TidBITS Web site redesigned!

On Sep 15, 2007, at 11:17 AM, John C. Welch wrote:

> That's what I wonder too. Paid subscriptions by and large fail, and
> horribly, especially if the content was free. MacFixIt is an
> exception, but
> then I wonder why anyone would pay for bad troubleshooting advice.

Last time around, I elected to renew MacFixIt (but as usual not
"upgrade" to the bundle with Version Tracker). But either they or I
messed up the transaction (I had had different passwords in the
forums and for the site for several years, thanks to something they
did--so the fault could easily have been mine), and the renewal
didn't "take" (although the charge to the card did), and I didn't
care enough to try to get it fixed.

It's not the same since Ted left, and I almost never have to
troubleshoot since I stopped running Mac OS-ancient (which happened
at Mac OS X 10.2 time, whatever cat that was).

I stop by MacFixIt after a Mac OS X update (and I will for the
imminent 10.4.11) a few days after that comes out, to try to separate
out the failures on machines where the failure is clearly the fault
of preconditions (Pith Helmet stopped working---Doh!) from actual
failures that might apply to me. The last thing of note I found
there was the bungle in the Panther upgrade process which messed up
parts of the "BSD Subsystem"--their repair suggestion worked fine. I
don't feel bad about ignoring their ads, since I'm actually paid and
shouldn't see them anyhow.

After 10.4.11 comes out, I'll finally get around to taking MacFixIt
out of the News folder of Safari toolbar favorites/bookmarks.

   --John


  
  

At 11:17 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-15, Google Kreme wrote:

> On 15-Sep-2007, at 04:09, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

[... javascript-dependancy of a few links at new TidBITS site]

> Except for the part about lynx and Google, I think this is mostly
> 1990's thinking. Javascript has, like it or not, become a pretty
> essential part of the Internet and cruising about with it disabled
> will make all sorts of things break.

In my experience almost nothing essential breaks. (I have javascript disabled
by default. For a few sites that I consider 'essential' and reliable enough,
I have filters to allow certain javascript functions. Most sites that are
javascript/Flash/CSS dependant really aren't essential at all.)

> All sorts of rather cool things, in fact.

Yup. Like I said, I see the value in things like XMLHttpRequest. It allows
great stuff, enriching of 'web apps'. I'm just pointing out that the only
techniques a web publisher can rely on to work for every user, are HTTP and
HTML. (Until a HTML spec defines and requires UAs to support XMLHttpRequest.)

In any case, only a few of the links in the new tidbits.com navigation menu
supply this cool factor. So it looks more like some library that happened to
be available was used, then that a conscious decision was made to enhance the
user experience.


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

On 16-Sep-2007, at 05:33, Shawn King wrote:
> On 9/15/07 2:17 PM, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:
>>> I have to ask. How do you expect the content providers to pay for
>>> their web site? Seriously?
>>
>> Seriously at this point I couldn't possibly care less.
>
> Wow - as a content provider, I've got to say, that's a disappointing
> attitude.

I agree, but it's an attitude that the people providing content on
the Internet have nursed for the last decade, encouraged by their
extreme advertising, their pop-up windows, their flash animations,
their monkeys scurrying back and forth across the screen and their
practice of continually increasing the advertising on their sites. To
say nothing of the occasional explosion of dozens, if not hundreds,
of pop-ups that renders your machine completely unusable, though I've
not see that in a while.

It's exactly what the broadcast and cable networks have done, and I,
like many people, am totally fed up. That said, I am still in a very
small minority. When I watch TiVo I skip ALL ads, when I am with
other people with TiVo they may or may not remember to skip ads, and
usually don't.

If enough people feel like I do, then the world is not going to
collaps and the Internet is not going to go away. A different and
less intrusive and less offensive revenue model will need to be
found, and that will be a good thing. However, I seriously doubt that
will happen, so I will just continue to wend my way blocking
everything I can and live in my little ad-free bubble all my own. If
you consider that supposedly IE still has an +80% marketshare, and
Safari is the most popular browser on the Mac, and you further
consider that neither of these products offer ad-blocking and never
will, then the current content-model is safe from people like me for
quite some time.

I miss the pre-redesign feed, which provided a nice, quickly-scannable feed by using the RSS 'description' element [more-]correctly. Please consider a second feed, like the old one.

(If ad-free like the old one, some of the 'no ads' people might also like it, if they don't care about full articles in the feed itself....)

Thanks (either way)--TidBITS continues to be great!

I have one major problem with the redesign: if one is using a wide
window, there is too much whitespace of the left. The pages should
take account of the actual width of the viewing window and adjust the
'meat' frame accordingly. Note that such a change would also obviate
the need for a different print window (already on your "to do" list.

In addition to often using a wide window, I often print interesting
web articles to read at times when I am away from a computer. 81/2"x
11" flexible media is an amazing portable medium.

Alan Forkosh Oakland, CA
aforkoshmac.com

On 09/17/2007 09:03 AM, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:

> If enough people feel like I do, then the world is not going to
> collaps and the Internet is not going to go away. A different and
> less intrusive and less offensive revenue model will need to be
> found, and that will be a good thing. However, I seriously doubt that
> will happen, so I will just continue to wend my way blocking
> everything I can and live in my little ad-free bubble all my own. If
> you consider that supposedly IE still has an +80% marketshare, and
> Safari is the most popular browser on the Mac, and you further
> consider that neither of these products offer ad-blocking and never
> will, then the current content-model is safe from people like me for
> quite some time.

Wait...how will that happen? What magical model will replace ads? What,
sponsors will throw money at websites without needing any advertising at
all? You're blocking all ads anyway, and if everyone takes your tack, then
it won't matter what replaces it, you'll be blocking it.

Or will it be replaced by some future where you get to approve all content
from a site ahead of time so that you never need be bothered by base things
like other people's business models?

Of course, we all know what will replace ads: Charge for content. Not the
current model mind you, where you get some for free and you pay for "the
good stuff". Eventually people will realize that's a fool's errand, because
by and large, the majority of people consuming content have entitlement
issues that beggar the imagination. No, it will be replaced by pay to see
anything but a link to pay content on the home page.

Bandwidth is not free. It never has been, and *unlike* broadcasting where
you don't get charged more because your show goes from a hundred to a
million viewers, on the internet, success is your worst enemy, because it's
a battle to get enough money to pay the bills.

Everytime I hear someone say "Something better will replace it", I never,
ever hear what this magical model is.

--
John C. Welch Writer/Analyst
Bynkii.com Mac and other opinions
jwelchbynkii.com

>I have one major problem with the redesign: if one is using a wide
>window, there is too much whitespace of the left. The pages should

Do you mean too much whitespace on the *right*?

>take account of the actual width of the viewing window and adjust the
>'meat' frame accordingly. Note that such a change would also obviate
>the need for a different print window (already on your "to do" list.

This is definitely something we want to do, but determined it would
be best to implement in the next revision instead of holding up the
ship date.

Jeff

On Sep 19, 2007, at 5:52 AM, Jeff Carlson wrote:

>> I have one major problem with the redesign: if one is using a wide
>> window, there is too much whitespace of the left. The pages should
>
> Do you mean too much whitespace on the *right*?

Sorry about that. I'm not reading the Hebrew edition. I do mean 'right'.

Alan Forkosh Oakland, CA
aforkoshmac.com

On 19-Sep-2007, at 06:43, John C. Welch wrote:
> No, it will be replaced by pay to see anything but a link to pay
> content on the home page.

No it won't, because no one will pay to see content when they have no
idea what the content is. Pay for content will likely become the
model once a simple and fast and cheap micro-payment model comes
along that works. It would be the next Google.

I 'load' my computer up with, say, a $10 credit. I go to IMDB and
load a total of 166 pages in a month, and I get charge $0.83 for
that. I watch a trailer for a new movie, and that costs $0.05, so at
the end of the month, IMDB has gotten $0.88 from me, and probably a
similar amount from a million other users.

The trouble with that now is that micro-payments don't work because
the simple cost of MAKING a payment is 20-30 cents all by itself.

But I think it will be for another generation to answer as most
people are perfectly happy living in a world where they are assaulted
by advertising everywhere they go and with everything they see. I
can't control the vast majority of 'branding' that I see, but I can
control the commercials I watch and the ads I load in my browser, so
I do. If the ads were not such a huge imposition, then they wouldn't
bother me.

But like I said, in my lifetime the amount of advertising on
television has TRIPLED. More for children's programming.

At 1:24 PM -0700 9/14/07, Jolin M Warren wrote:
>I wasn't suggesting eliminating ads from the website. I realise that
>they are necessary to keep TidBITS (and other sites) running, which
>is why I don't block them. Maybe the ad on the right could be placed
>above the grey box instead. This probably won't be popular with some
>other people, but for me I really don't like content mixed with ads.
>I feel like I've got passed the ads and am reading content, and
>suddenly more ads appear. So I think I'd prefer that the ads were
>actually above (or below, but that's likely not possible financially)
>the grey box on the right. That way the box is just content. It's
>hard to know for sure without seeing it, but this layout feels better
>to me. Incidentally, that's what Ars Technica do.

It's an interesting question. On the one hand, some research seems to
show that ads do better when mixed with the content, since people are
so good at ignoring them otherwise. But on the other hand, as you
note, it sometimes feels more logical and cleaner to have them
outside content. Perhaps we'll try it both ways and see how the
clickthrough rates change.

>> We thought about that, but here's the rub. When you start reading
>>an article, you don't know if you want to see related articles. You
>>only know that once you've read at least some, if not all of the
>>article.
>
>I hadn't thought about it that way. Makes sense. Presumably you
>couldn't include the related articles at the end of the article?
>Thought that might not look as nice.

We're about to put some serious thought into what should be at the
bottom of articles, since that would seem to be an important decision
point where we can entice readers to stay on the site, add comments,
recommend articles, and so on. Few sites seem to do this well...

cheers... -Adam

At 1:24 PM -0700 9/14/07, Dave Scocca wrote:
>--On 9/14/07 2:41 AM -0700 Adam C. Engst wrote:
>
>>At 11:33 AM -0700 9/13/07, Dave Scocca wrote:
>>>(1) Clicking around on this I was bothered by something on the nav bar.
>>>The expand/contract buttons have triangles that look like folder expansion,
>>>but expanding any one tab header closes any other tab header that happens
>>>to be open. My instinct is that if they're meant to be individually
>>>toggled open/closed then opening one should not close the others. And if
>>>they're meant to have a radio-button-like functionality (only one tab
>>>header open at once) the interface should reflect that rather than having
>>>folder-expansion type widgets.
>>
>>We went back and forth a bit on whether clicking one tab header
>>should collapse the others. A user interaction expert friend said
>>that they're doing so in all their Web apps these days because if
>>multiple headers can be open at the same time, users tend to become
>>confused about which tabs were there before and which were just
>>revealed. Plus, if you open all of them, then you have to scroll to
>>see them all, or manually close some.
>
>This is a reasonable choice--the problem is that it's inconsistent with the
>normal use of the folder triangle widget.

Ah, I understand now - it's purely the triangle widget. If we used an
alternate graphic (NOT the Windows +/- !) or a color then it wouldn't
be as confusing.

>(Although as I play with it I see another problem: if I open a tab header when
>the one above it is also open, the tab header I just clicked on "jumps" away
>from where my mouse is... Dramatic example is if "Sections" is open, and you
>click on "Issues", your mouse pointer (which is where your attention
>is) is now
>pointing at blank space below the nav bar and you have to refocus to find the
>results of what you just clicked on.)

Yeah, that's not ideal, though it's only really problematic when
you're scrolled down. I wonder if there's a way to scroll the screen
appropriately too?

>(Also, having the search bar between the "Sections" tab header and
>the contents
>of that header is more than a bit confusing when you open and close the tab
>header.)

Really? It's in the same background color, and the thought was that
it ties Search to the contents tightly, rather than have it be off
somewhere else.

>>Obviously, this is easily changed, but my
>>gut feeling was that it was better to go with a generic name that
>>anyone could understand rather than the mailing list name
>
>"TidBITS Talk Forum" might be a good compromise. (Plus at this point it's a
>singular "forum", not multiple "forums".)

I don't think that would fit, but we can try.

>>>(3) Thinking about what greets a new visitor (rather than an old-time
>>>subscriber) it would be nice if, whien you click on "Get Tidbits via....
>>>email", you actually got some list of what you could possibly sign up for
>>>in your email

I've done some rewording on this - I can't control the interface
much, since it's heavy-duty AJAX that I can't modify. See if my new
text explains it better (and note that if you're logged in, you won't
see it, since there's no need for you to enter your address again).

<http://www.tidbits.com/list>

cheers... -Adam

--
Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Publisher <http://www.tidbits.com/adam/>

At 02:59 09/12/07 -0700, jbastin wrote:
>For me, the lack of contrast in the light gray text in some areas makes it
>particularly hard to read for me, whose eyes aren't what they used to be
>(and even "used to be" wasn't that good).

I too noticed that immediately -- thanks for fixing it. I commonly "fix"
that by applying a site preference user style sheet with

      * {color:black !important}

Didn't have to do that. However, it still uses a serif font, which needs a
300dpi display rather than the sucky 100dpi displays we are stuck with due
to software limitations in both Windows and Mac OSX. So I applied my user
style sheet that says

      * {font-family:Verdana !important}

Too bad about the site designers' carefully considered font choices ...
except that choosing a serif font for almost anything on the web is not
carefully considered.

At 02:44 09/14/07 -0700, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:
>Personally, I try to filter out only animated ads. But often sites provide
>no hook to make that distinction, forcing me to filter out all ads.

Opera does it pretty darned well. I default to "off" the options "Enable
GIF animation" and "Enable plug-ins". This stops all the moving ads except
a few implemented with JavaScript (I think). In Opera, I can toggle those
options with two keystrokes each (F12-E or F12-U). The first, I toggle for
Weather Underground's animated radar maps and virtually nothing else.
Disabling animated GIFs not only stops some ad animation but also those
terminally annoying animated avatars in forums. The second I often toggle
when something useful needs Flash, which has started to happen surprisingly
often nowadays.

At 05:43 09/19/07 -0700, John C. Welch wrote:
>Of course, we all know what will replace ads: Charge for content.

Fine with me. I've been saying for years that I want the content providers
to be beholden to the viewers rather than to the advertisers. (Except of
course for the few who are truly doing it as a donated service and are
beholden to no one but themselves.) An interesting development in recent
years is that the browser developers have become beholden to the search
engines more than the advertisers. This isn't quite the same as being
responsible to the users, but it's a big step I think.

I was a paid subscriber to the NY Times and was sorry to see it go free
again. I'm no elitist, but their reason given was that advertising is
producing a lot more revenue than expected and so they are better off
drawing more ad impressions. So I can now expect more ads rather than less,
and a site design designed to impress the ads on my eyes. Well, if I have
to turn off images to be able to read the site, it won't be a great loss.

GK's response about micro-payments is exactly along the line I was
thinking. We've been hearing about micro-payments for, what, ten years now.
They won't happen until something forces the issue -- and perhaps that
something will be dwindling of advertising revenue below the break-even point.

The signs of progress remain small but tantalizing. It was several years
ago that I mentioned here a mini-payment system that works for me -- a
$5/year subscription to the Weather Underground
(http://www.wunderground.com) which allows me access without ads and also
provides me with forecasts by email. Not micro-payment, but getting closer
-- $5 is a really light-weight subscription.

More recently and more promising, I've been doing remote backups using
Jungle Disk to store my data in Amazon S3 (http://www.jungledisk.com).
Jungle Disk is conventionally priced (though with unconventional lifetime
upgrades included), but the storage on S3 is straight micro-payment.
There's no minimum payment and the price is the same at all quantities --
you pay a fixed price per byte for storage and transfer. If you store 50MB
and transfer 5MB/month, you will see a charge of $0.01/month on your credit
card. I store about 20G and upload a few hundred MB/night and pay about
$10/month. The ease of starting small, with little risked, and building
gradually makes a huge difference in acceptance. This really is
micro-payment, though so far limited to the one site and only for a
specialized purpose.

Edward

On 09/20/2007 14:14 PM, "Google Kreme" <gkremegmail.com> wrote:

> On 19-Sep-2007, at 06:43, John C. Welch wrote:
>> No, it will be replaced by pay to see anything but a link to pay
>> content on the home page.
>
> No it won't, because no one will pay to see content when they have no
> idea what the content is. Pay for content will likely become the
> model once a simple and fast and cheap micro-payment model comes
> along that works. It would be the next Google.
>
> I 'load' my computer up with, say, a $10 credit. I go to IMDB and
> load a total of 166 pages in a month, and I get charge $0.83 for
> that. I watch a trailer for a new movie, and that costs $0.05, so at
> the end of the month, IMDB has gotten $0.88 from me, and probably a
> similar amount from a million other users.

"Bulldookey" is my word for that model. Sorry, but no, I'm not going pay in
advance to see what I get for free with ads now.

True, that would get rid of ads. Along with the content. I mean seriously,
you can't get people to pay a *DOLLAR* for a SONG that they can keep FOREVER
without onerous threats, and yet somehow, you think people are going to pay
*per view* of a friggin' web site? What, it's another buck every time I hit
refresh?

Hating ads is one thing, but that model is beyond silly.

--
John C. Welch

On Sep 22, 2007, at 3:06 AM, Edward Reid wrote:

> More recently and more promising, I've been doing remote backups using
> Jungle Disk to store my data in Amazon S3 (http://www.jungledisk.com).
> Jungle Disk is conventionally priced (though with unconventional
> lifetime
> upgrades included), but the storage on S3 is straight micro-payment.
> There's no minimum payment and the price is the same at all
> quantities --
> you pay a fixed price per byte for storage and transfer. If you
> store 50MB
> and transfer 5MB/month, you will see a charge of $0.01/month on
> your credit
> card. I store about 20G and upload a few hundred MB/night and pay
> about
> $10/month. The ease of starting small, with little risked, and
> building
> gradually makes a huge difference in acceptance. This really is
> micro-payment, though so far limited to the one site and only for a
> specialized purpose.

Does anyone here know how Amazon manages to get those $0.01 through
$0.04 charges (my range so far with S3, although I should be higher
for this month and beyond) into the credit card system without losing
its "shirt". I've been surprised that they dutifully make the charge
monthly rather than letting it accumulate.

(One thing that makes heavy consumer use of S3--via Jungle Disk which
I use or otherwise--uncertain is the "broadband" providers' hidden
limits on data transfer.) (I put broadband in quotes as in the US we
are remarkably liberal in defining the low end of "broadband"...I'd
say Comcast is approaching the low end of broadband with their 6
megabit--burst to 12--down service. On the other hand, I don't
insist on OC-192 to the premises.)

   --John

On 22-Sep-2007, at 04:06, Edward Reid wrote:
> * {font-family:Verdana !important}
>
> Too bad about the site designers' carefully considered font
> choices ...
> except that choosing a serif font for almost anything on the web is
> not
> carefully considered.

I have to disagree completely. I HATE sites that use sans-serif
fonts for block text. makes it nigh impossible for me to read them,
so I don't.

At 02:44 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-14, Sander Tekelenburg wrote:

> At 09:34 -0700 UTC, on 2007-09-13, Adam C. Engst wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> We think we've fixed the problem with the too-frequent updates to feed
>>items.
>
> Looks like it, yes.

Nope :) I'm still seeing partial 'reactivation' of previously (marked as)
read RSS articles. (NetNewsWire Lite.)


--
Sander Tekelenburg, <http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/>

[ooo-kay, I think we're WAY off-topic now. Let's wind the thread down. -Andrew]



At 03:06 09/22/07 -0700, John C. Welch wrote:
>you can't get people to pay a *DOLLAR* for a SONG that they can keep FOREVER

One billion plus $1 songs from iTMS say otherwise.

And that's not counting the music people are continuing to buy in large
quantities on CDs (despite the whining of the large record companies).
That's probably roughly $1 per track too, and Apple claims (unverified
AFAIK) that most music on iPods is from CDs.

>you think people are going to pay *per view* of a friggin' web site? What,
>it's another buck every time I hit refresh?

Nah, it's more like $.001. A tenth of a cent is more in line with what
people will pay for the average web site. That's MICRO payments.

After all, what are you paying for net access? The more net literate people
here probably mostly have broadband, or what passes for it in the US. Say
$50/month. At a tenth of a cent each, that is the same cost as 50,000 page
views. I doubt many of us come anywhere close to that.

So with realistic micropayments, your monthly page view bill is just a
fraction of your net access fee. You quickly stop thinking of it in terms
of a per-page fee and think of it in terms of monthly rental, just as with
broadband you stop thinking of the per-megabyte cost. Probably a lot of
ISPs bundle some tens of thousands of page views into monthly packages, and
don't police the limits except for severe offenders. You pay for your page
views, the money goes to the web site provider, and you seldom if ever even
think about it.

Edward
--
Art works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

I have always read TidBITS on the website Tuesday morning after each new issue comes out. For my weekly read, I like the format where all the articles appear in one long page.

With the new redesign, it's hard to find the single-page view. I have to navigate to Issues, then pick the top issue, then click on "Show the text of all articles".

It would be much more convenient if the TidBITS home page had a navigation link to the "Current Issue".

>>> We think we've fixed the problem with the too-frequent updates to
>>> feed
>>> items.
>>
>> Looks like it, yes.
>
> Nope :) I'm still seeing partial 'reactivation' of previously
> (marked as)
> read RSS articles. (NetNewsWire Lite.)

I believe that's when the articles are actually updated--I've turned
on NetNewsWire's "highlight changes" and I can see that the articles
are actually undergoing some editing (as an aside: many newspaper's
rss feeds also change often, and it's interesting to read what they
changed and to wonder why it was done). I haven't seen the ads change
since Adam said they were fixed, so I think that actually has been
fixed.

Max

>I have always read TidBITS on the website Tuesday morning after each
>new issue comes out. For my weekly read, I like the format where all
>the articles appear in one long page.

Out of curiousity, why do this instead of just receiving the issue in email.

>With the new redesign, it's hard to find the single-page view. I
>have to navigate to Issues, then pick the top issue, then click on
>"Show the text of all articles".
>
>It would be much more convenient if the TidBITS home page had a
>navigation link to the "Current Issue".

Hmm, what if we had a click on the Issues tab show recent issues, but
also display the most recent one in the main bar?

I'm also suggesting to Glenn that we store a cookie on the show/hide
status of summaries, so if you click Show Full Text once, it could
remember that and always show you the full text until you changed the
setting again.

cheers... -Adam