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I purchased a Dell Dimension L933-r yesterday off of craigslist for Annie. It’s now sitting next to my newish Dimension E510 and has a fresh install of XP Professional, a measly 930 MHZ processor, and a soon-to-be-upgraded 128 meg of RAM. But for just surfing the Internet and writing the occasional document, this box will more than suffice for her. It’s replacing our old 450 MHZ Dell, which will officially be put out to pasture as soon as I plunder the memory I added to it a while back.

I spent about an hour or so just now upgrading and tweaking WordPress 2.0 and so far I have a very good impression of it. It definitely has an AJAX flavor to it now — admin pages are more customizable and features just flow nicer.

One of the more noticeable differences I can see is the restoration of the Dashboard. In version 1.5.2, I could only see the right side of the Dashboard — the left column was mysteriously missing. Yet in another install of 1.5.2 that I had done, the left column worked just fine. However, the Developer blog entries are missing from the Dashboard now! Such a pity.

Well, the move is over, college is over, the Dimension E510 arrived, Christmas is over, Verizon Fios is up, so I think it’s about time I sat back, maybe get back to those marathon coding sessions, and fuel my recent addiction to Starbucks’ Mint Mocha Frappuccinos.

I brought over Annie’s G4 because she said she was having trouble starting it up. I’m not a Mac person by any means, but I took a look at it and everything seemed to work. Connecting it to the network was simple; I fussed around with it for a bit, but only because I wasn’t familiar with the interface. It’s a shame Firefox isn’t available on OS9.1, or else I would have urged Annie to abandon *gasp!* Mac IE 5.1.7 a long time ago.

I have many exciting things going on right now: I’m taking my final final exams next Saturday (no more college!) All this week I’ve been moving out of my condo and into a townhouse — replete with painting, organizing, sorting, tossing out stuff, buying new stuff, etc. December’s postings and site updates will be few, as I won’t have Internet access at my new place until Dec 27th. I’m having fiber installed, so it should be well worth the wait. I will somehow find a way to survive over three full weeks without a TCP/IP connection.

I was browsing my server logs recently when I came upon this entry:

halhoupro3.halliburton.com – – [09/Nov/2005:06:17:58 -0800] “GET /random/jenna.jpg HTTP/1.1” 200 24414 “http://images.devilfinder.com/go.php” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; Q312461; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

Hmm…Make of this what you will.

Bugzilla #313438.

One annoying aspect of B&N’S search bar is that the default search category is “Books”. In comparison, Amazon’s default search category is everything — “Amazon.com”. B&N users are automatically restricted in their searching. Amazon has left the default search at a broad level, and lets the user restrict the search as necessary. Amazon’s search is more versatile — it allows you to search by ALL categories at once. B&N doesn’t even let you do that — as far as I know. It may be a minor point, but it amounts to obfuscation on the part of the seller. The quicker customers can find what they’re looking for, the more likely they are actually stay and purchase and not surf away to other sites. Amazon knows this. Barnes and Noble is beginning to find this out.

When endeavoring to develop and create an interactive system, one must consider the diversity of people who may potentially interface with said system. All too typically, developers of interactive systems design for themselves. Their designs may seem perfectly logical to them, but may appear cumbersome — or even downright unusable — to certain segments of the population. Developers must be perpetually cognizant of the diverse needs, skill levels, handicaps, and mindsets of potential users.

When undertaking something as vast and complicated as, for instance, an operating system, the developers must consider the lowest common denominator — not in a strict numerical sense, but in terms of the skill-levels and competencies of a potential user base. Developers must leverage coding for this lowest common denominator with meeting — and even surpassing — the needs of experienced “power” users. A novice user shouldn’t have to spend minutes wading through documentation in order to accomplish simple tasks. The functions of an interactive system should be intuitive and fundamentally logical.

In addition to developing to a potential user base’s levels of expertise, systems developers must consider the physical and mental handicaps of users. As the Baby Boomers age, a growing number of computer users find themselves with less-than optimal vision. Crucial applications, such as web browsers and operating systems must be accessible to people with poor vision.

Correlatively, software programs and Internet content must also be accessible. In creating web content, web developers can ensure accessibility by 1.) Using relative (as apposed to fixed) font sizes, 2.) Using plain text instead of image-based text when possible, 3.) Providing alternate text for images, which is crucial for audible screen readers. (Screen readers cannot reliably determine the content of an image and must fall back to alternate text.), and 4.) Being cognizant of the contrast ratios of text color(s) and their corresponding background color(s).

Derek Powazek‘s article “Embrace your bottom!” brings up some good points regarding the usage of sidebars that “compete” with a page’s main content.

Some designers prefer sidebars that “compete” with main content for attention because 1). it reduces the need for additional vertical scrolling and 2). it may have something to do with the mindset that the web is not linear, i.e. there typically does not have to be a proper sequence to pages — disparate or not. Derek said that

Those sidebar items are great for readers who just aren’t engaged in whatever they’re reading. They can skim down a paragraph or two and then link away to the next thing.

But sidebar items aren’t the only places for readers to “link away”. Contextual links in main content also serve to distract the reader and encourage linking away to other content. Don’t get me wrong — one-column layouts can be effective. But well-written content that “competes” with sidebars often wins out over said sidebars. Added to the mix are browsers with tabbing capabilities, which enable users to “link away” to sidebar content without taking their eyes off main content.

Derek has a good eye for design — I especially like his 19th century German-looking font he uses in his header images.

Eric Meyer recently posted an entry about his apparent unpolished skills answering interview questions:

I have to be honest: reading the full transcription of the interview was a deeply shocking and humbling experience. In the past, when reading transcripts of news interviews and commentary shows, I’ve winced and clucked over the mangled syntax of the people being transcribed. False starts, weird shifts, strange commas, unfinished sentences, mind-number repetition, long rambling assaults on syntax and coherence —what was wrong with these people? Are these the best minds our society can produce? Can none of them do so much as utter a sentence with a clear point and progression? How many “you know”s does one person really need?

Some people just have a knack for proper diction during interviews. Consider John Roberts, answering a question yesterday during his Senate Judiciary Committee hearing:

Senator, you did not accurately represent my position. The Grove City College case presented two separate questions, and it was a matter being litigated of course in the courts. The universities were arguing that they were not covered at all by the civil rights laws in question simply because their students had federal financial assistance and attended their universities. That was their first argument. The second argument was, even if they were covered, all that was covered was the admissions office and not other programs that themselves did not receive separate financial assistance. Our position, the position of the administration, and, again, that was the position I was advancing, I was not formulating policy, I was articulating and defending the administration position.

None of the dreaded “filler words”. Totally unscripted, unprepared, unrehearsed — the man is a machine. Some people take comfort in others’ inability to speak in public (Thomas Jefferson’s problems come to mind). Somehow, Roberts’ eloquent words likewise give me comfort.

Eric’s admission to poor interview-giving doesn’t make him any less of a “CSS god” in my eyes. I’d be just as bad at it if I were important enough to be interviewed.