By Fred Langa
Here’s my new look! As I announced in the
Oct. 30 issue of the LangaList, I’m merging with the Windows Secrets Newsletter to bring you even better content. The combined newsletter will reach more than a quarter million subscribers. And it gives me access to features that my newsletter didn’t previously have.
I’m becoming the editor of the merged publication, and Brian Livingston, the former editor and co-author of 10
Windows Secrets books, is becoming the editorial director. The logo at the top of this message is a temporary design we’ll use until Dec. 31 showing both names. After Jan. 1, 2007, the logo will revert to simply say "Windows Secrets."
The message you see today is a simple format that’s been tested in every kind of e-mail program we could find. It allows me to include interactive features and images that aren’t possible in plain old text.
Allow me to briefly touch on a few things you’ll find in every issue of the combined Windows Secrets & LangaList.
A menu to additional resources
A horizontal bar will stretch across the top of each issue, leading to services at WindowsSecrets.com:
•
WinFind, a Windows tips search engine, allows you to search past issues of the LangaList and 14 other sources of trustworthy technical advice.
•
Reviews Overviews, a section of links to major test labs, allows you to easily find head-to-head ratings of computer products you may be evaluating. We get nothing from the test labs for linking to them.
•
The Prefs tab, which links to your preferences page, makes it easy for you to change your delivery address, your alternate address, your locale, and preferred format. If you didn’t establish your preferences last week when I mentioned this,
set your prefs now.
The other links in the menu jump to other resources at WindowsSecrets.com. Sometime in the next month, the material found in past issues of the LangaList will be fully integrated with the new site.
A working table of contents that scrolls
Just below the menu in each issue, you’ll find a table of contents. Hyperlinks enable you to scroll immediately to topics that are of interest to you. (Scrolling doesn’t work in Lotus Notes and some other, older e-mail programs.)
A feature like this has always been available to my paid subscribers who received the complete, HTML version of the LangaList. But it was technically impossible for me to provide in the plain-text version that my free subscribers received.
Features like these are part of the reason that I’m upgrading all of my readers, free and paid, to the complete version of Windows Secrets & LangaList, with images and all. If you’re using a very old e-mail program that isn’t compatible with the format, however — Lotus Notes 5, WebTV, and Pine — you can easily change your preferences so you’ll receive the plain-text, Notify-Only version, as discussed below.
Polls that let you tell me what you like
First, before you change your preferences, I’d like you to try out one of my best new features — polling.
Each issue of the merged newsletter will include not just my own writing, but that of at least three other contributors. You may have heard of PC World contributing editor Scott Dunn,
Timesaving Techniques for Dummies author Woody Leonhard, patch guru Susan Bradley, and my other new colleagues. Each article will end with polling buttons so you can give me your rating of each writer.
I’ve said in my last two issues of the LangaList that no reader would be forced to upgrade from plain text to the complete version with images if he or she didn’t want to. To find any problems, I’m running a poll in this test message, asking whether or not this content looks normal in your e-mail program or is somehow messed up. (You can compare this test message with its counterpart
on the Web to see what it looks like in a browser.)
•
If you’re on a slow dial-up connection, and you never want to download any pictures, you can easily turn off images in most of today’s e-mail programs. This is your best bet, because it lets you choose to see the images in any particular message that you may feel is important.
•
If you don’t like HTML, the Web language that we’re using, a similar solution is available to you. Most modern e-mail programs allow you to force inbound messages to be displayed in plain text. Once again, this puts you in control.
Since my announcement on Oct. 30, more than 35,000 of my 140,000 subscribers have visited the merged publication’s preferences page, according to our server logs. As of Nov. 6, only 655 of my visitors (about 2%) have switched to the plain-text, Notify-Only edition. The other 98% of you have selected the complete version. I feel this reflects the fact that almost everyone’s e-mail program today can handle colors, fonts, and images correctly.
The polling buttons appear only in the complete version of the e-mail newsletter. They don’t appear in the Web version.
If you haven’t already, please use the Prefs link in the menu above to update your preferences page. Or
use this link.
The final issue of the LangaList as a separate publication will be e-mailed to you on Nov. 9. Then you’ll receive a short welcome from Brian around Nov. 14 before you receive our first combined issue on Nov. 16. Thanks for your support.
LangaList is merging with Windows Secrets
With almost 140,000 new readers joining us, we’ve designed a temporary logo (right) to help them recognize the combined title. You’ll see this image at the top of the newsletter in the months of November and December 2006. During that period, we’ll be known as Windows Secrets & LangaList.