Ask Emi

Peer-to-peer problem-solving

2005-06-09T11:00:00.000-07:00

If you are scratching your head over an annoying code problem, Kathie Legg of Kathie's Politech has graciously offered to look at your code and try to help. She wrote me this just before I distributed the email list to the class on Tuesday:

My classmate . . . had an error in their code for their last post. I offered to help them with that (I am good at finding errors) but they seem to have taken down the blog post. Can you just make sure they know I don't mind helping them fix it and they did not have to take it down?

When I asked whether she wanted to offer her help to other classmates, as well, she replied:

Feel free to let them know. I LOVE looking at code!

Call for volunteer tester

2005-06-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

Note: Adding links to your blog is strictly optional and will not affect your grade. If you don't happen to care about this, please ignore this post.

Blogger provides some basic instructions on how to edit your link list, but they probably are not explicit enough for people who have never worked with HTML before.

So I wrote up instructions for non-coders explaining exactly how to do this. To do this, you only need to cut and paste in HTML.

If you don't know anything at all about coding in HTML but are willing to try a cut-and-paste task. . . you might want to volunteer to test these instructions. If you find them adequate, I can recommend them to your classmates.

How to create an HTML link

2005-06-03T17:12:00.000-07:00

As an exception, this tech tip is also posted on our official class blog. Normally, I will not ask you to learn any HTML. However, this basic skill is very good to know and easy to learn.

Problem
Here's a link copied from the address bar in my browser and pasted directly into this blog:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/

There's nothing wrong with that link. But a problem occurs when you have a really long URL, like this one:

http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/achenblog/2005/05/blogs_and_journ.html

While the link does work — it's a perfectly valid link — the problem is that this particular URL is so long that at normal font size it breaks the page layout, causing the blogroll column to slip down. In fact, I had to make the font size artificially tiny just to be able to show you this example without breaking the layout of this page.

Solution
To correct this, simply insert the address into an HTML link.
For instance, if you type this code into your blog:

<a href="http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/">see the article</a>

it will be rendered like this on the web page: see the article

Summary
Notice the basic format is as follows:

<a href="http://www.somewebsite.com/somepage.html">text</a>

How to add our class blogs to your blogroll

2005-06-03T17:09:00.000-07:00

These instructions tell you how to set up your blogroll to list all of our class blogs.

HTML knowledge required: none
You don't need to know how to create any HTML, but you will cut and paste the code below into the HTML code of your blog template.
Don't worry; it's easier than it sounds. If you can cut-and-paste neatly and accurately, you can do it.

If you have never worked with HTML at all before, I strongly suggest that you create a separate practice blog in your blogger account. (I did this myself, because Blogger's automatic formatting was changing my HTML and I wanted to test it.) You can call it anything, such as "test blog". That way, you can practice the instructions below on your test blog before trying it on your actual class blog.

Save a backup copy of your blog template code
Before making changes to your Blogger template, always be sure to make an exact copy of it and save it to your hard drive. Here's how:

Leave this browser window open for reference and open a second browser window. In the second browser window, log into Blogger, click on the name of your blog, and click the Template tab.

You will see a large input box containing HTML code.
With your cursor, carefully highlight everything in the input box.

Note: The highlighted code should start with <!DOCTYPE html
and end with </html>
Without closing your browser, open any plain text editor. For example, in Windows, open Notepad or Wordpad.
(To do this, simply click Start, All Programs, Accessories, Notepad).

You will see a blank screen displayed in Notepad (or whatever text editor you are using).
Copy and paste the highlighted code into Notepad (or other text editor).
Save the file to your hard drive as template.txt (and remember where you saved it).
Open the Notepad document you just created to verify that you copied everything, then close Notepad.

Remember, the highlighted code should start with < DOCTYPE html and end with </html>

Modify your blog template
Now you are ready to add the list of class blogs to your template.

Note: I cannot troubleshoot your HTML code. If you try this procedure and have problems, simply take the backup copy of your original template code and paste in back into the template box.

You should be logged into Blogger, with the Template tab selected and the input box containing the template code displayed on your screen.
Scroll down to nearly the end of the template until you see a line that reads:
With your cursor, carefully highlight the eight lines of code that follow, as shown below:

Important: the highlighted code should start with <MainOrArchivePage> and end with </MainOrArchivePage>

Without closing the browser window, go to the first browser window that is still displaying the AskEmi blog. Do not use the back button; the AskEmi site and your blog site should both be open in separate browser windows.
Highlight and copy the code in the yellow box below, switch to the other browser, and paste the code into your blog template, replace the eight lines of code you highlighted earlier.

Note: be careful to completely replace the eight highlighted lines and not leave any stray characters remaining from the original eight lines.

<ul>
<li><a href="http://adviseconsent.blogspot.com/">Advise and Consent</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bigblockofcheese.blogspot.com/">Big Block of Cheese</a></li>
<li><a href="http://blueinaredworld.blogspot.com/">Blue in a Red World</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bluestatesofmind.blogspot.com/">Blue States of Mind</a></li>
<li><a href="http://bluestateblush.blogspot.com/">Blushing in a Blue State</a></li>
<li><a href="http://britishboyindc.blogspot.com/">British Boy in DC</a></li>
<li><a href="http://cannedhamm.blogspot.com/">Canned Ham</a></li>
<li><a href="http://centerforce.blogspot.com/">Centrifugal Force</a></li>
<li><a href="http://thedailyrag.blogspot.com/">The Daily Rag</a></li>
<li><a href="http://demchatterbox.blogspot.com/">Dem ChatterBox</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gspmdesi.blogspot.com/">DesiPolitica</a></li>
<li><a href="http://dimmysworld.blogspot.com/">Dimmy's World</a></li>
<li><a href="http://femocrat.blogspot.com/">The Femocrat</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gwodem.blogspot.com/">GWO Dem</a></li>
<li><a href="http://123hegemon321.blogspot.com/">Hegemon</a></li>
<li><a href="http://iammeblog.blogspot.com/">iammeblog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://idealistaction.blogspot.com/">Idealist Action</a></li>
<li><a href="http://il2dc.blogspot.com/">IL 2 DC</a></li>
<li><a href="http://independentblogger.blogspot.com/">Independent Blogger</a></li>
<li><a href="http://klegg.blogspot.com/">Kathie's Politech</a></li>
<li><a href="http://mediapreference.blogspot.com/">Mediated Preference</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.meetjustin.com/Blog/">meet justin</a></li>
<li><a href="http://newmediablog.blogspot.com/">stuck in the middle with blue</a></li>
<li><a href="http://smechum.blogspot.com">"new media" musings</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.obstacleremoval.blogspot.com/">Out of the Way</a></li>
<li><a href="http://outsidedamage.blogspot.com/">outside damage</a></li>
<li><a href="http://pnm05.blogspot.com/">PNM05</a></li>
<li><a href="http://politiae.blogspot.com/">Politiae</a></li>
<li><a href="http://red-or-green.blogspot.com/">Red or Green?</a></li>
<li><a href="http://separight.blogspot.com/">Right Blog</a></li>
<li><a href="http://thesamewavelength.blogspot.com/">The Same Wavelength</a></li>
<li><a href="http://pmgt218.blogspot.com/">A Schwarzenegger Republican</a></li>
<li><a href="http://shadowsmews.blogspot.com/">Shadow's Mews</a></li>
<li><a href="http://hieneman.blogspot.com/">Southern Dems Still Exist</a></li>
<li><a href="http://thetoastertalks.blogspot.com/">the toaster talks</a></li>
<li><a href="http://mikedinthehouse.blogspot.com/">Unassigned Topics</a></li>
<li><a href="http://internationalperspective.blogspot.com/">understanding u.s. politics</a></li>
</ul>

Click the orange Save Changes button, then the navy blue Republish button.
Go to your blog's home page and see how it looks. You may need to refresh the page to see your changes.

(To refresh the page, press and hold the Shift button on your keyboard while pressing the Refresh button in your browser. This clears the browser's "cache," or memory.)
You're done. If for any reason you are not happy with the results, you can simply go back to the template code box (where you made the changes earlier) and replace the code that is there with the backup copy you made earlier.

If you're new to HTML, but curious . . .

2005-05-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

You might want to read Mike D's blog entry: "PSA: New To HTML?"

Posting images on your blog

2005-05-28T19:31:00.000-07:00

If you want to add images to your posts, one way to do it is using the free Hello software, which is designed to work with Blogger blogs.

I tested the Hello software and was able to use it to post images to my blog. However, in order to get it to work, I had to enter Hello.com as a trusted website in the security settings for both my web browser and my anti-virus software, a configuration issue I did not see mentioned in the Hello.com online help.

I noticed that the Flickr website also claims that you can use its software to post images to Blogger blogs. I have not tested that myself yet, though.

Tip: SharpReader puts all blogs on one screen

2005-05-28T14:11:00.000-07:00

Now I can scan all the class blogs as easily as checking my email. I can see immediately when someone has added a new entry that I haven't read yet. For me, SharpReader was painless to install and set up, but I already had the .Net framework installed.

If you don't want to bother installing the .Net framework, you can simply take Peter C's advice and automatically add RSS feeds into your Firefox browser. (If you already use another browser, such as Explorer, it's OK to install the Firefox browser, as well. I have several browsers installed. They each have advantages and drawbacks.)

This blog is the place to address tech issues

2005-05-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

Because PMGT 218 is not a technical course, I won't be teaching technical skills in the course and students won't be expected to learn them.

However, some students may find it helpful to have a separate forum where they can discuss technical issues. This blog is the place for that. It is strictly for fun, and is not part of the PGMT 218 course curriculum. Any writing posted on this blog will not count toward your grade.