adrian holovaty

July 31, 2002, 11:05 PM ET

Site review: Omaha.com

Omaha.com, site of the Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald, sports a modern-looking design that's heavy on drop shadows -- but we won't hold that against them. It's clean and airy, almost to a fault; information is spread so thin that it takes several clicks to get to it. A few thoughts:

• Instead of using its home page as a site index, Omaha.com merely lists a handful of top stories. This gives Omaha.com a much more "point-and-click" feel than most other news sites, because users are forced to travel back and forth, from section to section, just to get the news they want. It's smart to encourage readers to explore the site in depth rather than rely on the home page as a one-stop index; but there's also something to be said for the one-stop shop approach.
• Kudos to the site for using a liquid design (definition / tutorial) -- something most major-to-mid-sized newspaper Web sites don't do. Some might say it looks silly with extremely long lines of content on high-resolution monitors, but those people can feel free to resize their browser windows appropriately. Giving users the freedom to set the width of the text they're reading is a good thing.
• But while they're granted that freedom, users of IE for Windows are barred from changing the site's font sizes, because the text is formatted using pixel widths, which Win-IE users aren't able to resize. I suspect this site's tiny related links boxes and page-bottom navigation links have frustrated many users that like to surf with "Larger" fonts enabled.
• And speaking of frustrating users, every page's TITLE is simply "Omaha.com." If I were to bookmark 10 separate pages from this site and return to the bookmarks an hour later, I wouldn't remember which was which. (Not to mention it hurts Omaha.com's chances of being accessed via a search engine's results page; most search engines display pages' titles as indicators of the pages' content.)
• The link to "Your First Stop" is ambiguous. As far as I can tell, it appears in the top horizontal navigation of each page, and for that reason I assumed it led to some sort of essential breaking news page -- or, at least, something else that merited being my "first stop" upon visiting Omaha.com. In actuality, following this link gives you a page that explains how to make Omaha.com your home page. I question the reasoning behind putting this atop every page sitewide and giving it such a unhelpful/misleading title. (On a broader scale, I question having this feature in the first place, but that's another can of worms.)
• The horizontal, "point-and-click" feel I mentioned above is strengthened by the section pages' incomplete selection of links. For example, the Sports page lists a few stories with photos and blurbs. Below those is a list of a few more sports stories, with only headlines. You'd think these were all the sports stories for the day -- but there's an easily overlooked link to "More stories." Only then are the remainder of the sports stories available.
• There's a jarring usability problem in the site's navigation scheme. On the home page, the navigation links for subsections are located in a blue area on the right side of the page. This is an unintuitive place to put them, as their placement runs counter to practically every other news site. (And this is further confused by the yellow links in the left rail, where users historically have been trained to look for navigation.) So it took me a while to get used to the placement of those section links. But once I finally did, they changed on me! On section fronts and story pages, the section links are on the left side of the page, with the yellow links shifted down. And to make matters even worse, still other pages (like the Search page) put that blue navbar at the bottom left of the page, not even visible in the first scroll! Consistency is so important.

A few more nitpicky comments:

• The mouseover effect in the yellow left rail can be done using style sheets instead of JavaScript. That'd trim the page weight a tiny bit. (It wouldn't be visible in older browsers, but it's an inessential feature.)
• The site's logo doesn't link to its home page. This goes against common Web style and causes users to waste precious milliseconds looking for the link to "Home."
• There's a user-added-comment application at the bottom of story pages, and it requires JavaScript. That's fine, but a NOSCRIPT error message would be nice for people who have turned JavaScript off. (See my previous post.)
• The left-rail links to QwestDex and MapQuest are kind of random. I expected them to be Omaha-personalized versions of these sites; instead, the links just spit me onto those outside sites. Maybe they could be designated as "outside links," or, to add some value, perhaps the MapQuest/QwestDex form fields could be prepopulated with Nebraska information. (For example, clicking MapQuest could take the user to a generic map of Omaha, instead of MapQuest's home page.)
• On the weather page, is that animated graphic at the top supposed to be an indicator of current weather conditions, or is it a standing graphic, or an ad, or what?

As always, please add your own comments using the comment system below.

Comments (5) / Permalink

July 29, 2002, 10:33 PM ET

Site review: wlbz2.com

Wlbz2.com is the news Web site of television station WLBZ in Bangor, Maine. Its help page says, "It can be tough to find everything that a website has to offer." The rest of the site aims to prove that statement.

• The home page leaves room for about two stories above the fold: a lead story, placed dead center, and part of a second story that's located to the lower left. (That is, under the banner ad, to the left of the rectangular boxes that look like ads, and to the right of the left-rail boxes that look like ads.) This MSNBC-style spotlight on a single story leaves me searching desperately for more content. And finding little more than rectangular JPEGs and GIFs. And getting progressively frustrated.
• The problem is, the banner ad cuts sharply through the middle of the page, leaving everything disjointed. Everything on these pages seems to be compartmentalized. I feel claustrophobic when I try to focus on a part of the page, and I feel overwhelmed when I try to take it all in at once. (The sharp contrast between blue background and white foreground may add to this.)
• Perhaps more content would fit if the large, blue, drop-shadowed image at the top center of each page were eliminated. It measures 495 by 85 pixels, weighs 10 K and achieves nothing. A study has shown users expect the top center of a Web page to contain banner ads, but in this case, there's no ad -- only empty space. And I think that's why that giant slab o' blue feels so awkward.
• If that banner ad was moved up there, the news content would no longer be split into two sections, loosely joined by a "continued below," and it would feel a lot friendlier.
• Well, whaddya know. The site uses breadcrumb navigation, as I discussed yesterday. However, I question its usefulness here, as it uses different names for its site categories (e.g. "Our station") than the left navigation bar does (e.g. "About Us"). It's a noble effort, but consistency would help.
• When I checked, the Weather Extra page presented a 473 by 319 pixel image that simply displayed five lines of text over an image of red roses. To devote 49,389 bytes to an image that displays five lines of text is absurd. And, to make matters worse, the image lacks ALT text.
• Speaking of unnecessary file size, I was intrigued by the sheer amount of overkill -- both graphical and textual -- on this site. I tested the food page and found it weighed 260K, with images, script and all. The page's necessary components (the content unique to that page) weighed around 2K. Yes, that means the page weighed more than 100 times what it could weigh.
• Adding significantly to the page weight are the rectangular images under "NEWS CENTER Segments." As far as I can tell, they appear on the right side of the content area on every news story page. They tease to other news content on the site, such as special reports. Not only are these images excessive, they look like ads, too, so my eyes ignore them. If they were text links, they'd give the page more breathing room, they'd save tons of bandwidth, and, heck, they'd probably get clicked more often.
• The image of a person clicking on a mouse has got to go. This stinks of "Oh, I need to fill this slot with an image."
• There's a "Recommended Plug Ins" message in the lower left corner of each page. It recommends Acrobat Reader and Flash, but it doesn't link to them. Instead, it provides a pair of indecipherable 12 by 12 pixel images.

Alas, all is not bad with this site. I believe every news site can teach us something other than what not to do. Here are a few positive points:

• The left-rail navigation, shaped like a remote control, is a breath of fresh air in the artistically drained world of left-rail navbars. It's different enough to be quirky, but it's not so different as to confuse users. A remote control is the perfect TV analogy for navigation; and such user-interface analogies are hard to pull off. (Of course, using an image map for navigation means users won't be able to resize the text if they think it's too small...)
• Another good thing about the remote control: The Web designers were thoughtful enough to give the image map ALT attributes. This is especially appropriate for the upper four "arrow" icons, which were meaningless to me until I held my cursor and saw the ALT content in a ToolTip.

Pitch in with your own review of wlbz2.com by posting a comment below.

Comments (7) / Permalink

July 28, 2002, 3:14 PM ET

Study finds breadcrumb navigation useful

A University of Maryland study examines the usefulness of what it calls "structural navigation bars" -- otherwise known as breadcrumb navigation. Researchers found test subjects "took about 60 seconds less time to navigate a site with the nav bars than without."

I haven't seen many cases of breadcrumb navigation on news sites, and I think that's a bad thing. The only two news sites I'm familiar with that use it are:

• CJOnline -- The Topeka (Kan.) Capital-Journal
• themaneater.com -- The Maneater (student newspaper at the U. of Missouri)

(Disclaimer: I implemented breadcrumb navigation at themaneater.com.)

CJOnline organizes its breadcrumbs by topic (e.g. Home > News > Kansas), while themaneater.com organizes them by date and topic (e.g. Home > 2002 > July 17 > News > News story). In both cases, the breadcrumbs are extremely valuable tools, not only functioning as navigational shortcuts "up" and "down" the site tree, but also helping users orient themselves in the site. More news sites should be doing this.

Comments (9) / Permalink

July 28, 2002, 2:44 PM ET

Boosting Web site credibility

Stanford University's Web credbility guidelines give useful ways to build a site's credibility -- including design and usability guidelines. The guidelines are somewhat obvious, but the cool thing is, they're backed with research.

I have a feeling these tips would be more helpful to small news Web sites than to larger ones.

(Previous post on this topic: Online credibility survey.)

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 26, 2002, 11:34 PM ET

Site review: honoluluadvertiser.com

The Honolulu Advertiser's Web site is worth a look for its feeling of, well, freshness. Something about its combination of liberal font leading, flowery reds and blues, the always-slick Trebuchet MS, and the clean, airy balance of it all make it quite refreshing. Some thoughts:

• Its home page manages to pack in dozens of headlines while maintaining a clean, easily scannable architecture -- not an easy task. Breaking news gets priority at the top, in a no-nonsense textual list. When I checked in the evening, it listed the day's breaking news in one convenient spot labeled "BREAKING NEWS/PM UPDATES." This is a great, seemingly obvious way of presenting breaking news, but for some reason many news sites still don't provide a way of distinguishing online-only content.
• Unfortunately, the home page uses small fonts that can't be resized in IE for Windows, and it commits a further no-no by using points for its font units. (As many designers will tell you, points are meaningless on the Web.) That brings up an interesting question: What's better, to look great but make your users squint, or to look lousy but be accessible?
• The site continues to use old-fashioned FONT tags for text formatting, in addition to style sheets. It's always interesting to find a site that's still concerned with looking good in version 3.0 browsers.
• One of the site's strong points is its tendency to organize content logically, which is something on which we all can improve. I've already mentioned the home page's orderly headlines. In addition, check out its columnists page, which is yet another seemingly obvious feature that I don't see implemented often enough; its Back Issues page, which presents all the site's content since May 23 in easily grasped calendar form (one gripe here: not all newspaper stories get posted to the site); and a one-page approach to a photo gallery, on which the photos are a bit small, but, golly, they sure are organized neatly.
• Speaking of photos, the Advertiser uses tiny ones. They're absolutely minuscule, and that's not a good thing. Heck, the large flower image on the site's home page is larger than the page's lead art. Fortunately, clicking on a photo will get you a larger version -- albeit just a plain JPG, without any HTML around it. Whenever I run into this technique, I get a sense of cheapness. They didn't have time to wrap some HTML around the photo? That kind of thing can be automated.
• The story URLs are semi-trimmable, which is to say they make sense and still work logically when cut. For example, cutting en05a.html off this URL gets you the July 26 entertainment index; cutting the en gets you the entire July 26 issue index. It doesn't work at any higher level than that, but at least some of the URL is hackable, and that's a good thing.

Comments (3) / Permalink

July 26, 2002, 8:51 PM ET

Redesign at canoe.ca

Craig Saila points out that CANOE (Canadian Online Explorer, "Canada's leading news and information site") has redesigned its home page.

I'd never been to the site, but I was struck by how jarringly different its site subsections are -- if "subsections" is an appropriate word. Compare, for instance, CNEWS to SLAM! Sports to C-Health to the Weather page -- all of which are listed in CANOE's "site index." (So I assume they're all considered part of the CANOE site.)

At first look, this is quite overwhelming and disorienting, almost surely proof that branding is not compatible with Web usability.

Then again, each subsection has a strong sense of identity and immerses readers in its content; readers are forced into the sections, one at a time, with no easy way out and limited means of distraction. I wonder whether readers would favor this more immersive type of design over a more traditional layout with, for example, a sitewide standard left rail navbar.

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 25, 2002, 9:40 PM ET

A not-so-subtle design hint

This one cuts to the chase: Why Web Builders Must Move to XHTML.

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 25, 2002, 9:31 PM ET

Inaccessible multimedia at nytimes.com

According to an item on ResearchBuzz, nytimes.com has launched a new multimedia section.

It's convenient having all this multimedia content in one place. But the convenience is overshadowed by the page's inaccessibility to browsers with JavaScript turned off. After disabling JavaScript in my browser, I discovered 24 of the 27 links in the content area of the page (not counting "Related Article" links) didn't take me anywhere. Nothing happened when I clicked them, because their a hrefs were set to load a JavaScript popup window and provided no alternate means of accessing the content.

The least they could have done is provide an error message for non-JavaScript browsers. Instead, the significant group of Internet users who disable JavaScript will be left clicking -- and getting increasingly frustrated.

(I've mentioned how to make JavaScript popups accessible in a previous post.)

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 24, 2002, 10:11 PM ET

Usability study compares online news presentations

A Wichita State University usability study compares three presentation formats of online news -- "full," "summary" and "links" pages. A snippet of its findings:

Overall, there were no statistical differences in search time across the three presentation types. However, the Summary condition was perceived most positively in terms of ease of finding information, being visually pleasing, promoting comprehension, participants' satisfaction with the site, and looking professional.

Insightful results. The section labeled "Discussion" has the meaty stuff.

Comments (4) / Permalink

July 24, 2002, 9:35 PM ET

Site review: EcoLatino.com beta site

Eco Latino, an upcoming Morris-affiliated Spanish/English monthly online tabloid in Florida, is still a work in progress. In fact, it only consists of one page that's about half done. But staugustine.com's AgentKen, who's working on the site, asked for some comments. Here goes:

• The color scheme is striking. It's bright, it's bold, and it invokes a sense of multiculturalism that's right on the mark for a site like this. Too often do we see news sites use color schemes that have no real purpose; here, the tones give the content an added kick. It's apparent here that the colors were given significant thought. And, as an added bonus, they're all Web safe. (For more on colors, see Poynter's outstanding Color, Contrast and Dimension in News Design.)
• Navigation in the left rail looks straightforward, although it's hard to judge it with only one page to work with. Section names are logical and easily grasped. One question here: The (intentional?) division of categories by background color implies categories with the same background color are somewhat related. Are they? The last four -- Advertisers, About Us, Site Map, Contact Us -- certainly are, but to link Message Board and Latest Issue is a bit more of a stretch.
• Speaking of the navigation, it uses a neat all-CSS mouseover. No JavaScript functions or image downloads needed. And, down the road, changing it will be as easy as editing a single CSS file. Slick.
• The date at the top of the page is somewhat confusing. Is that intended to be today's date, or the date of publication? If the site is updated monthly, printing the last-updated date would be more useful than displaying the current date. And to make things clear, I'd preface it with "Last updated:" or just "Updated:". If you do decide to print today's date, it'd be helpful to label it as such, to avoid misleading the readers.
• The language-switcher link that rotates the page's content between Spanish and English is an outstanding feature.
• The page's reliance on style sheets is commendable. I'd push it even further by using CSS to display the horizontal lines between categories in the left rail. Since they all have a single-pixel bottom border, you could just set border-bottom: 1px solid #c90; instead of calling an image of an orange horizontal line after each list item. (While we're at it, if these navigation sections were in an unordered list, they'd be a tiny bit more accessible to any Lynx users out there.)
• There's a layout bug in Netscape 4 and in browsers with style sheets turned off: The main Eco Latino logo covers up the "Subscribe," date, weather, and language-switcher links for some reason.
• The page uses an @import statement to call its style sheet, and that leads me to believe that support for older browsers like Netscape 4 isn't a priority here. That's fine with me, as long as the content remains accessible, which it is -- but if you're willing to disregard Netscape 4, why not take the leap and move to an all-CSS layout? Glish, BlueRobot and Little Boxes are three great resources on this topic.
• Links could be more clearly defined. In the content area, they're pink on an orange background with no underline. In the top horizontal bar, the links are only distinguished as such when moused over. I had trouble distinguishing them myself; and I suspect users who are color blind would be ten times as frustrated. (Useful site: Dive Into Accessibility's Using Color Safely.)
• A few shortcuts in the style sheet code would cut load time. Instead of font-family: eurostile,arial, sans-serif; font-size: 0.8em; font-weight: bold;, the same can be accomplished with font: bold .8em eurostile,arial,sans-serif;. Likewise, font-family: arial,sans-serif; font-size: 0.7em; line-height: 1.3em; can be consolidated into font: .7em/1.3em arial,sans-serif;, and background-color: #909; can be consolidated into background: #909;.

Comments (10) / Permalink

July 24, 2002, 9:30 PM ET

A new feature: news site reviews

AgentKen asked for some comments on one of his current projects. I've also received a few e-mails from readers requesting reviews of their own news sites. With that in mind, I'm going to start a regular feature on holovaty.com: news site reviews.

Reviews will focus on the technical ins and outs of sites -- including design, usability, information architecture, cleanliness of code, and accessibility. I'll try to make suggestions for improvements and, at the same time, point out cool features or ideas that other people in the industry might find interesting.

I'll try to post a new review every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. And, of course, readers are welcome to join in and post their own opinions on the sites I review by clicking "Comments." In fact, I insist. I want this to be a place where people can exchange ideas, teach and inspire one another.

Eventually I'll add discussion boards to this site so all outward communication won't have to go through me. Until then, you can submit a site for review by e-mailing me.

Without further ado, I've posted the Eco Latino review.

Comments (6) / Permalink

July 22, 2002, 11:37 PM ET

Holovaty.com site improvements

I just added a custom-built search engine. It's on the upper right of every page, assuming you're using a current browser. (Otherwise it's at the bottom of every page.) It only searches blog entries, but I'll add comment-searching functionality soon. Please let me know whether anything breaks, or if you have suggestions.

Another feature I just finished: a page that lists the 15 latest comment postings. I've found that some of our discussions have kept going for days, and it's hard to keep track of the latest postings. A permanent link to this page will be up soon.

Also, AgentKen suggested I provide a way to fix typos in comments. Right off the bat, I can think of two solutions to this problem:

• Upon comment submission, have users provide a password that will let them change their comments at any time.
• Display a "preview" screen before a comment is posted.

Which one's preferable?

Comments (10) / Permalink

July 22, 2002, 1:13 PM ET

Keeping popup blockers in mind

The Wall Street Journal has a story about the fierce "arms race" between advertisers and companies that make popup-ad-blocking software, where "each side is working feverishly to outmaneuver the other."

A problem, the article notes, is that popup-blocking software, like Pop-Up Stopper, often has negative side-effects. Mainly, if you disable JavaScript popup ad windows, you'll also disable any other site functionality that relies on JavaScript popups and does not provide an alternate, non-JavaScript link. This problem affects not only users of popup-blocking software, but those who've turned off JavaScript manually, as well. A few examples of inaccessible content at time of this writing:

• The "Play video" links in MSNBC articles
• The "On Assignment" link on washingtonpost.com's Camera Works
• The "War on Terror" video reports on sptimes.com
• Online polls on dallasnews.com and CNN.com
• Photo galleries on boston.com
• Video clips on cbsnews.com and abcnews.com

With JavaScript turned off, a user can't access any of those features. And news sites usually provide no explanation of why a link or feature won't work without JavaScript. (One exception: sacbee.com provides a nice message to JavaScript-disabled browsers explaining some of the site's features require scripting.)

There's an easy way to make your pages accessible to non-JavaScript browsers and users of popup-blocking software: Use the NOSCRIPT tag, and code your popup links appropriately.

Comments (5) / Permalink

July 18, 2002, 10:46 PM ET

Knight Ridder sites regain some design control

Steve Outing reports Knight Ridder has backed off from its strategy of applying the same design to several Web sites in its chain. (Example: The Miami Herald vs. The San Jose Mercury News vs. The Kansas City Star.) Here are the only design details the article provides:

Local newspapers in the KR chain now have more control over their own Web sites -- with the ability to decide for themselves (mostly) what they wish to emphasize (city.com vs. newspaper.com) and more control over how their sites look. They have more options for making the sites best reflect their communities, rather than be saddled with a corporate-wide design.

Despite the fact that there were a few too many "more"s and "mostly"s in there -- and not enough "all"s or "completely"s -- it's good to see Knight Ridder's changing its tune. As many have said before, the current sites are completely devoid of character, horrid examples of cookie-cutter design. (One KR online editor was so frustrated he wrote a letter to his readers apologizing for the design and explaining his helplessness.)

This is great news. I hope it doesn't take long for the sites to redesign.

Comments (3) / Permalink

July 18, 2002, 9:47 PM ET

Search engine lets users control its design

This isn't directly related to news sites, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing more of this soon: AlltheWeb, a search engine that's quickly gaining popularity, yesterday introduced a new feature, Alchemist. The press release gives details, but basically, it lets users design AlltheWeb to their liking, using style sheets. Fonts too small? Make 'em bigger. Don't like the color scheme? Paint it however you'd like. Your style sheet is yours to play with.

It's simple technology -- albeit unoriginal, as Waferbaby has had a similar feature for quite a while -- but it's significant because AlltheWeb is a relatively high-profile site. Perhaps other sites will take notice and realize the benefits of standards-compliant designs that separate content from presentation.

I predict news sites will be strongly hesitant to adapt such a feature -- God knows some are already nervous enough putting their content online for free -- but eventually a site will buckle and the followers will follow.

Comments (5) / Permalink

July 18, 2002, 8:42 AM ET

Redesign at nydailynews.com

The New York Daily News redesigned its Web site Wednesday. New features: A monstrously large photo on each section front, DHTML-driven navigation and a 468x60 banner ad directly above all stories.

But before we delve into the redesign, let's look at the old site design for some perspective. Here are two versions of the old design's story pages. (They come to you courtesy of folks who happened to copy the Daily News' source code directly to their own Web sites.)

• Story from August 18, 2000
• Story from March 12, 2001 (In PDF format)

The old pages were pretty run-of-the-mill, standard online newspaper pages. A gray left rail; small, box-like icons for navigation; and a standing "quick search" form. The most exciting thing happening was the use of Impact as their headline font, which you don't see often.

Now, it's changed dramatically. Here are some first impressions:

• Body copy has changed from the staid Times New Roman to a much more hip Georgia. Unfortunately, the type size is set in pixels, which means users of IE on PC won't be able to resize the text if they can't read it. (Speaking of font styles, the style sheet doesn't validate because of a few missing commas; this is nitpicky but important.)
• Navigation is much, much easier. A new horizontal navbar allows users to change sections quickly. And it's augmented by drop-down menu functionality that lets users dig even deeper.
• A bold section header appears at the top of most story pages, shouting out the user's current location and occupying about two-thirds of the page's width. It's almost as if this site cares more about its section's individual brands than its own brand -- "Daily News" is buried above each section heading, easily defeated. It's great to know exactly which section you're in at all times (well, except for a few sections that simply feature the Daily News logo in this area), but something about the position of the section headers, along with the thick, black lines, makes me think they're ads at first glance.
• The gray left rails on many story pages feel rather naked. They're completely empty on most pages, except when a story includes related links of some sort. They might consider carrying over a feature from their previous design by including the search form there on each page.
• They've provided a nice, detailed explanation of the redesign to help users who might feel overwhelmed or disoriented. This is great stuff. One interesting part was their policy on linking to old stories: "If you used links to stories from the NYDailyNews.com archives on your website, you will need to contact our Webmaster to get the new URLs. There is a $40 fee for this service, which may be waived for select media websites and some community/nonprofit organizations." Seems a bit steep to me, and a bit illogical; after one site links to nydailynews.com, won't that "secret" new URL be available to the public anyway?
• Curiously, there is no 404 page. Instead, any erroneous or nonsensical URL will be automatically redirected to the home page. This can be confusing and frustrating for users who might have mistyped a URL or clicked on a broken internal link. Not to mention countless previous links and bookmarks to nydailynews.com are now bad, from what I can tell.
• The Today's Headlines page is a convenient list of all stories on the site on a particular day. It's so simple but so helpful; I don't know why more sites don't do this. One thing this page could do better, though, is to keep headlines on one line. Strangely, many of the headlines currently on that page are split up into two lines, and there's no way of easily telling where one headline ends and the next begins. The headlines do turn a different color when rolled over, but this page would be a lot more usable if the headlines were in a list-item format.
• The site's ALT attributes are few and far between. I've created a page listing all the images from the home page with corresponding ALTs; most images are missing them. (The useful "ALT attributes - show all" favelet from this page made this page for me in seconds.)
• There's a link to discussion forums at the bottom of story pages: "? What do you think? Post your comments on our Forums." This link goes to the generic forum page. It'd be more useful if the link went directly to the specific forum for this type of story (e.g. if you were reading a story about the Yankees, it would take you to the Yankees forum.)
• And, finally, a look under the home page's hood reveals it uses insanely huge HTML comments to delineate the page's structure for (I assume) page producers. I question the extravagant use of these: When I checked, the home page weighed 68,084 bytes. After I deleted some of the comments, it weighed 58,371 bytes. What's more important -- thoroughly commented code for the nydailynews.com producers, or a faster page load for thousands of users?

That's it for now. Feel free to add your own review (or review of my review) by posting a comment below.

Comments (9) / Permalink

July 17, 2002, 12:05 AM ET

Using HTML headings for headlines

The latest post in Mark Pilgrim's 30 Days to a More Accessible Weblog series encourages designers to use proper HTML headers. The main advantage of using proper header tags (e.g. H1, H2, H3) to define the logical structure of your Web pages is that headings will still have meaning in browsers that don't support graphics.

It's one thing to use FONT tags to make your headlines stand out in traditional graphical browsers. It's another to define the underlying structure of your documents so non-graphical browsers (Lynx, voice browsers, Web-enabled handheld devices, etc.) can also identify headlines as important pieces of your document. For example, Mark points out that JAWS, a screen-reading browser, announces the number of headers on a page, after which a user may select the header he or she wants to jump to.

This is an outstanding tip, and there's no reason news sites shouldn't be utilizing structural markup tags like H2 for their headlines. The technique introduces no harmful side effects; it only improves a site's accessibility. (And did I mention it'll help Google rank your headline's keywords higher?)

But the sad news, as always, is that news sites tend to have inaccessible markup. I examined the code of several news sites this evening to see which sites used the preferred method -- heading tags -- and which sites used FONT tags or CSS. I split the results into three divisions. (Methodology: I checked at least two standard news story pages on each site.)

Division I

These sites used proper HTML structure to define their headlines.

• sacbee.com came closest to ideal markup (even though the H1 tag wasn't used), using H2 for headlines, H3 for decks and H4 for bylines.
• cnn.com used H1 tags for story headlines.
• azcentral.com used H2 for headlines.
• nytimes.com used H2 for headlines.
• sptimes.com used H2 for headlines and H3 for subheads within stories.
• suntimes.com used H2 for headlines.

Division II

These sites used Cascading Style Sheets and/or inline styling to apply graphical formatting to their headlines.

• abcnews.com
• cbsnews.com
• chicagotribune.com
• cjonline.com (also used FONT tags)
• csmonitor.com
• espn.com
• indystar.com
• latimes.com
• miami.com
• news.bbc.co.uk
• orlandosentinel.com
• startribune.com
• stltoday.com
• sunspot.net
• tampatrib.com (also used FONT tags)
• usatoday.com

Division III

These sites only used old-school FONT tags to apply graphical formatting to their headlines.

• ajc.com
• boston.com/globe
• guardian.co.uk
• seattletimes.com
• washingtonpost.com

Comments (10) / Permalink

July 15, 2002, 10:48 PM ET

NAA awards announced

The Newspaper Association of America has presented this year's Digital Edge Awards. The big winners this year were CJOnline, SavannahNOW.com and washingtonpost.com. My favorite is Hannibal.net's Mark Twain site, complete with videos of Mark Twain impersonators.

There's some great journalism here. I just wish there were an award for accessibility -- a reward for site creators who take the time to make their content easily accessible to all users, regardless of browser type. We're a long way from such an award, but introducing something along these lines might incent sites to do better.

Comments (6) / Permalink

July 15, 2002, 12:10 PM ET

Online credibility survey

DallasNews.com and affiliates are conducting an online credibility survey that asks, "How credible are online news sources?" It claims to be "the largest online news survey ever undertaken on the credibility of online news sources." Evidently the study's results "will be used by journalists across the country to improve online news services."

I spent some time looking over the questions and was disheartened to find there was no attempt to determine a corrolation between credibility and good Web design; instead, most questions focused on content and usage patterns.

The lack of design questions is disappointing because past studies have shown that Web design can communicate trustworthiness, and credibility can be increased by the use of high-quality graphics. Clearly there's some kind of corrolation there, and it'd be interesting to see whether it extends to news sites.

A question like "Do you find well-designed news sites to be more credible than poorly designed sites?" would have made this survey more credible.

Comments (6) / Permalink

July 14, 2002, 11:16 PM ET

Design copycats

"Stealing" content has been the talk of the online content industry lately, but here's another type of stealing that many people rarely think about -- design theft.

MediaGuardian.co.uk has an interesting article about theft of online design, which claims, "[w]hile most website operators know ripping off content is rife, the lifting of online design -- from entire sites to individual elements -- is just as widespread."

Great point. In fact, Web design theft is so widespread there's an entire site, pirated-sites.com, devoted to spotlighting particularly blatant cases.

I only found one news site in pirated-sites.com's archive, but I'm convinced news sites are some of the worst design stealers out there. (An example: The left-rail navigation of washingtonpost.com vs. that of U.S. News. I think the Post's came first.)

But who can blame 'em? For the most part, news sites have similar content, similar information architecture and, ultimately, similar missions. There are only so many ways that a Web page can present and organize "News," "Opinion," "Sports," and "Features." Plus, consider Web designers' limited font choices and somewhat-limited color choices, along with the philosophy that sites should abandon individualism in favor of usability, and you end up with very little room to move.

Still, that's no excuse. I know from experience how it feels to be ripped off -- my You Write the Caption site on ajc.com was blatantly copied by the Baltimore Sun, and they even admitted it after I e-mailed them -- and I think news sites should keep a steadier eye out for design copycats and maintain originality in their own designs, if for nothing else than for credibility.

For instance, I just plain wouldn't feel right ordering anything from Musician's Friend, seeing that its design is a direct copy of Amazon.com. Because they're not willing to invest in an original design, I can't help but wonder whether their products are similarly second-rate. Same goes for news sites; when I visited usnews.com for the first time, I felt the site was cheapened by the fact that its left rail looked exactly the same as washingtonpost.com's. (Of course, I'm a font and design junkie and thus notice these things more than the average Web surfer, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who has felt this way.)

A final thought: Ivan Hoffman, an Internet law attorney, has published some legal Articles for Web Site Designers and Site Owners, including advice on protecting your site's look and feel. While I don't necessarily condone legal action to ward off copycats, it's interesting to note that it's indeed a realistic option.

Comments (15) / Permalink

July 12, 2002, 4:36 PM ET

Strange section titles

I've just posted a comment to Poynter's online-news list-serv about some news sites' strange section titles. Someone had asked whether online news staffs could benefit from attending usability conferences. My reply:

You bet your bippy online newspaper staffs can benefit from usability conferences. Steve Y. nailed it: Most newspaper sites' designs try to replicate a print product. And it's disgusting.

I can't tell you how many times I've happened upon a newspaper site for the first time and been mystified by its strange section titles. Take a look at some of these and see if you can guess what kind of content lurks behind them:

• Highway 1
• Periscope
• Good Turns
• Surroundings
• Xpress
• Metromix
• FYI
• PageSix

(I don't mean to pick on these sites in particular; they're just the first few I stumbled upon.)

"FYI"? Isn't *everything* on a newspaper site supposed to be FYI? "PageSix"? That's very relevant in a newspaper, but online, it's meaningless. I'm from Chicago, so I'm familiar with "Metromix" -- but who's to say an outsider will know what that is?

Etc, etc, etc.

Producers of these sites might make the argument that repeat users will eventually *learn* the meaning of these vague terms. But what's the percentage of Internet users who just happen upon your site, say via a search engine, at any given time? I recall hearing it was a relatively high number.

Anyway, yes, newspaper sites have a long way to go in terms of usability. I've only mentioned a single usability problem above, but there are way too many others.

Since posting, I've found a few more:

• Compass
• XLent
• Insight

Thoughts? Seen any really wacky section titles? Post a comment.

Comments (13) / Permalink

July 12, 2002, 12:50 PM ET

Helping the uninitiated 'get it'

Here's a great cause that's worth helping: A few members of evolt.org's thelist list-serv have begun a campaign to put together an informational kit that explains, in plain English, why sites should adopt Web standards. In theory, it'd be an explanatory white paper -- complete with charts, laws and real-life case studies -- that Web designers could take to their bosses/managers/clients and say, "This is why our site should be standards-compliant. Here's the proof."

All right! I can't wait to see what they come up with. The best part is, anyone can help. They've set up a Yahoo Group and have begun preliminary discussions on where the group is going and who's helping out with what. Do the Web a favor and check 'em out.

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 12, 2002, 8:43 AM ET

USATODAY.com hacked

USATODAY.com reports hackers "penetrated the site and vandalized the homefront" late last night. Ananova reports bogus stories appeared on the site's home page. Matt Drudge reports the bogus stories included "Bush proposes another new Cabinet post," "Opps says the Pope; Christianity a Sham!" and "Donald Rumsfeld: An American Beauty?"

USATODAY.com was taken offline and restored a few hours later, according to the note on its Web site.

Comments (5) / Permalink

July 11, 2002, 7:14 PM ET

At Economist.com, compliance is in the works

David Wertheimer, design director of Economist.com (and fellow blogger), outlined some fantastic future plans for his site in a WebDesign-L post yesterday. Namely, he and his team are planning to rewrite their site in standards-compliant code. Here's a snippet of what David wrote:

1. We are looking into the adoption of limited-use CSS for our text rendering, which will significantly reduce our HTML once more -- time to phase out the "178 font tags" noted here earlier. Issues remain, and implementaion may take several months, but development is underway.

2. We are determining a formal doctype (debating HTML 4 and XHTML 1.1, if you're curious), and new development will soon be written with compliant code, start to finish, preparing Economist.com for the future as well as the present.

I continue to stand by my opinions that providing consistent page delivery and a backward-compatible user experience is tantamount to good design.

At the same time, I am moving Economist.com forward, with code compliance and simpler page structure, and we are doing so with an eye on our browser stats and a clean, consistent design. I am proud of this achievement and I encourage the design community to strive for similar goals.

Outstanding! The fact that the director of a major site was willing to openly discuss -- and encourage suggestions for -- some of his site's flaws is admirable in itself. But even cooler than that is his dedication to Web standards and clean page structure. To my knowledge, this is unprecedented. (News sites traditionally have had terrible code.) I hope this gets the ball rolling in the industry, and I have a feeling it will, once David and crew begin to reap the many benefits of their work and other sites take notice.

Comments (21) / Permalink

July 11, 2002, 1:26 PM ET

Auto-refresh on news home pages

I was taking my merry time while browsing the headlines on a news site's home page late last night, and suddenly the page reloaded on me.

I hate it when that happens.

Yes, some news sites' home pages are set to refresh automatically after a certain number of seconds. Here are a few offenders, ranked by number of seconds between refreshes:

• Boston Herald -- 300 seconds
• Los Angeles Times -- 300 seconds
• ABC News -- 600 seconds
• Boston Globe -- 900 seconds
• New York Times -- 900 seconds
• Wall Street Journal -- 900 seconds
• CNN -- 1800 seconds
• Denver Post -- 1800 seconds
• Denver Rocky Mountain News -- 1800 seconds
• USA Today -- 1800 seconds
• Washington Post -- 1800 seconds

I can only assume the producers of these news sites do this for two reasons: to make sure their users see the very latest headlines, and/or to drive up their page views. Let's tackle these reasons one at a time.

Using auto refresh to ensure users see the very latest headlines. Oh, please. Let's give users some credit. I think it's safe to say that the majority of Web users know...

• how to use a "refresh" button
• that pages they're viewing are only current as of the second they loaded the page

If users want the latest news, they'll hit "refresh." And if they're confused enough not to know how to use the "refresh" button, just think how confused they'd get if their page automatically reloaded in their faces.

Using auto refresh to drive up page views. This, like related "strategies" (e.g. making users click through several pages just to get content, in order to get more page views), is incredibly ridiculous, unethical and just plain sneaky in the worst ways possible. Any online journalist who does this willingly should really reconsider his or her career: Try spamming, telemarketing, etc., instead. It's more up your alley.

But back to auto-refresh. Not only does it offer no advantages, but it presents several disadvantages in your site's accessibility and usability.

Let's start at the top. The World Wide Web Consortium, in its "Techniques for Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0", flat-out says:

Until user agents provide the ability to stop the refresh, do not create periodically auto-refreshing pages.

This is a Priority 2 guideline, which means Web developers should do this. There are browsers that do provide the ability to stop auto-refresh, but I don't believe this feature isn't readily available in mainstream browsers yet -- at least the three or four Mac and PC browsers I use. (Please correct me if I'm wrong by posting a comment below.)

Why the guideline? The W3C gives an example of a "retiree with several aging-related conditions" who tends to avoid sites that auto-refresh because he can't get through the site without having the carpet pulled out from under him via an auto-refresh. It's not just retirees; some people read slowly, period -- and couple that with the fact that, people read 25% slower from computer screens than paper. Has anyone given some serious thought to how many people auto-refresh pisses off?

So, we've established auto-refresh is bad. But what to do? Simple. Make it an "opt-in" option. The Simplified Web Accessibility Guide offers this solution:

[W]hen using a continually updated page, inform the users that they should reload the page often...If using auto-refresh is unavoidable, provide a single line of text at the top of the page stating that the page contains changing information and will automatically reload itself after a certain amount of time. Also, provide a link to the next screen for those browsers that don't support the feature.

Or, if you insist on auto-refresh for whatever diabolical reason, fess up, and provide a way out. Digital Web Magazine suggests, "If you must create an auto-refreshing page, warn the user and allow them to request more time, if possible."

Good examples of this are washingtonpost.com's Live Online chats, during which users may specifically designate "Automatically Update Page" (in the left rail). But the default pages do not automatically update.

Comments (21) / Permalink

July 10, 2002, 12:52 PM ET

An important day in accessibility

Today's the "most important day" in Mark Pilgrim's accessibility series. The topic: text equivalents for images. In short, he says every image needs an ALT attribute.

This is an oldie but goodie, relatively well known compared to some of his other tips, but that doesn't make it less important.

Something I've found useful (and that Mark didn't mention) is the "ALT attributes -- show all" favelet on this page. It's a tiny, bookmarkable script that gives you a list of all the images on whatever page is open in your browser, along with their corresponding ALT values. That way, you can easily weed out the images that don't have 'em.

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 9, 2002, 11:11 PM ET

And the survey says

In tomorrow's Toronto Globe and Mail: On-line surveys help sites improve. The article makes this claim:

Having the best Web designers on the planet is no guarantee of getting it right the first time, or even the second. The only way to know for sure that you're hitting the mark is to ask customers.

In reading it, I was instantly reminded of Jakob Nielsen's column First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users, in which he claims:

To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behavior.

OK, so we have two very different opinions here. But I think they're both valid points.

I'm of the belief that users know a little something about their Web surfing habits, and therefore it can be useful to ask them what your site is doing wrong or right. But Jakob has a point -- sometimes users aren't the coldest beers in the fridge, and what they say isn't really helpful.

I'm curious as to how common these online surveys are in the Web news world. To what degree do sites use them? Are they helpful? My experience with them has been minimal.

Comments (3) / Permalink

July 9, 2002, 10:49 PM ET

List-mania

Today's Web accessibility tip from Mark encourages us to use the real code for HTML lists, rather than hard-coding in an image before each item in your lists.

This tip is especially appropriate for news sites, considering lists of headlines are the bread and butter of most of their home pages.

To see the hard-coded images in action, check out the News Break section on the right side of ajc.com's home page -- each of those red arrows is a separate image. Same goes for CJOnline's home page, but in its case the arrows are double arrows, and they're blue. Neither site has an ALT attribute set for the arrow images, which means people using a text-only browser will see [redarrow] each time that image is used on ajc.com, and [blue_double_arrow] for every instance on CJOnline.

Of course, I don't mean to pick on these two sites in particular. After browsing for a few more minutes, I found many more examples:

• The Tampa Tribune (blue triangles)
• Newsday (red blobs)
• The Detroit News (red triangles)
• The Boston Globe (maroon triangles)
• The Boston Herald (somewhat three-dimensional blue balls)
• The Christian Science Monitor (a golden arrow)

I also noticed some sites use normal text bullets but go out of the way to style them in a different color or font. This is fine and dandy from an accessibility standpoint (text bullets should show up as text bullets regardless of your browser environment, as long as nothing funky happens with character sets), but I think it's wasteful -- and downright silly -- to do this. Here are some culprits:

• The Washington Post (bullets in red Arial vs. text in blue MS Sans Serif)
• The RealCities sites, e.g. San Jose Mercury News (arrows in orange vs. text in blue)
• The Village Voice (orange bullets vs. black text)

For all these sites, OL and UL tags would simplify the lists tenfold -- they'd be easier to maintain, the pages would be lighter (assuming stylesheets were used), and in some cases they'd be more accessible. News sites have got to clean up their flab.

Comments (7) / Permalink

July 8, 2002, 8:16 PM ET

Redoing your old pages in CSS, step by step

Digital Web Magazine has published a great tutorial on converting current Web designs to CSS. After a detailed run-through of a sample redesign, the author compares the file sizes of the table-based and CSS-based designs, concluding...

Contemporary CSS methods do win a victory in a head-to-head match based on file sizes. But more importantly, using CSS for pure presentation allows the removal of all spacer GIFs, HTML tables, and a total of 31 images! The benefits of dropping those methods are sizable savings by themselves. Couple these savings with the added bonus of valid markup that will work in standards compliant Web devices, and it's very clear that CSS is the way to go.

Well said. Now, only if news sites listened.

Comments (5) / Permalink

July 8, 2002, 4:18 PM ET

Bowing down to Microsoft

Here's a depressing story from news.com: Sites bow to Microsoft's browser king The headline about says it all; the article claims many Web developers are ignoring Web standards in favor of using proprietary Internet Explorer code.

On the other hand, here's a reaction to the story from a member of the Web Standards Project.

Comments (3) / Permalink

July 8, 2002, 12:14 PM ET

Spacer GIFs and ALT attributes

The latest tip in Mark Pilgrim's 30 days to a more accessible weblog series is to use an empty ALT attribute on spacer images so non-graphical browsers will ignore them.

In my mind, spacer GIFs, which are transparent 1x1-pixel images that some Web designers use to achieve precise positioning of elements on their pages, are a severe bastardization of what HTML was intended to be. Images are meant to add pictures and graphics to your Web pages -- not to push your text over 155 pixels to the right, to set up an adequate margin. (That's what style sheet properties are for.)

But aside from that argument, spacer GIFs have a terrible effect on text-only browsers. (This is Mark Pilgrim's main point.) Since a text-only browser can't display images, it displays the ALT (alternate) text for images in their place. Thus, a page with lots of spacers might look like this in a text-only browser:

[spacer][spacer][spacer]
[spacer]
[spacer][spacer][logo]The Anytown Daily News
[spacer]
...

Not pretty. If the above example had used blank ALT attributes, all of those annoying [spacer]s wouldn't have shown up.

I examined the code of several large newspaper Web site home pages to see how rampant spacer GIFs were. Here's the bad news:

nytimes.com used 103 spacer GIFs, all without ALT attributes. I visited their site with a text-only browser and was met with an ugly sea of [spacer]s. It's clear that text-only browsers are not welcome at The New York Times.

washingtonpost.com used 36 spacer GIFs -- significantly fewer than the Times, but worse, for the following reason: Each spacer image was specifically designated as ALT="spacer". If they cleared these ALT values, they'd make their pages look a lot cleaner in text-only browsers, and cut their home page's load time.

cnn.com used 48 spacers, but they got it right -- each one had ALT="". Nice.

latimes.com used 0 spacers. Instead, their spacing needs were handled by style sheets. Outstanding. CORRECTION: Style sheets handle a part of their spacing needs, but Todd pointed out that the page does indeed use spacers -- 87, in fact. Some have ALTs, some don't.

usatoday.com used 94 spacers. Like nytimes.com, none of them had an ALT attribute. Poor.

chicagotribune.com used 86 spacers. These were all over the map. Some had ALT="", others had ALT="spacer", and still others had no ALT attribute at all.

Comments (10) / Permalink

July 5, 2002, 12:49 AM ET

Web news awards overseas

Winners have been announced for the 2002 European Online Journalism Awards.

Looks like the BBC, fresh off winning the Webby for best news site, has cleaned up again.

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 5, 2002, 12:11 AM ET

A hard day's work

A big deal here in Atlanta is the Peachtree Road Race, the world's largest 10K. This year at ajc.com, we decided to have some database-driven fun with the results. I ended up spending most of my day and night at the office creating the site -- but it turned out to be nifty, I think.

I got the race results at a little after noon today, popped them into a database, set up queries and wrote several programs to generate an assortment of pages. The final product is a wild forest of intertwined HTML pages. I hope users eat it up.

Here are the different ways I've presented the data:

• Results listed by finish time
• Results listed alphabetically by runner's last name
• Results sorted by age group
• Results sorted by runner's hometown city
• Results sorted by runner's state
• Results sorted by runner's country

I'm curious to see how much traffic the site gets -- although I'll quickly say that I'm definitely not a huge proponent of obsessing over site statistics. My personal philosophy is: Put every single bit of information online that you can, and if the information helps at least one person, it was worth it. As Rob Curley says, "Overkill is just the right amount."

Comments (2) / Permalink

July 3, 2002, 1:27 PM ET

Smart code words vs. long, annoying numbers

As mentioned on E-Media Tidbits, the Spanish publication El Mercurio has begun including "Web codes" in its print edition classifieds. A Web code is a long number (e.g., 2011662) printed alongside a classified ad that you can enter into a form field on El Mercurio's Web site to get more information about the product -- like a nifty photo, detailed specifications, etc. -- that, clearly, wouldn't have fit in the newspaper.

It's a nice idea, but I think it the execution could be a bit better. Namely, who wants to remember random numbers? I'd rather be given an intuitive, descriptive, easily remembered code word. Something like "1996 chevy corvette" or "antique wooden table." That would make it much easier for me -- and it just might be easy enough to convince skeptical, or impatient, readers to use the system. (Yes, the numbered "Web code" system is relatively pain-free, too, but I think some people tend to shy away from large numbers. One glance at "2011662," and they might say, "To hell with it.")

It can be argued that if people are interested enough in the product, they'll do whatever it takes to get more information -- including scribbling long numerical codes. Yes, I agree. But for the casual browser, the process can be made much simpler by using easy code words.

(Isn't this why AOL's keywords are supposedly so successful?)

Thoughts? Have you ever seen something like this implemented on a site? Post a comment.

Comments (3) / Permalink

July 2, 2002, 12:38 PM ET

17 days down, 13 to go

Mark Pilgrim's "dive into mark" blog continues its 30-day series on making blogs more accessible. The latest entries: avoiding opening new windows and the importance of defining acronyms. Once again, as I pointed out earlier, this is essential reading for any Web designer who cares about making his or her content accessible to all. I should hope that includes any and all designers of news Web sites.

Comments (1) / Permalink

July 2, 2002, 12:31 PM ET

Online news audience is stagnant

Editor and Publisher reports the results of a new Pew study that reveals the online news audience isn't growing. Specifically, 25 percent of Americans get news online at least three times a week, as compared to 23 percent two years ago.

Why the stagnation? The article suggests that "we are so drenched in information, that news doesn't even stand out as a category."

That's a valid point. But I think the lull in users might also have something to do with news sites' design. People won't want to get news from a Web site if it's not designed in a logical way, or if it just plain looks too busy. Pew ought to do a study that somehow compares news sites' architecture/design with readership. Something like the Stanford-Poynter EyeTrack Study, with less eye tracking and more habit tracking.

Comments (15) / Permalink

July 2, 2002, 11:55 AM ET

A worthwhile wireless world

A Geek News article about the wireless Internet suggests the technology is getting more and more popular -- but handheld wireless devices remain pretty much unusable, because most sites don't cater designs to them. The article's author opines:

I have been surfing the Internet on handhelds for three years now. While things have improved from the beginning, it's still, basically, a nightmare. I feel for Web developers, having to decide whether to fork their site once more for mobiles or attempt to make one version of the page that satisfies all screen sizes. Whatever most of them are choosing to do is not working.

In my mind, the answer is simple: Make sure your Web documents have a logical structure, and move all formatting into a stylesheet. Then designate a stylesheet for each browser type you'd like to support -- from standard Web browsers to handhelds to vocal browsers. Don't enlist programmers to output entirely different HTML pages for each medium; instead, do it the easy way.

This extends to "printer-friendly versions," too. Why make your users load another page just to get a printer-friendly version when you can use printer-friendly stylesheets instead? (A List Apart has a great article on this topic.)

Comments (2) / Permalink

July 1, 2002, 11:44 AM ET

More on user registration

Last week's OJR article about user registration (which I wrote about here) has generated lots of discussion on the Web. Slashdot and Metafilter have picked up the story, and, as expected, most comments are strongly anti-registration. (Much of the Metafilter thread is devoted to posting creative ways of fooling registration/login forms.)

Halleluiah! My personal information belongs to me, thank you very much.

Comments (2) / Permalink