“web”
142 posts under this tag.
My final discovery of A List Apart—a magazine “for people who make websites”—has been late coming, but as the article I’m about to talk about explains, relationships in the web are just difficult to establish (they require “an exorbitant amount of synergy”, why-the-lucky-stiff would say). I’ve been visiting them fairly frequently along the past couple of years and almost always I’ve learned something valuable. It is not only top-notch content, the attention to detail is painstaking too, though it takes you several visits to start noticing it: from the spot-on illustrations (most by the very talented Kevin Cornell), to the helpful snapshot feature at the right, to the issue-number stamp, to the tasteful ads, to the impeccable atmosphere they maintain throughout, to Zeldman’s and Kissane’s careful editing—it’s not a print wannabe, it’s the first web-only alreadyam.
The cover article of issue 221 (as of this moment, the latest) is a gem and the reason I started writing this post. By Amber Simmons, it is wonderfully titled ”Gentle Reader, Stay Awhile; I Will Be Faithful” and deals with how to write (particularly, with how to write for the web) by introducing the never-before-better-named idea of a faithful writer—a writer who thinks of her reader, who anticipates her questions and curiosities; a loyal writer, respectful of her reader’s time and intelligence; a writer who delivers. Truly great advice—I know I’ll never write the same again.
[Inside Friendster] there have also been Fakesters, evidence of how contemporary Americans crave connectedness. Users composed profiles for their pets (and then connected their pets), their colleges (and then connected to their alma maters) and household odds and ends (and then watched the conversation that developed between “salt” and “pepper”). To Ms. [danah] boyd it was interesting not only because people played with identity, but also because of the range of reasons they did so.
Apparently Friendster management could conceive of only one reason: to subvert the site. So it began terminating the Fakesters. That set off a Fakester revolution, complete with a manifesto: ”We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all fakesters and real people are created equal.”
I’ve been plowing through Humanized today and though it’s been somewhat less interesting than I thought it would be (perhaps my expectationsELZR were just too high), here are two very worthy text scraps:
Why do people use Google Maps? Because it’s just so nice to use. Microsoft’s Terraserver gave users access to high resolution satellite images many years before Google Maps did the same. (In fact, while attempting to be clever, I inadvertently terrified my to-be roommate: I used the service to view an aerial photograph of his home and asked him some leading questions about the stuff in his backyard. It took until the second quarter of college before he even talked to me, and then only warily.) But, it wasn’t until Google rethought online maps that the security and privacy issues of such a service came into the national conscience. Why? Because whereas Microsoft had given access to satellite imagery, Google made them accessible.
[Bracket Notation for Editing is] simply three sets of square brackets. The first set denotes deletion, the second set denotes addition, and the third set denotes a comment. It’s easiest to explain by example. Let’s start with a simple sentence plagued by two typical errors:
They called to say that their coming over in an quarter-hour.
An editor might revise the sentence to:
They called to say that the[ir][y’re] coming over in a[n] quarter-hour. [][][Be careful with “their” and “they’re”.]
The link is the first significant new form of punctuation to emerge in centuries..
Steven Johnson, Interface CultureAM, p110-1
Indeed it is, but then we might as well feel warranted to pose the seldom-asked question of why are hyperlinks underlined. Dull utilitarian answers aside, an intriguing yet plausible historical explanation (or rather, re-interpretation) herefollows.
I believe our answer traces back to the humble clothe buttonA, that immemorial “knoblike appendageWP used on wearing apparel either for ornament or for fastening,” forgotten (as much else) during the Middle Ages, dismissed as vanity by the Puritans, and traded to Native Americans by early settlers.
With society’s mechanization through the first and second Industrial RevolutionsWP, there was dire need to create appropriate interfaces for the control of the suddenly ubiquitous machines and one of the simplest, most versatile methods invented came to be called “button”WP, owing to its creative resemblance to the former fashion accessory (both were usually round after all).
One subtle point, which shall prove of great importance later, must be remarked now: Owing to human factorsWP, most control buttons are usually seen from a very specific angle. Words fail me to further describe it but perhaps some pictures can help to illustrate the matter:   the keyboard on the ←left shows the usual, canonical perspective of buttons we’ve grown accustomed to since the late 18th century, and any other perspective, say, the keyboard on the right→, feels immediately awkward.
But back to our story: When the turn came for society’s computerization, there was again dire need to come up with suitable interfaces for the novel symbolic devices. Abstruse command-lineWP interactions followed at first, but thanks to Xerox PARC’sWP bitmap revolution1 graphical interfacesWP were envisioned (and, eventually, accepted). The new art form required new metaphors2 and prompted a creativity explosion that continues to this day, but few metaphors proved more fertile or intuitive than the visual staple that became the “graphic button”. Beveled out, it’s “push affordance”3 invites interaction (a click, a push, a press) like nothing else we’ve come up with since.
With the advent of the inter-network, you guessed it, that direst of needs—the interface—made itself felt again. We needed a way to link geographically and semantically far-flung documentsEE together. So what if Ted NelsonWP himself, hypertext’s father, was thinking in our trusty ole friend, the button, when he came up with his gift to the world?
The hyperlink might just be the latest, abstract, stylized reincarnation of our centuries-old pal, the button.
A 16-page meaty interview with Edward R. Tufte from the Technical Communication Quarterly.
A big intellectual move in my work and my teaching came together in Envisioning Information, which I think is the most original of the books, the most theoretical. It essentially opened the entire world of visual evidence up so evidence was no longer statistical graphics—it was the whole world of seeing and thinking, bringing together how seeing and therefore thinking could be intensified.
Excellence in visual design is largely realized through the creation of graphics that correspond with the mental tasks they are meant to support.
The commonality between science and art is in trying to see profoundly—to develop strategies of seeing and showing. This seeing is not about “Aren’t these pictures of molecules beautiful?” Rather, the point is to recognize the tightness between seeing and thinking on an intellectual level not just a metaphorical level. That tightness is expressed in the very physiology of the eye: the retina is made from brain cells; the brain begins at the back of the eye. Seeing turns into thinking right there.
The purpose of analytical displays of evidence is to assist thinking. Consequently, in constructing displays of evidence, the first question is, “What are the thinking tasks that these displays are supposed to serve?”
My wife and I took our extended honeymoon in Japan in 1985 and lived there for a little while. The intellectual idea was to go to the farthest away, highest resolution, technically advanced culture— that is, to increase the variance of our seeing.
My view on self-publishing was to go all out, to make the best and most elegant and wonderful book possible, without compromise. Otherwise, why do it?
Robert Merton, the great sociologist,.. taught me a great deal about scholarship. It began when he looked over a manuscript of what ultimately became my book on political economy, Political Control of the Economy. Bob did a lot of editorial commenting and was a wonderful editor and kind critic, one-on-one. Near a completely undistinguished paragraph I had written, Bob wrote “an echo of Veblen,” a distinguished social theorist. What this said to me was not that the paragraph was good, but rather “Why don’t you try playing in the big leagues?”—that is, to do work that might last for a long time.
I like to give every student every day lots of pieces of paper, many handouts. For years I had a Xerox machine in my living room, running away the night before my lecture.
Along with thirty-two years of being a professor at Princeton and Yale, I also greatly enjoy teaching out on the road. I go about one week a month on tour and give a one-day course. This has been going on now for twelve years; 120,000 people have attended the one-day course. This does get the word out.
When most people begin their advice about communication, their first grand principle is “know your audience.” In practice, that statement too often leads toward underestimating the quality and interests of the audience. The know-your-audience philosophy can be a big step down the road to pandering to the audience. I think sometimes if we anticipate too much the characteristics of the reader, we are going to censor ourselves or change our work—and I think all too often wrongly.
Having grown up a bit, I try to get out of first-person singular when giving advice. It can be dangerous to listen to authors about how to write or establish communication; they can only say what has worked for them or how they work. With an N of 1, a sample size of 1, the variance is infinite.
In my work, there is an effort to raise standards-—by admiring excellence, saying that there are things that are good and there are things that are bad, so get out and tell the world about it.
A curious consequence [of my work] is that I have become a minor celebrity. I have a hint of what a real celebrity must go through every day—a flood of interesting, encouraging, importuning, angry, weird, scary communications. I am not sure quite how to respond to all this. Now and then I ungratefully mutter Bob Dylan’s remark: “Just because you like my stuff doesn’t mean I owe you anything.”
For those going into the corporate world, the key choice point is where you go to work. You had better, for example, see what clients the company has. Once you start working for the company it is probably too late. The socialization is strong, and the masking of responsibility is strong, so that it is probably a little bit late and a bit hard to ask people to change jobs because we don’t think the companies they work for are doing the right thing.
It is straightforward for me to be ethical, responsible, and kind-hearted because I have the resources to support that. I have a lot of privilege and plenty of resources that enable me to try to do good. I admire President Kennedy’s thought: “To whom much is given, much is expected.”
Probably the only generalization about the Internet is that there is none, which is to say that users can have nearly any experience they desire. Internet users are not prisoners—they are responsible for their experience since they can generate nearly any experience they wish (other than an in-depth historical analysis).
One problem from the user’s point of view is that any given manual may be perfectly fine, but most of us are confronted with a multiplicity of interfaces. Just start to add up all the interfaces: that stove, this dishwasher, that microwave, those cameras, that cell phone, this and that computer, and so on. All the differences among those interfaces make a difference. While all the interfaces can be perfectly good when viewed individually, in aggregate it is hard to have much retained learning. For example, when I get a new camera, I take it with me on a trip and dutifully work through the manual. I am the master of that camera in two to three hours and take a few good pictures. I put the camera down and come back a month later, and there is little that has been retained. Somehow we need to have interfaces and explanatory explanations of interfaces that lead to retention and avoid interference from the multiplicity of interfaces.
The top level of most product interfaces is quite good these days. The lower-down levels, where the featuritis fungus thrives, are too often jungles.
I’m trying a different style of highlighting here, sticking to blue and white, and remarking the key word of each paragraph/fragment. What do you think of it? Is it helpful?
I will one day build a Fortune Global 500WP company made out of less people than my then age. The headcount limit should keep it interesting.
Blogger’s own (lousy) spellchecker says blog’s a spelling mistake (and helpfully suggests bloc, Bloch, blows, or bloke instead). Ironic, ain’t it?
Btw, haven’t you felt Blogger has been pretty much abandoned lately? It’s feeling untended and clunky lately, not that it ever was particularly elegant—it’s just that obvious errors aren’t being corrected, obvious improvements (webcraft advances by the minute) aren’t being implemented.
I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by…
— Douglas Adams WP
Oh boy, can you hear the whoosh yet again? For the first deadline (August 5) my excuse was mostly several huge, polished posts (1, 2, 3) that I just started pouring out possessedly one afternoon after another. For the second deadline (August 12—yesterday!), well, no excuse other than that I’m in thrall with Domburi, and despite sleepless nights (day? night? they’ve lost all meaning to me), I’m happily obsessing with details and trying all sorts of innovative things. I’ve reached a strange state of scripting satori: I’m writing HTML through Javascript like no one has before. I swear it’s so weird and powerful that in a way it’s funny. It’s big stuff.
So yes, it’s better to think of my previous Road Map as broad guidelines for what’s to come. Just trust me, when Domburi’s finally out (August 31), it’ll be heart-breakingly beautiful. Till then and thanks for keeping in touch.
Simile is a simple, snappy AJAX timeline from MIT. To keep with the space-time musings of late, it’s a Google Maps for time.
|
RSS
email
