#Really Simple Publication (part one)
When we last saw our hero, he was pondering the question: “How do I teach web publication to a scientist and/or university professor? Someone who is obviously smart but also technologically UN-savvy?”
It is a tough question.
As we previously discussed, the question is not just “how do I most easily make an HTML document?” but also: “How do I publish it so that it is accessible by my audience?”
Let’s use this “part one” of the series to make a couple of ground rules and assumptions:
- “Really Simple Publication” is aimed at answering the above question and assumes an audience that is NOT interested in become particularly web-savvy. Our audience is about as push-button as we can get.
- Given #1, we want to use as few applications to create, edit, and publish our content as possible. We’ll set 2 applications as our absolute maximum. In fact, if we can’t do complete this assignment with only one application, we only get partial credit.
- Given #3, web-based blogging/[tag]CMS[/tag] utilities (e.g., our dear [tag]WordPress[/tag]), while not out of the question, are given secondary status because:
- We must assume the most bare-bones of server environments (e.g., no server-side scripting, no database access, etc.), and
- For the sanity of our subject (i.e., consistency of user experience, etc.) we want to keep this on the desktop
- This solution should apply regardless of platform (assume our subject will be flipping back and forth between a Windows-based PC and a Mac)
CAVEAT: Linux will not be under consideration here because it is fair to assume that a Linux user is already out-classing our subject in the “tech savvy” realm.
- Our solution must be flexible and user-friendly enough to easily accommodate posting a variety of media (e.g., video content, images, PowerPoint presentations)
Alrighty… Let’s get out thinking caps on and … begin!


[...] Let’s continue and see if we can’t identify a contender or two. In our last episode, we laid down a few ground rules with respect to the application we envision as our goal by digging into the context of our subject-slash-target audience. In this episode, let’s think about our content creation tool and give only a little bit of thought to publication. Our question this time around: [...]
October 2nd, 2006 at 10:13 pm