May Mensokie is Online

Posted in Central Oklahoma Mensa on April 29, 2003

The May issue of Mensokie is now available online. Remember, you will need the case-sensitive user name and password (found in your last issue) to view it. We are trying a new format this month — feedback is greatly appreciated. “Read More” to find out what is different, and why we are doing it this way.

First, a little background information: Currently, the Mensokie is created each month using Microsoft Publisher. In my opinion, it is an excellent desktop publishing program. In the past, we have used that program’s “Export to Web Page” function to generate each month’s online version of the newsletter. Also in my opinion, Publisher is a lousy web page generator. More often than not, simple text ends up as images, making the pages much larger than necessary. Also, with only “next” and “previous” links on each page, navigation is cumbersome.

In an effort to make this site faster and more accessible to all users, I did things differently this month. I pulled all the text and some of the images out of the Publisher document and created web pages from the articles. I also added a navigation menu to the side of each page.

Certainly, if all you read is the web version, you are missing out on a lot. Nancy does a wonderful job as editor, and this new format does not do her beautiful designs justice. Unfortunately, print designs do not translate well to the web. You end up being forced to make a tradeoff, sacrificing design for usability, or vice versa. In this case, I felt it was more important to make the information available to those who wished to reference it.

I realize there are other options, such as Adobe Acrobat, that would make the web version look exactly the same as the print version. If anyone would like to offer to generate an Acrobat version of the Mensokie, OKMensa will happily host it. But, I will still do the text version, because I believe it is more accessible and faster to download than any other option.

I hope you find it useful, and if you have any suggestions, please let me know.