Jakob Nielsen’s latest Alertbox
discusses the many usability issues surrounding using PDF files to
display web content.
“Users get lost inside PDF files, which are typically big, linear
text
blobs that are optimized for print and unpleasant to read and navigate
online. PDF is good for printing, but that’s it. Don’t use it for
online presentation.”
Amen brother!
[Jon
Udell](//www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/09/19OPstrategic_1.html): “It seems kind of unfair, doesn’t it? First, developers
have to understand and accommodate users’ habits. Then we have to
deliver solutions that add value while surreptitiously encouraging
users to adopt better habits. Finally, we have to bring to the
surface, examine, and modify our own deeply-ingrained habits. That’s a
painful and psychologically hard thing to do. But happy users are not
the only reward. The habit of breaking habits will serve you well.”
I know there’s been an abundance of doggy posts lately, and it may get worse. You see, I got an early birthday gift from Mary this morning.
That’s right - Zim is mine! I still can’t believe it. How many ways
are there to say “thank you?”
If anyone’s interested, I’ve got a few more photos here
Like it or not, this is how
corporate web design should and will be done in the future. Take a
look at the markup and the stylesheet. Excellent on both counts. HTML
weighs in at 9.2K. Validates XHTML Strict. Dual image/text rollovers
using the :hover pseudo class instead of Javascript. And how the hell
did they get the footer to stay at the bottom where it belongs? A
wonderful example of forward-thinking design. Oh, and while you’re
there, you might consider actually reading some of the content. It’s
worth it.
[Tim
Bray explains](//www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12/WebsThePlace) what it means to be a sharecropper in the sofware
development world.
“If you develop server-side software that runs on Unix (by which I
mean any platform that runs bash and creates processes with fork(),
which includes GNU/Linux, Solaris, AIX, and many others), you’re not a
sharecropper. They’re not 100% compatible, but they’re enough alike
that you can move around and nobody really owns the turf.
You’re not a sharecropper if you’re building around the Apache
webserver and the increasingly-large suite of associated software.
Nobody owns it, and it runs on anything; nuff said.”
Then goes on to argue that applications running in a web browser are
more usable that those running on the desktop.
“These people have forgotten that all user interfaces used to be
“richer environments,” which the users abandoned by the millions, in
favor of the browser, the moment they got a chance. I said millions
and I meant millions: tens of millions, hundreds of millions of
browser downloads from the Netscape that was, and the software vendors
fighting the rearguard actions to defend their “richer,” “more
responsive,” “higher-performance” client software; and losing,
losing.”
A significant reason for the mass migration to browser-based apps was
not that the browser was intrinsically better or more usable, but
instead because there was suddenly an abundance of apps, and most of
these magical new things ran only in a browser. Although I do
think that web-based apps are simple and consistant, making them
easier to use than many of the so called “rich-client” apps out there.
Cholesterol: 259
Triglycerides: 305
259 + 305 = PutDownThatSandwichAndGetOffYourAss
This is Zim
This is not my dog either, but it could be - if I wanted another dog, that is.
I don’t, right?
A week or so ago I registered and created mozillafirebird.org . It
was pointed out to me today that since Mozilla Firebird is one of the
most standards-compliant browsers, its web site should probably at
least validate, which it didn’t. I’ve made changes so that it now
validates as XHTML 1.0 Transitional. Thanks Andre!
Using Blosxom as a
weblog engine is working out quite well. The biggest hurdle was in
creating friendly URLs. I didn’t want the address for my blog to be
http://jackbaty.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi. Once again, Apache’s
mod_rewrite solves the problem. Here’s the snippet from the .htaccess
file…
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/$1 [L,QSA]
It works by checking the filename requested by the browser. If the
filename does not point to a file or directory, it rewrites the url by
prepending “cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi” to the requested document. So, if I
type http://jackbaty.com/some_story.html, the server actually serves
up http://jackbaty.com/cgi-bin/blosxom.cgi/some_story.html, which is a
valid blosxom URL. Neato, eh?
By the way, I found the above technique in the blosxom faq,
but I thought it was worth repeating.
For those of us who live in (on?) the net and love it, it’s good to
remember that not everyone feels like we do. Bring your salt grains
and read [The
Internet is Shit](http://www.internetisshit.org/index.html). It contains an interesting, albeit aggressively
disillusioned, viewpoint on the state of things.