Children's Web pages are a haven for annoying web effects

After caving into finally using Flash on the library's website, I decided to open the floodgates to a multitude of other cool yet annoying web effects. The main gripe I have against all these extra multimedia effects is that they slow down the site. Nothing is worst than having to wait and wait for a page to download. However, with a children's website, anything goes because it's okay to wear mismatched clothes when you're a kid. We're still a long way off from having a really cool kid's page like Disney.com but all those "cool" yet amateurish effects are beginning to pop up on the children's "fun page". Animated, blinky gifs - check, a bunch of mismatched fonts - check, loud clashing colors - check, Flash, javascript - check, check. I'll soon tack on some hideous midi sound wav files and mouse trailing effects because a kid's webpage should be a little like Wonka's chocolate factory.

I LOVE RSS

RSS has made my work really simple. For those who don't know what RSS is - it's magic code that allows me to export newly published content from one website to another. HBPL has about 6 blogs maintained by different staff. I was struggling with how to showcase all of them on Facebook. Thanks to a fellow librarian's blog, I discovered Yahoo Pipes. Pipes gathers up all the blog rss feeds and lets me repost them into Facebook. In addition to Pipes, I can use Twitterfeed to forward posts to the Library's Twitter page. I just sit back and the bloggers post to their hearts' content and it automatically gets posted on Facebook and Twitter.