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Kevin Walzer, software developer.

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Final site tweaks

I've done a bit more tweaking to the Code by Kevin website, and now I'd like to highlight those changes:

• Adopted a "Coverflow"-style effect called Protoflow, developed by Deensoft. This provides a more striking home page than the older, table-styled layout did, and will grow to accommodate the additional products I'm developing. One user complained this was an example of "mystery meat navigation," meaning that it wasn't immediately clear how to navigate to the product pages on the site. Fair enough, so I added a note explaining how to navigate--slide to the right product, then click on it. There are other coverflow-style Javascript packages out there, including ones that more closely mimic the Coverflow effect in Mac OS X, but Protoflow is the only one I've found that allows an image to have an HTML link on it. So, I'm sticking with Protoflow.

• Adding "A division of WordTech Communications LLC" to the site to make its corporate structure more clear. When you click on a "Buy Now" link on my product page, you are brought to a Paypal page that says WordTech Communications LLC, and a couple of users told me that was confusing. WordTech is the corporate structure I have set up for self-employment, and it pre-dates my work with software, so that's why I am using it. (WordTech is also active in the publishing industry, a business activity that isn't directly related to software, so I don't emphasize the WordTech "brand" in my software activities.)

• Sharpening the GUI vs. command-line brand message of the site. Apart from tightening up my product copy to focus on this contrast (which I also hope improves my Google traffic), I also added screenshots that show how my programs' data looks in the command-line, and in the GUI I design. I think a picture's worth a thousand words here.

• Using a different service for the "recent news" box on my site pages, which pipes in the RSS feed from this blog into the main site. The previous service I used has grown very slow and is offline much of the time, which gave me concern for its future. I'm now using rss2html, which is lightweight and speedy. The point of linking the blog feed to the main site pages is to show that there's a lot of activity with my software development. Nothing stagnating here.

After all these changes, I've pleased with the new look and usability of the site. Now it's back to product development, incorporating the latest and greatest from Tk-Cocoa. I'm just waiting for a few more bug fixes and patches to go into TK-Cocoa in the next couple of weeks, and then Tk-Cocoa will move from the "development" branch of Tcl/Tk to the main line of the codebase. At that point, I'll be able to quickly get out a few new products, and I'll also post a detailed blog entry about the improvements that Tk-Cocoa is allowing for my software.

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