What Is Nontroppo’s Wonderful World of Visual Tutorials Missing?
Posted on Oct 17, 2005 | Categories: Screencasts | 2 Comments
(Migrated weblog post from LSR)
I am sure that by now most of those folks who have been using Opera 8 or, at least, have visited the web site itself, have seen the superb tutorials that nontroppo has put together to show some of the most popular features from Opera’s latest version. The tutorials themselves can be found in here and after having gone through them I still got to learn a trick or two, even though I have been using Opera for some time now.
However, I couldn’t help noticing something missing. Something that takes more relevance, specially, with the latest version of the popular web browser: some audio. As you well know, for the first time ever in any web browser (as far as I know) Opera is introducing a voice component that will actually help you talk to it to surf the web and read stuff out loud to you. And I was just thinking that those tutorials would have been a whole lot better if nontroppo would have been using the concept of screencasting, introduced coined by Jon Udell where those tutorials could have been created with both a video and an audio component.
I bet they would have been a lot more effective and compelling than what they are already now. After all it is always more appealing to hear someone’s voice telling you about something than having to read it out yourself, right? More than anything else because you can just sit back, relax and enjoy the ride. I wonder if they would get updated at some point using screencasting and see if it would have the same effect. I am sure they would not. Main reason being adding both audio and video to a tutorial is probably one of the most powerful ways of delivering information to an audience, wherever or whoever they may be. So let’s see what happens next time. We will keep on watching.
For the time being if you do want to have a look into what features have been put together do not hesitate to check out the tutorials. You will enjoy them ! Thanks much, nontroppo!!! for putting them together and help others discover Opera and its many great features. Way to go !
How To Write A Successful Blog: Top Ten Tips
Posted on Oct 17, 2005 | Categories: Metablogging | Leave a comment
(Migrated weblog post from LSR)
As I mentioned earlier on in another weblog post I have been weblogging already for some time now and throughout all this time I have been fascinated by the weblogging phenomenon. I have always believed that it is actually one of the most powerful ways to democratising the Internet and share information with other people who may have similar interests. At the same time I have always said that everybody should have their own weblog, regardless of whatever flavour they would like to give it.
Thing is that despite the millions of weblogs out there already, there may be still folks out there who may not know how to get started with weblogging. And this is the time when weblog posts like Robin Good’s How To Write A Successful Blog: Top Ten Tips would become really handy.
As the title of the weblog post indicates there you have got listed a Top 10 Tips on how you can get started with weblogging. The list is not meant to be the one and only list of tips. Just basically a list with some good suggestions for those new to weblogs. However, the interesting part is that the list of tips has been put together by somebody, Sharon Housley, who hasn’t got a weblog by choice but that has researched this phenomenon for some time now, amongst others.
And for those folks who may not have a chance to go through the entire post here you have, as an excerpt, those tips put together. I would say they would be quite self explanatory on their own but if you would want to read some more about it check out the original post. So here it goes:
Stay on topic. Be informative. Old news is not news. Adhere to a schedule. Clarity and simplicity. Keyword-rich. Quantity matters. Frequency. Spell checking and proof-reading. RSS.
Just in Case Anybody Had Some Doubts Still
Posted on Oct 17, 2005 | Categories: Productivity Tools | Leave a comment
(Migrated weblog post from LSR)
I know that it has been mentioned how can people possibly compare web browsers like FireFox and Opera when they are both suiting people’s needs in many different ways, yet we seem to have a tendency to try to compare both of them to try to see which one is best at what they do. And like I mentioned earlier on, imho, this comparison is just like comparing oranges with apples. Both browsers help address completely different needs from different end-users and as such saying that one browser is much better than the other would be totally unfair, I would say.
However, there are a couple of web sites that people who may not know which web browser to use as their default browser should check out first before making a final decision as to what may be the choice for them. First one, and although I am not going to stop too much time on it, is the well known Acid2 Test where if you perform the test on Internet Explorer, FireFox and Opera you will be able to see that, although not 100% accurate (there is always some more room for improvement) Opera is the browser that best carries out the test, so you would say that Opera would be following the web standards better than any of the other two web browsers.
The second web site that is really worth while reading in order to help you make a decision as to what may be the best web browser for your needs, if one of those needs is speed, would be this one: Browser speed comparisons. This particular web site provides you with some really good benchmarks notes as to which web browser is the fastest out there. And here is a quote from the final statement after having done all the tests:
“Ok, ok. Firefox and Mozilla are clearly optimised for Linux, and Opera is clearly optimised for Windows. These optimisations are mostly obvious with the loading times, although there is also a little difference in the cache handling on the different operating systems. However, Opera seems to perform admirably well on most tasks, on any platform. When it comes to page rendering (tables, CSS or images), most of the major browsers perform very fast, with very little to distinguish between them. When it comes to scripts, Opera clearly holds its head above the others, nearly twice as fast as the others. The only one that comes close is Safari 2.0, but that is tied to the Tiger release of Mac OS (currently in preview).”
Or this other summarising comment:
“So overall, Opera seems to be the fastest browser for windows. Firefox is not faster than Internet Explorer, except for scripting, but for standards support, security and features, it is a better choice. However, it is still not as fast as Opera, and Opera also offers a high level of standards support, security and features.”
And finally, the third web site that would be worth while considering to take a look and see which one would be the best browser from a Web Browser Standards Support would be the following one: Web Browser Standards Support, where you can see how each of the different web browsers perform against a number of different web standards. Again, Opera comes on top with a pretty good score of 72% of web standards compliance while Internet Explorer is just at a mere 39% and FireFox is at 67%, not too bad.
So if you like to have some comparison benchmarks between each of the different web browsers have a look into all of them and, hopefully, that will help you make a decision as to choose your default web browser. However, if you hate comparisons, specially when they do not match very well you may want to try each of the different browsers for a while and see which one you like the most. I would bet that in most cases you would stick with Opera. But then again that is just my web surfing experience. Others may have a different one based on different needs. And that is the greatness of choice. Your choice!
