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MailChip has just recently released the news that users can now make use of a handful of mobile themes (more are coming soon) and a few very helpful mobile testing tools. Both of these combined should make creating mobile friendly newsletters a snap.
Mobile Newsletter ThemesUnless you would like to go ahead and design your email newsletters from scratch, coding included (you masochist, you), templates are a gift from heaven. Don’t worry, just because you choose to use a template, you don’t have to settle for a cookie-cutter newsletter design. You can first choose a template, then modify and customize it until it suits your fancy (and MailChimp user already knows this). MailChimp has just released some 14 to 15 mobile-friendly newsletter templates with a promise of many more on the way.
When you get to the design stage of your campaign, choose either basic templates (there are two basic mobile-friendly templates) or designer templates (there are 12 designer mobile-friendly templates). Make sure you glance down the left column and check off the mobile-friendly category so you get the whole list showing.
Personally, I like to choose from the more basic templates because I feel they give a cleaner look and I have more of a clean slate to customize from.
Mobile Testing ToolsAn important part of getting that mobile-friendly newsletter looking just right is being able to test it. MailChimp has several tool that can help.
1. The “Mobile Styles” view while customizingWhen you editing the design of the template, you can use the style editor. Within the style editor is a tab labelled “mobile styles.” When using this tab, you can view what the newsletter will more than likely look like on a mobile device the size of a regular smartphone.
This is only an approximation but it should give you a good idea. You can rotate the preview at will which also helps. Go ahead and make design changes and watch the preview change in real time.
2. Preview and Test toolsThe first option is not necessarily a new one. You can Send a Test Email and you can manually test the design using your own device.
Finally, there’s the Push to MailChimp Mobile option. This requires downloading the app for your device (iOS, Android, etc.). Once installed though, sending a test view of the newsletter is simple. Just select it from the drop down and you’ll get a popup window with a send button.
This gives you a very nice preview on your mobile device.
ConclusionManaging a newsletter is complicated and involved enough without worrying about the design and many different devices subscribers use to read their email. MailChimp is getting ahead of the mobile curve and helping make the mobile newsletter design process simple.
Tim Lenahan
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How To Create Mini Theme Flip Toggle Switch Using Jquery Mobile?
In this article, we will explore the process of creating a Mini Theme flip toggle switch using jQuery Mobile. This type of toggle switch is a user-friendly way to present a binary option to the user, allowing them to quickly switch between two options. jQuery Mobile provides a simple and efficient way to create this type of control, making it easy to implement and customize. By the end of this article, you will have a working Mini Theme flip toggle switch that you can use in your own web applications.
Getting Started with jQuery MobileBefore we dive into the process of creating a flip toggle switch, you need to make sure you have the jQuery Mobile library included in your project. You can download it from the official website or include it from a CDN.
Syntax $(selector).slider(options) .slider() MethodThe slider() method, which is a part of the jQuery Mobile library, is utilized to generate a slider control that allows the selection of a value from a range of values. This slider control is constructed from a select element that specifies the range of values with option elements. The slider() method can be applied to alter the slider’s appearance and behavior, such as defining the minimum and maximum values, step size, and orientation. Furthermore, the slider() method provides the ability to attach events to the slider to respond to changes in the chosen value or monitor the slider handle’s movement.
Where −
selector is a string containing a selector expression that matches the select element(s) to be converted into a slider.
options is an optional object that can be used to specify the options for the slider.
The options available for the slider() method are −
disabled − a boolean value that determines whether the slider is disabled or not.
initSelector − a string containing a selector expression that matches the select elements that should be automatically converted into sliders.
mini − a boolean value that determines whether the slider should use the mini version of the jQuery Mobile theme or not.
theme − a string that specifies the theme to be used for the slider.
trackTheme − a string that specifies the theme to be used for the track of the slider.
highlight − a boolean value that determines whether the slider should highlight when the handle is moved.
step − a number that specifies the size of the step interval to be used when selecting values.
ApproachCreating a Mini Theme flip toggle switch using jQuery Mobile involves the following steps −
Include the jQuery Mobile library in your HTML file. This undertaking can be achieved through two methods – the first being the addition of a reference to the library in the head segment of the HTML document, while the second involves obtaining the library and assimilating it into your project.
Constitute a select component in your HTML document and supplement a duo of alternative components to it. The primary alternative component will embody the “inactive” orientation of the switching mechanism, whilst the secondary alternative component will epitomize the “active” orientation of the switching mechanism.
Call the slider() method on the select element. The slider() method will convert the select element into a slider control, which can be used as a toggle switch.
Incorporate the data-role characteristic onto the select element and establish its worth as “slider”. Such action notifies jQuery Mobile to fashion the select element as a slider mechanism.
Set the data-mini attribute to “true” on the select element. This tells jQuery Mobile that the slider control should use the mini version of the theme, which is smaller in size and more suitable for mobile devices.
Incorporate the attribute of data-theme into the elect component and assign its worth to the coveted motif. This shall intimate jQuery Mobile as to which design to apply towards the management of the slider.
Incorporate the data-track-theme characteristic into the designated selection unit and establish its numerical or categorical denomination to the preferred motif for the trail of the slip controller.
Electively, append the data-highlight characteristic to the elect component and designate its worth to “true” if you yearn for the slide regulator to accentuate whilst the grip is shifted.
Finally, bind an event handler to the slider event of the select element. The slider occurrence is activated upon any modification in the magnitude of the slider restraint. Within the happening handler, you have the ability to retrieve the present magnitude of the slider control and undertake operations in accordance with the elected magnitude.
ExampleThe following is the complete code which we are going to have a look at in this example −
$(document).ready(function() { $(“#flip-min”).slider(); });
ConclusionTo sum up, the fabrication of a Mini Theme flip toggle switch using jQuery Mobile is an uncomplicated and effortless undertaking. By utilization of the offered slider element from the library, we achieved the creation of an amicable toggle switch with just a small number of lines of code. Its Mini Theme layout makes it compressed and aesthetically pleasing, rendering it a magnificent option for web applications with limited screen space. As a result of its simplistic implementation and adaptable attributes, the Mini Theme flip toggle switch is a magnificent supplement to any web application. I trust that this article has served as a beneficial tutorial for the incorporation of this practical mechanism in your personal undertakings.
Is Wine Linux Enterprise Friendly?
Migrating to a new operating system is not a simple task, especially for enterprise users. This has led many people to exploring whether WINE on Linux is an enterprise friendly solution. This article will look at working examples at how it can be, but may not be the best idea for a long term approach.
Installing WINE onto the Linux desktop allows the end user to run Windows-specific software in a Linux environment. In truth, running WINE to power Windows specific software is a bit of a hack and probably best suited for non-mission critical applications. However for businesses looking to keep some software expenses down without switching their existing software for a Linux migration, often times WINE presents a degree of opportunity for a smoother transition.
There are instances when using WINE on Linux can make a lot of sense for enterprise users. For example if you’re in dire need of using Microsoft Office products, running these applications on WINE might make sense for you. The only caution here is to make sure you fully test the version of the software you’re needing with the recommended version of WINE. Clearly this isn’t a great long term strategy, however for smaller businesses, it can work out pretty well.
If you have legacy Windows software users working from home, using WINE can be beneficial if they prefer to run Linux as their primary platform. As mentioned above however, you must remember that using WINE is a work-a-round at best and not something anyone should be relying on for mission critical software.
Another example of when not to rely on WINE is when you need to run a program that handles the safety of passengers, environmental controls for the office, or other related tasks. Even if such a thing was possible and could be made to work, it’s simply not worth the risk of having the software running in WINE and hoping it doesn’t crash.
Without question the best supported business programs for WINE are those offered by Microsoft. More specifically, Microsoft Office products. Office 2000, 2003, 2007, and newer versions of Office all work with varied levels of support. As a general rule when running WINE, the older the Windows program the more likely it’ll work without a ton of additional effort.
This is especially true for those businesses that rely on Adobe products such as Photoshop. Specifically, Photoshop CS6 and Lightroom 5. However there are usually some issues to be aware of such as it working best on one graphics chipset and not another. Intel for example, doesn’t usually lend itself well for CS6 whereas NVIDIA, does.
By now you may have noticed that it’s important to find a WINE installer that you can trust. Because if you attempt to do some of this stuff using WINE on its own and lack a database of what is working and what is not, you’re going to find yourself dealing with a lot of frustration.
Without question, the number one WINE installer I recommend is both commercially supported and also supports the WINE project as a whole. That installer is from CrossOver. Not only does CrossOver have unofficial support for running Microsoft Office 2023. The official Linux rating for this version of Office is that it runs well. But don’t be too excited, you’re still limited on the versions of Photoshop that will install successfully.
As a general rule, CrossOver is best for those who want professional support for their WINE installer. CrossOver support comes with phone, email and even remote desktop support solutions…it’s the recommended method I’d suggest if you’re looking to implement WINE into your business environment. However, it’s not the easiest to use if you want to install WINE on your own terms.
If you want greater control over the version of WINE you run, yet still would like to keep to a nice GUI experience with CrossOver, then I recommend looking at PlayOnLinux. Contrary to popular belief, PlayOnLinux isn’t just for games. Despite the lack of professional support available, it does offer solid community support for Microsoft Office products and other legacy Windows only programs.
If it runs on WINE, it’ll run great in PlayOnLinux. This handy GUI installer for WINE provides both supported and unsupported installer functionality like you might find with CrossOver. If you’re up to becoming “the support person” for your business, then PlayOnLinux is absolutely worth looking into.
Now, for the final piece of the puzzle. If you know what a “WINE bottle” is, have a working knowhow regarding winetricks, winecfg, among other WINE specific tools…then perhaps you’re in a position to install and configure WINE on your own. No GUI, all “conf” and command line tools only. I cannot stress enough this isn’t a recommended approach unless you know exactly what you’re doing.
To bring this article to a close, I’d like to point out the following – there’s no substitute for running natively available applications. If possible, use LibreOffice over Microsoft Office. Consider Krita / GIMP over Photoshop and always run applications built for Linux when relying on something that is mission critical to your business.
How To Protect Yourself From Email Bombing
As vital as email is, it has some ugly sides. In addition to spam and phishing, one more threat associated with it is email bombing. In this article we’ll discuss what email bombing is and how to protect oneself from being attacked with an email bomb.
What Is Email Bombing?According to Wikipedia, email bombing is “a form of net abuse consisting of sending huge volumes of email to an address in an attempt to overflow the mailbox or overwhelm the server where the email address is hosted in a denial-of-service attack.”
As you see from the definition, fortunately email bombing is very resource-intensive and as a result it is more difficult to implement than a spam campaign, for example. Also, unlike spam and especially phishing, email bombers gain only satisfaction and rarely money, which coupled with its high resource demands, makes it a less popular choice for online criminals.
In fact, in your lifetime you might never become a victim of an email bombing campaign, while you can’t avoid phishing and spam. This is good news for sure but still it won’t hurt to know how to protect yourself against email bombing.
How to Protect Yourself Against Email BombingThe following lays out what you can do to protect yourself from email bombing.
1. Choose a Reliable Email Service ProviderIf your email provider has done their homework to prevent email bombing on a network level, ninety-nine percent of the job is done. If they haven’t, there is still something you can do, but it’s not much. Therefore, it’s vital to go with a good provider – one that has a good spam filter, reliable servers, and competent staff to deal with such an attack.
2. Be Careful Who You Give Your Email ToIn order to get an email bomb, an email bomber needs to have your email address. As with spam and phishing, just be careful whom and where you give your email address. It will help if you have multiple email addresses for different purposes – e.g. work, friends, banking, shopping, etc. – so if an email address of yours gets compromised, the damage will be narrowed down to only one aspect of your life.
3. Report the AttackYour provider might have already discovered the suspicious activity in your Inbox, but if they haven’t, file a report to notify them. They might be able to stop the attack immediately at server level.
4. Check Your Online Banking AccountsOne of the ugliest sides of email bombing is that it could be used as a cover as a diversion tactic to distract your attention so that you don’t notice an important email – for instance, a notification about a withdrawal from an account of yours. So if you become a victim of online bombing, check your online banking accounts immediately for any suspicious activity. If there is a breach, the sooner you discover it, the better the chances to minimize damage.
Though it is certainly not pleasant to become a victim of email bombing, for you as an individual email bombing isn’t as much of an issue as for your email provider. Aside from making illegitimate payments from your online banking accounts, the worst consequence from an email bomb is that you can remain without the email account for a while. If you have other email accounts or other ways to be contacted, this isn’t the end of the world.
Ada Ivanova
I am a fulltime freelancer who loves technology. Linux and Web technologies are my main interests and two of the topics I most frequently write about.
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Newsletters As An Instructional Coaching Tool
I take what I learn from students and teachers across our school and use it to build a weekly staff newsletter called Teacher Talk, a shared resource that helps build community, inspires professional learning, and is tailored to the needs of our school.
Learning What Teachers Need
By working in many different classrooms, instructional coaches have a pulse on the school’s needs. I attend weekly grade-level and child-study team meetings and act as the note taker. I listen to what is most important to teachers at these meetings. Are there behavioral challenges? Are there special projects that classes are working on? What are the ways I can support them in their teaching? I find that most requests usually fall within what instructional coaching leader Jim Knight refers to as The Big Four: (1) classroom management, (2) content, (3) instruction, and (4) assessment of learning.
I also meet weekly with my principal and listen to her needs and priorities. I try to think of ways to help implement her ideas throughout the building. In addition to meeting times, I’ve found that some of the most valuable conversations with teachers happen informally at the copy machine or in the hallway. Wherever I am, I listen. I look for what topics get teachers most animated. That is what they care most about. All of these conversations guide my choices of topics to focus on in the newsletter.
Building The Newsletter
Layout and design: Since teachers have limited time, I put extra effort into making the newsletter visually appealing and keep reading time to a minimum by giving quick summaries of links to the articles, books, podcasts, or videos that may interest teachers and highlight good instructional practices. I break up the process of creating the newsletter into chunks, adding one resource or summary every day to the template I use when I have time in my schedule between meetings or classroom visits, with the goal of having a complete newsletter ready to send out to teachers every Tuesday. Overall, it takes me one or two hours per week, or about 20 minutes a day, which I make time for in my daily schedule.
I build the newsletter in Canva, a free resource for educators. I start the newsletter with a captivating image: one that I select from Canva’s digital archive, a screenshot from a link I am providing, or a photo taken at school. I have found Canva to be a simple, intuitive graphic design tool.
After building and proofreading the newsletter, I send it to staff attached to a weekly email. I give a quick bulleted summary of resources I’ve included and offer to help implement any new ideas in their classroom. I also ask for suggestions on topics that teachers would like to see covered in future newsletters.
Writing: Each week, the newsletter is organized into the same sections, such as “Curriculum Corner” (teaching strategies), “Fresh Air” (ideas for getting students outdoors), “Classroom Spotlight” (sharing teacher or student work), “Give a Listen” (links to podcasts), “What’s Going On at VES?” (new happenings at our school), and “Book Review” (lists of recommended titles). I also try to include a photo, meme, or quote of the week that is funny or affirming for teachers. Using these ideas to format my pages, it is easy to make a copy of the previous week’s newsletter and paste links to new resources each week.
Advantages for our campus
Putting together a newsletter each week provides resources that teachers may not have time to search for. It also creates a culture for professional growth in our building. It helps connect us by providing a place for sharing work and celebrating accomplishments that may have gone unnoticed. Ultimately, I hope it makes teaching a little easier by offering inspiration and strategies for teachers to help them improve their practice.
Teachers often stop me in the hallway to thank me for finding resources they did not have time to search for. A teacher recently came back from a conference with a link to a science of reading (SOR) website that provided valuable resources. She asked me to share it with other teachers in the newsletter, and it became a topic of conversation that week during team meetings. One teacher wrote me to say, “Thanks, Alissa! I especially loved the SOR resource, as it has so many resources and how-tos built right in. I may use it as a resource for some of my families as well!”
The newsletter has created a way for teachers to feel seen, valued, and heard. I respond to their requests, and the resources become tailored to the specific needs of our school. As coaches, we can be influencers, and the ideas we draw attention to can have an impact.
How To Use Facebook For Email Address Capture
Plus a clever Facebook cover image trick
With ever lowering Facebook reach, fan acquisition on Facebook is increasingly less of a desirable goal. Yet I do believe that the platform still has a major role to play for many brands, not least because of the ubiquity of the platform, but also for its simply awesome targeting potential.
Page admins have moaned long and hard about decreasing reach – how hard it is to reach fans which many have paid to acquire. With the end of like gating and further algorithm changes afoot in January (Facebook will drastically reduce the reach of Pages that have a tendency to post promotional content with limited “context”), it is most certainly time to re-think the way you use the platform, particularly if your focus to date has tended towards those vanity metrics of big fan numbers.
The “Download a Whitepaper” incentive has been used in B2B marketing successfully for many years and I’ve been trying a similar approach on Facebook for my B2C Page Musicademy. By creating an irresistible offer we’ve been able to data capture many email addresses and also delight users with a free gift that is genuinely useful (and neatly showcases our product range in a “try before you buy” format).
I’ve been trialling two different approaches. The first uses a cover image trick that I’ve only ever seen one other brand try. This approach is aimed at existing fans with a view to data capture of their email address.
Facebook cover image trickHere’s how the cover image looks:
So far so good. We’ve drawn attention with a great offer and got the user off Facebook and onto a landing page of your choosing. What’s next?
The landing pageThe landing page takes users to an Infusionsoft data capture form. Infusionsoft (view demo here) is the leading sales and email marketing software for small businesses and I can’t recommend it highly enough. This form is actually hosted on my website but there are plenty of other options including MailChimp data capture devices and a host of Facebook apps.
By completing this form, users are then sent to a landing page with the promised 40 free lessons, but any tick besides the instruments of interest triggers an email sequence full of great content (and a little info about products). I’ll write a more detailed post about my approach to email and content marketing using Infusionsoft another week.
Note that there are a number of good practice tips to share from the landing page above.
I’m only capturing the minimal amount of information I need – first name because I then personalise subsequent emails, email address (obviously) and some simple ticks to identify areas of interest
Double opt in – this is not essential in Infusionsoft so I’ve not made it a necessary part of the sign up process but does mean that we get the important double opt-in for many of the new users
Share the love – this would actually be better as a mail:to link but you can see how I’m using every opportunity to spread the word about Musicademy
Personalised content – by giving users the chance to tell us more about themselves they end up with emails containing content far more relevant to them than the standard “spray and pray” newsletters
Reassurance about no spam policy
Follow buttons
Data capture appsShortstack, Woobox, TabSite and many other app providers will allow you to create a Facebook app which enables data capture. Remember that Facebook apps do not work on mobile unless you use a workaround such as this one we created using the Facebook app StaticHTML by Thunderpenny Software which will provide a link that will work on mobiles.
Again, some good practice to draw from this example:
No space within the 20% rule for the logo so I’ve ditched it – the brand name and favicon are clear at the top anyway
You are allowed text on product shots. Otherwise try to use the images to convey the message as I have done here with the silhouette image of the instruments
This ad was created in Power Editor which gave me lots of control over the content in the various places on the ad as well as the call to action button. Previously this type of ad was only available as a result of going through the somewhat laborious “Unpublished” or “Dark post” route. Now it’s just the standard method of ad creation and thankfully offers an edit facility without recreating the content from scratch
Limited repetition of text. I’ve made each of the areas (Text at the top, Headline, Link Description and Display Link) convey a relevant but non repeating message. Whilst there may be a case at times for repetition, I think often it is better to have no text than repeating text
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