Yet another geek blog

16 February 2008

I am a Web Page

(how I followed Max Headroom into Cyberspace)

At the moment, if you are reading this on a mobile phone, then you are officially a Geek. I can say this because the way to this page is a physical mobile object: me. Sadly, it also means that the rest of the page will be of no interest you you because you already know it.

The Portable Internet

We are currently at a very interesting time in the development of the Internet. Mobile devices with Internet access such as the iPhone are just hitting the mass market.

This does not sound very revolutionary. Compared to a comfy chair in front of a 19″ screen it sounds like a step back.

In fact, the user now has a very interesting property that they never had before- location. And if web pages can also be given a location, or be made to respond to a location, then lots of interesting things become possible.

Think about those handsets you get in museums and art galleries. They give you information about the object you are next to. Imagine if the Internet worked like that.

How Do You Attach a Web Page to a Real Object?

There are lots of ways. The way I did it was with a type of barcode. Like the ones you see on, um, everything. Barcodes hold information which the barcode reader uses to examine a database.

What you need is:

• A web page with information.
• A barcode storing the page's address.
• A physical object to slap the barcode on.
• A barcode reader to get the web address.
• A browser to display the page.

Example: Attaching a Blog to a Blogger

All I needed was a piece of Quick Response (QR) code. QR code is 'big in Japan', which means that either it will be big here, or it will disappear without trace.

Lots of software is available to generate QR codes. I used this one, which gave me this:

My next obvious step was to tattoo this onto my forehead. Unfortunately, the tattoo parlor was shut so to make my deadline I had to make a tee-shirt instead.

The Clever Bit

Now, the clever bit: getting from the tee-shirt to the blog. This is possible because modern mobile phones are small computers that have cameras and browsers. The camera sees the QR code. The computer extracts the web address. The browser displays the page.

Actually, there is a little cheat here. The phone needs software to read the QR code which you need to know about and download. But this is already very common in some parts of the world. In Finland for example, this technology is used to tell people standing at bus stops when the next bus is due.

Is this the Future?

Alas no. Two things will probably happen with mobile phones that will make the solution redundant. The first is that Optical Character Recognition will improve to the point that the phones will be able to read printed text. The second is that the ability of phones to know where they are will improve to the point that they will be able to search the Internet for pages that relate to them. (Postcodes are already appearing in metadate to help with things like this).

But this technology certainly has the power to introduce the potential of the mobile Internet to the masses.

Legal

QR code is trademarked by Denso Wave, inc.

Labels: technology, web design

15 September 2007

What is wrong with 'Click Here'?

Don't use "click here" as link text.

Quality Tips for Web Masters W3C

Don't use "click here" or other non-descriptive link text.

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005 Jakob Nielson

Google returns 1.3 billion search results for the phrase ('click here')

Wikipedia

Too little of what is written on the web is written for the web. Ideally it is written by somebody who knows the subject and then rewritten (I refuse to say 'repurposed') by somebody who knows about the web. I am one of those rewriters and removing the words 'click here' is something I seem to do every day. And I am forever explaining it. And if I am ever over-ruled, it will be about this.

But users need help

Committees tend to be the worst offenders. There is always somebody who insists that just because a user has

• turned on a computer;
• opened a browser;
• used a search engine to find a site and
• navigated to a page

it does not necessarily follow that they know how to use a hyperlink. They will always demand the safety blanket of instructions for the link. Instructions that appear anywhere but the link.

What is interesting, is that these are often the same people who oppose technology neutral phrases for disabled people because there are hardly any of them.

Yes, help is good. But why is a hyperlink singled out as being difficult? There is tons of literature about the fact that users do not scroll, but I have never seen instructions for a scoll bar on a site.

We do not publish books that have 'please turn over' in the corner of every page. We are not told by BBC 1 that to watch the programme on BBC 2 we need to change channel. We do not need 'click here' on a hyperlink.

'Click Here' Wastes Space

Whever 'click here' is used as the link text, it needs to be accompanied by an explanation. Space is precious. Compare these examples:

• Click here for the July Report.
• July Report.

Once the link describes itself, the rest becomes redundant.

This division of the link and the explanation for the link is also inelegant because in forces you into using a particular phrase when that might not be what you want to say.

'Click here' Wastes Ink

A web page is still a web page if it is printed out. No, that is not a zen riddle. A book is still a book if it is a PDF. Printers and screens are just two different methods of viewing the data. So it is always a good idea to be as format neutral as possible.

Not Everybody 'Clicks Here'

This always seems to come as a surprise, but not everybody accesses the Internet in the same way. Teenagers use their mobile phones, yuppies use PDAs and there are even browsers that read text aloud. So, links are 'followed' in a variety of ways.

Since the physical workings of the browser are nothing to do with the content of the page, there is not need for the page to refer to them.

But everybody else does it

The fact remains that 1,300,000,000 pages use 'click here' and I have just made it 1,300,000,001. Why? Two big reasons are banner advertisements and standardisation.

Banner Ads

Banner ads are everywhere. Even on this page, I admit it. More and more of them work on a 'pay-per-click' system so they scream 'click me'. The sheer volume of all this normalises it.

Standardisation

The same Jakon Nielson who complains about 'click here' also coined:

• Jakob's Law of the Internet User Experience: users spend most of their time on other websites.

In other words, if everybody else does it so we should too. In fact, when people do object to having their content rewritten, they often insist that they put it there because everybody knows that that is the way you are supposed to write it.

This is the reason I have saved this point until last.

Search Engine Ranking

Do the people who are ranked fist for something worry about it? Do they say Everybody else is lower down, surely that means that I should be lower down too!

Oddly enough, the do not think that. In fact, they are often in that position because they have paid good money for a Search Engine Optimiser. SEOs are people or companies that go through a site and make it as easy as possible for search engines to correctly index their pages.

Now, I mentioned disabled users above. Search engines are the most important users of your site- and they are blind.

Look at this example:

Dogs are very important. For more information about them click here.

Now, imagine that you are Google and that you need to know what the destination page is about. What can it tell about the page from here? Absolutely nothing.

Now look at this:

Dogs are very important.

The page is about dogs! How do we know, because the text that links to it contains the word 'dogs'. The association between that page and the search term 'dogs' is now stronger. Not much stronger, but every little helps.

But let me emphasise this. Small changes, like the removal of the words 'click here', make such an accumulated difference that people can make a living out of them. Now, wouldn't it be easier if we all just stopped doing it?

Labels: web design

2 July 2007

What is Wrong with Comic Sans?

Questions Clients Ask. Part 1.

This issue came up where I work recently because a client wanted it. This immediately triggered a discussion about the best way to get the client to change their mind.

As we all know, Comic Sans is a bad font and must never be used. But why is it a bad font? Why do clients ask all the time? What is a 'bad font' anyway?

One of the reasons people ask for it is that they like it. And one of the reasons that they like it is this:

There is nothing wrong with Comic Sans.

There, I have said it.

Reasons for not using Comic Sans

Comic Sans is overused

Complete rubbish. The vast majority of websites use Arial or Times New Roman. So overused are these fonts that people become blind to them. And when they do notice, they cite it as evidence of how good the fonts must be.

Comic Sans is Badly designed

For what? So it might not be a masterpiece of kerning. But it is very readable. Call be old fashioned, but I like what I read to be readable.

Comic Sans displays poorly at small font sizes

By far the feeblest complaint. All fonts have a lower resolution limit. Sans-serif fonts generally do better at low resolutions.

Reasons to use Comic Sans

• When something needs to look unofficial and unthreatening
• When something needs to be clear to children or people that do not have English as a first language

Comic Sans was designed to imitate the clear handwritten lettering found in the speech bubbles of comic. The rounded strokes look friendly and informal. The resemblance to the lettering you saw when you first learned to write makes it highly readable.

If this font is misused, it is because of the lack of better alternatives.

But there are many better fonts!

Indeed there are. Hundreds.

• Arial Rounded MT Bold has the friendly rounded edges
• Lucida Handwriting has the informal handwritten appearance.

But none of them are among the so called 'core fonts' that are installed on the vast majority of computers. CSS solves the problem of font availability by allowing you to specify backup choices for the fonts you want to use. So no matter how good the fonts you want to use are, you will still need fonts like Comic Sans as a safety net.

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Labels: web design

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