sorts of complex rich Internet applications; they have worked hard at making Flash Player a standard, their Adobe AIR Framework has become an interesting alternative to things like desktop widgets and browser-run online applications. But with all of the effort making ActionScript flexible and powerful enough to satisfy developers, they have alienated many entry-level designers. The learning curve for ActionScript 3.0 is significantly higher than that for ActionScript 2.0. This tutorial will cover the basics of creating and linking the two files needed to access the full power of AS 3.0. This tutorial will not cover any of the functionality of ActionScript, and it will not explain any of the terminology. Its only purpose is to show how to begin setting up a Flash project. A print version is available in PDF format. |