A List Apart: Fragments …

A List Apart: Fragments of Time

O’ReillyNet: Mozilla as an Application Virtual Machine

O’ReillyNet: How to Change Your Look With Mozilla Skins

Metadata Creation — Down and Dirty

Ron over a Leatheregg has an interesting look at line text lengths. While his observations are interesting, he’s missing the whole point of fixed table widths vs. expandable table widths. Sites that allow body copy to expand with the browser’s window size offer much more control to the end user than sites that contain body copy in fixed width table columns. By comparing column widths of online sites with column widths of newspapers, you make the mistake of treating the web like print design. While I agree that large blocks of text with long line lengths are hard to read, I think a lot of these problems can be solved by breaking the text up into smaller paragraphs. Which is why this paragraph stops here.

A reader wrote in saying that “you’ve made the content submit to the medium which is clearly backwards” and then proceeds to explain that the point of the medium is to convey the content. This is why books are printed in sensible sizes with readable typefaces. This is why people use the Verdana font so much in their web sites. What it boils down to is that you should use the line length that best works with your layout. Clumping a bunch of different sites with widely varying layouts together and comparing their line lengths isn’t a very effective study. Lastly, I realize that CamWorld’s line lengths get a bit ridiculous at resolutions higher than 800 x 600 . Unfortunately, I don’t have an immediate solution to this problem, except to ask my readers to make their browser window smaller.

PurpleYogi is another IE-only personal privacy invasion tool masquerading as a helpful service. Ugh.

Today’s reel.com has a picture of Woody Allen’s head on a dinosaur’s body. Truly bizarre…

Boy, user forums are often the best places to learn cool new tips and tricks. Never underestimate the power of the word “free”. You think AOL is on to them yet?

For and Against Microsoft. [found at Glish]

Pssst, wanna buy a cow? [from Metafilter]

Seen in the June 2000 issue of LinuxJournal:

Windows: Where do you want to go today?
MacOS: Where do you want to be tomorrow?
Linux: Are you coming or what?

Unfortunately, I was too busy this week to participate in the NPR weblog interview that features Evan, Brad, Rebecca and others. It’s a great interview. Have a listen. Great job, all around.

Had dinner last night with Elan. Lots of great conversation and whatnot.

In-depth review of Mac OS X DP4. It’s looking pretty good!

Posted by Cameron Barrett at May 19, 2000 06:02 PM

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *