last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 33 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:33 UK time

Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 25 Nov 2001) | View Other Weeks

A Plea for the Horizontally Organized | Thu 22 Nov

There is nothing intrinsically disabling about being left-handed, but when the world is organized for right-handers, it can be a real handicap. Consider the chairs one finds in university lecture halls, with little fold up desktops on the right side for taking notes. A left-hander has to write with the left elbow dangling in mid-air, or turn all squeezed around in her seat, with her elbow where the right-hander puts the notebook and her notebook on the narrow back of the desk where the right-hander puts his elbow.

Sat 24 Nov 16:43 | Anita Rowland | Aren't the lecture-hall seats on the left-hand side of the hall usually set for lefthanders? I know I've encountered such when I was at college.

Don Norman is wrong when he compares pens to software | Wed 07 Nov

The idea of software getting as easy to use as a pen is revolting to me. The only way thatll happen is if you reduce its functionality down to only one or two functions.

Sat 24 Nov 00:12 | Charles Mauro | Mr. Heron: It appears that you have made it your recent mission to post negative comments about my firm on various BB and blogs. For the record, I find your statements especially in appropriate in light of the fact that you are making comments for which there is virtually no scientifically valid support. Making such comments about my firm's web site without detailed knowledge of our user profile and business objectives reflects poorly on your level of expertise not to mention good sense. For the record my firm’s web site has literally thousand of hits a month from leading corporate e-com executives who operate entirely with-in the framework of high-speed connections. None have ever mentioned or complained at any point about the matters that mention. Furthermore, prior to the launch of our site we subjected the site to extensive usability testing by our target profile and found response time well with-in acceptable range and search/find time and errors very low. Our site is not now and never will be designed for the casual, inexperienced individual like your self. To make a statement that all text in GIF format is poor usability engineering is absurd in the extreme. To state such, as if it were a universal truth of site design, is an example of blindly applying a principal with out the benefit or insight of context of use. Finally, had you taken the time to actually look at our site before entering your postings you would have seen that my firm has executed several of the most successful usability engineering projects at work in the world economy today. Founded in 1975, we have received the highest citations from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, NASA, and the Association of Computing Machines. Our clients and history speak for themselves. Mr. Heron you have the right to your opinion but you do not have a right to make it your mission to spread information that is inaccurate and inappropriate. Finally and most important, on my comments above about Don Norman. I offer the following response. Had you taken the time to actually look at our site you would have seen that we recommend Don’s first book near the top of our reading list and in fact we actually sell a number of his books each month through our connection with Amazon. Don’s contribution toward increasing public awareness of usability is without peer. However, when Don shifts analysis to design issues he is frequently off base. I have maintained this point of view for many years and have made it known in other forums. Charles L. Mauro

Left-Handed Computing: A Sinister Plot? | Thu 22 Nov

I was surprised by the lack of left-handed computing products because for years, Ive heard that left-handers are significantly more common in the world of personal computing than one would think, given their numbers in the general population.

Fri 23 Nov 22:14 | Frank Lynch | A left-handed keyboard? How I've longed for an enter key on the left side (probably a big reason I like Opera: the z/x keys are back and forward). Unfortunately, I couldn't find the referenced 'left-handed keyboards' at Dalco - - that search term was ineffective. (Too bad they didn't build that specific into the href link...).

Fri 23 Nov 22:57 | John S. Rhodes | 1. Left-Handed Computer Keyboard 2. Left Handed Keyboards 3. Left-Handed Keyboard 4. Left Handed Keyboard 5. The KBC 3500 But no Enter key on the left hand side...

List of famous lefthanders | Thu 22 Nov

This is a list of famous lefties. The names are from reliable sources or from my own observations (tv, movies). In red are the names of Dutch or Belgian celebrities.

Fri 23 Nov 04:10 | Alan Fisher | It's often said that extreme aptitude at music goes hand-in-hand with an extreme aptitude for maths and science. Take a look at the list - Bach, Beethoven, Einstein, Isaac Newton, Da Vinci, Rachmaninov, Ravel, Prokofiev. Perhaps it's being left-handed (or whatever causes left-handedness) which is the key factor? I'm not left-handed, but both my kids are, and they're better at music and maths than I ever was.

Understanding Design Misfits | Tue 20 Nov

(WebWord) The purpose of this paper is to briefly discuss design misfits. A cursory overview of misfits is provided, along with a working definition. Eight types of design misfits are revealed. Three examples of each type of misfit are provided for clarification.

Wed 21 Nov 17:40 | Rob Searle | Good on the whole. I accept that your examples of vestigial misfits show what might be meant by vestigial but they are much weaker than your other examples - Circumcision - Driven by user demand not provider inertia (spiritual/religious) Digital Signatures- See Bruce Schneier on why a digital signature is not the same as a paper signature evn though it has a similar name. Over Adaptation - the lock example seems to have nothing to do with over adaptation. The problem to be solved is to be easy to use for the legitimate user and really hard for anyone else, The key is what identifies the legitimate user, other identifiers are possible (what you have, what you know, what you are) but solutions which are immune to loss (what you know, what you are) require smarter locks which tend to be more expensive/dependant on power supplies/less reliable etc.

The Web Designer's Toolkit (What to buy, and why) | Sun 18 Nov

Rather than go into the relative merits of Macs and PCs, which usually ends up in something like a religious war, lets look at the actual requirements of a Web designers toolkit.

Mon 19 Nov 00:08 | Jack Schonchin | It doesn't matter whether you design on a Mac or Windows system? Say again? Hands-down you design on a Windows PC because 90+ percent of your audience is on Windows w/IE (unless you manage a Mac or Linux-oriented site) and there are display differences between Windows and Mac. So you simply should be designing through the eyes of the majority of your audience, and testing your work on the lesser platforms - not the other way around.

Mon 19 Nov 10:25 | Francis Wu | JS, I don't think it matters on what platform you're designing on, as long as the design is properly tested on all platforms.

Mon 19 Nov 12:11 | Jack Schonchin | But if you acknowledge the display differences between platforms you must also acknowledge that your site looks better on one platform vs. another... not good vs. bad, just a marginally better appearance on a particular platform. That 'best' presentation is going to be on the platform that you are designing on of course. So why would you use a Mac or Linux if 90 percent of your audience is on Windows? Time and time again I talk to Mac designers who are slightly surprised when they see their sites on Wintel PCs. Sure, they tested their layout in Wintel, but they haven't looked at the pages day-in and day-out on Wintel. It's very clear to me that they prefer the 'best' presentation that they designed for when they were on their Macintosh.

Mon 19 Nov 16:50 | Francis Wu | In retrospect, I usually don't worry about the platform screwing things up for me. The only thing I really worry about are Netscape's shortcomings in terms of how it interprets the code. If I had a penny for each time I have to deal with Netscape's crap, I'd be workin' on a Mac instead of a PC :).

Fake or Foto? | Sun 18 Nov

Take a look at the ten images below. Some of them are photographs of real objects or scenes, others are created by computer graphics (CG) artists. Test your ability to tell which among the array of images are real, and which are CG.

Mon 19 Nov 14:02 | Francis Wu | JS, I agree. Mixed media movies involving CGI with anything else is still imperfect... and for that reason, distracting enough to be annoying, especially in classical/CGI animated films. Off the top of my head, other mixed media failures include Titan AE and Heavy Metal 2000. Iron Giant was pulled off superbly. I should also note that the anime Blood: The Last Vampire sets the new standard for classical/CGI animation, just as Akira set the new standard for classical animation in 1988. From what I've seen so far of Lord of the Rings, I expect the CGI to be absolutely exquisite.

Mon 19 Nov 16:27 | bk | not only is amelia a wonderful movie, the few spots where they use cgi are seamless.