January 2006 Archives

Todd tells us that Microsoft released the public beta of Internet Explorer 7 today, and he sent us this link to the Beta 2 developer checklist, including these items (among others):

• Verify your User Agent string detection detects Internet Explorer 7.
• Check your website for the use of CSS hacks that may have been turned off in Internet Explorer 7
• Verify that transparent images on your website are rendered correctly
• Verify that your website hasnÕt been adversely affected by Internet Explorer 7 Security changes.
• Verify that your website doesnÕt get flagged as a Suspicious or Known Phishing site per MicrosoftÕs Anti-Phishing White Paper.
• If you would like to add/implement access to your site’s search provider, implement the window.external.AddSearchProvider(URL) call in your webpage to prompt the end user (see the Internet Explorer blog).
• Utilize the Internet Explorer 7 Developer Toolbar to explore the DOM tree and find elements on the page, disable Internet Explorer settings, view information, outline elements, control images, view the toolbar, resize pages to common screen resolutions, and have a powerful ruler that lets you measure pixel perfect content on your page. It also will help you to validate against existing standards and provides pointers to W3C specs.

In Home Page Goals Derek Powazek explains why he designs the deepest pages of a site first before working his way back to the home page:

Before I get into those goals, hereÕs a grain of salt. Every site IÕve ever worked on has had strikingly similar traffic trends, and one stands out. Remember that smallest, deepest element…? This is the atomic element - for a news site, it’s the story page; for a search engine, it’s the search result; for a store, it’s a product page. This page accounts for 60 to 75 percent of all page views on the site. The rest belong to the home page.

He goes on to stay that a home page has four main goals (and I think, for the most part, he’s correct in his analysis):

1. Answer the question, “What is this place?”
2. Don’t slow down repeat visitors
3. Show what’s new
4. Provide consistent, reliable global navigation

He goes on to recommend making part of the home page dynamic to address the first three priorities: “That area can show an explanation to newbies. But once the user is logged in, replace the explanation with some information specific to that user (which also meets goal three).”

Works for me.

This is it. The Firefox Extension I’ve been looking for. As a site developer I spend a great deal of time switching between IE and Firefox to test browser support. This extension completely removes that need and brings it all home. I haven’t tested it extensively however one of my other gripes has been the slow response time for Yahoo! Mail in Firefox. Loading Yahoo! Mail in an IE Tab using Firefox is the solution. MMmm… the best of both worlds!

IE Tab - Firefox Extension

Interesting trend over on Kos of late. Senators and reps have been posting on Kos for at least a year or two. The first one I happen to remember was from Senator Boxer, and folks just loved her for it. But the frequency of these big-name-posts has definitely been on the rise, especially over the last month. A few recent examples:

During the NSA hearings, Rep. Conyers urged folks to tune in to CSPAN. Over the last week, with the Alito filibuster effort under way, Kerry and Kennedy have both repeatedly posted on Kos, urging action. (The first Kerry post was especially interesting -- he generally took a shellacking on Kos during the election. And now he shows up, says he reads the blogs and doesn't mind the abuse, and just as quick, hundreds of comments form a love parade. Makes you wonder what if anything might have happened had he posted there a year ago October).

It's a fascinating power shift -- senators and reps (or at least, staffers of senators and reps) taking their message directly to their base. Does anyone happen to know if the same phenomenon has been seen on the right? Does Santorum post on freerepublic.com for example?

This was once my favorite game:

(via TED)

This stuff’s all over my head, but it seems to be talking about tricks to get the performance of Ajax applications in the browser without trading off the standard browser experience your users (and Jakob Nielson) have come to expect (Developing Ajax Applications That Preserve Standard Browser Functionality):

To provide the traditional Web usability features, the Ajax application therefore needs to handle URIs client side in much the same way as the server does in traditional Web applications. The Ajax application needs to:

• Generate a URI and send it to the browser when a client-side state change occurs
• Recreate state when a new URI is requested by the browser

I’ve always felt (and I said this all over the book) that it was wrong to think that the Internet inherently isolates people or makes them behave antisocially.

A Pew report issued Wednesday, supports the idea the use of the Internet expands social contact:

The Pew Internet and American Life Project also finds that U.S. Internet users are more apt to get help on health care, financial and other decisions because they have a larger set of people to which to turn.

Further rebuking early studies suggesting that the Internet promotes isolation, Pew found that it “was actually helping people maintain their communities,” said Barry Wellman, a University of Toronto sociology professor and co-author of the Pew report.

The study found that e-mail is supplementing, not replacing, other means of contact. For example, people who e-mail most of their closest friends and relatives at least once a week are about 25 percent more likely to have weekly landline phone contact as well. The increase is even greater for cell phones.

“There’s a certain seamlessness of how people maintain their social networks,” said John Horrigan, Pew’s associate director. “They shift between face-to-face, phone and Internet quite easily.”

Meanwhile, Internet users tend to have a larger network of close and significant contacts — a median of 37 compared with 30 for nonusers — and they are more likely to receive help from someone within that social network.

Is knowing what to ignore.

Anil Varma of Refinery makes some intuitive points regarding success factors for implementation of a Content Management System in this white paper (Four success factors for a Content Management System).

As I frequently work with Extractable’s clients during the early stages of Content Management System evaluation, I strongly believe that understanding the business and user requirements driving such a purchase are paramount. Once we have a good understanding of those requirements, Extractable provides an objective point of reference for our clients, helping them to navigate the yet-to-consolidate Content Management System vendor market to select a solution best paired with their needs.

I’ve got a deadline, so I’m going to stop playing this fastr game and get back to work.

We’re pleased to announce a successful site launch: American First Credit Union. Congratulations to the team that designed, developed, and deployed the site!

The folks at Google Code have published some interesting analyses of HTML markup statistics and trends, complete with nice bar charts for us visual learners (Google Code: Web Authoring Statistics):

In December 2005 we did an analysis of a sample of slightly over a billion documents, extracting information about popular class names, elements, attributes, and related metadata. The results we found are available below. We hope this is of use!

They have separate reports covering a large number of categories (elements in pages, attributes in elements, classes, metadata, the body element, link rel microformats, the a element, custom markup from web editing tools, and more). Each of the separate mini-reports is well worth reading, with a lot of amusing “stupid markup tricks” revealed.

(via reddit: what’s new online)

One of the oldest rules of Search Engine Optimization is the importance of meta description and keyword tags. They help search engines understand the content and context of each page they query. On my drive in to work today I thought a bit deeper about a strange occurrence I’ve begun to notice. I recently spent several months recoding two of my personal sites (more sites = more experience) and the result has been a steep spike in referrals to both sites from search engines. Each site ranks very high (top 5 results) for related queries and yet the strange thing I’ve noticed is the description for each result is the meta information rather than content from the page itself. This is true for both sites.

An example query for “Sony Launches Music With a Twist” produces some 500 thousand results. My recoded site Jungle-Life is the 2nd result just below About.com and above Sony’s own music blog. This proves the power of the new method which I’m using to code websites, and after this experiment I’ve begun applying the methods I used on my personal sites to the sites I code here at Extractable.

Check the screenshot below (I’m using Firefox’s handy Google Preview extension btw). Pay special attention to the description beneath each title. The first result produces a contextual summary for the article as does the third and fourth results. The second result however is only the meta description. What is it about my site that causes this to happen?

Digging deeper I find that About.com is using content directly from the article as meta description information (a clever SEO tactic) and the article title for meta keyword information (equally clever).

Checking the Sony blog I see that they are using neither meta keyword or description tags and have left out the title tag altogether. The summary Google is using appears on Sony’s page only after the second sentence of the fifth paragraph!

Continuing my quest I check the QueerDay Magazine site to find that they too are lacking meta tags. It appears that Google has used the document title as the search result link and portions of the second and third sentences as a summary.

So what can we learn from this? It seems clear from this expirement that the importance of meta tags can surely be downplayed. A site will show up in relevant search queries regardless of meta diligence. How high they will rank may require further research (both the About.com and Jungle-Life websites use meta tags) but whether they are something worth investing time and money implementing on each page is something else.

On the one hand, I like seeing content summary results for the other sites, it allows a person to quickly scan the content for relevance. On the other hand, the simple meta description displayed on the Jungle-Life query allows you to see if the site itself has what you’re looking for - not just the search result.

In the end, the jury is still out and while the major search engines are constantly changing their techniques, Search Engine Marketers scramble to keep pace. One thing is for sure: Content is still king. Provide quality, relevant content and the customer will find you both organically and through search engine referrals. No amount of search engine optimization can trump a person’s desire to find accurate results. They may find a black-hat SEO marketer’s website first - but does that website provide the results they seek or does yours?

In the meantime, I will continue to monitor search engine, site analytic and referral statistics. Perhaps I will consider implementing the content-as-meta trick for better search summaries. Or maybe the best idea is not to mess with a good thing. Either way, research is key and the more we know the more we can offer our clients.

Addendum: After all that, I’ve just discovered that the anomaly appears inconsistently. So a search for “free encryption softwar” (the ‘e’ is deliberately missing since that is how it appears in my referral stats) returns contextual summaries while the earlier query does not. See the screenshot below… Will have to explore this further!

Graham is right that Web 2.0 started off as a brand invented for an O’Reilly Conference. He says now it means something along the lines of “using the web as an application,” “Ajax,” or “doing things the way they should be done” on the web.

Here’s his take on Ajax:

One ingredient of its meaning is certainly Ajax, which I can still only just bear to use without scare quotes. Basically, what “Ajax” means is “Javascript now works.” And that in turn means that web-based applications can now be made to work much more like desktop ones.As you read this, a whole new generation of software is being written to take advantage of Ajax. There hasn’t been such a wave of new applications since microcomputers first appeared. Even Microsoft sees it, but it’s too late for them to do anything more than leak “internal” documents designed to give the impression they’re on top of this new trend.

Both this link and the previous one come from Semiologic.

FireBug aids with debugging Javascript, DHTML, and Ajax. It is like a combination of the Javascript Console, DOM Inspector, and a command line Javascript interpreter.

Here are some of the listed features:

• XMLHttpRequest Spy - Ever wonder what all them newfangled Ajax websites are up to? Watch the requests fly by in the console!
• One web page, one console - Tired of slogging through a zillion errors in the JavaScript Console trying to find the one you want? The FireBug console is built into the bottom of the browser, and only shows you errors and log messages that came from the page you’re looking at.
• JavaScript Error Status Bar Indicator - It’s a sin that Firefox doesn’t include this by default, like IE does. When there is an error in the page, the status bar will let you know with a big red blob.
• Logging for web pages - Sick and tired of “alert debugging”? Jealous of all your C programmer buddies with their fancy printf? Now you can log text and objects to the FireBug console from any web page.

It looks like Dan Gillmor is rebooting. Bayosphere didn't work out exactly as he had hoped, but he's got a new project already launched in cooperation with UC Berkeley's J-School and a star-studded cast of advisors.

I wonder if the Pajamas Media guys are watching?

Because a day can’t go by without something about Ajax appearing onscreen, I’m stealing a news item that Todd posted to our project portal that IE7 will have a native XMLHttpRequest Object:

In IE6, 5.5, and 5 (yes it’s been there for 8 years) you had to use MSXML as an ActiveX control to get use of the XMLHttp object, but in IE7 the implementation will more closely resemble the defacto-standard that Firefox and Safari use.

When I asked Todd what this means effectively for developers, he told me (via IM): “It removes the requirement that the IE user have ActiveX enabled in their browser to use AJAX sites,” and that it helps establish “a common platform for the developer writing AJAX sites: Firefox, Safari and IE7 will all use XMLHttpRequest object.”

Anything that saves work for developers is a Good Thing in my book.

I don’t design type, but I wish I did. I’m posting this iStockphoto.com article, Know Your Type, here as a reminder to read it later when I’m not as slammed.

In his Noise Between Stations blog Victor Lombardi compares three models of organizational evolution and change—deteriorating, chaos, and periodic renewal—and finds the last the most healthy, writing:

Periodic renewal requires the organizational discipline to stick with what works as well as the resolve to occasionally improve it, a careful balance.

Just today Dan and I were talking about how ideally you’d release a new website quickly and then just rapidly iterate the needed fixes and user-experience changes based on observing how the site was used, what wasn’t working, and what requirements had shifted over time.

We were both rejoicing in and lamenting the fact that on the Web your work is never finished. This is the blessing and the curse of the Web, a medium that is more organic in this sense because it evolves over time and refuses to cooperate with the static concepts of “product releases” and shipments and publication dates and other illusions of frozen, trapped, or boxed time.

It is the rare organization, though, that can periodically renewal itself and its processes. In my book, The Power of Many, I called this rarity a “learning system.” A learning system studies itself and changes itself based on what is working and what isn’t.

I was trying out Technorati’s new ego-charting feature on my last name and discovered a few sites out there mentioning the book or linking to this blog. For example, Know More Media lists The Power of Many under Blogging Books that Influenced Us, We Media 2.0 lists it under Appendix: Books - Other, and it looks like the person building a community site called Gator Grad Student has posted a number of blog entries about the book: The Power of Many, Alternatives to Meetup, The Dark Side of the Tipping Point, Digital Places and Crossing Communities, virtual vs. physical self, and the [murmur] project, readings, and misc..

Web guru Jeffrey Zeldman examines the “Web 2.0” hype that threatens to overwhelm some of the legitimate advances in rich application development for the web in his article Web 3.0 at A List Apart, noting that it’s hard to map out AJAX interactions and putting the bubblicious flavor of the hype in context with this parable:

Steven, a young web wiz, has just celebrated his bar mitzvah. He received a dozen gifts and must write a dozen thank-you notes. Being webbish, he creates an on-line ÒThank-You Note Generator.Ó Steven shows the site to his friends, who show it to their friends, and soon the site is getting traffic from recipients of all sorts of gifts, not just bar mitzvah stuff. If Steven created the site with CGI and Perl and used tables for layout, this is the story of a boy who made a website for his own amusement, perhaps gaining social points in the process. He might even contribute to a SXSW Interactive panel.

Shimone just sent these around via mail:

• SF Bay Area Tech Companies
• Companies advertising on their rooftops for the benefit of Satellite Imagery

More info at Silicon Valley WebGuild…

I’m blogging from the SXSW Interactive party in downtown San Francisco. It’s still the depths of winter but I can imagine the spring thaw. It’s time to add an SXSW badge to my blog and make my travel plans for Austin, Albuquerque, and Vancouver.

Update: Before I left I saw Min Jung Kim, Renee Blodgett, danah boyd, and a few others I’m spacing on at the moment.

The Extractable strategy team has a few conference appearances in the upcoming months.

First, Christian and A’lan are both presenting posters at the upcoming IA Summit (March 23 to 27, in Vancouver):

1. Social Software in the Enterprise - Christian
2. Architecting to Users Concerns - A�lan
3. Architecting from Values - A�lan & Christian

Also Christian will be speaking at the Southwest/Texas Popular Culture Association conference in Albuquerque, NM in February and will be moderating a panel on do-it-yourself (DIY) media, called “Consumer is the Producer,” at South by Southwest in Austin in March.

OK, so nobody tapped me for this but it looks like fun:

Four Jobs You’ve Had

1. Paralegal
2. Architecture studio assistant
3. Vendor at Yankee Stadium
4. Literary agent

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over

1. The Sting
2. Dr. Zhivago
3. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
4. Army of Darkness

Four Places You’ve Lived

1. New York City
2. San Francisco
3. Lawrenceville, NJ
4. Washington, DC

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch

1. Arrested Development
2. Curb Your Enthusiasm
3. House
4. The Shield

Four Places You’ve Been on Vacation

1. Prague
2. Hawai’i (the big island)
3. New Orleans
4. Big Sur

Four Blogs You Visit Daily

1. The Poor Man
2. Telegraph
3. Eschaton
4. after this I’d have to pick a blog I visit “frequently”

Four of Your Favorite Foods

1. Grilled salmon
2. Squash soup
3. Puerco adobo
4. Risotto

Four Places You’d Rather Be

1. San Francisco
2. Oaxaca
3. Rome
4. London

Four Albums You Can’t Live Without

1. Astral Weeks
2. Marquee Moon
3. Double Nickels on the Dim
4. Live/Dead

Four Vehicles You’ve Owned

1. 1969 Mercedes 250
2. 1988 Toyota Tercel
3. 1998 Saturn SL2
4. that is all

Tag to Frances, So-Called Bill, Cecil, and Xifer.

My blogdaughter, Frances, sent me a blog meme that sounds like fun: Yahoo! 360 - Good Bloggin’ West - Five Weird Habits of Highly Effective People…

OK, so here are five of my weird habits:

1. When someone’s voice or way of talking sounds funny to me I, almost involuntarily, imitate them under my breath.
2. Sometimes, when I get up in the middle of the night to heed the call of nature, I check my email with my glasses off.
3. When I’m home alone I put loud music on and dance around like a fool.
4. When I hear certain words (examples: ruby grapefruit, Rio music player) my mind dredges up the most nearly related song it can find (Ruby Tuesday, Rio) and then I hear that song in my head for the rest of the day - often with fake lyrics I made up along time ago that somehow overwrote the real words in my memory.
5. Even though I’m agnostic I pray nearly every day because if nothing else I need the practice in asking for help and recognizing that I don’t have all the answers.

I’ll tag Cecil, Xifer, and So-Called Bill.

I swear, all the cool kids are at Yahoo now: Susan Mernit's Blog: Newsflash: I'm joining Yahoo!

According to Empire: Movie News, the Serenity movie didn't do well enough in its theatrical release to justify sequels, but Joss Whedon is still sanguine that he will be able to continue the story, perhaps on TV again, possibly in the miniseries format.

When did touch base morph into touch bases?

Is it because few people still follow baseball? In baseball touching base is making an important connection. Touching bases sounds like two people each holding some kind of “base” and touching them together. I can’t picture it.