 Friday, 1 February 2002
 Software
Various tools I use got upgrades this week ... BBEdit 6.5.2, Eudora (Mac OS X Beta 20), TimeCache 4.1.5 (though not the OS X version; wish they'd fix some bugs with that one too)...
Still waiting for: Macromedia Fireworks (who I expected to have something to say for themselves at Macworld, but nooooo....) and Adobe Photoshop ('just taking our time, see you in the spring'). What, was OS X a sudden surprise? Were the demos from last year and the year before of their programs working under OS X just QuickTime movies, or were they real?
Bah. I'd give them money if they would give me new software, but so far they refuse to take it.
Google pop-ups On the one hand, it seems self-evident that pop-up and pop-under ads are bad. On the other, it's clear that not everyone thinks so, as they keep showing up on even 'major' sites. (Amazon, TIME, NY Times...). So it's nice that a different major site has come out as being opposed to their use in general. They further note that whatever pop-up windows you may see near a Google window didn't come from them.
Kinda sad that it's necessary to clarify it, but it's good of them to do so.
Speaking of Google, here's a semi-interesting interview with the CEO:
Three Minutes With Google's Eric Schmidt [PCWorld]Half of Google's revenue comes from selling text-based ads that are placed near search results and are related to the topic of the search. Another half of its revenues come from licensing its search technology to companies like Yahoo.
The catalog search is a good example of a new service, because it was done in six months by two people. Because Google already has the infrastructure, it's relatively easy to add new services.
Font sizes. Old-web-curmudgeon font size gripe:
When so many sites out there set their main text's font size to be small (with, say, <font size="-1"> or <small> or some entry in a style sheet), it makes those of us who don't modify the text size of our body copy (under the assumption that the user will set the text to their own most comfortable font and size) look like we're artificially, deliberately big in comparison.
Over time, people will set their browser's font size to make the majority of sites they visit appear at a comfortably readable text size. If the majority of sites are a size small, that size will be set as the new 'normal' and sites that were a normal (unmodified) size will then appear as overly big text (as though we are shouting, perhaps) when in fact we were the ones trying not to interfere with the reader determining their own optimal settings for reading us. It's perverse, I tells ya.
Everything would have been better if so many people hadn't insisted that their sites appear as teeny text. Teeny text is good for sidebars and for other incidentals but not for the main blocks of text people come to a site for. Oh well, too late, can't do anything but moan and gripe.
"If everyone's site uses small text, no one's site will have small text."
4 comment(s)
Indeed -- with just a few exceptions, I don't read sites that use really teeny text. I mean, hello!! Eyestrain?? No thanks! I especially hate it when I can't adjust the text size (for whatever reason) with the browser... then I'm just inclined to click on by.
I used to have a proxy filter out all FONT tags except the ones from nowthis.com. Now I use Galeon, which lets me set a minimum font size, so no site can have small text (which is fine with me) and no one is made to shout.
mozilla, ominweb, and iCab also support min font sizes... don't remember whether opera does or not
Ah, but matt, my point is that if sites didn't *try* to be so $%^#! small, you wouldn't even have to care about such a setting.
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February already. February already. Hm. Guess I should start moving the site to having a 2002 archive folder (and copyright notices...). Was going to do that when I moved to Movable Type, so I guess that means I need to get to it.
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