December 03, 2005
The Origin of Verdana and Georgia
If you know anything about web design, then you know that Verdana is the most screen-readable sans serif font and Georgia is the most screen-readable serif font. Probably less widely known is the history of Verdana and Georgia. In short, back in the mid-90's -- to help you frame this, think back to the time when Microsoft introduced Windows 95 -- Microsoft asked Matthew Carter (shown in the photograph), a world class font designer, and Thomas Rickner, a leading expert in True Type technology at Monotype, to create new fonts that would be optimal for reading on a computer screen. Microsoft wanted both a serif and a sans serif font. The result was the creation of Verdana and Georgia.
The creation of these fonts truly was a significant event. The design approach taken by Carter was a departure from tradional type design. Daniel Will-Harris has a great article on this theme, including an interview with Carter:
The following is a short excerpt:
In graphic design circles, people think of screen fonts as preview mode--it's only when the toner hits the wood-pulp that we usually judge a typeface.
But that's an increasingly short-sighted view of life. Larger numbers of computer users spend their entire time in front of a screen and never (or seldom) print anything. So it became obvious to us that this was a reversal of priorities--we should not approach this as one of doing printer fonts adapted for the screen, we should design them as screen fonts from the outset, the printer fonts are secondary in this case.
In the past I've been burned starting from outlines and trying to be extra clever in the hinting. So I finally deciding, ‘I'm better off grasping the nettle. What's most important is to get the bitmaps right at the sizes people use most often.'
Because Microsoft makes these fonts available for free, I don't see any reason not to use them. Indeed, Verdana includes 893 glyphs, which represents a fairly large subset of Unicode characters, including all Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic characters. That's a much larger subset of Unicode than most other fonts provide.
The following links provide more information about Verdana and Georgia:
December 01, 2005
Whiteboardcasts
ZDNet has created a collection of "whiteboardcasts." These short videos are superbly done. And the idea is truly creative. I'm not sure exactly why these videos seem so fascinating. Perhaps it's because of the human connection -- the speaker is standing right there in the video -- and because of a spontaneous feel. This is much different from a Powerpoint-like presentation done with Flash.
Others would do well to follow ZDNet's example. Specifically, keep their videos short, relevant, and pithy. And put a human face on it. I think these whiteboard presentations could be much more effective than a buzz-word-laden white paper.
If you get a chance, do have a look. Some of my favorites include Microsoft's Dilemma, The Google Galaxy, and SEO 101.
November 27, 2005
Reification of Attention
Most of us have never thought of our "attention" as a tangible thing. Advertising executives surely do, though. And so do a group of people led by Steve Gillmor who created a non-profit organization called AttentionTrust.org.
According to the thinking of this group, your "attention data" is valuable, and you should have the right to control it. Attention data is the record of your past online activities that indicate where your attention has been. Attention data has predictive power, which is why it's valuable to advertisers -- they want to know what will grab your attention and what you will immediately dismiss. Above all, AttentionTrust.org believes you should have the right to control how your attention data is used, and even negotiate the terms for its use.
Recently, one of the directors of AttentionTrust.org has launched a new company called Root Markets, with plans to build a business around attention data. The concept of the business is abstract, but the basic idea is to act as a broker of attention data.
This all seems incredibly abstract to me. And so, I have to ask this question: Can AttentionTrust.org and Root Markets gain any broad acceptance if the "attention" of the average person does not include an interest in attention data? The point is this: the ideas of "attention" are far too abstract to be of any interest to the average person.
November 26, 2005
Is Control-S Necessary?
How many decisions do we make just because everyone has always done it that way? You write a desktop application, and you add a File menu, and that File menu has a menu item labeled "Save," and you bind Control-S to that "Save" menu item, right? Of course, we've always done it that way!
Why?
Control-S, and "manual save," are so natural, we never stop to think about whether it really makes sense. But if you do stop and think about it, I think you'll agree with me that we really don't need it.
A world without Control-S is a different world. When you make a change to a document, the application stores that change immediately. The upside is that you never lose your work because of a crash or power failure. At first, it may seem like the downside is that you can't undo, but that's not the case. All modern desktop applications support multiple undos. The downside really is just that you may have to perform a lot of undos to get back to the place you want. So, in the end, it comes down to what is more important: never losing any work or having to do multiple undos to go back to a previous document state. I think it's time to rethink Control-S. A good alternative might be a "Save a Copy" menu item, which allows you to save a snap shot, or a "Create Checkpoint" menu item, which saves a named checkpoint somewhere, possibly even in the document itself.
For more reading, check out Michael Feathers article entitled I'm Tired Of Saving! Michael suggests that the IDEs used by software developers could not only do away with Control-S, but could also run test suites in the background and provide instant feedback about any problems in the code. This is a step beyond just checking the syntax in the background.
November 16, 2005
Oreilly's Open Books
O'reilly is a popular publisher among techies, and deservedly so.
One of the valuable services O'Reilly provides is the Open Books Project. This project provides books online for free. There are many reasons O'Reilly has made these books free. Some books have outlived their economic viability, meaning that O'Reilly would not recover the expense of another printing. Some books are free because the author(s) negotiated a deal that required that they be free online. Some books are free for still other reasons. Even though these books are free, you may buy the printed book versions from O'Reilly.
Some of the most interesting books include:
- DocBook: The Definitive Guide
- Version Control with Subversion
- Creating Applications with Mozilla
- MySQL Reference Manual
The Open Books Project web site is worth knowing about, as it can save you a few bucks. However, if you are like me, sometimes you will still pay for the printed book because you prefer reading on the living room couch, or on a plane, or someplace other than a computer.
November 12, 2005
Where Do You Find RFCs in HTML?
Have you noticed that some RFCs are available in HTML and plain text?
Every few months, there is a discussion on the IETF general mailing list about the format of RFCs. The result is almost always the same: we'll continue to publish plain text RFCs, but we'll keep an open mind.
Well, a few years back, Marshall Rose and friends created a tool named xml2rfc that converts a certain XML format into the standard plain text RFC format. In addition, the tool converts the XML to HTML. (There are similar tools that convert from nroff and from Microsoft Word into plain text RFCs, but not HTML.) This made the text-only side happy, and it allowed the plain-text-sucks side to be happy, too.
The problem is, not all RFC authors use the xml2rfc tool, and they continue to create only plain text RFCs. For those of us who prefer to read HTML in a browser instead of plain text in a text editor, it's helpful to know which RFCs are available as HTML, and where to find the HTML version. It turns out that the developers who created xml2rfc wanted the RFCs linked together, so they created a database for RFCs. The xml2rfc tool checks the database to find the link targets for referenced RFCs. You can check that database yourself if you want to see if a particular RFC has an HTML version. You can get the database as a zip file or just visit the directory.
As a side note, there are a lot of RFCs converted to pseudo-HTML, which are available at http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/. These "HTML" RFCs are basically text with <pre> tags around them.
November 07, 2005
Do You Speak XML Schema?
XML Schema is commonly used in technical documents, including Internet RFCs, to express the syntax for XML in various documents and protocol messages. It's also the basis for SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI.
I have felt for a long time that XML schema is ugly and useless. It's ugly because it is so difficult to read. Most published documents, even Word documents, don't publish the XML Schema with syntax highlighting, which would certainly help. But if it's hard to read, at least it's machine readable, right? True, but it's rare for anyone to use validation tools with a published XML Schema. The published schema is often just for human consumption.
Now, however, I feel that my feelings have been affirmed. The following is quoted from an email by Tim Bray:
Many people in the XML community - I hesitate to say consensus, but would claim at least a plurality - feel that [Relax NG] is substantially technically superior to both DTDs and W3C XML Schemas. ... W3C XML Schema is a profoundly bad design which exhibits very poor comprehensibility and interoperability.
So, at least in Tim's opinion, Relax NG should be the way forward.
Read Tim's complete email in the archive. It's a short but interesting read.
November 04, 2005
Who Should Pay Whom?
It's been around the blogosphere. SBC's CEO Ed Whitacre (pictured) calls the application providers "freeloaders." See, for example, the post at Techdirt. The idea is that the application providers should pay the access providers -- SBC for instance -- for access.
But isn't this backwards from the other popular distribution model? What about cable TV? Imagine Comcast telling Disney that it must pay to use Comcast's cable lines. No, in the cable TV business, the cable company pays the content company. Comcast's cable lines have no value without the content. So, perhaps someone should ask Mr. Whitacre why his situation is any different.
October 28, 2005
What's the Value of Music?
Yahoo has raised the price of its music subscription service. As I read this article, this quote caught my attention:
"We definitely believe that subscription is the model that most people will adopt," said Shannon Ferguson, director of Yahoo Music Europe.
I don't know what most people will adopt. Some people will definitely sign up for a subscription service. A paid subscription service is not much different from a paid radio service, like XM Radio or Sirius. The difference is that with a music subscription service, you pick your own playlist. With a paid radio service, someone else picks the playlist.
Then, it occurred to me: doesn't the music subscription service diminish the perceived value of the music? Even though it's a paid service, it's so much like just listening to the radio, which is free. The monthly subscription fee is small. In return for paying, you get to listen without advertisements.
Much of the value of music comes from having something -- something you can hold. What if, ten years from now, there are no new CDs manufactured? What if the only way to get music is to download it from the Internet? Will music still have its perceived value?
I'll suggest an answer to the last question. There may be no value attributed to the music. Instead, the value will be attributed to the service itself. In other words, we won't be thinking, "Is this song worth $X to me?" Instead, we will be thinking, "Is this service worth $X a month to me?"
October 22, 2005
Skype Filtering Technology
Verso Technologies announced a Skype filter:
Verso Introduces Carrier Grade Skype™ Filtering Technology
The announced network "filter" would enable ISPs to control the kind of content that may be conveyed through the networks they own (and "lease" to their customers).
Who could possibly feel threatened by Skype? Skype is relatively low bandwidth. I don't know for sure, but I would guess that Skype uses less than 64 kbs. Besides, with Skype being free, one would think that ISPs would tout Skype as a feature, like email, blogging tools, etc. It seems odd that Verso would advertise that the product is targeted at Skype, when there are worse applications from the perspective of an ISP.
The whole issue of ISPs policing the use of their networks -- allowing some applications and disallowing others -- is controversial. Don't expect anything Draconian from the ISPs. They would never get away with blocking applications willy nilly. For example, a cable internet service provider like Comcast, which charges $55 per month and offers 3 Mbs downstream, would never get away with blocking Skype. However, we should expect situations where the ISP makes a stonger case in favor of blocking. Consider an MVNO (mobile virtual network provider) that would like to provide basic wireless email access, in the model of the Blackberry, that wants to block Internet phone calls.