(Comments added for week ending Sun 28 Apr 2002) | View Other Weeks
| last updated:16 Aug 2002 13: 32 Webword time, or 16 Aug 2002 18:32 UK time |
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| Webword Statistics - Recent Comments (Comments added for week ending Sun 28 Apr 2002) | View Other Weeks |
| Removing the Ws from URLs | Sun 28 Apr |
| (WebWord) In this article, however, I will go one step further and recommend that sites should be set up to work with or without the Ws, but also have the Ws automatically removed from the URL using a server-side technique I will henceforth refer to as removing the Ws. I will detail why I feel this is a more appropriate solution and explain how this can be done. |
| Sun 28 Apr 23:44 | jon | The author seems to be stuck in a web centric world. A domain name is not just a pointer to a web site, and subdomains help segregate traffic and help people understand the difference between www.domain.com and mail.domain.com. |
| Usability for Senior Citizens | Sun 28 Apr |
| (useit.com) Websites tend to be produced by young designers, who often assume that all users have perfect vision and motor control, and know everything about the Web. These assumptions rarely hold, even when the users are not seniors. However, as indicated by our usability metrics, seniors are hurt more by usability problems than younger users. Among the obvious physical attributes often affected by the human aging process are eyesight, precision of movement, and memory. |
| Sun 28 Apr 16:05 | Jack Schonchin | My new metric for evaluating a Jakob Alertbox: scroll down to the bottom of the article..If there is a link selling a related report, close the window. |
| Sun 28 Apr 16:59 | MadMan | Good one, Jack. I'm following the same system. ;) John, Nielsen surveyed over 350,000 web designers from all over the world to conclude that all of us are young (and by implication, inconsiderate). NOT! It's just another grossly generalised statement based on his opinion. Over at www.evolt.org we had conducted a survey of members (600+) a while back. One of the questions was about their age. The results tell us that while the 26-32 age group is the highest (with about 36%), and the 18-25 group is about 30%, more than 28% is in the 'old' group. Thought you might be interested. |
| Sun 28 Apr 19:35 | Frank Lynch | Lots of baby and lots of bath water in Jakob's latest, but for Jack Schonchin to suggest that a yardstick for the value of Nielsen's results is whether or not Nielsen is marketing a more detailed report seems misguided. Perhaps Jack still expects everything on the Internet to be free? (Information doesn't want to be free, it wants to be inert; it takes effort to move it.) Perhaps Jack expects Nielsen to conduct research where the findings will have no commercial value? I admit that I am taking a pot shot at Jack's comment, but has taken a pot shot at Nielsen. There IS plenty to disagree with, in Nielsen's posts, and it's handled quite well at CHI-web, but to posit an irrelelvant, unsupported argument does nothing to further the dialogue. |
| Sun 28 Apr 21:27 | Jack Schonchin | I question any article or column that is the basis for the same author to sell his product. There is a direct conflict of interest that would raise bloody hell for any newspaper or magazine author / pundit / guru. Everything he has to say at that point is suspect. Plain and simple. In my opinion, the purpose of the Alertbox has changed. The public would be better served if commercial messages originated on the NNGroup web site. In contrast, WebWord takes the high road. John is not hawking a specific product in the articles he writes. The articles serve to inform and demonstrate his expertise. That is what the Alertbox used to do. The integrity of what John has to say is not harmed. As for commercial value... hey, take a look at the world of academic research where progress occurs in a free and open environment. You know, that wacky place where knowledge builds on the shoulders of the researchers who came before you. Wow, did I utter such a silly, non-capitalistic comment? Dang. |
| Sun 28 Apr 21:36 | Jack Schonchin | To say it another way... When Jakob uses the Alertbox for a commercial message, he loses the intregrity and loyalty I saw/placed in him as a guru. Until now, I had been Jakob's biggest defender. I won't refer anyone to his books or web sites any more. |
| Sun 28 Apr 22:21 | John S. Rhodes | Jack, thank you for the kind words. I do strive to take the high road as you suggest. I would certainly like to make more money via the WebWord site, but I would not do it the Jakob way. Instead, I think that I would have the commercial content fully outside the articles I write. As you suggest, Jakob could have done this through the NNgroup site. However, the useit.com site gets a lot more traffic...so that is where he does the selling. I should also point out, to be fair, that Jakob's articles aren't devoid of value. They are just sometimes too commercial. On different topic, I think that Jakob either feels that WebWord competes with useit.com or that he just plain doesn't have any respect for WebWord (or other similiar web sites). Until this year, Jakob listed WebWord on useit.com's web traffic statistics page, but now he doesn't. What a shame. I drive more traffic to useit.com than nearly all of the search engines on his list. Sometimes I wish I had more pull, so that I could make more of a difference. I really need to write a book...or find other ways to get more press. |
| Sun 28 Apr 23:03 | Eric Scheid | My usual complaint with JN is his mis-applied mathematics. I can't fault him on the arithmetic, it's just the application/presentation thereof. In this Alertbox he presents a comparison between seniors and a younger control group, and does the maths to represent the usability of the seniors group at 100% and the non-seniors at 222%. In my mind, he's done it backwards: the control group should be at 100%, and the seniors should be 45%, clearly indicating that the designs tested are *inferior* for the seniors group (rather than being 100% A-OK). Unfortunately, each time he does this he damages his credibility as I wonder what other weird math I'm not seeing, upon which the final weird maths is built. But then, I usually get steamed at seeing cumulative periodic data plotted in line graphs too. |
| German railway operator to sue Google over sabotage links | Fri 26 Apr |
| Deutsche Bahn AG, the German national railway operator, plans to file suit tomorrow against Google Inc. because the companys search engine provides links to a Web site that offers instructions on how to sabotage railway systems, Deutsche Bahn said Tuesday. Lawsuits against Yahoo Inc. and AltaVista Co. are also being prepared. |
| Fri 26 Apr 08:52 | Anonymous | How ridiculous is it to think that by removing links from the web, you rid yourself of sabotage, terrorism or any other ugly act man can concoct? Yes, getting rid of the links may make it harder to find information, but the problem will not go away. By bringing a lawsuit, Deutsche Bahn is worsening its problem by letting even more people know this stuff is out there. As the suit progresses, every news report will make the information they want to squelch more prominent in the public view. |
| Fri 26 Apr 09:44 | Berna | I agree with the anonymous post. I dont think that you can make terrorism or sabotage go away by getting rid of links. But if anybody was to argue that you could, I would just say that you would need to get rid of all links for hacking, chemical reactors, poison, and what have you. But it seems like Google and AltaVista have already removed the link. I couldnt find any kind of information about their reasoning. But here's the link that says they already have: Link Removed |
| Fri 26 Apr 10:49 | Jack Schonchin | I wasn't sure what forget personal information meant, so clicked it to see what would happen. Found out it left my ID off my comment. Perhaps the button would be better labeled post anonymously. This whole issue brings up a good question: If businesses in different countries are expected to abide by each others' laws in the web arena, will they also be expected to abide by laws in other areas, such as copyright? |
| Sun 28 Apr 22:25 | John S. Rhodes | js, I took your advice. I changed the button to POST ANONYMOUSLY. Thanks. |
| Interview - Vincent Flanders of Web Pages That Suck | Sat 27 Apr |
| Well, Im a marketing weasel and I hate everything thats boring personally, I think being boring is the only sin so I come up with an attention-grabbing name instead of an appropriate one. Not to rag on Jakob (Nielsen) because Jakob really is a cool guy, but I would imagine Jakob would have called it Web Pages That Have Mistakes. |
| Sun 28 Apr 01:40 | Lyle Kantrovich | I wish people would stop acting as though Vincent Flanders has any qualifications to talk about web usability. Read my rant here...http://crocolyle.blogspot.com/2002_04_21_crocolyle_archive.html#75838500 |
| Sun 28 Apr 11:45 | MadMan | Judge a man not by how many degrees he holds, but what he says. Just a general principle, not necesarily disagreeing with you here. Let's not close the door to people who don't have a Ph.D in HCI, eh? Note that I haven't expressed an opinion on Flanders' rants. Don't want this thread to take a 'Flanders rocks/sucks' turn. ;) |
| Sun 28 Apr 13:15 | Matt Round | I hope he doesn't really think the ALT attribute is just for the blind. |
| Sun 28 Apr 20:56 | Lyle Kantrovich | Just to clarify, *I* don't have a PhD in HCI, and I don't think you need that to be 'qualified' as an expert. But I haven't seen anything from Flanders that goes beyond a 'gee that sucks' about an obviously 'sucky' page. What kills me is that there are plenty of really qualified people out there that could be highlighted instead of Flanders. People like Rolf Molich, Jared Spool, Peter Merholz, Christina Wodtke, etc., etc. Like Flanders says, he's a marketing weasel (and ex-system admin) -- I suppose it's the 'weasel' part that prevents him from pointing interviewers to the real experts. Notice on my blog I do take him to task for what he says. |
| Review: The amazing keyless keyboards | Sun 28 Apr |
| Many notebook owners have learned to use little touchpads in place of mice, but a company called FingerWorks is using large touchpads in place of keyboards as well. Instead of traditional keys, FingerWorks touchpads have silk-screened diagrams representing keyboards: You simply touch the area marked Space, Enter, or 8, for example. |
| Sun 28 Apr 17:05 | jjg | Well, the technology here is a bit different from the membrane keyboard your old Atari had -- one big difference is that software is now doing most of the work, while the functionality of the keyboard used to be literally hardwired into the device. In both cases, though, touch-typing is impossible, making this type of keyboard impractical for any sort of extended use. But I could see this sort of device being adopted for kiosk or public terminal applications, where the lack of moving parts means lower maintenance costs, and extended use is fairly uncommon anyway. |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 25 Apr |
| Exactly what value does Flash add to the GM home page? |
| Fri 26 Apr 09:07 | Berna | Confusion? A section of a screen that's designed to annoy the hell out of the user? hah! I dont know if it was a glitch that my browser ran into or something, but the huge START button they have on the upper right, doesnt do anything when you click on it! But it does have a rollover effect which makes you expect that something SHOULD be happening. |
| Fri 26 Apr 10:53 | kevin D. White | How long? How many times? Does it take before coporations realize the LAST place you want people to linger is on your corporate homepage? The homepage is supposed to allow a person to *get their bearings* and then move on into the content. Why is this so hard? |
| Sat 27 Apr 09:29 | (the other) JS | Flash developers have tapped into the core root of corporate life -- ego. And conspicuous consumption. Flash serves this purpose by yelling like a sugared-up four-year-old 'look what I can do.' This is basic to understanding why. Pity nobody asked what to do about it, or how to turn it to the advantage of usability folk. Maybe usability should look into why their 'Eat your spinach' implied tagline isn't working as well as it could. Maybe it should be made more, well, usable. |
| Sat 27 Apr 12:26 | MadMan | If it didn't flash so freakin' much (pardon the pun), it could actually have been used for something more useful. |
| Sat 27 Apr 17:14 | Matt Round | Having to look at 'loading navigation' and see the cars jerkily make their way across the screen is enough to try anyone's patience. I think the 'Find the vehicle that's right for you' area could potentially make good use of Flash (how about a fun-to-use vehicle selector entirely within that Flash movie which leads directly to vehicle details and related information?) but having the main navigation in the Flash is pointless and irritating. And there's no way to tell if a link will open a list of sublinks or lead to another page immediately. DHTML would be quicker and more useful (users could right-click on links to do things like open a new window, for example). I've worked on many automotive sites (for a while I seemed to be doing nothing else) and it was heavy going. Even fairly large companies with slick branding sometimes insisted on running Web projects like they were for a dodgy used car dealership. Logos had to spin, buttons had to have brushed metal effects, tacky splash pages were adored. My most patient, subtle & devious client-handling techniques often failed miserably. Once out of sheer frustration I put together the corniest splash page I could think of to show a client insisting upon one. They loved it, of course. |
| Sun 28 Apr 11:41 | MadMan | Matt, a brilliant idea has just hit me. We could both make some money out of it. Since you work with so many flash-loving people (general flash, not Flash), I suggest that you continue to suggest and build very corny splash pages. I can then approach your clients offering user experience consulting services and fix the splashy crap. You destroy, I'll build. And then we'll split revenues. ;) Sound interesting? |
| Sun 28 Apr 12:37 | Matt Round | Hey I like your style, but there are two flaws in your cunning plan: 1. Fortunately I'm no longer doing automotive sites. 2. They wouldn't have wanted you to fix their sites. You'd have been met with bemused stares for criticising the spinning logo splash page. |
| Study: Users aren't buying online ID hype | Sat 27 Apr |
| A new Gartner study indicates that despite compulsory sign-up programs, consumers arent interested in online identity and authentication accountssuch as Microsofts Passport and AOLs Screen Name serviceand wont be anytime soon. Moreover, few people trust Microsoft and AOL to safeguard the personal or financial information necessary for conducting online transactions. |
| Sat 27 Apr 22:59 | mcw | It appears people aren't as clueless and stupid as the 'experts' anticipated. It was widely held that people would sign up for Passport, and give over their information, enabling Microsoft to exert control over these millions, for their financial benefit. Seems that such will not turn out to be the case. I foresee the day when the service of an 'artificial identity' will be offered, that will enable a person to conceal personal information, in fact fabricate an identity, to use in the online world. A bank, for example, could offer this service, the benefit to customers would be to shield their real identity. Would people trust their bank, with whom they have a relationship involving their money, in such a partnership? Good question... |
| Color Wheel Expert | Fri 26 Apr |
| Color Wheel Expert is a useful and easy-to-use color utility for web designers, artists, or anyone who works with color. |
| Sat 27 Apr 14:06 | Chad Lundgren | Demo issues: Several key features are disabled, complete with random, popup-like dialog boxes urging you to buy. A 'Buy Now!' button hovers randomly over the program the whole time it's running. Generic issues: Why does a program called Color Wheel display the colors in a square? Other oddness follows. Text fields annoy by sometimes being editable, sometimes not. A menu selects triad colors, complements, etc, but it shows the colors below the menu, instead of highlighting them in the context of the color square, I mean wheel. On their web site, they purport to have a 'handy and intuitive interface.' It needs more work before that's true. |
| XP Means Extra Pain | Thu 25 Apr |
| (Fortune) XP is not fundamentally easier to use. Windows XP is prettier than Windows 2000 or Windows 98. The color schemes are more attractive, and Microsoft seems to have paid a real graphic designer to refine the icons and other screen elements. But XP is still Windows. Keeping track of programs or data still requires you to know how the operating system stores things. Configuring applications still requires you to dive into multiple levels of menus. |
| Sat 27 Apr 03:20 | Murat Akin | Any person who claims that XP is worse either doesn't know what he is talking about or he just wants to bash Microsoft. |
| Sat 27 Apr 09:18 | (the other) JS | Comparatively speaking, the current GUI WIMPs of all flavors are out of ideas. XP is a sidegrade. Not better or worse. Just different. The slogan of the age, don't think better -- just different. |
| When ecommerce beats commerce | Mon 22 Apr |
| Commerce is selling with people. Ecommerce is selling with content. |
| Sat 27 Apr 08:45 | mcw | Back in the old days, well written catalogs were a primary resource for buyers. That was also selling with content. |
| WebWord Comment | Thu 25 Apr |
| Give com.com a try in your browser. You might also want to give news.com.com a try for the same reason. URLs can be fruity. |
| Fri 26 Apr 10:22 | Matt | This isn't URLs being fruity. CNET bought the com.com domain, so this is the URL doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Here's the WHOIS entry from Network Solutions. |
| Fri 26 Apr 11:48 | John S. Rhodes | Matt, I realize that CNET bought the com.com domain. I am merely saying that the domain name might be difficult for people to understand for two reasons. First, 'com.com' just doesn't sound right. It seems like it is an error. Second, it redirects people to CNET's main web site. I have to ask...what value is 'com.com' to CNET? Do people use it a lot by accident? Did they think it was cool? Something else? |
| Fri 26 Apr 15:29 | MadMan | The dotcom crash must be getting to them. ;) I've observed this new URL scheme for a while and can't think of any possible use for it. Unless they're trying to centralise the URL tracking system, of course, which is an unbelievably complex system. Hmmm... MadMan (former Webmaster of CNET India) |
| Two wrongs make a Nielsen | Mon 22 Apr |
| (NUblog) How to publish an accessibility report the inaccessible Nielsen way. |
| Mon 22 Apr 23:08 | Jack Schonchin | The accessibility report is the only one I've purchased. As you read through the report you will see a speaker icon indicating there is a related audio file. (The audio files are not included with the PDF - they're a separate download.) So, anyway, when you click the audio icon nothing happens. You literally have to load the audio files separately (via your file manager or whatnot). The PDF does not link to the audio files! (The PDF should link to the audio files with the assumption they're in the same folder as the PDF... or at least link to unzipped versions at nngroup.com) |
| Wed 24 Apr 09:34 | Anonymous | Just looking at his site scares the hell out of me. I stopped reading his articles too. There are more gurus out there now. Better ones too. |
| Wed 24 Apr 23:46 | m | OPINION: Jakob Nielsen is overrated, narrow-minded, and the antithesis to art and creativity. |
| Thu 25 Apr 10:31 | Eric Grose | Well, well, we sure are down on Jakob here aren't we? Here's my opinion: Jakob is a leader. He has been cutting through bull and fuzzy thinking for years and years. He has carved a niche for usability, putting the profession years ahead of where it would be without him. Because of him, people know the name of an entire profession that--without him--would still have an identity crisis. His style of communicating is clear and unequivocal, and is nearly always right. Don't agree? Just look at his record. (The biggest risk he takes is his predictions, which are not often wrong in their substance, but in their timeframe.) Of course, people who speak in such absolute terms can't help but make other people angry sometimes. But what a pleasure to get such precise, actionable advice, typically backed up with data. The software weanies and the arteests are offended by him. But, so what? They've had their time under the sun for too long. It's time for the emergence of interaction design. I admire Jakob Nielsen, and hope he keeps up the heat for a long, long time. |
| Thu 25 Apr 11:45 | Jack Schonchin | I've been a long-time Jakob supporter... but I'm offended by his post-dot-com-bust approach to hawking his wares. The commercialism of his Alertbox columns is rising, while the level of useful information is lowering. |
| Fri 26 Apr 09:52 | Jack Schonchin | Constructive criticism is good for everyone, even 'gurus'. In technical fields, particularly the ever-changing world of the web, a guru can't afford to rest on his laurels. Always, someone will come along who is better. |
| WebWord Comment | Tue 23 Apr |
| Is Amazon Scan another part of the Voyeur Web? I think yes. What do you think? |
| Tue 23 Apr 17:20 | Jack Schonchin | For me, the term 'voyeur' applies to observing the personal behavior of an individual or small group when there is an expectation of privacy, done so without that person or group's knowledge. I don't know how to define Amazon Scan, but I would liken it to the NYT Bestseller list or Top 40 music charts. I don't think I'm being a voyeur when I consume that information. But hey... if Amazon allowed me to look at Customer #129832 who just bought a copy of the 'Life is Beautiful' DVD, and let me view all other purchases by that customer (whom I'm told is a homemaker living in the Pacific Northwest), and Amazon then offered to e-mail me updates every time that customer buys something new... hey, now that's the voyeur web. I would rename John's 'Voyeur Web' to something like the 'Collective Mind' or something similar with a catchier name. |
| Wed 24 Apr 09:42 | Berna | I know we're talking about Amazon Scan in particular and as far as I've seen it doesnt show you customer specific information. But Amazon, in general, allows you to look at customer specific information. There are limitations and all but you can still be a voyeur. For instance, when a customer posts a comment or review about a book they've read, you can look at their Profile, see what kind of books they have on their wishlist, which ones they've purchased and what they've reviewed. Though you cant access all the information a 'voyeur' might be interested in, I think that it allows access to much specific information. So maybe we can call Amazon 'Voyeur' much easier than AmazonScan. |
| Wed 24 Apr 10:24 | MadMan | Note, however, that Amazon.com doesn't make this customer information public without permission. You have to explicity agree to have your profile shown (you can post reviews anonymously), as well as making your wishlist public. |
| Wed 24 Apr 10:25 | John S. Rhodes | Amazon.com: The Hit List -- 'The Amazon.com Movers & Shakers lists, located at www.amazon.com/movers-and-shakers, feature the biggest gainers in sales rank over the past 24 hours. The lists are organized by product type: books, music, video, DVD, electronics, software, toys and games, video games, kitchen and housewares, outdoor living, and tools and hardware. Amazon.com also features hourly updated bestseller lists found on each store's home page.' ...just a little bit more on Amazon. |
| Supporting obsolescence at Economist.com | Mon 22 Apr |
| (CHI-WEB) On a fundamental level, at Economist.com we are not willing to ignore any technology that accounts for more than three percent of our total site traffic (Mac users, Netscape 4.08, etc.). Thats full of caveats, of course; our internal CMS is designed for IE5/PC, for example. But Economist.com is designed so that even old-school 640x480 monitors display our Web pages so that readers do not have to scroll horizontally to read an article or navigate the site. |
| Tue 23 Apr 16:16 | Matt Round | Huh? You have to scroll loads on that site at 640x480 and their home page has text rivalling k10k for size. They're right about 800x600 (users of higher resolutions tend not to maximise their windows as often anyway), but their site isn't a good advert for being cautious with technology. Apart from anything else, it's considerably slower than it could be. The 75K of HTML for the cluttered home page could be reduced by at least 15-20K by using CSS for text formatting and box borders, and would render quicker. At 5 million page views per month that adds up to a frightening amount of wasted time and money for everyone involved. Why not use newer technologies to produce a better, faster site? Where's the print style sheet? Why not improve accessibility for search engines and non-graphical browsers? Why not use valid markup? Why isn't it built better than a site from 1997? If anything, Economist.com demonstrates the perils of being a late adopter. |
| Tue 23 Apr 17:06 | Jack Schonchin | OK, I'll bite. They don't use newer technologies because, as the preface states, they are 'not willing to ignore any technology that accounts for more than three percent of total site traffic.' Economist.com looks similar in my Netscape 4.7 and IE 5.5. Among sighted users, a site built with legacy code is accessible to a wider audience. Pull out the legacy code and you have an ugly presentation for legacy users. And my unscientific feedback is that visually impaired users have as much trouble using an accessible site as they do one built with legacy code. For the time being, Economist.com and many other companies simply have no reason to abandon legacy users in favor of an ideal. |
| Wed 24 Apr 04:35 | Matt Round | 'my unscientific feedback is that visually impaired users have as much trouble using an accessible site as they do one built with legacy code' Having fewer tables helps those whose readers do point them out and with CSS you can often put some unimportant elements at the bottom of the source to avoid them having to go through them first (also helps with search engines). And what do FONT tags do for the visually impaired? I agree they shouldn't be ignoring 3% of users, hence me suggesting using limited CSS. Netscape 4 users would have a perfectly usable site. They've already got one cosmetic touch in there that doesn't appear in NS4 - a link hover colour. Perhaps they feel it's worth all the extra HTML to make sure NS4 users get their box borders and v3 browser users are comfortable, but it seems people rarely consider these trade-offs. How many potential visits/page views are lost by the site being slower than it could be? |
| Wed 24 Apr 09:29 | David Wertheimer | Page weight is a large (pun intended) concern at Economist.com, and one we're working to rectify. When we launched the site in October 2000, the total home page load was around 90K, equivalent to other news sites at the time. Since then our design has grown up and out, and we've become a bit heavier than we expected. A main design project this spring is to alter our code and shave 10 to 20 percent off our total page weight without altering the design. We are also beginning to integrate style sheets and cleaning up our HTML to improve overall accessibility without lessening legacy system access. As you are aware, many factors affect a design, and our focus has wandered to other, equally important tasks--like adding and improving content--in recent months. But increasing usability is important and not going unnoticed. -David Wertheimer Design director, Economist.com |
| Robot cameras 'will predict crimes before they happen' | Mon 22 Apr |
| By learning behaviour patterns, computers could soon alert police when an unmanned camera sees suspicious activity. |
| Mon 22 Apr 11:11 | Jack Schonchin | I believe this one is as likely as facial recognition systems catching crooks in public places... just won't happen until there is artificial intelligence that rival's the human brain. Humans can fool technology with ease. |