This is a test

A story referenced by digg brought up the old argument of software engineers not really being engineers. It compared them to the engineers responsible for building bridges—and not favorably as you can imagine.

A rose is a ro—segfault

So much of this is just a pride issue associated with a word, but if I were to buy into the engineer == infallible precision thing, I'd have to agree that software engineers don't meet that requirement. This is a matter of industry goals and established business patterns and any number of other things that I'm sure were stated in that article—maybe I should have read it. Nonetheless, hopefully most of us try to be precise and not allow bugs into our code. Still, I have to admit it's a rarity that a medium sized application gets out the door bug free. In fact, since the term "bug" is quite amorphous, it's pretty much an impossibility. For sure, more small applications ship with bugs than should, but unlike bridge building, product fragility is not weighed against lives. It's really a shame that quality is just another variable in the production equation. Perhaps we should be called "Software Adventurers". :)

No doubt this is a function of my chosen employment, but for as far back as I can recall, I've been fortunate enough to be surrounded by civil, polite coworkers. We may have disagreements over this architectural issue or that, but after stepping out of a heated meeting, we're just coworkers again—hey, let's get lunch. From a work perspective, it's good to be participating in a group of fair minded individuals that are capable of separating the task at hand from their personal feelings. From a personal growth perspective, it's good to be emersed in an environment of varying expertise and opinion.

Varying opinions are important

The way I see it, there are three main contributing factors to accelerated personal growth:

1. exploration and experimentation,
2. education through reading (books, magazines, blogs, etc.) and exposure to other's work in your field, and
3. engaging in dialog and receiving constructive criticism

Presently, I'll focus on that last point. People respond to criticism in a variety of ways. But without it, you're left to wonder "is my work truly good, or are those people just saying nice things to be nice?" I suppose it comes down to ego—maybe I should have gone into psychology. You can choose to believe

1. they are being honest and you actually do rock,
2. they sort of like it, but don't know what would make it better,
3. they don't really care one way or the other and are just saying something nice because that's the shortest path to a new topic of conversation, or
4. they don't hate it enough to chance the drama involved with an emotional reaction to criticism.

You can contrast your work to what you've seen and/or read about, but after you've put the Legos™ together, have you created a monster or masterpiece? Beauty being in the eye of the beholder and all, it's particularly important to have beholders that are honest and unafraid of stirring things up. Which leads me to my next point.

Criticism can be good or bad

Criticism being a human interaction, is a road fraught with complication and trepidation. It can be given well, or very very poorly. There are a multitude of pages devoted to tips on how properly to give and receive criticism, and innumerable books dedicated to the subject. But because it is a person to person thing, we're dealing with psychological borscht on both sides of the equation. But the point that has interested me of late is more germane to the receiving end.

The receiver must believe the critic is qualified

It's one thing to follow all the rules about giving criticism, but if the person you're giving criticism to thinks you're about as qualified as the rutabaga in the garden to comment on it, your feedback may cement their choices despite your opinion. Conversely, receiving criticism from someone you feel doesn't have the appropriate credentials to support their stated opinion makes it harder to accept their feedback. Of course, the key thing to remember is that everybody's opinion is valid, even if their suggestions may not be informed—supposing they have suggestions and don't just say "It sucks. I hate it." They may, in fact, have no idea what they're talking about, but at this point, it's up to your ego to sort out. But let's not digress into self-help here.

Wanted: anal retentive design critic with a penchant for typography

On a more personal note, I have had the benefit of working in groups in which I can openly exchange feedback, both complimentary and critical. However, as each of us grows professionally, our paths deviate and our capacity to give informed critical opinions diminishes. That's not to say that I don't value the feedback of my coworkers, but rather that I'm increasingly looking for more focused feedback that I feel they may not be qualified to give (of course, I still ask). I'm finding a growing need to search for mentors and peers that I can interact with in the areas that I have chosen to pursue; to broaden my audience. Fortunately for me, most of these people live in the same place: the web.

At the gym last night, they branched out their musical tastes and played some death metal. I'm not much of a fan of death metal, but tend not to poo poo any given musical genre on the face of it. However, while absorbing the dulcet tones, I wondered what exactly it is that distinguishes one death metal band from the next? What quality of the driving roar of band A separates it from the driving roar of band B? The lyrics? The percussive elements? The hair? What? Both bands have fan bases, so there must be something. I'm so confused.

The web is an interesting medium. Unlike written text, "pages" on the web have no physical size limit. An author can prattle on for hundreds and hundreds of lines. It's entirely possible to put the whole of War and Peace on one web page. And why not? Because it's not practical. The file size would be tremendous. If we were able to remove the technological barriers, what issues would remain? Typography. The information architecture is already there. The book is conveniently pre-divided into chapters (wasn't that nice of Mr. Tolstoy?), but an entire chapter is still an unreasonable block of text for the average web page consumer. A page in print is a unit of content division. The human mind has been optimized to consume content in these logical chunks, even if the content of the copy crosses the page barrier. On the web, however, the average user doesn't pay attention to the specific content for more than a few seconds. They practically need to be forced or tricked into consuming the content of a page measuring even 800x600. With 200 pixel margins. In 14pt font. So now that 1024x768 has largely become the standard viewing resolution, the capacity for visual overload is a force not only to be reckoned with, but to be humbled by. As web content authors and designers, we are the artists standing before a blank twenty foot by ten foot canvas knowing that the people viewing our finished work will be second graders with ADHD. The medium just isn't appropriate for the consumers in its natural state. Plenty of knowledge about how to organize web content has been collected through the study and experience of very intelligent people. Of course most web content authors aren't privy to this knowledge, or don't care. I'm as guilty as the next guy, and could insert any number of perfectly valid excuses here, but that's not my point. There's more to learn than there is time to learn it. In the mean time, here's a little snippet:

Content below the fold is visually equivalent to the reverse side of the printed page.

Book print could be compared to a simple two column layout, where the gutter forms the space between the columns. But the next two pages (or two columns) are invisible until you turn the page. Similarly, web content below the fold is invisible until you scroll down. And just as turning the page makes the previous pages invisible, the top of the viewport consumes the content previously above the first fold. The difference of course is that web content is inately consumable in the transition state, where paged media isn't. It has been generally held that this is an improvement to be taken advantage of, but is it? If we have to trick the average web page consumer into reading the content above the first fold, what hope do we have for getting them to read the content beyond it. I recently noted an interesting design choice by a web and print design firm called the Cuban Council. They started by standardizing their content area to fit horizontally in an 800x600 pixel resolution, then split the content vertically into sections. I'm not sure if they were aiming for this, but the first and second content sections are approximately 750x550 pixels, which happens to be roughly the remaining real estate at 1024x768 after browser navigation, menu bar, status bar, and in my case tabs and the Developer toolbar. By putting the second content section in a contrasting color and sizing it to fit the viewport, they adopted a quasi print media-esque paging mechanism. Sure the contrasting color groups the content nicely, but beyond that, it encourages the viewer to scroll the top of the new content section to the top of the viewport. Since the second section ended just within the available real estate, the section's lower border created an obvious second fold. As a viewer, it was a comfortable place to stop scrolling because I knew there was nothing below that point that was germane to what was currently in my viewport. Beyond the second fold, the content was styled in accordance with the primary color theme again. Since the following sections weren't vertically sized at ~550 pixels, there wasn't a clean third fold. I noted, however that the last section fits nicely in the visible real estate when sized at 800x600. By the mix of optimization between 8x6 and 10x7 viewing, I'm assuming that this wasn't their goal, but at least when I visited the page, it began as a very pleasant experience even before I read a word.

Manipulating and multiplying the fold

Perhaps the notion of multiple folds has been around a while, but in my experience it has always been a single boundary at the base of the viewport when initially rendering content. As a designer, if you are working with static content, you can choose to optimize for a resolution and section your content appropriately to create multiple folds. Sizing page sections just under the vertical height of the viewport and making them visually distinct from one another creates bite sized content and allows the user the (perhaps subconscious) comfort of knowing when and how much to scroll. Of course, designing for multiple folds inherently comes with challenges.

1. Not everybody will view your site at your optimized resolution.
2. Many users will have extra toolbars or browser themes that affect the available content real estate.
3. Different users will size their browsers differently.
4. So on and so forth

At the least, however, the notion of content portions segmented to operate cleanly in certain resolutions is another tool in the designer's bag of tricks.

I had an inspiration to create this graph. It's dying for a thought provoking, or humorous post around it, but I was at a loss. I figured it was worth posting, so there.

There was a story on NPR this morning about the UN recommending the US close down the internment camp at Guantanamo Bay. The US response was, as expected, an emphatic "Stuff it". We're so civilized. Nonetheless, there was a sub-plot of sorts in the story that I found interesting.

If you want the US empire to crumble, encourage it.

In the last few years, it seems the standing of the US in the international community has taken on a downward trend. Ok, pretty much everybody seems to hate the US either for its behavior in the world arena, or its undisputable dominance as the sole world power. Both points are debatable, of course, but from my crazy left-leaning-tree-hugging-peace-loving perspective, it seems to be the case that the US is viewed increasingly as the playground bully on a bad day rather than the wealthy, magnanimous benefactor of nations. We're managing military states in two middle eastern countries, and now there's growing tension with Iran. "All options are on the table" as our beloved president has stated. The US becomes weaker the more broadly it tries to assert itself militarily. Weaker in a military sense as well as in both domestic and international opinion. The world is falling apart according to the powers that be, and if the evil doers don't respond to reason, there's no choice but to force them back in line. The problem is that the US is the only capable force to do so. This is all according to the US executive branch, of course. So if the rest of the world views the US's position in the world as unbalanced, then it behooves them to encourage more invasive international involvement. Every nation the US hurles its might at, the less might it has to hurl at others. Additionally, the more aggresive the position, the less likely it will be in alignment with that of the UN or the world at large. At what point will the influence of the US diminish below that of an increasing number of allied disenting countries? My enemy's enemy is my friend, apparenly. But who's saying it?