The Duke of URLs

Saturday | December 27, 2003 | 4:17 pm  

Whitespace has a good discussion going on about directory structure and thinking about it in advance.

Directory structure is important to system administrators, URL structure is important to designers.

But, Chris, you say, aren’t the two inherently linked? Won’t /www/news/metro23.html have to be http://www.site.com/news/metro23.html?

There was a dark time, when that was true, but then there was mod_rewrite, and it was good.

Without going into too much detail, you can use mod_rewrite to abstract the file structure from the URL structure. So, for instance, a one-off page like /contact.html could easily become the URL http://www.site.com/contact/.

Admittedly it would become excessive to have to rewrite every single URL on your site, so doing some basic planning between the file structure and your URLs at the outset is good.

But mod_rewrite could easily let you fix small differences between the file system and the URL.

For instance on a site I’m working on for my employer, I wanted to keep all the text-based content (not photo galleries or video, etc.) in a folder called /articles. This included columns which lived on the filesystem in /articles/columns/. But for URL purposes I wanted columns to be a top-level section of the site so a bit of mod_rewrite magic makes /columns/ point to /articles/columns/.

Where mod_rewrite can really shine, though, is in taming ungainly CMS generated URLs, like this one:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005JLF5/qid%3D1072559511/
sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-5343588-7541623

A bit of mod_rewrite could turn that into something like this:

http://www.amazon.com/dvd/ds9/one

But, don’t take my word for it. (Hat tip)

Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Web design

Holiday point / counter

Wednesday | December 24, 2003 | 3:28 pm  

From the geeky smile / geeky warms my heart department:

Opening salvo

Counter-battery fire, target eliminated, IMHO

Happy Holidays everyone! Have a great New Year!

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Technology

News industry should donate to open source projects

Tuesday | December 23, 2003 | 2:36 pm  

While the discussion on XUL vs. XAML has quieted down a bit, I think it’s worth bringing the issue to the attention of the news industry.

I’m not sure if we’ll ever be in the business of making “news applications” with either XUL or XAML — the Web site seems a perfectly good way to do that, for now.

But the discussion should serve as a wake-up call for the news industry. Micrsoft has a very public policy of “embrace and extend” — the trick being that extend means “make proprietary.”

As an industry we’ve had, essentially, open access to our audience. If you can read, and you’ve got $.50 you can pick up our print product, and even now if you’ve got an ISP and a browser you can read our Web product.

But Micrsoft’s relentess march toward “embrace and extend” threatens a vital factor of the news industry’s success — open access to the audience.

Here’s a what if:

1. What if XAML/XUL applications become the way of reading news online (substitute XAML for any other technology you like)?
2. What if Microsoft makes XAML proprietary?
3. What if the browser market remains the same, with Microsoft controlling virtually 90% of the browsers?

The once-freely-accessible audience may now come with a Microsoft license-fee price.

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t look like a pretty picture.

What can we do?

• Can we change Microsoft’s “embrace and extend” policy — the courts failed at that.
• Can we make sure Microsoft doesn’t charge licensing fees for (name of future publishing technology here)? See above.
• Can we change the browser market? There’s a lot more promise with this one.

Why don’t we, as an industry try donating money to open-source projects. Initally Mozilla would make a likely candidate.

With a strongly-supported alternative browser, that’s committed to open-source, the news industry would be in a better position to have guaranteed access to an audience.

But, it should go beyond the browser as well — change is constant on the Web and there’s a good chance we’ll be using something other than a browser, (for doubters, see RSS), in the future.

I’d say the industry should be donating to the Free Software Foundation and other groups that could further the goal of an openly-accessible audience.

The new industry needs to realize that the course of the software industry will affect our business, now and in the future, in the same way that the price of newsprint has for the past century.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Management, Web design

Apple’s come a long way, so can we

Saturday | December 20, 2003 | 9:29 am  

Apple has come a long way from predictions of doom and gloom.

One sign of this struck me when I hit The Washington Post’s site today. They have a small teaser ad (that doesn’t animate, jump, flip, split, twirl or anything and I noticed it — pay attention ad designers) for their “PC Buyer’s Guide.”

The thing is, the image is of an Apple iMac.

Apple is now an icon for PC coverage.

Whatever the company’s faults may be they have spirit and take risks. And for that, they’ve been rewarded with a successfull business, (it’s about high-margin hardware sales not market penetration), growing legions of fans, and numerous awards.

Everyone says the end of newspapers is near. We’re antiquated, we can’t do anything right. We’ve got quality issues and a dwindling audience.

They said the same thing about Apple.

So as 2003 quickly fades away, I challenge the newspaper industry — let’s be Apple, not Dell.

Let’s take risks — do more with our Web sites, explore new distriubtion and advertising models, let’s innovate, not duplicate.

Let’s focus on quality — sure Britney Spears, Bennifer, and Kournikova will get you one-off sales and clicks, but let’s not commoditize news. Our readers, our advertisers, our communities, our nation deserves better than that. Let’s break news, get in-depth, provide context. Anyone can produce cheap news (and anyone can make cheap computers). Let’s make quality our value proposition and our product differential.

Let’s make money, the right way — Apple isn’t a charity, and neither is the news business. But no one said being a good company and making money are mutually exclusive. If we produce quality, innovative products and cultivate a loyal following of readers, we can serve them well, make money and in turn, make a better product and a better community.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Management, Technology

The New York Times hosed my computer

Friday | December 19, 2003 | 12:19 pm  

This story doesn’t get any better.

I mentioned earlier that the New York Times was running a Java applet video ad that caused my home computer to wig out.

At work, it seems, the applet causes my computer (G4 Mirrored drive door) to completely lock up and the only remedy is a hard reboot.

These aren’t 486s we’re talking about here. Both machines are top of line with tons of RAM running the latest browsers.

Maybe this is some nasty scheme tought up by the circulation managers at the paper… because now the only way I can read the Times is in print.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Technology, Web design

N.Y. Times has video ads done wrong

Thursday | December 18, 2003 | 9:07 am  

I’m not suprised that the New York Times has video ads — they’ve tended to be pioneers in ad formats — but I’m suprised that they’re done so badly.

This morning I was trying to read this story when all of a sudden my screen started flickering, my CPU monitor jumped to 100 percent used and my system slowed to a crawl.

But hey, it’s all worth it to see an ad for Nexium. Not! (Hat tip)

When I checked at work the ad wasn’t there but I’ve got screenshots: page-view, close up of ad.

The ad was presented via Java applet, and I’m not sure who wrote the code but it practically brought my Pentium 4 rig to stand-still.

There’s nothing wrong with video ads as a medium but they should probably follow some rules (these could go for editorial video too):

Ads should not interfere with a user’s computing exerpience — test thoroughly

Video ads should always present an image first that the user must click to access the video.

The image should always explicity tell the user that they’ll receive video if they click the image and should include pertinent info like file size and whether there is sound.

Once the video has started playing there should be a clearly identifiable way to stop the video and mute the sound.

The video should never loop.

That said, I’d make one addendum to the list: provide a download this ad link. If you’re going to run video ads, they should be particularly creative and entertaining. Some users might want to download the ad for later viewing or to show to a friend. (For doubters, how many folks went to, or knew folks who went to Ad Critic before it became pay?).

Side note: I really wish I could download some of those really creative Flash ads for Absolut that were running on The Onion.

I mentioned this before, but Flash seems like a reasonably cross-platform way to deliver the video and the aforementioned rules could be easily carried out in Flash.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Web design

Begun these layout wars have

Tuesday | December 16, 2003 | 8:55 am  

There’s a layout battle brewing in the blogosphere that’s sure to ripple out to the rest of the Web design community.

Several prominent bloggers have begun switching to fixed-width layouts for their site. Whitespace makes several points about legibility and optimum line length being reasons to switch to fixed, as opposed to liquid, layouts.

The problem with fixed layouts in an era of font-resizing (you are using ems aren’t you?), is that optimum line length is a moving target. In the print world, optimum line length is based on the size of the typeface being used.

But if you’ve got a site that allows for font-resizing (which you should) or even if you don’t and your visitors are using browser like Mozilla, which will resize type no matter how you specify it, then all the work put into a fixed layout is blown out of the water by the user — who, rightfully so, has resized the type to fit their needs.

The only answer to the problem, and design is about solving problems, is to use a liquid layout.

If the user wnats big type and narrow columns — they can have it. If the user wants small type and wide columns — they can have it.

The legibility experts may say that goes against years of research (and they’d be right), but research is ultimately about averages — the average user wants x point size in columns y picas wide.

But on the Web we have the chance, and the ability, to easily let users take ownership of any site they want. So even if the user is a statistical outlier they can still be happy with your site.

This just in (12:16 p.m.): Stopdesign’s change is an experiment. He has a good discussion of the various factors involved, and brings up a good point about ems-based designs:

To solve the line-length issue, some have suggested setting column widths in “ems” so they will expand and shrink with text size. However, em-width columns can quickly extend beyond the width of the browser window after just a few increments of text-resizing, resulting in the awkward horizontal scroll bar. And even though this solves the line-length problem, we still have a “fixed width object inside liquid container” problem.

Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Web design

Site improvements

Saturday | December 13, 2003 | 3:40 pm  

As you can see, heisel.org, has taken on a slight new look. I’ve switched to a sans-serif typeface for everything but blockquotes, and I’ve adjusted some of the color scheme here and there.

I also moved the historic photo of the Spirit of St. Louis the absolute bottom of the page. I liked having if fixed at the bottom of the viewport but too many browser just don’t play nice with fixed backrounds (CPU and memory usage spikes…).

But fear not, my dear readers, the original stylesheet still exists. If you’re using a real browser, then you should be able to switch the stylesheet to “Classic” to see the old appearance.

I’ve also added a conctact page, and a colophon, for those interested in contacting me and fonts respectively.

Finally, I’ve turned the Trackback capability of Moveable Type on, and using Simple Comments, they now appear, rightfully, among the user-submitted comments.

P.S. For those of you who miss the plane being in view, I may add an historic image to my flag… stay tuned.

Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Site News, Web design

I don’t want to say I told you so…

Friday | December 12, 2003 | 2:13 pm  

But Advertising.com has finished a study that shows that up to 85% of “conversions” occur days after a user has seen an ad. (via Web Marketing News)

While I’ve talked about this before, I’ll readily admit that I don’t have an army of researchers or a pile of cash at hand to test my idea. Thankfully, though, this research has come to light and I hope that other firms will move to replicate the study and validate its claims.

In addition to the good news that publishers should now be able to sell clients on branding campaigns and depreciate the pay-per-click model that robs publishers of the value they provide, it seems Advertising.com has developed a method to track these delayed “conversions.”

I don’t know anything about this “view-through tracking” technique they’ve developed, but I hope other researchers (esp. those in the Academy) have developed/are developing this methodology so we can get more data about this reality of online publishing.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business

There’s nothing like a click

Tuesday | December 9, 2003 | 11:13 am  

Flyout menus: I don’t like ‘em. I don’t want ‘em.

Recently, my employer, AJC.com, switched to using flyout menus, and many other Web sites and Web applications use them.

I understand the need. As a designer, you have to constantly make choices about how much information to present — what to hide, what to show. For a very deep site, it can be overwhelming to present all of the sections and sub-sections of site.

I personally tend to favor an approach that does some good top-level factoring so you can present the user with a decent number of choices that is not too over- or under-whelming.

Some designers turn to fly-out menus, which I can’t stand.

Why?

The fundamental user-interface on the Web is a click.

It’s a click on a link that takes a user to another page, a click on a submit button that activates a form, a click on the home button in the browser lets the user escape.

All fundamental change on the Web is started by a click.

Flyouts annoy me because they introduce a fundamental change — the layout changes, content and/or navigation may be covered up by the flyout — on hover.

Users may have to move their mouse across a page to access in-page navigation, browser navigation, scrollbars, other applications, etc. What I’m saying is, there’s a whole lot of moving going on, when it comes to the mouse.

Users may even move their mouse over link choices — expecting to see the URL in the status bar, or a title if its provided. They may move the mouse over the link as a virtual equivalent of running your hand over a shelf of books while looking for the right one.

Any way you slice it, it can be very disruptive to have a menu come flying out of nowhere.

If you have to obfuscate menu choices, then I think the better way to do it is with the Mac twister style.

What’s the Mac twist, well it goes like this:

If you’ve used the Mac Finder in “list mode” you can drill down to sub-folders within a window by clicking on the arrow next to a folder. Screenshots: Closed, Open.

One site that I use often, my Web host’s control panel, uses Javascript to create a similar experience. Screenshots: Closed, Open.

For those with Javascript disabled, you’re taken to the first sub-menu option when you click on a top-level option, and on the page you’re taken to the menu has been expanded…

So, though I think having more options visable to start with can avoid a user jumping back and forth, if you’ve got to do DHTML menus, please let’s do the twist.

Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Web design