Working with “Techies”

by Vanessa Barber
Project Manager, Advent Media Group

We here at Advent Media Group pride ourselves on being in-the-know when it comes to technology. Most of our clients are at the forefront of technological advances in medicine, and it’s our job to know what’s out there so we can write about it knowledgeably and educate our readers.

Over the years, we have also worked hard to stay abreast of the many ways in which technology advances outside of the medical world. We concentrate on the progressions in website development and design. As the digital age continues to expand and surge forward, it’s important that we here at AMG know everything there is to know...as soon as it is ready to be learned.

I, personally, do not know anything about computer programming. And while I have learned much over the years about web design and development, I still look to our AMG IT experts when it comes to the large, and small technological questions.

So, I thought I would compile a brief—but pointed—list of my “must-haves” for a positive working relationship with the illustrious “IT person.” If you are looking to develop a website, or choosing an IT person to help you with office technology, you may find this useful.

• I like to learn something from every working relationship I develop. Even when it’s a tiny email issue that takes three minutes to fix, I always appreciate it when the IT person explains to me what happened with my computer, and why.
• Knowledge is key. I always work with someone who knows the latest programs—their pros and their cons.
• Also, I prefer to work with someone who has some knowledge in both arenas—programming and designing. They don’t necessarily need to be a designer if they are a programmer, or vice versa, but they should know W3C guidelines, and be aware of the latest trends. In this respect, really, I’m looking for an advocate for the client’s success. If you are spending money to develop a site, you don’t want to launch something that’s already outdated. And, in the world of fast-moving technology, that is an issue to consider.
• I’ll admit it: I am sometimes completely overwhelmed by techie jargon. I often feel shy or embarrassed about asking what a particular acronym stands for, and I’ll let things go over my head when I really want to know more. The best IT person for me to work with: the one who slows down, and takes the time to answer my questions in a language I can understand.

I’m hoping as the digital age develops, and more people begin to use computers for every aspect of their business, that the divide between the IT person and us “non-techies” will diminish. I will always have more to learn when it comes to computers and advancing technology, and I look forward to gaining that knowledge through the experts.

Top Ten: things I've noticed about medical specialists

Jackie Delk

Creative Director

 

No, this isn't a Letterman act, although I borrowed his formatting; it's just highly opinionated profiling…

1. Orthopaedic surgeons are competitive.
   
2. Radiologists are either lots of fun or very, very serious…or both.
   
3. Cosmetic surgeons are punctilious…and have attractive office staffs.
   
4. Neurosurgeons are witty conversationalists.
   
5. Cardiovascular surgeons are tough to get on the phone for an interview, but once you do…
   
6. Ophthalmologists are passionate about marketing.
   
7. Urologists are easygoing; gastroenterologists wear red socks. Well, Dr. Colin Chircop always does.
   
8. Oncologists are engagingly polite.
   
9. Medical specialists are often exceptionally talented musicians and visual artists.
   
10. They love to talk about their work, making it easy for writers to get the info we need.
    

 

And, with very few exceptions, each enjoys sharing a laugh…thankfully!

 

Comments, debate, rebuttal are all encouraged.

Email Marketing: Rendering Issues in Microsoft Outlook 2007

By Tony Pesavento
Art Director

Recently, Advent Media Group has started to offer a new service: email marketing. We have partnered with Constant Contact, the leader in email marketing best practices, to offer our clients turn-key solutions for their email marketing campaigns. We do the writing and designing; Constant Contact gets the email delivered.

As the designer, I had to test many different email client programs to be sure that the email would render correctly. My email was table based with a little CSS. What could possibly go wrong?

Yahoo, Google mail, and Outlook 2003 were all displaying properly. It wasn’t until a colleague sent me a screenshot from her Outlook 2007 that my journey into email newsletter design really began.

Bad News for Designers
“Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 uses the HTML parsing and rendering engine from Microsoft Office Word 2007 to display HTML message bodies. The same HTML and cascading style sheets (CSS) support available in Word 2007 is available in Outlook 2007.”

In the past, Outlook had used the HTML parsing and rendering engine from Internet Explorer to display HTML message bodies. At the same time, it used Word’s parsing and rendering to compose email. Today’s Outlook 2007 is streamlined to support the same HTML and CSS as Word 2007. This is definitely not good news for designers.

So, unless your HTML emails are very simple, you’re going to have rendering problems in Microsoft Outlook 2007. Here is a list of a few things that Outlook 2007 doesn’t support (for a more comprehensive list, click here):

• Animated GIFs – Outlook will only display the first frame of your animated gif. If you are going to use them, make sure the important information is on the first frame.

• Background images – Background images are not supported in CSS or in tags.

• CSS floats and positioning

• Flash

• Forms – The fields, text input, dropdowns, radio buttons and checkboxes, are replaced with “[ ]”, and buttons are deactivated.

• Inconsistent padding and margins

Thankfully for PC users, an Outlook 2007 Tool, HTML and CSS Validator, provides a way to validate HTML and CSS grammar using some of the most popular Web development tools: Microsoft Office SharePoint Designer 2007, Microsoft Web Expressions 2007, Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004, and Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. Unfortunately for Mac users, Outlook offers no support for validation.

Classes, Inline Styles, Padding, and the Box Model
My email was an eight column table. It was 640 pixels wide. I had colspans and set widths with a few images aligned left and right. I was using Constant Contact’s Advanced Editor to create my email campaign. I would create classes that CC would convert into inline styles when sending the email.

My problems were these: Outlook 2007 was ignoring the padding on my text (classes and inline styles), butting it up to my table borders, while simultaneously adding that padding to my set-width table cell (padding and box model), causing my table to expand beyond its set width. I couldn’t wrap my head around why it supported the padding in one instance and not the other. This caused great confusion for me, and probably sent me down many dead ends.

The fixes
The latter problem was the easier fix. First, because Outlook 2007 seemed to follow the box model of Firefox (it was adding the border, the padding, and the cell width together to create a colspan greater than what I wanted), I deleted the widths of all of my table cells. The table was 640 pixels. If I had a colspan of 4, I could now assume that cell being 320 pixels, and I could design accordingly.

The text padding issue was not as easy for me. I was trying to apply classes and inline styles to the div tags for my body text. As you know, not all HTML tags, specifically the div and p tags in Outlook 2007, fully support CSS properties. This caused many problems for me. So, I tried other experiments like using the h1 tag, which fully supports the padding style, for my text, but that still didn’t work. Outlook 2007 was ignoring my padding on the text.

The one thing that worked for me was to apply a class to the td tag. My text had padding, but now so did my images! I tried applying inline styles with zero padding to my image, but that didn’t work (even though it should, according to Microsoft). My workaround was to reduce the size of my photo, accounting for the padding of the cell. So if I had 20 pixels of left and right padding, I knew that the width of my image had to be 20 pixels less.

Ultimate Workaround
I searched high and low for answers on the Web. I found a lot of blogs from the year 2007 that explained the new problems with Outlook 2007, but no answers. The purpose of this blog entry is specific: I had problems with how padding was rendering in Outlook 2007. For me, the solution was to add a class/style to the td tag (I believe the td tag is the key). This class included all of the styles I wanted for that cell. This was the only thing that worked for me. I hope this helps anyone having the same problems.

When all else fails, the best solution is to include a URL link that when clicked renders an e-mail in a W3C standard browser (i.e., Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer).

At the top of my email, I used “Trouble viewing the below message? Click here.”

This resolved the many issues caused by Outlook’s HTML rendering (because it circumvents Outlook) - and should be considered a requirement on all emails.

Professional Panic

By Vanessa Barber

Project Manager, Advent Media Group

It was a busy day. Phones were ringing off the hook, stacks of paper were waiting to be edited, and I was trying my best to keep on track…and hydrated. I was in the middle of working on editing a pretty tough piece and I was really in the zone when my phone buzzed. I reached over to pick it up and chaos ensued.

If you have ever spilled a cup of coffee, or in my case a glass of water, all over your work, you know the feeling of panic that comes over you. Everything gets louder, quicker, scarier. Try pouring that water all over your computer. It’s a similar feeling to jumping full body, head first into the ocean. In October. In New England.

For three days now, my laptop has been turned upside down with a fan blasting on it in the hopes of drying it out. And for the past three days, life has been that much harder. I am working without my documents, my materials, and my entire email history. So, in an effort to save you from this experience, I’ll share with you the few things I have learned about laptop rescue.

You know the first thing I’m going to say, I bet. Back up! Save everything to a public server at work. Get a flash drive (a portable USB storage device) and save everything on it. Do something, do anything, but remember to back up.

But that comes before the torrential downpour flooding your keys, seeping into your hardware, sizzling the motherboard. So what to do if this happens to you?

• First, turn your computer off.
• Second, and this is REALLY important, don’t turn it on again for days. Several days.
• Take out the battery and shake out the water as much as possible. Don’t shake too hard.
• Don’t touch anything with a paper towel or even your hands…avoid static electricity at all costs.
• Flip it up so moisture is pulled away (like a tent).
• Use a hairdryer on cool to dry it out. I’m using a fan, but some sites I have read said this is a bad idea because it may retain moisture. (I’m thinking, how much damage can I incur with a fan at this point? I guess we’ll find out.)
• Lastly, you wait. You hope. You might even try praying.

All of these recommendations came from various forms of online research and advice from computer gurus. The only advice I can give you is this: if you MUST drink beverages while working on your computer, then you MUST drink them from a container that won’t spill. Or keep them far away from your computer. Because if you are at all as dependent on your computer as I am on mine, the devastation is not worth the drink.

On Monday, I’ll hold my breath and power on my laptop. I’ll let you know how everything turned out.