Their customer service has been difficult. They have a phone number, but no one picks up, and you can’t leave a message. Their email response time is much slower than the old ISP, and I don’t have a single person handling a single ticket. This means having to re-explain things to a bunch of people.

I hope everything else goes smoothly, as I’m looking at some much cooler hosting plans that will enable me to have large amounts of space and huge transfer for not too much more a month, and it will allow me to house as many domains in that space as I wish. VPS is looking like a much more interesting option.

But what about Blocklevel.com? For now, I am going to keep it up, and continue blogging. I do need to make some changes, as I am no longer willing to take on clients outside of Behavior.

I’ll write more when I have the chance, as there is so much I want to share with my audience.

For several years, I have been part of the IA/Design weblog community. Like a good netizen, first I read all I could on the topics that interested me. Soon, I found a good group of authors that produced articles worth discussing. I’d leave comments with a consistant username and URL, so over time other readers and authors would know me, and (hopefully) find my comments insightful. In my transition from passive reader to active participant, I found something troubling. I’ve left comments on so many sites, it became impossible to follow up with them. It was then I decided a “reverse trackback” could be a very useful tool.

Trackbacks have existed in the weblog universe since the fine folks at Six Apart created the concept. You can think of a trackback as a “remote comment”. It tells an author of a weblog, “Hey, someone posted an article on another site that references your article”. This is a good idea, as you may want a bit more flexibility in your response than a comment form provides. Of course, this doesn’t solve my problem. I want the ability to track all the comments I’ve made in the past, based on my username. At the time, there wasn’t a central clearinghouse for identifying yourself on multiple weblogs. Now, TypeKey, also from Six Apart, may allow for this functionality.

Originally, I wasn’t too fond of the idea of a central repository for weblog comment authentication. There are too many privacy issues, and too many avenues for abuse. I’m still not keen on the idea, but TypeKey, if given a “push”, could offer the functionality I desire. Let’s assume for a moment, that all weblogs had TypeKey verification. Then, I could log into any site, leave a comment. Later, I could go to my TypeKey account page, and see all the sites that asked for TypeKey verification. I could then click on any one of the entries, and go to my original comment. This would allow me to aggregate my comments, and better manage discussions. TypeKey doesn’t currently offer this functionality, but it should.

There are two “major” microformats hCard, and hCalendar. Both of which are supposed to mimic the standard machine readable vCard and iCalendar format. The microformats use XHTML span tags and class attributes to give meaning to content blocks. But why? As a human being, I can tell that “Sally Jones” is a name, regardless of formatting, and that she lives on “123 Pine Hill”. If I wanted to copy that information, I could simply download the provided vCard, and pop it into my address book. However, what if I am blind, or need to access a webpage from a non-standard browser? Microformats, as they are today won’t help, as human beings still know what an address, date, and name are, and a machine can just as easily grab the supplied vCard or iCalendar file. If those files aren’t available, the site visitor must still manually copy and past the information into their application of choice. There is no benefit to the microformat.

A proper solution is to have additional semantic tags in the next revision of XHTML. I’d like to see tags set up for dialogue, and support for Dublin Core. Those alone would go a very long way in machine interoperability.

At the moment, the existing microformats seem like a solution to a non-problem. Humans have no trouble extracting meaning from context, whereas machines must be told. If machines must be told the type of content, microformats are actually a way to help machines, not humans. Wouldn’t a better way of solving the lack of semantic tags be to add them to the XHTML specification, rather than a poor hack to an existing framework? Microformats, as they are today, are a non-starter. Sorry, Tantek.

• Bokardo, by Joshua Porter. He writes about human/computer interaction inside the “Web 2” universe.
• Particletree, by Ryan and Chris Campbell and Kevin Hale. I just recently found them. Their site is beautiful, and their content is right on the money. Good job, gents!
• Dan Cederholm of SimpleBits fame. He’s always got some new trick in his breast pocket.
• Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds. He writes about the very difficult task of communicating in front of an audience, and does so with aplomb.
• Edward Tufte is a huge influence on how I do my job. Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.
• 37signals The 37signals crew put out some amazing stuff in 2005, including sparking the creation of Ruby on Rails.

The client has a huge selection of downloadable digital content. Not just audiobooks, but periodicals like the The Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, and other spoken word material as well. Because the content on offer spans many genres, it was daunting for the Audible.com subscriber to find what they wanted. To fix this, a new navigation scheme was designed to show the subscriber where they were in the site, and what options were available. Other elements of the page were also enhanced, like the “flickswitch” widget that allows the member to view many items without refreshing the entire page. Various calls to action were made distinct based on function and context, alerting the subscriber to their next step in the browsing experience. Content areas were clarified, better segregating editorial and up-sell content from the primary audio content, resulting in a less distracting experience.

While those changes were very important, an online merchant lives and dies by their shopping cart. If the cart is difficult to use, slow, or broken, it will result in lost sales. While we didn’t have time to totally overhaul the cart experience, we were able to spread the shopping cart checkout process into several pages. Each page has a single purpose making it easy to understand what to do, and what still needed to be done. While it is too early to empirically say the new cart is a success, it has proved useful to our limited test audience.

While this assignment was quick, it was only the first step in a larger vision to overhaul the Audible.com website. We were able to outline a roadmap for the client. Each stage paves the way for the next, enhancing the site’s value to the subscriber, resulting in increased revenue while decreasing maintenance costs.

Launch Date

December 2005

While there are many user agents that are lacking in XHTML and CSS-foo, the biggest roadblock to moving the community forward is Microsoft. They are the 800lb gorilla. With the gigantic installed base of Windows users, Internet Explorer will always be the most widely used browser. Due to this, Microsoft actively and passively dictates which technologies will be used in the future. All the cool new technologies coming out of the W3C mean little if they aren’t adopted by the largest installed base. Luckily, Microsoft realises there is a problem and is trying to catch up. However, as good as their intentions may be, they will always be behind. The smaller mammals will always be quicker to adopt new and exciting technologies.

So what to do? Continue to push for the adoption of open standards. Use them yourself in your projects, evangelise them in your workplace and show your clients the benefit to standards adoption. Use best practices when they make sense. They are called best practices for a reason, but make sure you are adopting the correct best practices for your situation. The Web is mature enough that many people have already gone down the road you are about to embark. Use their knowledge and understanding so you don’t re-invent the wheel. The W3C isn’t faultless. In the past, they’ve come up with some rather vague rules which in some cases, created less interoperability rather than more. Push the W3C to create clear, easily implemented technologies. Finally, always think ahead. Think about what you are doing now, and how it will be used in the future. Keep it simple.

So while it may be difficult to move ahead, it’s not impossible. The people who create browsers will adopt the technologies their users want. If we choose interoperability through open standards, future browsers will implement them. However, it starts with us. We must voice our thoughts, otherwise we all stagnate.

A bit of history. Long ago, Tantek Çelik saw that there was a problem with how Internet Explorer in Windows rendered the Box Model. The problem was sized block level elements with margins and/or padding took up a different amount of space on the page, adversely affecting the presentation of these elements. Through trial and error, he found a “magical” character sequence in CSS that caused IE to choke, and stop reading a CSS declaration. He used this to feed one value to IE, and feed the “correct” values to all other browsers. And thus, the Box Model Hack (or BMH) was born.

Over time, other people discovered that they could use similar methods to feed various browsers one rule, and other browsers another. This was great, as these hacks prevented the less-savvy browsers from attempting something they couldn’t properly render. People visiting the site wouldn’t get an identical experience, but at least these hacks would prevent the visitor from getting a bad experience.

What happens over time, when a browser that used to be unable to render something properly suddenly becomes a model citizen? Your hack sequence may still work, so you will feed the newly-fixed browser the wrong information, resulting in a bad user experience. This means you have to go back and rip apart your CSS code and take out the hacks. Best practices say we should separate CSS files for our hacked declarations. Doing this allows the programmer to easily find and change the code during such a problem.

Let’s take this one step further, and think about the nature of hacks themselves. Most of them include the use of a magical escape sequence to confuse a browser into cooperating. What if we didn’t use a magical escape sequence, but instead used a proper CSS selector that the problem browser just doesn’t understand (and therefore won’t render)? The idea behind this is the hope that both problems will be fixed in a new version of the browser, and the hacked CSS won’t break the new version.

In my hunt, I discovered that IE doesn’t understand Child Selectors. This made my life easier, as I didn’t need to remember a fragile magic sequence. I would make a simple declaration in CSS for IE, and afterward use child selector notation to feed the correct values to the smarter browsers. The downside is this method requires a bit of extra code, but we’re talking about a few characters. Considering most web servers send the browser compressed data, and the CSS file is cached on the client side, the extra bytes are negligible.

CSS has a method of calling an arbitrary element that is a child of another element. The syntax looks like: html>body>p {font-size: 1.6em} Which technically says “Find all <p> elements that are inside the <body> element which in turn, is inside the html element.” Of course, the easier way to think about this is “every <p> element in the document” (you can only have one <html> and one <body> element per document, and all valid <p> elements are inside the <body>). This notation could just have easily been written as: html>p {font-size: 1.6em} or body>p {font-size: 1.6em}

Because not all browsers render CSS properly, I encourage you to follow the best practices of separating your CSS patches from your main CSS file, and using proper selector sequences in lieu of magic sequences where possible. Doing so will give your code extra flexibility when your target browsers get updated.

Update:

It seems Tantek has chimed in on exactly this subject here.

In order to best meet the needs of the users, I needed to understand why and how people use a corporate identity website. During the discovery process, I interviewed different types of users directly and observed how they worked. From this, I came to a preliminary navigation scheme.

People come to a corporate identity website to understand how to responsibly apply brand content to a product. This implies that every user has an idea of the medium (print, web, video, etc.) and the application (press release, banner ad, etc.) of their product. With this, the Quicklink navigation widget was born. The Quicklink widget allows the user to simply select a medium along with an application, and is then taken to the appropriate page. The rest of the navigation consists of medium-specific content sections and a full-text search. The content sections exist to give an overview of how the Reuters brand is applied across that medium. Users are encouraged to click on the individual application to get specific guidelines. Navigational elements are available in full-view, so users can quickly scan the available links and select the most appropriate.

For creative vendor partners, we included several downloadable assets, such as application-native swatches to make it easy for them to apply brand-correct fonts, imagery, and colour to a project. For our Business users, we made sure to incude many downloadable “plug and play” templates. They can download these pre-styled templates and add their own content, allowing them to concentrate on their message.

The project was a smashing success for both Reuters and Blocklevel. Using a small team and an iterative approach allowed the design process to be completed within a scant few weeks. The result is a new Reuters Corporate Identity Website that is easily updated by the staff, and best serves the needs of its users.

Launch Date

November 2005

I keep a small notebook in my bag at all times. My bag is with me, always. It’s a spiral-bound, 6" by 9" single subject notebook with a pocket in the inside front cover. It has a perforated edge (to tear out leaves), and about 250 leaves. I purchased it at a drugstore for under $3 USD. Hipsters who swear by their Moleskine need to get over themselves. I am not going to pay $17 for a notebook, especially one with a flimsy cardboard cover that doesn’t want to stay open. Yes, they look cool, but I don’t get paid to look cool. I get paid to produce. Forking over $17 for a notebook will not make me more productive, nor increase the quality of my output. Pen and paper are Alpha tools, without them, there is nothing. That is why they’re in my toolbox.

I code everything by hand. I’ve found that WYSIWYG editors don’t create solid, semantic code. This makes them useless to me, even for rapid prototyping. With BBEdit, I have the ability to write code, validate, debug, and view results directly within the application. This allows me to build prototypes faster, making my clients happy. We like happy clients, and that’s why BBEdit is in my toolbox.

The Idea of KGTD came from a book with a huge cult following called “Getting Things Done”. The concept being that if everything you need to do in your life is broken into very small tasks, then grouped in to projects, you are always moving closer to your goal. You’re in a continual state of accomplishment. Tasks are supposed to be small, and easily accomplished in a minimum of time. Tasks that take a long time should be broken into smaller tasks and grouped as a project. Pretty simple idea, and it seems to work for many people.

While I don’t subscribe to the whole GTD scheme, I have found that KGTD helps me manage my tasks. It allows my brain to concentrate on more important things than merely keeping track of all the things I need to do. It also integrates into Apple’s iCal calendaring application. Because of this, it also has iPod integration, so I have my to-dos with me whenever I have my iPod (and that would be all the time). It makes my life easier, and that’s why I consider it part of my toolbox.

I’ve been using OmniGraffle Pro since its first incarnation on MacOS X. During every iteration, I’ve found a reason to upgrade. The Folks at OmniGroup write good code, and add features that are useful to their users. We like this approach to application design. In their latest version, they’ve added the ability to make “Master Canvases”. If you’ve used Quark XPress, InDesign, or any other professional page layout application, you know the concept. You create a Master Canvas, and you can link subsequent pages to that Master. Changes in the Master affect all linked pages. Had this been available in the prior version, it would have saved me days of effort.

It’s not a perfect application. It tends to be slow on a G4 laptop with thousands of elements on a page, and while generally spot on, their smart guides/”snap to” function can sometimes make it difficult to properly align objects merely by dragging one. Despite these flaws, it’s a solid tool that earned its place in my toolbox.

However, if you take the time and read the (quite accessible) manual, you discover all sorts of time saving ideas and advanced features including voice recording, global styles, and very good integration with OmniGraffle, and AppleScript. My favourite feature of OmniOutliner Pro is the ability to take an outline and open it directly from OmniGraffle Pro, to create an instant “one click” sitemap. That feature alone gives it a place in my toolbox.

From what I’ve observed, two types of tagging have become popular. Author-based tagging is performed by content creators. This is often considered a “top-down” approach to classification. User-based tagging, lets the user decide how to categorise the content they are consuming. This method is considered a “bottom-up” approach to classification.

Author based tagging isn’t any different from the content buckets that most Information Architects use to categorise content. Because the tags are a type of controlled vocabulary, the user is assured some measure of consistency. This is a benefit, as the user is then more likely to find the information they for which they are looking. The down-side to this method is the user now has to understand the methodology behind the categorisation process in order to get what they want. To mitigate this problem, it is up to the Information Architect to make these categories clear and unambiguous. A job that is sometimes very difficult.

User-based tagging can be separated into two types. Private tagging is when the user tags the content in an ad hoc fashion. These tags are not visible to anyone but the tagger. Public tagging is also ad hoc, but users can see all the tags applied to the content from all users.

Private tagging takes care of the problems inherent with a top-down classification system. Perhaps I don’t think the same way as the content authors, or maybe I have special needs. Having the ability to categorise the content in a way I can understand is empowering. I am more apt to come back to a website if I have sorted content based on my personal needs.

Public tagging is beneficial if you as a user aren’t sure about what you seek. It allows for greater serendipity, as you have many heads deciding what content is similar. Public tagging isn’t without problems. Noise is just one. As you are dealing with many interpretations of ‘similar’, you aren’t guaranteed relevancy for every piece of content tagged with the same keyword. It’s fun to see how other people categorise something. However, if public tagging is your only method of classifying content, you’re left with chaos. Public tagging can also be gamed. Malicious users can purposely pollute the “Tag Sphere” by tagging every bit of content with every possible tag –effectively spamming the system. This makes meaningful content retrieval difficult, if not impossible.

Tag Clouds are a result of public tagging. Tag Clouds are interesting in that it shows what words are most often used to describe content. But what if you have a similar piece of content, and you wish to tag it to get the most visibility? You would have to conform to everybody else’s standard. As specific tags become more popular (gain more prominence in the cloud), the less popular tags begin to recede and disappear. Alternate classifications get squashed in favour of the more popular way of thinking. It’s like being in secondary school all over again.

If you are incorporating a tagging scheme to your content, be sure to have a clear understanding of what you wish to achieve. Each flavour of tagging has its merits, and each has a unique role allowing users to find the content they seek. Tagging is a useful tool to augment your existing hierarchy and navigation system, but makes a poor choice if used as the sole method.

Update:

This article has been quoted in Ellyssa Kroski’s weblog: InfoTangle.

Good luck, and happy tagging!