Stamp Insider For November-December 2016

Stamp Insider for November-December 2016



The November-December 2016 issue of the Stamp Insider, journal of the Federation of New York Philatelic Societies, is online and available for free download in PDF format or viewing online with page turning. It is available in both PDF and HTML5-friendly format at:

http://www.stampinsider.org

The lead story completes our trilogy of presidential-related philately. In Presidential Madness: Covers Associated with the Road to the Whitehouse, Norman A. Cohen covers the era from the inauguration of Herbert Hoover on March 4, 1929, through the inauguration of George H. W. Bush on January 20, 1999.

The cover — Mail Delivery 1908 Style — is a clue to the editor's column about postal service 108 years ago, "The Cubs and Philately," which until this year was the last time the team won the World Series.

Other articles and columns include RFD Carrier Christmas Cards, two book reviews by Alan Warren, and a commemoration of the tenth birthday of the Connecticut Cover Club.

The featured video introduces Going Postal, a 15-minute monthly program by the Spellman Museum of Stamps & Postal History in which Education Director Henry Lukas explores historic events and famous people shown on postage stamps.

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Thanks for the info. Appreciated

Thank you. Very generous.

thanks for the share. Never heard of stamp insider
will help me alot thanks

Truly an excellent publication. Have been a fan for a couple of years now. Make sure you have it bookmarked.

StampInsiderNY - Thank you for the update, I have enjoyed the Insider for a while (I really appreciate philatelic online resources while I am chained to a dialysis machine for 15 hours a week!)

Are there plans for moving away from the outdated formats like PDF and the Flash 'flip-book'? As you may know, the Chrome browser will no longer be supporting Flash and Adobe is also ending support. And PDF display on smaller screens (as found on mobile devices) is problematic.
Don

HI Don,

For now I am sticking with PDF and page flipping (ePageCreator). Far from outdated, PDF is great for generating print files, but can be a bear on smaller screens. However, it looks beautiful on my iPad Air. The page flipping also works extremely well on the iPad.Since I spend my free time (as if!) reading I am planning to get the 12.9 inch iPad Pro Why is it that every time I call Adorama they being singing "Happy Days Are Here Again"? Any suggestions for other delivery methods?

Al

Hi Al,
It sucks eggs that we all have to rethink website design, it is costly and time consuming. I resisted making the move for almost 2 years hoping that something would change but finally knuckled under about 6 months ago. Of course the reason is that the world is moving quickly towards ubiquitous computing; desktop computing has given way to mobile computing. In fact, mobile users now represent greater than 50% of all online users.

To support the smaller screens on mobile devices requires the web design to dynamically resize well down to 320 pixels. And to support the widest number of browsers, HTML5 and CSS is the direction most everyone is now headed. So I implemented flip books that use only these; here is an example of a responsive flipbook design. http://www.stampsmarter.com/learnin...r__home.html I used WoWSlider, there is a free version and the pay version is affordable.

You can test a 'mobile-friendly' web design on a desktop by simply resizing your browser window to approximate the small screen. Google also has a tool you can use to test if a site supports mobile screens https://search.google.com/search-co...ile-friendly. It will tell you which elements need to be addressed to fix a non-responsive web design.

PDFs are another problem. The very point of a PDF is that is displays the same no matter what the platform. (Basically opposite of what is now needed.) Currently there are no solutions for making a PDF display well on a small screen. It will either cause the user to scroll excessively or change the zoom and make the PDF too small to read. There are some who are working on a 'mobile-friendly' PDF technology but at a minimum it will require us to recompile all PDFs into a newer format (read as the solution will be more expense and time suck.) and nothing is available yet. So PDF is currently a desktop only technology.

As far as general web design tool, I have migrated to an app called PineGrow after testing 4-5 of them. The responsive web design development tools are all immature and should get stronger as they evolve over the next few years. If you need any help in making his transition I would be happy to help you.
Don