Just a quick post to welcome a friend to the ranks of Prius owners...

This year is a very-off-year election, with only local offices up for consideration. ( Cut For Your Friends Page/Reading Page Protection )

One of the nice features about the World Wide Web is that it is possible to do all sorts of nifty things, like changing fonts, showing pictures, playing sounds, and having visual effects. Unfortunately, many people seem to think that "possible" is a synonym for "required". It's not.

Presentation is, as we know, important - You might get roast beef and mashed potatoes in your school cafeteria and at Peter Luger's Steakhouse, and it might even taste the same - but chances are, you're going to be more impressed by it at Peter Luger's, where they try to make it look nice, and serve it with all sorts of ruffles and flourishes, than at the school cafeteria, where they don't have time to do more than scoop it up, plop it onto the plate, and shove it across the counter at you. Some societies practically make a fetish of presentation of food; the Japanese, for example, have such a reputation. There are other examples, and not just in food. But the point is that most of us do realize that presentation is important.

Part of that, especially when presenting information, is to avoid distractions or conflicting messages.

Anything that diverts your visitor's attention from your message is, by definition, a distraction. Garish color combinations, such as red or magenta text on a blue or green background, are distractions. So are color combinations where the foreground and background colors are too similar, like dark gray and light gray (both of those color combination flaws make the text more difficult to read). Animated GIF files are sometimes distractions. Music is sometimes a distraction. Hard-to-read decorative fonts are usually a distraction. Non-static visual effects (blink, marquee, etc.) are generally distractions.

Conflicting messages are a little harder to define. In general, if the message of the text is jarring or inappropriate when viewed in the context of its surroundings, chances are that you've got a conflicting message.

Sometimes, conflicting messages are useful - they're not unknown in public service advertising, for example. However, even there, overuse is a bad thing. Distractions are always bad, although the things that cause them may be appropriate in some contexts (and hence not distractions in those contexts).

I'm not telling you not to use those things. Far from it; they can be useful. I'm telling you not to overuse them, and not to use them where they don't serve a message-enhancing purpose.

Animated GIFs, blinking text, and marquees draw the eye. They're the first things that the visitor is going to look at. If there is a definite direction to motion in an animated GIF, the visitor's attention will be drawn in that direction. If you're going to use these effects, make sure that you want your visitor's attention drawn there first. In any case, think about their use carefully, because even after the visitor has looked at them once, they're always going to be visible "out the corner of his eye", and that's a distraction. Distractions are bad.

There are good color combinations, and bad ones. Good ones provide good contrast, and make the text easy to read. In general, dark text on a light background is better than light text on a dark background (light text on a dark background tends to get "swallowed"). Bad ones make text difficult to read, because they provide insufficient contrast. Some combinations aren't just 'bad', they're downright evil. Those combinations are the ones that simply work wrong with the physiology of color perception. Putting red text on a blue background is an example of an evil color combination. It vibrates. It induces headaches or dizziness. You can't look at it for any length of time.

You'll hear a lot of people say that you should stick to black text on a white background. It's not a bad idea, but there's a case to be made that the normal screen white is a bit harsh - like some bleached semi-glossy papers. Experiment a little. You may find that it's a lot easier to read if you use dark blue/navy text on a background that's just a little bit off pure white - say, just a touch of sky blue, or yellow. Be careful when fiddling with colors, though; remember that not everyone supports 24-bit color - or even 16-bit color. Netscape has established a de-facto standard set of 216 colors; if you stick to the colors in this so-called Netscape Color Cube, you should be OK on any browser that supports changing the background color. Today, you're probably OK with just about any color, but note that all displays do not display colors with the same accuracy. You still want to be careful, and check your color selections on different displays from different manufacturers, just in case. Sticking to the Web-Safe Colors (formerly the Netscape Color Cube) might still be a good idea.

Background music is one of my pet peeves. Put simply, I don't like it. I don't like it because I generally have my music playing, either on the computer itself, or on the radio. And there's often no way to turn it off; your choice ends up being to either tolerate it, or turn off all computer sounds. However, there are times when including the sound is a reasonable decision - if the sound has a real connection with the page. That means, for example, that it's perfectly reasonable to have the theme from "Murder, She Wrote" playing in the background on a page about the show, or "Hotel California" in the background of a page about the rock group Eagles. What's not reasonable is putting the theme from "Star Wars" in the background on a page that has nothing to do with the movie, simply because you think it's cool music. That's a distraction. Distractions are bad.

Even if you do include background music, don't make it loop forever. The ideal piece of music will be just about long enough for the visitor to the page to read through the page before it ends. Once. Twice, maybe, if your visitor is a slow reader. But too much repetition gets annoying. If the visitor isn't done reading the page after two cycles of the sound file, let them suffer a period of silence. Another thing that gets annoying is cheesy electronic music. MIDI files are good, in that they don't take up a lot of space. But they don't have the sound of a real recording, and never will. They're always going to sound like cheesy electronic simulations of real instruments. Actually, MIDI simulation of instrument sounds has improved to the point where they're often better than merely tolerable, and "cheesy" no longer applies. It's still better, though, to stick to recordings of real music in formats that have high fidelity.

Other use of sound isn't generally a problem, because it's on the visitor's demand, and the visitor knows what he's getting into. Long pieces, such as recordings of speeches or songs, should have a way to pause them, so that the visitor can leave the machine if necessary and not miss anything. Short items, such as demonstrations of how to pronounce a word, can just be played.

In recent times, multimedia has come to include video, possibly even more than straight audio. When included, the video is automatically going to be the center of attention. Take that into account when you're building your page.

Short form: Make sure that, when you add multimedia effects, you are enhancing your message, not distracting from it. Remember, your main purpose is to deliver a message; you don't want your audience to be distracted from that message, or confused over what that message is.

A pillar of smoke by day, a pillar of fire by night; we knew not where it would lead, yet still we followed.

I think that perhaps it is time to stop, look where we are, and ask ourselves if this is where we wanted to be and where we should be. And then act on the answers as appropriate.

I'm feeling...: pensive

In our last installment, we noted that the response time of a page - how long before the visitor could start reading it - was important. You don't want to lose your visitors because they get bored waiting for the page to display.

Another technique that can improve response is to manage the size of your pages - large pages take longer to load.

Research has been done that indicates that people start to lose patience if there's no visible response within three (3) seconds; once a response starts, it must be useful within about ten (10) seconds, and complete within thirty (30).

Today, modem connection speeds in the United States so-called "First World" countries are largely 33.6 kbps 5 to 10 Mbps for cable, 1 to 5 Mbps for DSL, with 56 kbps becoming more widespread higher speeds expected to be deployed in the not-too-distant-future. However, there are still quite a number of 28.8 kbps modems out there. There are still people on dial-up, but even in those countries where state-owned telephone systems and high expense are the rule, it's not unreasonable to expect a dial-up connection to be at 50 kbps or so, even in the so-called "developing countries".

Overseas, the picture isn't quite so rosy. In many countries, state-owned telephone systems are the rule, and modems may be restricted in speed or significantly more expensive than in the US. 14.4 kbps and 9600 bps are still common speeds, especially in the so-called "developing" countries.

My recommendation: Tune your pages for about 20 100 kbps in a perfect Web. In other words, assume that the Web responds instantly, and that visitor's browsers can receive the data at 20 100 kbps. That's 2 10 kbytes per second. That means that the browser should be able to start to display the page after receiving no more than 6 30 kbytes of page material, it should be useful within 20 100 kbytes, and complete within 60 300 kbytes. That includes all text, pictures, tags, stylesheets, and so on. That should account nicely for delays in looking up IP addresses, establishing sessions, normal network congestion, and so on. Some people will see worse response; others will get better response. You can't please everyone; shoot for a happy medium based on your expected audience. Those numbers assume a generic audience, from anywhere in the world. If your pages are only of interest to people in your home town, and you know that everyone in your home town has a 56kbps modem 10 Mbps cable connections, and use the same ISP, you can sensibly design your pages around that fact - which will give you more bytes to play with. You could design general interest pages with 35 kbps 9600 bps in mind, to give acceptable response to virtually the whole world, but that will leave you with lots of teeny-tiny pages that will be an absolute bear to manage, and will lead to a lot of unnecessary clicking on links that amount to nothing more than "continued on next page". That causes even more of a performance hit than having 'oversized' pages does; it takes more interaction between the browser and the server to request a new page than it does to get the next piece of the current page. If you can get the initial response within the limits discussed here, you'll be in good shape, even if it takes more time to download the rest of the page.

There is no question that the United States Postal Service could be much improved. However, the changes outlined here (http://naamah-darling.livejournal.com/410499.html) are NOT improvements. Please contact your United States Representative as outlined in that post.

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