Any car parked longer than 4 hours in the city is considered a parts store.
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A good rule of thumb for web design is that indulge your interests in nifty tools–DHTML*, Flash, whatever–but your navigation should never be made up of anything other than a hypertext link, and you should never make your critical content accessible primarily (or only) through a mouse.
Lately, I’m seeing more and more sites use technologies, Flash in particular that violate these rules. As nice as they look, I always wince when I see a dependency on a specific product, focused at a specific audience: internet hip, sighted, and attracted to bright, shiny things.
Learning from DHTML
I didn’t always resist the shiny geegaws myself. When we were studying DHTML after it first came out, we all started using it to create our navigation buttons, and felt pretty cool and very web savvy. Mouse over a top-level button and a small little box would slide out underneath with all your options to click. After static content, this was heady stuff.
Of course, mouseover wasn’t always reliable. Sometimes you’d have to move quickly from the top-level to the sub-topics because leaving the top-level would close the sub-topic box; it then became a game of who could move faster–you or the browser.
This was all until we started running into cross-browser differences and the nightmare that followed for a good 2 or 3 years until Mozilla came along and routed Internet Explorer.
(What do you mean someone is still using IE?)
Then someone came along and said, well, what about blind people or people who can’t use a mouse? After all, it’s pretty difficult to try and tab through a lot of nonsense that doesn’t do anything in order to get to a working link. And if the work is DHTML, well that just mucks with the page reader’s electronic mind, and it doesn’t know what it’s dealing with.
After Google made web search fashionable and especially after it added a thing called pagerank, we found that not using hypertext links to manage our site navigation was actually working counter to seeing our pages show up in the search results, and as highly placed as possible. Pretty geegaw lost its attraction really quick on this one.
Especially when you add in the costs. In the dot-com job I had before it became dot-gone, I was brought in to lead a re-design of an application after another firm had spent close to two million dollars and basically had very little to show for it; all except for a really cool DHTML navigation system. No backend development. Half the pages needed unfinished. No database. No database design. But there were some really cool DHTML and pretty graphics.
Well, we kept what we could and yanked the DHTML and put a system out on the street in about five weeks. With plain old hypertext links.
But still, designers say when showing their latest frufrah, look how cool this all is?
(When I as at that dot-com, I shared an office with the lead web page designer — an art school grad. He was a nice guy and did the Burning Man thing and was all that was hip among designers, and very talented, too. But I still felt like I was sharing the office with someone from another galaxy, especially when it came to priorities. I know he must have felt the same way. Companies should do that more often–house the backend developers with the front-end designers. If both survive the experience, they might learn something from it.)
Let’s see: on the one hand we have cool. On the other hand we have cross-browser compatible, easier to build and maintain, search engine friendly, and accessible.
Bottom line, we came to understand that using DHTML to manage navigation, or to display critical content, was very uncool.
Next Big Thing
Of course, now we have the Next Big Thing in website design, which is Flash and its various incarnations. And it’s true, Flash can help you do some nifty stuff — but it still brings in the same burdens and problems on a page. You have to install the plugin; you have to have special readers for the content; you have to provide an alternative link structure for webbots if you want your pages search engine friendly; and it costs a lot more to design and maintain a Flash navigation system then it does plain old hypertext links.
To work around the accessibility issues one can use page readers that can read Flash, and one can install the plugins to access the navigation buttons; still each of these methods require that the web page reader go through extra effort to access your webpage content; content that supposedly you really want them to access. Site purpose and accessibility, in this case, is sacrificed to site design.
But isn’t design meant to enhance a site, not obscure it? In other words, if Flash and JavaScript hinder access, never use Flash, or JavaScript, or any moving part other than a hypertext link for site navigation–in fact any content that is critical for the site. If you must, have a separate Flash site, but make sure it’s secondary.
The Payoffs in Accessibility and avoiding the Geegaws
I’m not a web designer and I don’t pretend to make the prettiest pages and or use the best CSS and hippest styles; but one thing I have learned over the years is, if you design for those with accessibility challenges in mind, you’ll find that you’ve also created the easiest to build, easiest to maintain, cleanest, most valid, less fragile, and more forward compatible site design. In other words — designing for accessibility ends up being the best approach to designing for style, validity, durability, and economy.
*DHTML is Dynamic HTML, or using scripting language, usually JavaScript to manipulate a page’s contents after it’s been downloaded to the browser.
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Our Traveling data
Okay, at this point we have city data through OpenGuides (and thanks to Danny for pointing out the article on the front page.) We have London Tube data through Tubeplanner.com . Jo Walsh gives us the poetic (I like it) oranges and lemons, with descriptions of London churches and their location based on the nursery rhyme:
Oranges and Lemons sing the bells of St Clemens
You owe me five farthings sing the bells of St Martins
When will you pay me sing the bells of Old Bailey
When we are rich sing the bells of Sure Ditch
See? I said that poetry and RDF and the semantic web go together.
(Jo was also the first to point to OpenGuides, but I had focused on the oranges and lemons page that Danny pointed out– sorry Jo. Boy, I’m missing important bits and links that are right in front of me, all over the place. However, I’m turning 50 in a couple of weeks, which makes me old and feeble. I have a good excuse now.)
Jo is also working on a project to map the free Wireless network in London. Now that’s going to be essential to the modern day traveler. And blogger.
So now with this existing data, I can travel the Underground, visit a pub, go to church, and blog all about it. That’s a tasty start.
I don’t respond to most of the weblog postings that Halley Suitt writes about women in general. I do think she tends to promote stereotypes as often as not. However, I also think that sometimes she breaks stereotypes by presenting the concept that women can be many things and still be womanly or even girly if that’s what she wants.
But today, I have to write in strong disagreement with her 12 reasons women should vote for Kerry/Edwards. And indirectly, I also disagree with the USA Today story that inspired Halley (link to which will most likely disappear, since it’s to Yahoo News.)
The USA Today article writes:
Women have long tended to shift toward Republicans as they get married, have children, return to regular churchgoing and acquire wealth and mortgages. In 2000, 63% of single women voted for Gore, but only 48% of married women did. As the ranks of female business owners and homeowners grow, fewer may be inclined to lean to the political left.
However, the same can be said for men. Men, if they become business owners, tend to shift to Republican in their voting. That women do so also, just shows this is not a gender-based difference. Also, people of both sexes, as they get older and have kids, especially if they become regular church goers, tend to lean more Republican.
So why are we differentiating between men and women, as if somehow women aren’t of the same species? Why do we focus on the W vote, and totally neglect the M vote?
Instead of disagreeing with USA Today for this differentiation, Halley actually supports it, but thinks the article didn’t go far enough. In this, she was effective, and made good use of arguments and counter-arguments. But she still supports the dichotomy between men and women, as if how we think is so different that we might as well be from different cultures.
She writes:
No woman looking at the pictures of the prisoners of the Abu Ghraib prison can be anything but devastated by this ungodly treatment of humans under Bush’s watch. As a mom I find it disgusting that anyone ever let it happen and then, never took the blame. Those people — despite being our hated enemies — are the sons of some mother somewhere. No person should be treated that way. All mothers know that in their hearts. It makes me cry to imagine it and makes me ashamed to have been a part of it — which as an American I was forced to acknowledge — they did it in my name.
By implication,then, is Halley saying that men, Dads, could look at these photos and not be devestated? That somehow men are immune to feelings of disgust and sadness when seeing another person humiliated? That men can’t see the photos of these men and think of their own sons?
I know that Halley is refuting the Security Mom phenomena, whichs is nothing more than a cold, carefully crafted and fostered necon (yes, I have adopted this word now, I have seen the light) manipulation into making it seem that all women should vote for Bush because all our babies are going to be killed in their schools and in their beds if we don’t. I applaud Halley’s approach, even while I wince at it.
(BTW, yes, your babies are in danger now–if your babies are grown up in and soldiers in Iraq, or if you live in Iraq. Outside of this, your babies are more in danger of being sexually abused, hit by a car, killed by a serial killer, catching a fatal disease, or dying of a bee sting, than killed by terrorism in this country. Frankly the Security Mom agenda–with its images of the frail, semi-sexy, God fearin’ woman holding a German Luger–is a bit of joke.)
Still, returning back to Halley and the USA Today story — is the implication then that there are no Security Dads?
As for voting for Edwards because he’s a ‘babe’ who supports his plump wife — nothing like pointing out how heroic Edwards is because he didn’t dump his wife when she gained weight.
“By gol, that’s a darn brave boy that is. Look at his wife — takes courage, you know that?”
What I don’t understand is why Hilary didn’t dump Bill when he turned into a porker.
Bottom line, we’re more alike than not. If you cut us, do we not all bleed? In fact, can’t we even use each others blood and organs to survive? We are the same species, and though society does enforce subtle behavior differences, we still share the same culture and the same values.
Isn’t it time that we focus more on the candidates and what electing each of them can mean, then our sex, and what it means?
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From the Underworld comes the Troll
Recovered from the Wayback Machine
(Insert your favorite mental image of troll here)
Introducing the troll
We all know what a weblogging troll is; it’s the person, man or woman, who writes a comment or comments in post after post trying to pick a fight with one or more members of a comment thread. This is not to confuse the person with the random abuser who comes in through Google and writes, ‘This site sux’ or something to that effect. No the troll is nothing if not persistent.
A troll can appear, day in and day out, and almost become a friend through familiarity. Almost.
Sometimes the troll only appears when you post on a specific topic. Other times they appear after a long absence, write a flurry of nasty comments, and then disappear again.
I know of one troll who is fast gaining somewhat legendary status among many of the weblogs I frequent for the length of his comments; not to mention the vitriolic nature of most of his writing–when you can understand it.
Now, we can all get into little flame fests in comments, and this isn’t necessarily a bad thing; after all, if this was all sweetness and light it would be extremely dull. In addition, we can all get cranky, passionate, determined, angry, pissy, whatever depending on topic and other people’s responses. But this is not the same as being a troll.
No, a mark of a troll is that their only purpose in commenting in your post is to pull attention away from what you write, and what others write, on to themselves. They want the spotlight, but rather than start their own weblog and maybe dwindle into obscurity (and a troll most likely will, because they primarily only know how to write in an antagonistic style), they’ll come and steal yours. In doing so, they’ll wreck havoc on your space and what could be a good discussion thread.
What’s frustrating about a troll is that they’ll tell you what you’re doing wrong, again and again. If you ask them, then, why they keep coming back, they’ll say something to the effect of, “It’s a freeworld and I’ll go where I want to.”
You can’t appeal to a troll’s better nature to just leave, and it’s illegal to shoot them. So what can you do with a troll?
Bake them, mash them, put them in a pie…
The surest approach is to turn off comments, or require stringent comment registration.
Unfortunately that’s allowing your space to be controlled by another person–a malevant person who wants nothing more than to demonstrate his or her power. In addition, you lose out on the casual passerby who also happens to have something pretty terrific to say; or to the anonymous person who again, has something worthwhile to bring to the topic.
You can keep your space open and delete the troll’s comments, instead.
A good approach. However, this carries with it a risk. For instance, the troll could keep coming back with the same comment, forcing you to spend a lot of time cleaning your comments. In addition, other people will invariably respond to the troll, so you’re left with the dilemma about whether you should delete their comments, too.
You could also block them, by blocking their name or IP address.
This is usually not effective. The troll will just switch providers, or even use a proxy to write their comments; blocking on an IP is not worth the time. Also, anyone can change their name from comment to comment.
In addition, there’s an unsual risk associated with this one. When I blocked that aforementioned troll, who is getting a dubious reputation of troll extraordinaire, he actually went into other people’s weblogs who I read and started writing about me. Some of what he wrote was just odd; others of it was a deliberate attempt to embarrass me. Then I was forced to have to ask the weblogger to remove the comments; not all were happy about having to do this, because they didn’t believe in deleting any comments.
I now have a policy in my comments that you don’t use my space to bash another if the other isn’t around to defend themselves, or if the other isn’t the topic of the post.
Reason with the troll
You’re kidding, right?
Okay, so what can you do.
Don’t feed the troll
Ignore them.
This was the hardest one for me to learn, and is a policy difficult to adhere to at times. However, unless their comment is pretty horrible, letting it slide and not delete it or even acknowledge it exists is a very effective weapon against the troll. It takes away that power they wanted. Nothing deflates the troll more than to just ignore them.
More than that, though, you have to educate your other commenters to just ignore the troll.
There’s a couple of primarily political weblogs I read that have a very persistent troll in them (not the same troll). These are people who write comments almost invariably counter to the general flow of conversation; enough to know that they’re not writing about what interests them, or responding to the thread, as much as they want to pick a fight.
In each of these sites, they get their fight. The other semi-regular or regular commenters almost always fall for the bait and respond and the thread degenerates into an incoherent brawl. Eventually the site owner will come in and say, “If you don’t like what I write, why do you come back?”Of course we know why he or she (mainly he I’ve noticed) keeps coming back — look at the nourishment they suck out from the post and the comment thread each time they come back?
What the site owner should be saying is, “Folks, stop feed the troll.” In other words, educate your other commenters not to respond to the troll.
This isn’t to say that you should ignore people who disagree. Disagreement, even passionate, satirical, biting, snarky disagreement is healthy in this environment. If a person is disagreeing with the topic, you can tell by their writing that they are responding to it.
The troll, on the other hand, is not responding to the topic as much as they are trying to take over both the topic and the thread. Sometimes the difference is subtle; after a while, though, you’ll see a pattern form, and you’ll know if you have a passionate commenter who disagrees, or a troll.
However, even ignoring the troll may not impact on the densest, most obtuse, of the breed. That’s when you have to bring out the big gun…
The big gun in troll defense
Laughter.
