The numbers, in this case, refer to the size of the image. The two browsers with the lion's share of the browser market, Netscape Navigator/Communicator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, All of the major players in the browser market are both 'intelligent' browsers. That means that, given appropriate information, display of a web page can be optimized. One of the possible optimizations is to place the text on the canvas and leave space for the slower-loading pictures. However, in order to do this, the browser needs to know the size of the picture. This, as with the alternative text, is done by adding attributes to the IMG tag - specifically, the 'height' and 'width' attributes. These may be specified in any valid measurement, but the most common by far are pixels or percentage of display size.

The attributes in question follow the expected format:

<IMG src="foo.gif" width="635" height="480">

or

<IMG src="foo.gif" width="60%" height="60%">

The order in which they are specified doesn't matter, although it is conventional to specify width first.

If you are displaying a picture at other than its actual size, be aware that if the aspect ratio (the relationship between width and height) is not preserved, the picture will appear distorted. If you make a picture larger than its actual size, you will see the effect called pixellation (it will become apparent that the picture is built up out of lots of little single-color squares); if your make it smaller, detail will be lost. Both effects can detract from the appearance of the page; the loss of detail is less noticeable, however, unless the details of the picture are of high importance (as in a reproduction of text). In general, it is best if the picture's actual size and display size are identical.

Note that, regardless of display size, the larger the actual size of the picture, the slower it will load.

Some wWebsite management software (most notably Microsoft FrontPage) generally allows for the generation of 'thumbnails'. These are much-reduced copies of the pictures in question that 'stand in' for the actual picture where only a very small image (up to 100x100 pixels, generally) is needed. Normally, the thumbnails are linked to the full-sized image. The benefit of using thumbnails is that they load faster than displaying the full-sized picture in the same area.

The advantage of specifying the display size, as indicated, is that it becomes possible for the browser to display the text without needing to wait for the images to load first. This allows a faster apparent response time to the user, which reduces the chance that your visitor will lose patience waiting for your page to load, and go elsewhere. And keeping your visitors' interest is what web design is all about.

Everyone knows the old saw, "A picture is worth a thousand words", and recognizes how true it is - you can't, for example, convey the sheer majesty of the Grand Canyon in words alone; you've just got to show the picture - and even that doesn't do it justice, but...

The same is true on the web - you don't try to describe things in detail when you can put up a picture instead. And the Web makes it easy to put up pictures.

But the title of this article is not an error. And it's just as true as the original. Why?

Put simply, it's because pictures don't always work. You may have inadvertently chosen a format that the visitor's browser doesn't support (stick to GIF and JPEG, although PNG is probably safe as well), or traffic to your server may be so high that graphics are being throttled, or you may have screwed up the link. And what's going to happen? You're going to get a big blank with a little icon in it, saying "there's supposed to be a picture here, but I can't get it".

Or, what if your visitor is blind? Braille-based systems are most likely not going to handle pictures well. Neither will text-to-speech systems.

All this may not be a problem if the picture is simply to add interest, and doesn't itself convey crucial information to the visitor. But more and more, people are using images for things like navigation links and effects on informative text. And when those pictures are unavailable, the site becomes close to useless to the visitor, because most people seem to forget one little thing - the words that are worth the thousand pictures.

I speak here of the ALT attribute to the IMG tag. One silly little omission that can kill a site. And it's so easy to include, too. All you need to do is change

<IMG SRC="foo.gif">

to

<IMG SRC="foo.gif" ALT="This is a picture of a foo">

That's it. Now, when your server is throttling so that foo.gif isn't sent to the visitor's browser (or when you link to fpp.gif by accident, and don't realize it), they'll still know what's missing. You can put longer captions in there, too. But the most important use is when you're using graphics as navigation buttons. In that case, they become absolutely essential - otherwise, how will anyone know where they'll lead you - some browsers don't provide useful information about a URL in a status line, and even with those that do, the user may not be in the habit of checking. It's best to play it safe, and make the ALT text provide useful information about what the graphic button does.

The only time that ALT text isn't entirely useful is when you have an imagemap (click on different parts of the picture to go to different pages). In that case, treat it like a regular picture (i.e., give it a good descriptive ALT text), but make sure that you mention that it's an imagemap - and provide plain text links for each region that you've defined, so that your visitor isn't totally dead in the water when the image doesn't come up.

Short and sweet. But, oh, what a difference.

(When I originally wrote this, the HTML specification didn't require the ALT attribute, although it was strongly recommended. In HTML4 and XHTML, it's required. Even if you're writing to earlier HTML specs, use the ALT attribute anyway.)

(This can actually be considered a digression referred to in the introduction. Nevertheless, it should be useful in establishing the context for the rest of this series.)

With all the millions of websites out there, there are, broadly speaking, only two reasons for a website to exist. And every page exists for exactly one of those reasons.

The two reasons boil down to:

• I have this website because I have something to say.
• I have this website because I can.

That's it. 'Having something to say' is a pretty broad topic; it covers everything from 'I'm a major corporation doing image burnishing and product/service selling' right down to 'This is my hobby, and this is what I want to tell you about it'. Whatever the specific reason, it lends legitimacy to the page.

What doesn't is 'because I can'. This is simply showing that you're 'cool', that you know what a web page is, and that you've learned enough about either HTML or a particular HTML-generating tool (which may be a provider's automatic generation software) to be able to create a page that doesn't break when someone goes to look at it. If that's all, why bother? This is the equivalent of a programmer learning a new language and writing the traditional 'Hello, World' program in that language - even if it's his first language, he's going to feel pretty silly about showing it off, especially to other programmers.

C'mon, folks - we already know that the medium is not the message, in spite of any pithy sayings to the contrary - so why use the medium if you have no message?

You'll hear that 'everybody' has a web page. You'll hear that you 'have to' have a web page. Stop for a minute. Think about who's telling you this. Ask yourself where they heard it from, or how they benefit if you do. Ultimately, it's going to come down to somebody trying to sell you something - internet access, web presence, web design services, and so on - or somebody trying to take you for something - essentially free advertising, overpriced addons to the services you really need, and so on. Think carefully. Ask yourself 'Do I really have something to say?'. If the answer is yes, and the cost isn't unacceptable, hey, go for it. If the answer is no, why bother?

(Actually, there used to be a third reason to have a web page - early browsers didn't have 'bookmarks' or 'favorites', so a lot of people set their 'home page' to be a page that had nothing but links to other websites. By the time I wrote this, originally, that usage had largely been relegated to 'legacy' status, and people had mostly converted to using bookmarks/favorites. I don't count this as 'having a message', although it was a legitimate reason to have a web page. Since some early browsers didn't support the file: protocol, allowing the browser to read the page from the user's own computer, it wasn't unusual to have these pages stuck somewhere on a provider's server. I no longer consider this to be a legitimate reason to have a web page; I'm not aware of any browser that fails to have both bookmarks/favorites and the file: protocol.)

The rest of the series will assume that there's a message involved somewhere.

For a number of reasons, I find myself spending quite a large amount of time surfing the web. As more and more people decide to have a website, I see more and more pages that will present problems of various types. Many of these problems can be avoided. This series will discuss what I perceive as the problems, and what I consider a good correction of the problem.

It cannot be emphasized enough that these are my own opinions, and are quite definitely not set in stone. They are, however, generally echoed by authors of books on web page design, with varying degrees of emphasis.

I had thought to attempt to classify errors, but I could not come up with a satisfactory scheme to classify them - quite often, any scheme I came up with ended up placing a common error into multiple classifications, in spite of the fact that I intended the classifications to be disjoint and comprehensive. So, I'm not going to classify them, just go through them one at a time.

I also expect that I will be digressing occasionally, and expounding on general concepts - or perhaps launching into tirades on topics that I have particularly strong feelings about. Bear with me. Don't let it provoke you into flames; try to stick with civilized discussion. As I said, this is my opinion. You're free to ignore it, and I'd quite frankly prefer that to getting involved in pyrotechnics or competitive urination.

I've got a seed account at Dreamwidth now, and for the foreseeable future will be posting to both DW and LJ via the DW crossposting capability. I'm both freetrav and freetrav, so it's easy to find me. I'm still exploring DW, though, so LJ should still be considered the primary site for my blogging.

I haven't forgotten about the Sudoku techniques question I posted at the end of March. It turns out that doing it the way I'd intended would result in an entry that was massively over any reasonable limit for LJ (or probably any LJ-based site), so I'm working on the full discussion off-line, and then I will break it up and post the pieces one at a time over a period. They'll be tagged 'sudoku' and 'logicpuzzle'.

I also wrote a series of discourses on various aspects of web design several years ago, and posted them on the web space that my ISP provided. They've not been updated; I think I will update them and post the updates here instead of on that space. They'll be tagged 'webdesign'.

From hitchhiker...

http://deepleap.org is quite the addicting game, especially if you're into games like Scrabble and Boggle.

I've been thinking about a post on Sudoku-completion techniques. It would be quite long, so I *would* put it behind a cut - but the question is whether folx would be interested in reading it. So, that's the question: Should I do this, and would there be interest in reading it?

There is an accounting firm that has been using puzzles of various types in their ads. Today on the train into work, I saw one of their ads, with a logic puzzle. I am posting the puzzle here and inviting readers to comment with their solutions and reasoning behind the solution. Comments will be screened until at least Wednesday (and maybe as long as Friday).

The Puzzle:

Three supermodels are invited into a swanky and exclusive Fifth Avenue shop. They are shown a shelf upon which are five pashminas - three in deep cerulean and two in saffron. All three are then blindfolded, and one pashmina is draped over each. The remaining two pashminas are returned to the shelf. The models are lined up so that none of them can see the shelf.

The third supermodel's blindfold is removed, and she is asked whether she can tell, by looking only at the other two supermodels, what color pashmina she is wearing. She replies that she cannot.

The second supermodel's blindfold is removed, and she is asked whether she can tell, by looking only at the first supermodel (and, obviously, having heard the third supermodel's reply), what color pashmina she is wearing. She, too, replies that she cannot.

The first supermodel, before her blindfold can be removed, says "I am wearing a ___________ pashmina - may I keep it?".

What color pashmina was the first supermodel wearing, and how do you know?

For those of you who know meglimir, please read this entry in sammyd's journal...

I'm feeling...: sad

All Gave Some.

Some Gave All.

A new Heller case is already starting; according to SCOTUSBlog, the case has been filed (but not yet docketed The case has been assigned docket number 08-1289, before District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina) in District Court for DC. Heller and two other complainants are seeking to overturn the regulations put in by DC after the SCOTUS decision as onerous and violative of both the decision and the Second Article Amending.

Among other things, the regs in question classify semi-automatic pistols - such as the ones that the DC police carry - as equivalent to machine guns, if a magazine of more than 12 rounds is AVAILABLE (even if the specific weapon to be registered does not get used with such magazines).

The new DC regs also require that the gun be unloaded and/or trigger-locked at all times EXCEPT when there is a "well-founded belief" that imminent use for self-defense will be necessary. This has been characterized as the "Wait, Mr Home Invader, please let me unlock my gun" clause.

The text of the actual complaint in the new case (PDF format) is at http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/new-heller-lawsuit-7-28-08.pdf

Edited 8/1/08 to reflect that it has been docketed.

Today's decision from the United States Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller is rightly being called significant, and even a landmark decision. However, contrary to some of the comments I've been hearing from friends in various forums, it is not the death knell for gun control. At best, it is the beginning of the end-game; more likely, it is a significant tactical victory, but the battle remains joined, and is far from over.

First, let's look at what the Court held in its opinion. This can be summed up in three statements:

1. The Second Article Amending the Constitution of the United States guarantees the protection of an individual right to own firearms.
2. The DC law banning the possession of handguns in the home is overturned as unConstitutional.
3. The DC law requiring any firearm not kept in a place of business to be non-functional (unloaded, and either disassembled or with trigger lock) is overturned as unConstituional.

These are indeed significant, as the Court has now established limits on gun laws in the District of Columbia. However, there are other statements about the decision that can be made:

1. The Court specifically stated that, based on the facts of Heller's complaint, the prayer for relief could be satisfied through the issuance of a license by the District of Columbia to Heller permitting him to keep a handgun in his home. Thus, permit laws are not prima facie an unConstitutional infringement on the right to keep and bear arms.
2. The Court also indicated that they are not overturning restrictions on possession in 'sensitive' locations such as schools or government buildings. Thus, such restrictions - which are being expanded as fast as legislatures can justify doing so - are also not prima facie unConstitutional.
3. The Court made no comment as to whether the Fourteenth Article Amending the Constitution of the United States incorporates the Second and extends its provisions to the several states. Thus, even laws similar to DC's in other US jurisdictions may not be prima facie unConstitutional under Federalism doctrine.
4. The Court does not set a standard for examining future cases - although it is stated in the decision that the home handgun ban in DC does not pass muster under any reasonable standard of scrutiny.
5. The decision was 5-4, along expected ideological lines (Justices Stevens, Breyer, Souter, and Ginsberg in dissent). This is troubling, as it implies the definite possibility that, should the decision be revisited after a Justice in the current majority leaves the Court, the holding of an individual right could well be overturned. The Court's doctrine of stare decisis weighs in against casually overturning the precedent established, but it is not an ironclad guarantee - otherwise such decisions as Plessy v. Fergusen would never have been overturned by later decisions such as Brown v. Topeka, KS, Board of Education.

Really, the only thing we can be sure of at this point is that lawyers who argue gun cases are gong to be making a lot of money in coming years, as various state and local laws are individually challenged and work their way through the system via appeal, cross-appeal, and reappeal. The precedent established by today's decision is important, but not broad enough to short-circuit such litigation. It is a blow to the gun-control advocacy groups, but it is far from fatal.

Edited 6/27/08 09:10 to add: Other analyses I'm seeing suggest that some of the ambiguities and non-addressed issues in the decision were to get the fifth vote, said to be from Justice Kennedy (who has been the swing vote in other cases). If this is in fact the case, it makes the closeness of the decision even more troubling.

Some further possible ramifications:

1. There is the distinct possibility that "Shall Issue" may become the law of the land - that is, if a permit-issuing authority wishes to deny a permit, they may have to show objective cause, such as felony conviction or mental illness, for the denial, and otherwise issue.
2. Similarly, laws requiring transport or storage unloaded or otherwise unusable may fail to pass Constitutional muster. In the Opinion, Justice Scalia characterized a gun that was not in usable condition as "a club".
3. The discussion of United States v. Miller in the Opinion, and the relevance of "common use in militia or military service" to the question of what weapons would be covered by the Second Article Amending the Constitution of the United States, points to the possibility that the National Firearms Act of 1934, the Gun Control Act of 1968, and subsequent legislation banning semi- and fully-automatic firearms and so-called "assault weapons" may not withstand Constitutional scrutiny.

In short, although the Court attempted to rule narrowly, as per longstanding practice, the ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller may well turn out to have broader and farther-reaching effects than may have been anticipated - but this will only be determined in future litigation.

Edited 6./28/08 18:20 to correct references to the case to the correct name of District of Columbia v. Heller.

I'm feeling...: pleased

This time, it got all the way down to where the one box on the fuel indicator was blinking at me, and only about 345 miles. I figure it was the much colder weather that we had. Oddly enough, the pump kicked off at only 7.89 gallons, less than the eight-point that I got last time, with the fuel indicator at one box not blinky. Final figures, this tank 43.4 mpg; overall 46.2 mpg, a bit down from the 49 I got last tank. Still quite respectable. This time, I filled with regular (87 octane, (R+M)/2 method); we'll see what happens over the next four hundred miles.

I'm feeling...: cold

From Charles Stoss via unixronin's pointer to james_nicoll's pointer: The Top Ten Things Environmentalists Need To Learn

At 504 miles (407 since acquisition back in November), I decided that the gas indicator was showing low enough to make it wise to fill the tank. So I did. This fill was for eight-and-a-third gallons, yielding an experienced MPG of 49 in mixed city/highway driving. Pretty good, given that the EPA figures were 45 highway and 48 city.

The book wasn't clear on what I should fill with - it said "Unleaded premium 87 octane (91 Research Octane Number)". Unfortunately, that 87 is not clear as to whether it should be interpreted as Motor Octane Number or US/Canada Pump Octane Number - and when I filled up, I had no idea what "R+M/2" method meant - so I played it safe and filled with Premium, labelled at the pump as 92. When I got home, I did some checking, and assuming that the Wikipedia article on Octane Rating is accurate, the 87 cited in the book is most likely the Pump Octane Number, and I can probably fill with regular. If it turns out to be the Motor Octane Number, I can still use Plus, instead of premium, so I'll be cutting my gas costs even more (as the Camry was tuned for a lean mixture, and was always filled with Premium).

I'm feeling...: happy

As you probably know, Livejournal allows you to append ?style=mine or &style=mine to a LJ URL. Doing so causes the LJ page to be displayed in the style of the viewer's LJ (if the page admits of having user styles applied). This may (probably will) be different from the style that the page's author (i.e., the owner of the LJ) chose to present his/her journal in.

Question the first

Question the second

This is deliberately not a poll, just an open question; comment and discussion is invited.

Note: This entry was updated to reflect changes subsequent to an on-line upgrade to the Ubuntu 8.04 ("hardy heron") release. Changes are shown with old material struck out and new material in italics.

The laptop computer used for this is a Toshibe Portégé 4010. The specifications can be found here, http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/spec.php3?model=PP401U. This particular unit has 512MB of RAM and a 60GB HDD installed. The specifications do not mention the following:

• The unit supports IrDA.
• There is an option for either BlueTooth or WiFi; this particular unit has the WiFi option.
• There is a SlimSelectBay in the unit, which may take any of several different modules; this particular unit has a DVD-ROM/CD-RW unit
• The unit has a slot for SD cards

I attempted to install three different distros on this unit; only one succeeded. I do not rule out the possibility of personal deficiency and poor-quality media preventing the first two distros from installing; in fact, I consider those to be quite highly probable. The first attempt to install was off a Knoppix LiveCD; if I recall correctly, this was version 4 of Knoppix, and dates back to a previous attempt to experiment with Linux that ultimately went nowhere. While the LiveCD worked fine, I was unable to determine how to install the distro onto the hard disk. The second attempt to install was Fedora 8; while downloads of the ISO appeared good, and appeared to burn successfully to CD, the resulting LiveCDs failed to boot, or, if booted, failed the Fedora pre-installation verification.

The third distro attempted was Ubuntu 7.10 ("gutsy gibbon"); this attempt succeeded on the third try: The first try, selecting the option to install from the main menu, hung with a scrambled screen; the second, selecting the option to use 'safe' graphics, failed similarly (although the appearance of the scrambled screen was different). When I used the function keys to tell the LiveCD what the actual screen resolution is, and then selected the normal install, the install went through with no problems.

Tested

• General functionality. The system appears to operate in a reasonable manner. Other reports (from TuxMobil) indicate that certain features in the keyboard need to be disabled; I found that this was either automatically detected and done by the Ubuntu installation, or is not necessary.
• Hibernation. Based on other reports, I installed the Toshiba utilities for Linux, as it appeared that the suspend/hibernation mode would fail abjectly without them. With them, the system does appear to go into hibernation properly; however, restoring system state from hibernation is not without problems - most notably, the network interfaces do NOT get reinitialized, and the system acts like there are no functional network interfaces until rebooted and appears to function normally after coming out of hibernation.
• USB. The system successfully mounted (automatically) USB mass storage devices with Windows-compatible filesystems on them, and files could be read from and written to the devices. A Phaser 4500 printer was detected, and drivers (for the 6100) installed. Printing to this printer from OpenOffice Word Processor resulted in garbage being printed out; the same from the Printer Configuration tool, thus indicating that the selected drivers were not valid for the printer. Changing to the Generic PostScript driver resulted in valid printouts from both the printer test and OpenOffice.
• WiFi. This was tested on a secured network; upon provision of authentication information, the computer successfully acquired an address from DHCP and participated in the network with no problem. This included accessing the internet and shared files on other computers on the LAN.
• Wired LAN. The computer successfully acquired an address from DHCP, and participated in the network, including accessing the internet and shared files on other computers on the LAN, with no problems.
• IrDA. This appears not to be supported at all under Linux, though it works fine with Windows.
• Toshiba Fn Keys. These are the keys marked in blue on the keycaps, requiring a special function key to be pressed to activate the function. This allows keyboard control of muting the speaker, controlling the display brightness, switching between internal LCD display and external monitor, and so on. What I was equipped to test, worked.
• PCCard/PCMCIA/CardBus slots. The built-in USB ports on the base unit are USB 1.1. I acquired a Belkin USB 2.0 Cardbus interface for a different computer, and decided to try it on this one. On plugging it in, I saw some disk activity, but no messages indicating success or failure at device installation. However, plugging a USB 2.0 thumbdrive into the USB ports on the card caused the thumbdrive to be recognized and mounted immediately.

Not Tested

• 56K Modem. This will be tested in the near future, and this report updated at that time The conditions that I intended to test it under have become unavailable to me; I have no current expectations of being able to test this.
• SD slot. I have no media for this slot, and no other devices that use this media, so it is unlikely that this will be tested.
• PCCard/PCMCIA/CardBus slots. I have no peripherals using this interface that are useful with this computer, and do not anticipate obtaining any in the forseeable future. See Tested section.

...and it's far better than even I can believe.

I was walking home from the train, and for some reason, a little white car draws my attention. It doesn't look familiar, so I start to wonder why it caught my attention.

This little white car, a four-door sedan that looked smaller than my old Camry, is on the other side of a major intersection, coming toward me, but not yet close enough to see the logo on it. It is being driven like it is either severely underpowered, or the driver is the stereotypical little old lady with blue hair who is looking through the steering wheel to see out the front window.

The car turns down the cross street, in the direction I will be going. When I make the turn, I see it backing into a parking spot.

I get closer, and can see that the logo on the trunk is Toyota's, but I can't read the text that says what model it is.

I get still closer, and see that the model of this tiny four-door sedan is... Huh? Prius?

Understand that until I saw this car, I had never seen a Prius that didn't look like the userpic for this entry (modulo color). Not even in pictures. And yet my PriusDAR seems to have pinged right on this oddity.

Relating this episode to another Prius owner in IRC revealed the information that what I was seeing was the "classic" Prius, with inferior-to-present batteries, from the first year or so that the Prius was available in the US. It does NOT have the HSD (Hybrid Synergy Drive) that the current Toyota hybrids do. The 'dashboard' was centered, like in the Yaris, not directly in front of the driver, as in most cars (including the present Prius). It also did not appear to have the SmartKey system that I do, and the "gearshift" was a large handle, not a small knob-sized one, but still on the dashboard, not the steering column.

Quite frankly, if this had been my image of a Prius before buying, I'd probably have ended up with the Civic hybrid, or gotten another gas-engine car. But it's still astonishing that I picked this car out.

I'm feeling...: astonished

http://www.datamancer.net/steampunklaptop/steampunklaptop.htm.

Totally impractical. So bleeping what?! I want one anyway!

I'm feeling...: jealous