Posts tagged “web”

A Letter to my Representatives

Regarding SOPA/PIPA:

Don’t vote for or against this bill because of your political views. Vote against this bill because, with all due respect, and for lack of a better phrase, it’s none of your business.

Your duty, as a representative to the people, is to give voice to your people, not lobbyists and interest groups. Represent me, your constituent. Represent your other constituents. Vote against the restriction of liberty, because that is the very essence of your elected position.

– @sawaboof: “A Letter to My Representatives“

*slow clap*

slow clap

What if SOPA applied to the physical world?

Imagine if a SOPA-like bill was passed for the physical world rather than the web.

Let’s say someone sends an illegal item (drugs, weapons-grade uranium, kittens) through UPS. You’re not supposed to, but it probably happens all the time.

Someone discovers this tragic misdeed and files a complaint. Or, potentially, someone makes a mistake and thinks you shipped something illegally. They file the complaint anyway.

The government confiscates all the UPS vehicles, seizes the distribution centers and blocks all traffic to the buildings. After all that’s settled, the CEO is sent a letter announcing that someone filed a complaint, their business has been destroyed, and there’s nothing they can do about it.

That’s what SOPA will do to the internet.

Edit: Chris (@cammerman) makes an important point:

It’s true that the scale is monumentally different, but I think the analogy can still hold up, especially when you consider @baekdal’s original question.

Redesigned and Responsive-ized

Unless you’re reading this via an RSS reader, you may notice that the site has been redesigned again. After following as much Responsive Web Design news as I could for the last few months, I decided it was time to get with the program and update my own site to be a bit more flexible. The new design is still very much a work in progress and as such is subject to change. Probably drastic change. I welcome your feedback (either in the comments or via Twitter, bug reports, whatever you’ve got. Ideally it should display pretty well across desktop browsers, tablets, mobile browsers, etc, but there will probably be quite a bit of room for additional tweaks.

Highlights and notes

  • I’m deliberately only designing for and checking in the most current versions of the major browsers. (Translation: IE6 and IE7 can go frak themselves. Sorry, but IE6 is over a decade old and even Microsoft is trying to kill it, so I’m not bending over backwards to fix their issues. That said, there are still some fairly serious things I’m working on resolving for these… ahem… geriatric browsers.)
  • This is primarily a mobile-first design. The base styling should work decently on mobile devices, and then media queries take effect to add styling as needed for wider displays.
  • It’s still a very minimal design, in keeping with my own personal taste. That means almost no graphics, relying heavily on text and simple CSS effects like gradients and rounded corners. It’s quite spartan, perhaps too much so, but for now it’ll do.

The Best “Tip” for Non-Technical Web Marketers

tattoo of HTML tags

Yesterday I posted some thoughts on “easy HTML tips” for marketers to avoid – after seeing an article listing outdated (and potentially harmful) HTML tips including the use of inline styles and the like. After seeing some of the comments on the source article, I thought a follow-up was worthwhile.

Several of the commenters indicated that they were glad for an article explaining HTML, because it was so helpful, but “what I really want to know is ____.” As someone who’s worked in both marketing and web development simultaneously, I’m glad to see people like this enthusiastic about maintaining and contributing to their websites. But there’s a better way than relying on “tips & tricks” posts on the internet.

Dear marketers who want fine-grained control over the presentation of your content: the best tip I can offer you is this:

Talk to your web development/design team.

Talk to them honestly, and let them know you’re interested in being involved in the process of updating content. I can almost guarantee they’ll be willing to show you what you need to know, and set up some guidelines to make it easier for you. It’s in their best interests to show you the right way to do what you want to do, because it means there will be less things they have to fix later.

Whether they set up a system where you write using Markdown, or create custom templates for you to fill with your content, or teach you more detailed code, it’s better to work with them rather than around them.

To a happy future of marketers and developers working together in harmony!

Photo by webmove. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)

Easy HTML Tricks for Marketers… to avoid, please

The Hubspot Inbound Marketing blog just posted an article titled Easy HTML Tricks for the Non-Technical Marketer. It starts off just like you’d expect, with a helpful introduction:

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: knowing HTML is an extremely helpful skill that every internet marketer should know and can easily learn. This doesn’t mean you need to become a web developer; being comfortable with just the basics will make you invaluable.

Yes! Yes, absolutely true.

Your web developer doesn’t need you to be a guru or wizard or ninja or whatever the buzzword du jour is. Marketers who have anything to do with the website should just know the basics of web technology. Just as a movie producer doesn’t need to know the details of how CG effects are created, they need to know the essential limitations and possibilities so that they don’t foster unrealistic expectations.

So we’re in agreement so far that internet marketers should at least understand the fundamentals of the cornerstone of the web: HTML.

However, it then goes on to list several “HTML tricks” that take us right back to the pre-web standards days that so many of us have worked hard to correct: inline styles. Adding

1
vspace
attributes on
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<img>
tags. Using the
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<font>
tag. And it gets worse:

Here is a way you can combine multiple elements in your content:

Code:

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<b>&lt;font face="comic sans ms" size="2" color="green"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;u&gt;</b>This font is Comic Sans MS, Size 2, Bold, Underlined and is the color Green<b>&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/font&gt;</b>

If that doesn’t make you cringe, please go read Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman and come back. I’ll wait.

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