Miscellaneous Ramblings
by Sheena Beaverson and Larry Moss
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| Larry Moss created this fifteen foot Toy Soldier for a local play with a setting of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. |
A new look for BalloonHQ.com
Frequent visitors to BalloonHQ.com may have noticed some significant
changes to many of our web pages over the past month. These updates have
been a long time in planning, and we're thrilled that the overall
implementation is progressing smoothly (fingers crossed). Once
complete, Balloon HQ will be able to provide a more comprehensive suite
of web services to the balloon community than ever before.
Look and Feel
The most obvious difference is the way our web pages look. Since we began
operation (almost 11 years ago), the BHQ web site has accumulated a great many
pages, presented with a variety of styles, templates and headers. We've finally managed to clean house and bring our most popular resources to a common appearance. We've also taken the time to implement some fun things that have been on our to-do list for years. For example, the entry page to the Guide now displays the best-of-the-best
from the BHQ Photo Database.
Other improvements will help all BHQ visitors to locate the relevant information. Targeted search boxes on every page will assist with more refined research (when viewing a BHQ Column, restrict a keyword search to other columns). The new front page will help us to direct Balloon Professionals to their favorite BHQ resources, while showing kids and consumers fun ways to learn about balloons and hire balloon artists.
Universal Control
While we've been having fun switching the color of the logo balloon on the
BHQ front page during the past few months, it would have been impossible
to change the smaller logos displayed on all of the web pages. Now, BHQ logo and accent colors can change with the seasons. (navigation and improved search boxes are more easily updated as well :-)
Validation and Accessibility
For the web geeks out there, I'll provide a little information about the
new technical underpinnings of BHQ. All stand-alone pages have been
cleared by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) HTML and CSS validators.
That means our code is clean, all images have alt tages, and Cascading
Style Sheets now drive the presentation of the site. BHQ has never been
more accessible, which means that the manner in which web pages are
constructed will not screen out any colleagues or customers who are
interested in your work. (remember, all of us will be 'disabled' at some
time or another... a broken arm, a splitting headache, or distracting
noises can keep anyone from computing at their best.)
The Future
All of these changes will enable us to launch into the many
content-related projects we have on our to-do list. Our goals are to
offer greater access to information resources to all balloon professionals, expanded services for BHQ Members and Sponsors, and educated
assistance to potential consumers. We will continue to network and unite the worldwide ballon community.
Using mail filters to sort your BHQ mail
These days, with the vast quantity of spam that we all receive, it is
becoming a much more common practice to use email filters to put mail from
known sources into folders for easier reading. If you are using any mail
filter programs, there are several bits of information found in email
headers from BHQ list mail that might help you. The full email header
usually isn't displayed when you read your mail. There should be options to
display it in all mail readers and filters, but it might take some
searching to figure out how in your own software.
Here is an example of fields found in the header of mail from the
balloondeco list:
To: "BHQ" <balloondeco@balloonhq.com>
Resent-From: balloondeco@balloonhq.com
X-Mailing-List: <balloondeco@balloonhq.com> archive/latest/23094
X-Loop: balloondeco@balloonhq.com
While it is certainly possible for spammers to learn how to forge that
information as easily as anything else, we have yet to see a spammer forge
all of it. If you program your filters to look for some or all of the
above information, you should feel reasonably confident that you're
locating all of your BHQ mail.
This month's featured artist portfolio
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Chili Pepper by Amanda Trask
ART Balloon Sculptures, Cypress, TX |
Amanda Trask, one of the younger Balloon HQ members, has been populating her
portfolio with photos of some of her very large, precision work. Clearly,
she doesn't think small. Even her "small" sculptures are large enough to be
noticed.
Visit Amanda Trask's
Portfolio
