The Corporate Web Site as an Image Restoration Tool: The Case of Coca-Cola  

In this study, the communication tactics Coca-Cola uses on its Web site to mediate the negative publicity generated by the 1999 Ingram, et al. vs. The Coca-Cola Company lawsuit are examined. Drawing upon Benoit’s theory of image restoration and the metanarration construct of Venette, Sellnow, and Lang (2003), this study analyzes how Coca-Cola uses its Web site to create a secondary narrative that revises the derogatory primary narrative created by the independent media during the lawsuit. The case of Coca-Cola indicates that corporate Web sites can be an especially effective communication tool in the image-restoration phase of a crisis communication campaign.

Waller, Randall L. and Nicola Graves. Association for Business Communication (2004). Articles>Web Design>Public Relations

CoRR: A Computing Research Repository    

This paper describes the decisions by which the Association for Computing Machinery integrated good features from the Los Alamos e-print (physics) archive and from Cornell University's Networked Computer Science Technical Reference Library to form their own open, permanent, online “computing research repository” (CoRR). Submitted papers are not refereed and anyone can browse and extract CoRR material for free, so CoRR's eventual success could revolutionize computer science publishing. But several serious challenges remain: some journals forbid online preprints, the CoRR user interface is cumbersome, submissions are only self-indexed, (no professional library staff manages the archive) and long-term funding is uncertain.

Halpern, Joseph Y. Journal of Computer Documentation (2000). Articles>Content Management>Web Design

Correlating Web-User Data

Everything served to a visitor -- from the first page through marketing, sales, and product fulfillment -- generates data about the customer. Web marketers can tap into this 'free' source of profile data for just the cost of converting existing data into a format that can be used by a data-analysis program.

Allen, Cliff. ClickZ (2001). Articles>Usability>Web Design>Log Analysis

Create Your Own Ajax Effects

The basic and prebuilt effects in script.aculo.us are nice, but if you really want to build something great why not investigate doing your own, homegrown, do-it-yourself effects. We’re going to show you how to take basic effects and build on them to create your own. So let’s get going.

Fuchs, Thomas. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Web Design>Ajax

Create Your Own Style and Flair with Custom Fonts

Are you tired of those same boring fonts for your web applications and print projects? Do you know most fonts are licensed and can’t be added to web applications? Well, you can solve that problem by creating your own fonts with FontStruct, a slick flash application that allows you to create nice fonts right from your browser and save them to your computer or server.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Typography

Creating Killer Forms with CSS

So you’ve been to about a million websites at this point in your cyber life. There’s a little bit of everything in the online jungle, with every different imaginable style, color, and layout. Everyone is trying to be different, trying to separate themselves from the pack. So why is it that nearly every website, from the coolest of the cool to the worst of the worst, seem to still be using the same, ugly form fields that are default. Well, that’s about to change, at least on your website. I’m going to give you some quick and easy tips to spice up your form fields and set your website apart from the rest.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>CSS>Forms

Creating More Using Less Effort with Ruby on Rails

The “why” of Ruby on Rails comes down to productivity, says Michael Slater. Web applications that share three characteristics—they’re database-driven, they’re new, and they have needs not well met by a typical CMS—can be built much more quickly with Ruby on Rails than with PHP, .NET, or Java, once the investment required to learn Rails has been made. Does your web app fall within the RoR “sweet spot?”

Slater, Michael. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Server Side Includes>Ruby on Rails

Creating Multilingual Websites - Part 1

Extend the existing globalization capabilities of .NET to create flexible and powerful multilgual web sites. First, create a custom ResourceManager, and then create custom localized-capable server controls to easily deploy multilingual functionality.

Seguin, Karl. Code Project, The (2004). Articles>Web Design>Localization>ASP

Creating Multilingual Websites - Part 2

Extend the existing globalization capabilities of .NET to create flexible and powerful multilgual web sites. First, create a custom ResourceManager, and then create custom localized-capable server controls to easily deploy multilingual functionality.

Seguin, Karl. Code Project, The (2004). Articles>Web Design>Localization

Creating Multilingual Websites - Part 3

Extend the existing globalization capabilities of .NET to create flexible and powerful multilgual web sites. This third part won't focus on the fundamental but rather enhancements to what we've already covered.

Seguin, Karl. Code Project, The (2005). Articles>Web Design>Localization>ASP

Creating Usable, Search Engine Friendly URLs

There are many reasons to use mod_rewrite to create informative, useful URLs for your website. Most dynamic websites use some form of PHP or ASP to pull the data from the database and often times use that data in the URL as a string. This is not only a potential security flaw, it also gives the user and search engine alike a very uninformative destination for your website.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Search Engine Optimization>Usability

Cross-Browser Web Application Testing Made Easy

'Test on multiple browsers' has been a mantra ever since there have been multiple browsers to test on. Testing them all--especially these days--is impossible. But you can come a lot closer than you may think. In this article, learn a variety of techniques for cross-browser testing, from the very thorough to the quick and dirty. The choice you make will depend on your resources, but this is an issue you can't ignore.

Fruhlinger, Joshua A. IBM (2007). Articles>Web Design>Programming>Testing

Crossing Borders: Continuations, Web Development, and Java Programming

This article explores continuations, the technique behind frameworks like Smalltalk's Seaside. Continuation servers make it much easier to build Web applications by offering a stateful programming model without giving up the scalability inherent in statelessness.

Tate, Bruce. IBM (2006). Articles>Web Design>Server Side Includes

The Culture of China's Internet    

With China fast overtaking the United States as the world's largest online market, Rogers provides helpful information on how technical communicators can tailor their Web sites to appeal to Chinese visitors.

Rogers, Kevin. Intercom (2008). Articles>Web Design>Localization>China

The Cure for Content-Delay Syndrome

It is perhaps the market forces driving web development projects that find us aligning ourselves with the lexicons of marketing and advertising rather than publishing. As a result, we have lots of “brand identity guidelines,” but not so many “style guides” (for content, at least). We have “strategists,” but no “commissioning editors,” and we more often “go live” than “publish.” Hence, we tend to first think “copywriter” when trying to get our content sorted, whereas very often an editor is the person we should be engaging. That’s not to say there aren’t editors in our industry—there are—but they tend to be a part of large online publishing projects after launch rather than a part of the development lifecycle from the beginning. (Somehow, we’ve become a kind of freak cousin of publishing, ignoring that industry’s expertise.) In many cases, an editor would be a great addition to our process as well as, in some cases, a better and more rational investment than a copywriter.

Ronalds, Pepi. List Apart, A (2008). Articles>Web Design>Writing

Customer Support on the Web: Don't Call Us, We'll Call You

Sometimes, when a customer looks for contact information for Customer Support, it is hidden from view or buried beneath layers of menus. Some companies even deliberately hide their contact information, because they simply don't want customers to contact them. So, what factors should you consider if your goal is providing more optimal customer support on the Web?

Szuc, Daniel. UXmatters (2007). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Help

Cut Paper Text By Half

Reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from paper. As a result, people don’t want to read a lot of text from computer screens: you should write 50% less text and not just 25% less since it’s not only a matter of reading speed but also a matter of feeling good.

Communication Circle, The (1998). Articles>Web Design>Writing

The Dangers of Publishing Your Website in Another Language

Publishing your website in another language is like managing a brand new website. It demands people who are expert in writing and editing in that language. The standard of English on the Web, for example, is often poor, even for those whose native language it is. It can be embarrassingly bad for websites publishing English as a foreign language.

McGovern, Gerry. WTB Language Group. Articles>Web Design>Localization

Data Lives Forever

Web data (mainly in the form of pages) should live much longer than Web hardware and software. Even though most users go to the newer pages, older pages will still be of interest to some users.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (1997). Articles>Web Design>Standards

Data Mining and Predictive Analytics, Part 1

The cluster analysis process looks for groups of visitors in the data, where the people within the groups have something in common but the commonality is different from group to group.

Mason, Neil. ClickZ (2007). Articles>Web Design>Research>Log Analysis

Data Mining and Predictive Analytics, Part 2

In part one of this series, I examined visitor segmentation, a data-mining technique. Now, let's look at how data mining can be used to understand important visitor behavior over time.

Mason, Neil. ClickZ (2007). Articles>Web Design>Research>Log Analysis

Data Quality Sucks, Let's Just Get Over It

Data quality on the internet absolutely sucks. And there is nothing you can do about it. At least for now.

Kaushik, Avinash. Occam's Razor (2006). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Log Analysis

Data Visualization of Web Stats: Logarithmic Charts and the Drooping Tail

Using a linear diagram to plot data from website traffic logs can lead you to overlook important conclusions. Sometimes advanced visualizations are worth the effort.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2006). Articles>Web Design>Technical Illustration>Log Analysis

The Declination of Independence

The web is now recognized as a permanent fixture in our society. It's now a medium for designers, technologists, and shoppers alike. The term 'web designer' no longer carries such ominous tones to our non-technical friends, but rather shows that we are a legitimate workforce: part of the 'cutting edge' of our information society. You can now tell mom and dad you're a web designer, and they have some vague notion of what that means. They still have no clue how you can spend a solid 18 hours sitting in front of a computer working, but one miracle at a time, right?

Oeling, Brandon, Ryan Holsten and Michael Krishner. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Web Design

Deconstructing the Mobile Web

The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that the mobile Web is largely overplayed hype--the clumsy extrapolation of the behavior and use of a basic set of interfaces from one environment to another incompatible one. As a result of this broken mental model of mobile computing, we are not taking advantage of the real potential this technology offers.

Knemeyer, Dirk. UXmatters (2006). Articles>Web Design>Wireless Web