By “normal people” I mean those who are mere computer users, not literates nor enthusiasts nor experts. Cabel shares a striking example: in Japan, advertisers instruct potential buyers to enter specific keywords into search engines instead of their company URLs.
Clearly, a sufficient amount of search engine optimization is necessary for this to work, especially for the really famous and common-name brands. But this behavior of accessing websites did not arise because these companies have told us to do so. Neither is it limited to this Asian country.
I am sure you have at least one friend or loved one who has not grasped the concept of URLs and remains highly dependent on Google for finding their way around the web. If you’ll take a closer look at their web browsers, you’ll see why it really isn’t their fault.
Google invades the browsers
Most of the weird behavior we observe from other people is because they have Google as their homepage or built into their browsers. (You can also change the word “Google” to your favorite search engine of choice.) This usually comes in three flavors:
- the Google homepage (whether it’s plain vanilla, a Firefox-Google hybrid, or iGoogle)
- the Google search engine add-on (a common feature in all modern browsers)
- the Google Toolbar
As a result, users now have several blank input bars staring back at them—the address bar, the browser search bar, the Google Toolbar search bar, and the Google homepage search bar. Guess which one they’ll choose?
With the icons and text that draw one’s attention toward the Google search bars, the address bar fades more and more into the background. And since non-techie people are usually afraid of “breaking the computer”, they stick to a method that works well, which is to keep using Google.
Ignore or eradicate?
We can’t blame Google for trying to be the #1 product in our virtual lives; we can only be wary. But it should share the responsibility of educating users of how to use the Internet (how silly does that sound?) with the browsers. Unfortunately neither parties seem to care because: (a) Google would much rather have users search for sites than visit them through URLs directly; and (b) the browsers are earning money precisely because Google is paying them to have their search bars built-in.
Now, learning how to use the interface that lets one use the Internet is only halfway of the journey; choosing to use Google to wade through the Web is not necessarily a bad practice, as Jakob Nielsen predicted that this would become commonplace. But he also believes URLs will have to go.
In the long term, it is not appropriate to require unique words to identify every single entity in the world. That’s not how human language works.
The very nature of URLs seems to be another major stumbling block. Ordinary people don’t understand the use of a “www” and a “.com”, or that the “@” symbol is used only in e-mail addresses. They don’t know how to share websites through URLs either—unless there’s a button with explicit instructions that tell them how.
Add to that the explosion of all the domain suffixes like .me, .travel, and even .xxx. Not to mention all the malicious parties that wish to take advantage of their ignorance—stealing and spoofing personal information through misspelled URLs, search keywords, and deceptive e-mails.
The question is, if normal people aren’t using URLs anymore, what system can be built to replace them? Will it work? Or is Google doing a fine job already?
A few weeks ago Google announced that it can now extract and index textual content from Adobe Flash files. We all know that creating websites in pure Flash is a big no-no if you care about being found through search engines. So is there nothing left that’s stopping web designers from switching from plain old HTML and CSS to rich interactive Flash? I have yet to find somebody who agrees with a resounding “yes!”
Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, believes that this new development isn’t compelling enough to start building sites with Flash.
Flash content is fundamentally different from HTML on webpage URLs and being able to parse links in the Flash code and text snippets does not make Flash search-engine friendly. I think it’s great that Google’s digging deeper into Flash, but I don’t believe web developers should be any less wary than they’ve been in the past about Flash-based websites or Flash-embedded content.
If anything, I commend Google for continuing to convince web designers and search engine marketers alike to embrace web standards by pushing for the best practices in coding websites. Of course it’s the most logical thing both parties: search spiders need to parse content properly so that they can index it, and a well-formed webpage makes this possible; webmasters need not wade through nested tables and unnecessary tag soup when there’s a better way. And Google should, since it’s way more influential than Opera or any other web company out there.
However, Google’s efforts to read Flash still seem to be in the premature stages. Typical Google, they always release their products in beta without being wary of the consequences.
By consequences I mean clients who are now running around telling their web designers to create animated intros and the extravagant interfaces for their websites. I can’t really shoot down this little achievement by Google—except that it’s getting scarily smarter everyday and should try to have more features than issues when they launch a product.
More importantly, I can only continue to condemn those who misuse Flash without any regard for accessibility, much less usability, whatsoever.
When I first saw the new lowercase “g” favicon for Google, I thought it was a glitch. The blue of the icon was a bit too bright for my taste, and the “Web 2.0″ spin on it (shiny, rounded-corner button) was not characteristic of Google at all. A few hours later I saw that people started to talk, nay, complain about it. And then I realized it was a tiny Google redesign, after all.
Here’s the official explanation from the Google Blog:
Some people have wondered why we changed our favicon — after all, we hadn’t in 8.5 years(!). The reason is that we wanted to develop a set of icons that would scale better to some new platforms like the iPhone and other mobile devices. So the new favicon is one of those, but we’ve also developed a group of logo-based icons that all hang together as a unified set.
And here’s the whole suite of icons for the redesign:
It looks a bit nicer in higher resolutions, but as a favicon, not at all. The small “g” is just a few pixels away from becoming indistinguishable to the number “8″. It also looks like it’s struggling to stand up straight, but failing miserably at it.
How much does Google favicon suck?
- Mayer claims that the redesign is not final, and is even invoking the wisdom of the masses to submit their own Google favicon ideas. Spec much?
- A logo redesign takes a lot of effort (which was also mentioned in the post). The inability to stand by their decision to change the favicon shows flakiness on the company’s part. On the other hand, it’s a good thing for such a gigantic company to be this sensitive about the smallest thing about them. Maybe because they don’t want to act like “the big G”.
- The rounded-corner button look and the specific mention of the iPhone tells me they’re designing for Apple, not for themselves or for any other mobile device. Is Steve Jobs this good at being a design dictator?
- Users have created scripts to bring back the old favicon.
- A comment on TechCrunch: “Google has a design team?” More on that here and here. I’m sorely tempted to write about how Google’s designs are so Web 1.0 (now trying to be Web 2.0), but had no particular reason to. This favicon renewed that desire.
Note: When I use “Web 1.0″ and “Web 2.0″ as design terms here, I mean them sarcastically. I am fully aware that there is no such thing as the “Web 2.0″ look. Glossiness, reflections, and rounded corners are design characteristics that came from Apple first.
Point is, Google never cared about “looking Web 2.0″, never cared about looking a certain way—until this favicon redesign. Despite some very bad design choices, Google’s interfaces are clean, simple, and easy to use. They’re not trying to be what they’re not. But this favicon is. It’s the end of an era, alright.
Remember Blackle? Google is so universal that any small change can turn out to be a huge impact. In the case of Blackle, it was about saving energy. In the case of this favicon, it’s about associating an ever-visible icon on the browser tab bar with the most-used search engine out there. People will have to get used to looking for that small “g” instead of that big “G” when they’re cycling through tabs.
It seems the online world is the perfect place for all the madness taking place every April 1st, but I’ve noticed some of the pranks circling the Web today are really good ideas and worth discussing here on Wisdump.
Gmail users have long wanted a send email in future time feature to avoid unnecessary follow-up and back-and-forth emailing, but Google spins it around. In addition to “never delete another email again”, there’s “never send another late email again”. You can send an email timestamped as far back as April 1, 2004, which is when Gmail was launched and a clue right there how legit this feature is.
Many people would love to have custom time/date stamps on their emails—I know I would. But it becomes a case of deception versus productivity. Will Google continue to draw the line? Do you see this happening in the future? If you can do it with blog posts, why not emails? If you’ll remember last year’s prank, Gmail Paper, it’s another great idea that asks “why not?” too. (And, if anything, testimonials don’t make a product believable.)
Also check out Google’s other pranks for this year:
- Virgle (see also Larry and Sergey’s video), the first human colony on Mars
- gDay, which lets you search content on the internet before it is created
- Google Wake Up Kit, a system that sends increasingly annoying alerts (SMS, water bucket, bed-flipping device) to wake you up - it’s potentially a good idea, but it’s not as subtly executed as Gmail’s pranks so I won’t elaborate on it
Whew! Google’s been busy this year!
Darren Rowse on ProBlogger has launched a way to monetize Twitter with PayPerTweet. This totally makes sense because we’ve long wondered how Twitter could possibly be penetrated by advertisers, and we get a pretty viable answer.
Problem is, Twitter is a pretty trustworthy environment right now—you follow only whom you want to and the second they start spamming you, “unfollow” is always one click away. PayPerTweet is not just a prank but an addressing of the question we’ve all had on our minds: who will cross the line and bring advertising to Twitter? Are we there already? Will you tolerate it? Perhaps fake tweets like announcing PayPerTweet and other pranks—rickrolling is such a big thing these days—is the closest thing we’ll ever get to sneakiness (read: sponsored tweets) on Twitter.
Another great thing about the PayPerTweet announcement is that because it’s a blog-based prank, the comments section clearly shows who got punk’d and who managed to call BS. And you can discuss in a follow-up post the success (or failure) of your prank. We thus find out that PayPerTweet came from an actual proposal to advertise via Twitter for $20. Darren Rowse refused the offer.
Renowned information design expert Edward Tufte joins SlideShare’s board of advisors to help guide people in presenting visual information the proper way. The online slideshow service will employ technologies that automatically eliminate bullet points, chartjunk, and other distracting elements from presentations.
Even if you’re remotely interested in design, you probably believe the world will become a better place by throwing out crappy PowerPoint slides. But is Microsoft to blame for all the ugly, overloaded, and difficult-to-read slides? Can and should software encourage and impress upon its users the principles of good design? And since we know that PowerPoint, as well as Word, was made for business, should we expect people in non-design industries to have rudimentary design sense (i.e., should it be part of their job description)?
Darren Hoyt releases a WordPress theme that showcases the hottest web design techniques ten years ago. How nostalgic! When you click on the preview image, a JavaScript alert comes up, saying, “Happy April Fool’s — seriously, you were gonna download this?”
I wonder how many people actually clicked, or if Darren Hoyt kept track of how many did. Using this theme would be a really good April Fools’ prank; too bad no real theme files were created. Update (April 7, 2008): Somebody actually did a similar prank! Jasongraphix redesigned his site with the “90s look” on April 1st! There’s always the possibility that somebody out there actually finds this theme attractive. This got me thinking: did you really think that old school web design was tasteful back then? Do you think the current web design trends will be considered attractive in the future?
In 1998 I was a freshman in high school and we were supposed to create webpages on a slow, 16-color (yes, literally 16 colors only, not 16-bit) computer, with no graphics program, and had to make do with whatever images were installed on the PC. My geekier-than-thou classmates were fooling around with DHTML alerts and scrolls, and I was too flabbergasted at the limitations of the computer I was using to even see how it was possible to create a decent-looking website. Today, I see people worship the Apple aesthetic, but bash rounded corners and other bright, shiny, glassy Web 2.0 looks, then proceed to play tug-of-war between light, clean, grid-based minimalism and dark, dirty, anything-goes maximalism.
Update (10:48 PM):
The Serif announces that FontFont will release a Helvetica Serif, which is a digital recreation of the sketches by Max Miedinger’s granddaughter.
If the little nuances in the image above don’t already give away the impression that this is a less than spectacular typeface and couldn’t possibly match the sans serif that is Helvetica, that’s okay. But know that having a serif version of Helvetica is a really big deal, quite an impossible one actually. (Update 04/02/08: Stephen Coles of Typographica.org reports in the comments there’s Helserif by Phil Martin.) Helvetica stands for everything a serif typeface isn’t. Do you think Miedinger would come up with a serif typeface just for the heck of it? Do we need a Helvetica Serif? Who should be tasked to create it?
I hope you’re having as much fun this April Fools’ as I am. Don’t forget to check out the most popular April Fools’ Day pranks on the web then go vote for them here.
The Share This button, originally a WordPress plugin by Alex King (interview), is now a separate project, along with the Share This icon and everything. It’s hosted these days, but you can still download the self-hosted plugin should you prefer not relying on an external service.
And it’s apparently used by bookstore and -printer Lulu, which I saw today when following a link.
There it is. Cool.
They use a special layer when clicked, rather than the default ones, although they still stick to the basic style of the plugin. Click it, or see below:
Share This have spread tremendously, at least the icon can be seen on newspapers as well as tech industry leading blogs. Heck, even Google uses it for their share services! Branding gone well, I’d say.
It is bound to happen, the Google Web Browser that is. For a company so focused on delivering online applications that compete with the old desktop variant, a reliable browser and the direct connection with the users it offers just sounds like the obvious choice.
So where is the Google Web Browser?
Some might say that Firefox is the closest to the Google Web Browser we’re getting, and that may be true, although a bit simplified. Sure, there’s a Google search toolbar installed per default, but the same goes for Safari, you know. Problem with the latter is that it sucks in Gmail, for instance, which isn’t acceptable since that’s probably the most used Google web application out there, right?
So why should Google do their own web browser? more
Google, have you heard of them? Of course you have, they’re the strongest brand online today. When you google something, you search the web. Just like playing Nintendo was videogames (and perhaps still is, given the success of Nintendo DS and Wii).
One thing Google does better than the rest is using their brand, the logo in particular, in a playful way. It’s called the Google Doodles and you see it every Holiday season, or when something interesting is happening. Check out the Doodle archive to see what I mean.
So what’s so great about that? Well, besides the fact that it’s something to react to when visiting google.com, it’s also a very viral marketing ploy. Think about it, how often have you seen tweets or pownces, perhaps even full blog posts, or just short IM messages letting you know what those zany Google people’ve done now.
The Google Doodles spread across the web like a wildfire. It’s a brilliant marketing ploy, simple yet effective. The best ones usually are.
IZEA, the folks behind everyone’s favorite blog corruptor, PayPerPost, have launched IZEARanks, their PageRank alternative. Basically, it’s a service that lets you rank your blog and have it displayed to the public, giving you credit and authority where it is due. You install IZEA Toolkit, claim your blog, and you’re on your way. It all sounds easy enough.
Will you use it?
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