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skipchris

Listed below are comments made by skipchris between Monday, 18th August 2008 and Monday, 18th August 2008.

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New ways of linking 3:54pm on 18 Aug 2008 Whilst it's maybe emotive to yell at you for 'breaking the web', I can't believe that some otherwise-smart people have spent time and money on this project.

Hypertext is good. Linking to background reading is good. However, there was a simple and easy way of accomplishing this: hyperlinks in the page's content. Instead, you appear to have opted for the tried-and-tested 'wheel reinvention' approach to the project, and layered a complicated, flawed system over that simplest of web concepts, the hyperlink.

First of all, the popups are completely un-weblike. Instead of linking to a resource, with a URL (which I can bookmark, or copy into an email to my mum), you're shoehorning me into a popup window. If I try use the web as it's meant to be used and follow links in that window, I get more popups. We've been reading web pages in browser windows for well over 10 years now, and it works great; usability studies have shown that popups are no fun; yet every year or so, someone somewhere comes up with the half-baked idea that their links will open in popups, and tries to push the idea. Enough I say!

However, in spite of this wrongheadedness, I do see where you're coming from with the popups. A lot of people don't know what a tab is, and how they work (although you could argue there's nothing wrong with the back button), so these dirty popups get around the duty to educate users people their computers, which could well be insurmountable. In short, I dislike them, but I can forgive them.

What's completely unforgivable is the implementation, which is entirely Javascript dependent. So, if I'm browsing with script turned off for security reasons, or using an alternative user agent (this could be some modern mobile phones, we're not just talking about screen readers here), I don't get the background reading. A fundamental feature of the web which has worked brilliantly since the Dawn of the Web has been turned off.

Luckily, I use a normal desktop browser, and I have script turned on. The Javascript runs, and writes hyperlinks into the document, so I assume I can use them the way the web was meant to be used: by clicking them and using the background, or command-clicking them to open them in tabs... Except... This doesn't work. Clicking forces a pseudo-browser popup, which I can't turn off (except by turning off the link as a whole - which I don't want to do - I like the link); control-clicking does absolutely nothing.

It's easy to criticise, it's harder to help people - so here's my two'pennorth:
1) If you absolutely, completely, totally have to, keep the popups. There may be political pressures I'm unaware of, or some user research I haven't read which shows people are baffled by the 'back' button. I can accept this, so if you must, they can stay.
2) Mark up the document WITH HYPERLINKS BAKED IN. This is the nub of it. I'm sure there are political pressures here as well, and I'm sure I don't understand them, but requiring Javascript to be working to enable hyperlinking stops here. Please. Pretty please.
3) Make the javascript more intelligent. Click opens the popup (or doesn't... we can hope), but control-click allows power-users to use the web as God intended, and open the web page in a web browser.

Oh - and the alignment of the new icons with respect to the surrounding text is out of whack (I think)... but that's easy fixed!

Thanks, and apologies for verbosity,
Chris.

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