Genii Weblog


Civility in critiquing the ideas of others is no vice. Rudeness in defending your own ideas is no virtue.


Tue 3 Feb 2004, 10:11 PM
As described in Focus - Building a smarter website, here is the snapshot of focus material for HTML/XHTML/MIME generation, including exporting and converting to HTML/XHTML/MIME.  See the latest version by going to the Midas page focusing on HTML generation.

Focus on HTML Generation
High quality HTML/XHTML from Notes documents and rich text.

Sample Databases
Export to MS Word - MS Word compliant HTML
Generate HTML - Test bed for generating HTML
Send It! 3.20a - MIME/HTML e-mails made easy

Tutorials & Articles

Semi-Related

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Tue 3 Feb 2004, 10:10 PM
As described in Focus - Building a smarter website, here is the snapshot of focus material for doclinks, link hotspots, etc.  See the latest version by going to the Midas page focusing on doclinks.

Focus on Doclinks
Doclink creation and manipulation

Sample Databases
Change Links - Simple example
Doclinks to NDL/Notes URL - Auto-conversion
Midas Editing - Link creation
Valid Links - Validate doclinks and hyperlinks

On-line Demos

Tutorials & Articles

Semi-Related

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Tue 3 Feb 2004, 10:09 PM
As described in Focus - Building a smarter website, here is the snapshot of focus material for dynamic tables.  See the latest version by going to the Midas page focusing on dynamic tables.

Focus on Dynamic Tables
Table creation, sorting, access and manipulation.

Sample Databases
Append Table - Simple example
Walden R4 - Dynamic tables for R4
Walden R5+ - Dynamic tables for R5/ND6/ND6.5

On-line Demos
Create Form - Form creation with table
Create Page - Page creation with table
Walden - Dynamic table manipulation

Tutorials & Articles

Semi-Related

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.

Tue 3 Feb 2004, 11:13 AM
I'll be honest up front: I am not a great web designer.  The Genii website looks OK, especially if I keep my hands off the UI, but I am not a brilliant JavaScript expert or CSS expert.  I honestly don't want a lot of flash and sizzle, because this is a serious, business oriented website, and flash tends to distract rather than focus.

So what can a guy like me do to improve the website?  I need to focus on content, but the more content I add, the harder it is to find the information you may need, which is just a subset of the available information.  It seems to me that the key difficulty is getting the website to focus on what the user wants.

How can we know what the user wants?  We can always ask, and that is a great way, but we also have some other clues.  How did the user get to this page?  Let's say the user searched for "Generate HTML with Midas LSX" on  Google or Yahoo or some other search engine.  The first result points to our specific Midas LSX page, but the Midas LSX page doesn't have a lot of information about HTML generation, as that is just one of many topics of interest to those looking at Midas.

Or it didn't until today.  If you did that search now, you would find a box on the left hand side called "Focus on HTML Generation" with links to sample databases that can be downloaded, Help topics that are relevant, weblog articles that are relevant, and on-line samples that are relevant.  The UI isn't perfect yet, and I need to fill out a number of these focus charts for different topics, but the concept is cool (imho).  Of course, this assumes that I have good phrases that I can recognize, but I have another trick up my sleeve.

As some of you know, I answer a lot of questions about rich text on the Gold forums.  Occasionally, the answers refer back to my products.  When they do, I can use the unid of the answer to identify what focus the user might have.  If a customer asks a question abotu a specific topic, and I answer with a recommendation for Midas, wouldn't it be slick if the response link to the Midas page also focused on the area they were looking at.  If the answer is about dynamic tables, let them see the information about dynamic tables right there up front.

One great thing in this age of blogs and word of mouth is that you can track hits from specific pages of other people's sites.  For example, in the Fixing links article from Jens-Christian Fischer's blog, he mentions Midas and puts a link to the Midas page.  Wouldn't it be great if anyone reaching the page from that article saw specialized information on creating and fixing doclinks?

Of course, this idea is extensible for anyone providing a range of information linked by lots of other sites.  My design may be too convoluted for others to use, but once you think of it, it isn't too hard.  I just do lookups based the HTTP_referer field and a series of phrases, URLs and unids and then pull in a computed subform. 

Now, the one question remaining is should I always put a focus on... topic, and just randomize it if the user didn't come from a known site or use a known search phrase?

Update: See the first three focus topics and see what you think - Focus on Dynamic TablesFocus on Doclinks and Focus on HTML Generation.

Copyright © 2004 Genii Software Ltd.