Snap is the Animated GIF for sophisticated bloggers. It’s something you tack onto a site to elicit a “ooo, that’s cool”. In-text hover ads like ContentLink and Vibrant Ads are the same, except marginally more obtrusive, less functional, and monetizing. They’re appearing all over the web at an alarming rate not only on small and overambitious blogs, but on popular and oft-trafficked sites: even the site for Matt Mullenweg’s legendary Akismet uses Snap, and many high-profile news blogs (especially tech blogs) are putting up these in-text ads.

There are, of course, plenty of reasons not to inflict these sorts of things on one’s readers, the first among them being, it’s Annoying. This should be the first consideration before implementing an idea on a live site. Perhaps for ads the desire for money wins out over this consideration, but there’s no excuse to put Snap on a site. The bubbles from both of them obscure content on a mouseover, violating one of the most central tenets of good interface design: Mousing over should not initiate a layout-changing action. There’s a reason why in concrete interfaces - The Mac OS, Windows, various Linux desktop environments, as opposed to web interfaces - menus require you to click on them to show their contents. Mousing over is a passive action, and websites with Snap, hover ads, or even dropdown menus that activate with a hover are using this passive action to actively change the layout, something that in most cases requires a conscious and active move of the pointer (or, heaven forbid, even a click) to dismiss. Since passive actions usually elicit no response - at most a change in appearance (like a button that glows under the pointer) - a popup is unexpected, and as loath as I am to use the condescending terminology of interface designers, disconcerting. Normally I give users enough credit not to be disconcerted by something like motion (as critics of the myriad animations of Mac OS X and now Windows Vista occasionally argue, in favor of something more spartan), but when something totally unexpected like a hoverbox ad pops up after moving the pointer across the page, that’s disconcerting even to me.

There are certainly worse offenders, such as the Blackberry Pearl’s expanding banner ads that would slide out unceremoniously into the content that made their way onto Wired News not too long ago, but the backlash against those was immediate and strong enough so as to stamp them into quick disuse. There are of course the perky “Congratulations! You have been selected to receive two free iPod Nanos” ads that blare sound at you when opening the page, but those are mostly relegated to sketchy sites anyway. For these high-profile sites that ostensibly value long-term credibility and respect more than short-term profit but install hovers anyway, the message from readers and users needs to be unequivocally clear: Hoverboxes are a pollution to the internet, and will not be supported.

I’m having mixed feelings with regard to the Wired article on image licenses. On the one hand, I completely agree that copyrights on digital images have put graphically uncreative or photographically challenged (me without camera) bloggers with a huge inconvenience in searching for cool images to put up. When I don’t use photos of things I’m reviewing, I like to create my own images - AllOfMP3/Russia and Universal/Borg, for example - but even these are based on copyrighted logos, though I like to think they’re protected under fair use, being parody and all.

NetUtopia is on its way, but until then, I’ll declare here and now: All images I create on this site for the purpose of blog posts are from this point forward under a creative commons license. Go use the Microsoft/China logo on your own blog. You can even email me to change the background to a different color if the dark gray clashes. Or to tell me that I’m just flattering myself thinking that people are going to use them. A link back here would be cool (it would be cool even if you didn’t use the images; I’m always happy for referrers!), but it’s not like I’m going to sue if you don’t. I probably won’t even complain.

If only the rest of blogdom were so magnanimous.

Secondly, on the topic of HTML bloat, I believe a license tag would be a non-solution that makes a completely unrelated problem worse. First, hardly anyone will use the tag, because it adds to their markup without adding to the site’s functionality. I’m all for markup that makes sense, but the W3C has already taken it to ridiculous extremes. What was wrong with the <i> tag that <em> had to replace it? What difference does it make if I “emphasize” a block of text rather than “italicize” it? Why can’t screen readers emphasize the <i> tag instead of creating a different tag?

The <i> and <b> tags will never go away for 2 reasons. They’re shorter than <em> or <cite> and <strong>, respectively, and elementary web design classes still teach them that way. This is just one example of the problem: the ‘alt’ attribute requirement for the <img> tag, for example. The argument that “the tag is already bloated enough” is an argument for getting rid of and condensing attributes (getting rid of ‘alt’ and using ‘title’ for that purpose would be a good start), not adding more.

The only tag I can think of that would warrant a license attribute would be the <body> tag to indicate content as a whole rather than individual elements thereof as creative commons or other licenses. I still wouldn’t agree with putting it there, but I could at least see why it would be wanted.

A license attribute on any tag would also not solve the underlying problem that images are not legally copyable. Stay tuned for more on that…

Christmas came 2 weeks early this year. They say you can’t beat the feel of a brand new computer. In a lot of ways, the opening of the box, the techno beats of the welcome screen, and the never-opened manuals are sort of magical, but otherwise, it’s a lot like getting a used computer. The important thing is that it’s new to me.

What’s more gratifying in the long term, though, are the specs that you can’t get from a used computer. This will be my first that has 1) over a GHz clockspeed, 2) a gig of RAM, 3) over 1024×768 resolution, 4) USB 2.0, and 5) sweet dual latches. It closes more tightly than the iBook G3 did, but you kind of have to wiggle the button to release. Nothing major. The keyboard isn’t detachable, but it feels a lot sturdier than the iBook’s flimsy one. The trackpad is wider and a bit taller than the iBook’s, making it easier to work unplugged, and the CD slot is on the front, which would be good if I worked in a cramped workspace.

Booting it up beside the iBook to transfer files, the higher PPI of the Macbook made the iBook’s screen look dim and fuzzy by comparison. I had wanted the glossy screen, but it came with free AppleCare, and it seems customization (even free options) isn’t allowed with bundles. Bah. The matte screen shows sort of a speckled pattern, but it’s barely noticeable.

The backlit keyboard is a nice feature too for typing in the dark. I spent a few minutes covering up various parts of the computer looking for the sensor, until I figured out that it has sensors on both sides of the keyboard. Tricky! But while this is a nice feature, I did expect it to be fully automatic: three of the F-keys are used for controlling the keyboard brightness - F-keys that I would like to use for Exposé. Instead, I have to use command-F11 and command-F12 for the two that don’t fit on the free F-keys. It’s not too big a deal at the desk since the mouse takes care of the functions, but it gets irritating unplugged.

As for the more minor things - USB 2.0 is handy; now I can sync my iPod at full speed again, FrontRow is nice to have back again (10.4.8 borked FrontRow installation on non-supported Macs), I’m enjoying having a working ethernet port again, Magsafe takes some getting used to, the internal speakers are leaps and bounds better than the iBook’s pebbles (though not nearly as good as the external set), and PhotoBooth is still amazingly fun to play with.

Speedwise, I’m not noticing as gigantic of a difference as I’d hoped. Certainly things are faster, but bootup takes about the same. I was impressed, however, with Rosetta: It ran each of the most intensive apps I threw at it even faster than the iBook did. Things like Photoshop, MarbleBlast (a 3D game), N64 emulators - they all work without a hitch. Considering how different the two architectures are, and the abysmal performance of VPC on PPC, I’m impressed at how efficiently they were able to make it run.

Apple USB iPod Cable: $17
Apple Universal iPod Dock: $35
A dock without a cable: Worthless

Some things you just can’t leave out of a package. For everything else, Apple does.

Since the FireWire bus shorted out on my iPod, I’ve had to borrow a USB cable to sync it. It’s slow (USB 1.1), but it works. Being a nice guy, I don’t want to indebt myself too much with use of the cable, so I paid a visit to the Apple Store today. My thought was that if I’m to get USB connectivity anyway, I may as well get a spiffy docking station. After all, there’s not much point to a dock sans connectivity without a video iPod.

Knowing Apple quit bundling accessories with the iPod a few generations ago, I should have figured they’d quit bundling essentials with the accessories. But alas, no cable was to be found in the (very thick) box. Looks like I’m going to have to keep borrowing for a while.

So my question is this: Besides being an S-Video adapter for the new video iPods, what’s the point of the dock? The IR receiver doesn’t do much good without a remote (sold separately, surprise!), the iPod still can’t be used while mounted, and it doesn’t even connect to the computer on its own. Except for the neato factor of having an upright iPod, it’s completely worthless.

It’s a shame I had to open the package before I realized that.

Aren’t you sick of lists of text? I sure am. The iTunes dock menu, though functional enough, seems a lot taller than it should be. Do we really need 3 menu items for repeat options (off/all/one)?

Tiger introduced a new menu control that to date I’ve only ever seen in the Finder: the label selector. Instead of having a submenu with the titles of all the labels and the color of it beside as was the case in OS 9, the Tiger Finder shows the label icons inline with the menu going horizontally, with the name of the label appearing below as the different icons are hovered over. It’s a great concept for reducing menu clutter, and it’s a shame that Apple’s only implemented it in the Finder so far.

So why not iTunes? The setup lends itself well to the concept: each of the functions in the menu can be represented as a distinctly recognizable small icon. Instead of traversing through a submenu to rate the playing song, the stars would be right there - same function, less mouse movement. As you hovered over a star, those to its right would dim, and it and those to its left would turn black, returning to its original rating on mouse out. I’ve seen this implemented on many different websites (for example, the stars at the top of this one), and it only seems logical to apply the same to iTunes.

Secondly, play/pause, forward and back as icons rather than text is simply more intuitive. My brain will register “back a song” faster if it sees double arrows pointing backwards than if it sees the text “Previous”, and I imagine most people would be the same way. I’m certain Apple could come up with better looking icons for this row than I did, but nevertheless, it’s a perfect match for the Finder’s label control and music-control icons. And for the people that don’t immediately recognize the icons (of which I can’t imagine there are many - they are using iTunes after all), it’ll even display the name of the function - i.e., “Repeat” or “Play” - when you hover over it.

Lastly, I can think of many times when I’ve wanted to check the album of the song playing without leaving what I’m working on. But the menu doesn’t show the album, so I have to bring focus to the iTunes window to check that. “Now Playing” is a rather pointless menu item - it doesn’t give any information of itself, and it’s a general waste of space. I think it would be better to use that space instead to display the album of the currently playing song. It’s a minor kvetch, I know, but isn’t it the attention to detail that sets Apple apart from everyone else?