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What version of Windows is mindslip using? I've always found Mac OS applications to be a thousand times more consistent than Windows applications. Maybe he's just talking about MS Office, though, which apparently will be part of Windows soon enough.

And Microsoft spending money on usability and human interface testing? Puh-leaze! Apple wrote human interface guidelines back in the mid-80s before Windows even existed. Microsoft simply copied the Mac's GUI, and did a poor job of it at that. Windows 95 and 98 were much better than 3.1 (and even added a few features that Mac users envied and eventually copied), but 'consistent interface' are not words I'd use to describe any version Windows or its various applications.

More research needs to be done for human interface guidelines and usability in general, though. Neither X nor Mac OS nor Windows is anywhere close to the ultimate GUI.

See Jakob Nielsen's book, Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency and his Alertbox column for May 1997 titled "Web Design vs. GUI Design" for more talk about user interface design. The Anti-Mac paper is also interesting reading.

What version of Windows is mindslip using? I've always found Mac OS applications to be a thousand times more consistent than Windows applications. Maybe he's just talking about MS Office, though, which apparently will be part of Windows soon enough.

And Microsoft spending money on usability and human interface testing? Puh-leaze! Apple wrote human interface guidelines back in the mid-80s before Windows even existed. Microsoft simply copied the Mac's GUI, and did a poor job of it at that. Windows 95 and 98 were much better than 3.1 (and even added a few features that Mac users envied and eventually copied), but 'consistent interface' are not words I'd use to describe any version Windows or its various applications.

More research needs to be done for human interface guidelines and usability in general, though. Neither X nor Mac OS nor Windows is anywhere close to the ultimate GUI.

See Jakob Nielsen's book, Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency and his Alertbox column for May 1997 titled "Web Design vs. GUI Design" for more talk about user interface design. The Anti-Mac paper is also interesting reading.

What version of Windows is mindslip using? I've always found Mac OS applications to be a thousand times more consistent than Windows applications. Maybe he's just talking about MS Office, though, which apparently will be part of Windows soon enough.

And Microsoft spending money on usability and human interface testing? Puh-leaze! Apple wrote human interface guidelines back in the mid-80s before Windows even existed. Microsoft simply copied the Mac's GUI, and did a poor job of it at that. Windows 95 and 98 were much better than 3.1 (and even added a few features that Mac users envied and eventually copied), but 'consistent interface' are not words I'd use to describe any version Windows or its various applications.

More research needs to be done for human interface guidelines and usability in general, though. Neither X nor Mac OS nor Windows is anywhere close to the ultimate GUI.

See Jakob Nielsen's book, Coordinating User Interfaces for Consistency and his Alertbox column for May 1997 titled "Web Design vs. GUI Design" for more talk about user interface design. The Anti-Mac paper is also interesting reading.

First off, where did this term "deep linking" come from? I wouldn't be surprised to find some lawyer somewhere coined the term. Links are just links; they're what make the World Wide Web work.

Sure, most sites just use links as navigation controls ("Next Page", "Top", "Home", or even "click here"), but good sites also use them to direct a user to more information on a topic within the context of the page itself.

Where I think the problem arises is not "how do I ensure that my valuable ad banners get seen?" (Jakob Neilsen wrote in 1997 that advertising doesn't work on the web and in another article about research on web users' behavior that while ad banners are the most-used form of advertising on the web, it is the least successful.) but "how do I protect my intellectual property on the Web?"

In this case, I went to Movie-List to check it out, and it is a banner-driven (hence, I assume, ad-supported) site that is, essentially, a "link farm". He takes the trailers for movies and wraps his own HTML around them (complete with banner ad), and doesn't even acknowledge the movie studios the trailers are coming from. If I see a trailer from Universal's web site, I should have the option of hitting a link to their site to look around; Movie-List traps you there so you can look at his banner ads.

I would think that this is a violation of fair use (which is going to have to be redefined somewhat, if it hasn't already, to handle the Web) made worse by the fact that he's not incurring any bandwidth penalty himself; he's using their servers to host the information he's supposedly getting ad money off of, the trailers. My gut feeling is that Universal is in the right on this one.

Obviously, the concept of "fair use" on the Web is going to need to protect both the rights of the person who makes their intellectual property available on the web and the right of the person who wants to provide a link to it.

I would think that a good "fair use" policy for the Web should have the following requirements:

1) People should be allowed to point to copyrighted material on another site without obtaining explicit permission if they acknowledge the copyright holder of the material (either by providing the link in the context of their site, as my Alertbox examples do, or in the case of an image or movie, providing a link to the source of the copyrighted material). If search engines were to use the "copyright" LINK attribute (if properly set) on a page, I'd think that covers their backsides neatly.

2) People should only be able to place a page from another site within their own frame if the owner of the content of that site gives their permission (as I did when I set up my home page at XOOM) or for educational or informative purposes (a site that teaches good/bad web design, or a live "portfolio" of a webmaster's work). In the latter case, the frame should not have any ads on it.

3) A subscription-based site shouldn't include any copyrighted material from another source without that source's permission, period. Just live a print magazine.

This is just off of the top of my head; what else should go into a decent "Fair Web Use" policy?

Jay (=

First off, where did this term "deep linking" come from? I wouldn't be surprised to find some lawyer somewhere coined the term. Links are just links; they're what make the World Wide Web work.

Sure, most sites just use links as navigation controls ("Next Page", "Top", "Home", or even "click here"), but good sites also use them to direct a user to more information on a topic within the context of the page itself.

Where I think the problem arises is not "how do I ensure that my valuable ad banners get seen?" (Jakob Neilsen wrote in 1997 that advertising doesn't work on the web and in another article about research on web users' behavior that while ad banners are the most-used form of advertising on the web, it is the least successful.) but "how do I protect my intellectual property on the Web?"

In this case, I went to Movie-List to check it out, and it is a banner-driven (hence, I assume, ad-supported) site that is, essentially, a "link farm". He takes the trailers for movies and wraps his own HTML around them (complete with banner ad), and doesn't even acknowledge the movie studios the trailers are coming from. If I see a trailer from Universal's web site, I should have the option of hitting a link to their site to look around; Movie-List traps you there so you can look at his banner ads.

I would think that this is a violation of fair use (which is going to have to be redefined somewhat, if it hasn't already, to handle the Web) made worse by the fact that he's not incurring any bandwidth penalty himself; he's using their servers to host the information he's supposedly getting ad money off of, the trailers. My gut feeling is that Universal is in the right on this one.

Obviously, the concept of "fair use" on the Web is going to need to protect both the rights of the person who makes their intellectual property available on the web and the right of the person who wants to provide a link to it.

I would think that a good "fair use" policy for the Web should have the following requirements:

1) People should be allowed to point to copyrighted material on another site without obtaining explicit permission if they acknowledge the copyright holder of the material (either by providing the link in the context of their site, as my Alertbox examples do, or in the case of an image or movie, providing a link to the source of the copyrighted material). If search engines were to use the "copyright" LINK attribute (if properly set) on a page, I'd think that covers their backsides neatly.

2) People should only be able to place a page from another site within their own frame if the owner of the content of that site gives their permission (as I did when I set up my home page at XOOM) or for educational or informative purposes (a site that teaches good/bad web design, or a live "portfolio" of a webmaster's work). In the latter case, the frame should not have any ads on it.

3) A subscription-based site shouldn't include any copyrighted material from another source without that source's permission, period. Just live a print magazine.

This is just off of the top of my head; what else should go into a decent "Fair Web Use" policy?

Jay (=

First off, where did this term "deep linking" come from? I wouldn't be surprised to find some lawyer somewhere coined the term. Links are just links; they're what make the World Wide Web work.

Sure, most sites just use links as navigation controls ("Next Page", "Top", "Home", or even "click here"), but good sites also use them to direct a user to more information on a topic within the context of the page itself.

Where I think the problem arises is not "how do I ensure that my valuable ad banners get seen?" (Jakob Neilsen wrote in 1997 that advertising doesn't work on the web and in another article about research on web users' behavior that while ad banners are the most-used form of advertising on the web, it is the least successful.) but "how do I protect my intellectual property on the Web?"

In this case, I went to Movie-List to check it out, and it is a banner-driven (hence, I assume, ad-supported) site that is, essentially, a "link farm". He takes the trailers for movies and wraps his own HTML around them (complete with banner ad), and doesn't even acknowledge the movie studios the trailers are coming from. If I see a trailer from Universal's web site, I should have the option of hitting a link to their site to look around; Movie-List traps you there so you can look at his banner ads.

I would think that this is a violation of fair use (which is going to have to be redefined somewhat, if it hasn't already, to handle the Web) made worse by the fact that he's not incurring any bandwidth penalty himself; he's using their servers to host the information he's supposedly getting ad money off of, the trailers. My gut feeling is that Universal is in the right on this one.

Obviously, the concept of "fair use" on the Web is going to need to protect both the rights of the person who makes their intellectual property available on the web and the right of the person who wants to provide a link to it.

I would think that a good "fair use" policy for the Web should have the following requirements:

1) People should be allowed to point to copyrighted material on another site without obtaining explicit permission if they acknowledge the copyright holder of the material (either by providing the link in the context of their site, as my Alertbox examples do, or in the case of an image or movie, providing a link to the source of the copyrighted material). If search engines were to use the "copyright" LINK attribute (if properly set) on a page, I'd think that covers their backsides neatly.

2) People should only be able to place a page from another site within their own frame if the owner of the content of that site gives their permission (as I did when I set up my home page at XOOM) or for educational or informative purposes (a site that teaches good/bad web design, or a live "portfolio" of a webmaster's work). In the latter case, the frame should not have any ads on it.

3) A subscription-based site shouldn't include any copyrighted material from another source without that source's permission, period. Just live a print magazine.

This is just off of the top of my head; what else should go into a decent "Fair Web Use" policy?

Jay (=

• eye-tracking studies find that users never even see the ads
  
• click-through rates dropping from 2% to 0.5% in a few years
  
• sales data from many sites showing that they usually don't sell a lot to those few users who do click through - paying customers usually arrive in other ways
  

• eye-tracking studies find that users never even see the ads
  
• click-through rates dropping from 2% to 0.5% in a few years
  
• sales data from many sites showing that they usually don't sell a lot to those few users who do click through - paying customers usually arrive in other ways
  

To make what I'm thinking of possible, you'd need to have a standard indexing format. I'm sure Microsoft has one we can use, as long as half the links point back to them :)

Isn't that part of what the META tag is for? Or the LINK tag?

Looking over my copy of the HTML 4.0 specification, there's not a specified list of META attributes, but maybe the following should be considered standard for search engines:

• "description": for an overview of your page
• "keywords": give something for spiders to index by

The following LINK attributes should be set also:

• "home": Topmost level of your site
• "copyright": Copyright info
• "made": Author information

That way, a search result could take the format of:

• Page Title
• META description
• URL
• Home LINK attribute
• Author name (or webmaster of a larger site)
• Copyright information
• Keyword relevancy

The best thing about the LINK attributes is that at least one browser, iCab, provides a set of buttons for several LINK attributes -- start, end, next, prev, home, search, help, made, etc. Too bad it's MacOS only; maybe someone could create a similar set of buttons for Mozilla?

Anyway, Altavista, Yahoo, Infoseek, etc... could make deals with the big ISP's/web host services such as Mindspring, Netcom, Earthlink, Geocities, Tripod, etc... Those sites would then index their own sites, which would save your spider/crawler a lot of time.

Now there's a thought! Then meta-search engines like Metacrawler could have more meaningful returns.

Am I the only one that thinks a search engine should be a commodity? I don't care which search engine I use, so long as I get the best results. (Keeping paid advertisements out of the search results would be a benefit, too...)

There is still the issue of other sites not located on these big ISP's, like .edu's and ibm.com's.

Maybe someone should consider an EduSearch search engine, indexing only sites under the .edu domain? (Especially if its index can be used by a larger metasearch engine...)

As for ibm.com and the like, large corporate web sites should have some form of search facility; an Alertbox column from UseIT.com discussing corporate intranets says that having some form of search facility should be considered essential -- I don't see why the same shouldn't be true for their Web shingle as well.

Jay (=

After reading that stuff, I'm inclined to dismiss it as a publicity grab. Non-linear this and I'm-a-rebel that and the-whole-computer-industry-just-doesn'-get-it. On the other hand, having faithfully read Jakob Nielsen's useit.com website about web usability issues, I can certainly see that the browser/page model is hardly without flaw. There aren't any screenshots that I can find on their page, and I'm living (blissfully I might add) in unix-only land right now. Since they only have a windows version available now, could someone comment on it?

How about "My Way or the Highway"?

Greenspun provides useful information and is entertaining, but he's also self-absorbed and narrow-minded. You get the impression that he thinks anyone not using AOLServer, TCL, and Oracle is not doing "real work." Most unforgivable, IMO, is his Perl-bashing. He's entitled to his opinion, but to write a book about web development that actively discourages the use of Perl? Foolishness.

As someone mentioned earlier, Jakob Nielsen is an example of someone who's just as fanatic about adherence to web standards (AHEM, Slashdot!) and good design, but without the sour/arrogant attitude.

This is definately the best book I have read -- anyone who didn't read it should run, not walk to Philip's site and take a look...

If you want to do serious Web Publishing you have no excuse not to read it (and also check out Jakob Nielsen's site). -Petru

Come on, people. Stop whining. Ads are not so bad. Just look up at the top of this page. Slashdot.com does ad. I don't see you whine the ads here. You bunch of hypocrites.

Actually, to me the fact that it's yet more advertising isn't the big deal. The fact that it's going to add unnecessary bloat to their BIOS is what I'm worried about.

On a more vicseral level, the concept is so damned annoying! How would you like to have your dash display showing ads for Pennzoil or Texaco every time you started your car?

Life is not about being some "buying profile" or data statistic. Just because corporations and ad agencies want to be able to save a few bucks "by more effectively targetting our advertising" or "building brand recognition" doesn't mean I have to sit around like a sheep and take it.

(As for your comments about banner ads, they're a joke. There's a column at UseIT that says that clickthrough rates hover around 0.7% at this point, and other such articles say they decline by 25% every year. Slashdot might as well be getting free money from those companies for all of the benefit they're having...)

Jay (=

This is so almost completely off-topic it's not funny, but I saw it as I was waiting for this page to load...

Can I say that I hate deceptive-looking banner ads? It's a gray, dialog-box looking thing and the only words are "Are you on the list?", something that looks like a text-entry box, and a "sign up" button. I grabbed the image, and put it here if you want to see what I'm looking at.

What is this an ad for? Do I want to be on the list in the first place? Considering that some companies are coming under fire for improper uses of email address and other such personal information, why would anyone want to "join the list" without even a clue?

Yes, I know I can just click on the banner to find out, but the beauty of hypertext links is that I have an idea of what I am linking to in the first place!

It's ads like these that are causing clickthrough rates to fall through the floor (not to mention some companies coming up with banner-blocking software). One of Jakob Neilsen's recent Alertbox columns talks about "the top ten new mistakes of web design" and number 10 is "Anything that looks like advertising". People are becoming to desensitized to and even developing aversions to banner ads, pop-up consoles and the like.

Verging back to the topic, I suppose since we're talking about a 3D information space on the heldheld, we can expect this bad advertising trend to evolve into ads literally flying at us on the screen in the future...

Jay (=

I'm already paying for advertising in my time and attention. Personally, I'd rather micropay Rob directly. Maybe US$.10 for each day that I view /. I get at least US$36.50 of information, enjoyment, fulfillment out of /. per year. Why not pay for it?

Ad banners are a poor revenue model. Clickthru rates are falling and will continue to fall -- see Jakob Nielsen's site for more details.

I'm not saying that micropayments are a great answer...but they would make the web more competetive for what's *really* worthwhile - content.

PS: Rob!! here are some features that would really help this site's
usability.

Woohoo! I'm not the only one who reads UseIT on here! Jakob Neilsen gives some good, free advice on that site.

HTML validation, link validation, spell checking, and grammar checking.

Are you talking about spelling and grammar for comments, or in general? I've seen some scary typos in story titles...

I wonder how much overhead adding pelling/grammer checking to the "Post a Comment" functions?

I just switched to iCab on my Mac, and it's a great browser that also does HTML checking on pages you're looking at. (Make iCab smile!) It also has a button bar for the new HTML 4.0 attributes (UseIT does a good write-up on it.

Oh, and ditto on the code release. *grin*

Jay (=

PS: Rob!! here are some features that would really help this site's
usability.

Woohoo! I'm not the only one who reads UseIT on here! Jakob Neilsen gives some good, free advice on that site.

HTML validation, link validation, spell checking, and grammar checking.

Are you talking about spelling and grammar for comments, or in general? I've seen some scary typos in story titles...

I wonder how much overhead adding pelling/grammer checking to the "Post a Comment" functions?

I just switched to iCab on my Mac, and it's a great browser that also does HTML checking on pages you're looking at. (Make iCab smile!) It also has a button bar for the new HTML 4.0 attributes (UseIT does a good write-up on it.

Oh, and ditto on the code release. *grin*

Jay (=

PS: Rob!! here are some features that would really help this site's
usability.

• HTML validation, link validation, spell checking, and grammar checking.
  
• More source releases, especially in the customization areas of the code. Its time to simplify/
  refactor Slashdot's source code.
  
• More permanency. Maybe you could archive only highly read and high-scoring posts/articles.
  

are there any oss pdf->html converters around, i can't stand having to locate 3rd party plug-ins every time someone puts a document up. this is got to be one of the top ten mistakes of the web (Bleeding-edge technology - using pdf's)

damn, will they ever learn? the specs are in 'pdf' format.

• As Jakob Nielsen said, advertising doesn't work on the Web. He notes that click-through rates on banner ads were about one percent when he wrote his column in October 1997, and a year later, according to NetRatings, it was half that.
• Some of the movers and shakers in the Internet world are working on systems to meter Internet usage on a per-user basis, just like telephone calls are metered. Once such systems are in place, the extra bandwidth that banner ads take up will cost the users money as well as download time (unless someone sets up an advertiser-supported "toll-free" site, but then the ads will really have to pull in the bucks). Sites like slashdot could still recover the cost of providing service, however, by setting up the Internet analog of "900 numbers": collecting micropayments through the Internet billing system.

• As Jakob Nielsen said, advertising doesn't work on the Web. He notes that click-through rates on banner ads were about one percent when he wrote his column in October 1997, and a year later, according to NetRatings, it was half that.
• Some of the movers and shakers in the Internet world are working on systems to meter Internet usage on a per-user basis, just like telephone calls are metered. Once such systems are in place, the extra bandwidth that banner ads take up will cost the users money as well as download time (unless someone sets up an advertiser-supported "toll-free" site, but then the ads will really have to pull in the bucks). Sites like slashdot could still recover the cost of providing service, however, by setting up the Internet analog of "900 numbers": collecting micropayments through the Internet billing system.

For example, one of Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox columns dealt with testing page templates by showing them to users with fake, "greeked" text and asking them what on the page was what ("Now point to the page title").

The column included two sample templates. The one that people liked better (67% vs 52% visual appeal) was significantly harder to understand (+0.9 vs +1.3 score for usability on a -3 to +3 scale).

If you let people choose interfaces on the basis of visual appeal, they will learn to work around the flaws in the interface because they like looking at it. (How many people know why Windows and X menu bars work slower than Mac menu bars? How many still prefer Win/X menu bars because they don't like the Mac look and feel?)

And remember that the transportation of a human who bears information is equivalent to a videoconference with perfect audio and video fidelity.

Finally, if you just want to know about Internet bandwidth, Jakob Nielsen's got a nice chart.

1. The page dos not error-free run through:validator.w3.org Hu!? Even /. fails!?
2. It is not LYNX-clean (no ALT-Attribs etc.)
3. It is too slow (more than 30 seconds from Europe)
4. It's not user-friendly, not "clear" enough

1. Read the alertboxes
2. use a 14.400 Modem to simulate over-sea connections (this is no joke!)
3. use tidy to clean up Your pages
4. try with LYNX before publishing!

perhaps you mean
this.

For more stuff, try
this.