The Cesspool of Cyber Society

“Bullshit and hysteria have a long and proud history on the internet, one that should never be under-estimated”

I read this quote today in a forum & after being dragged through the anal cavity of the Web today, it has to be the most refreshing statement I have heard for eons!

Dodgy SEO’s, incompetent web designers, and unreliable web hosts combined to form the bowels of the Internet. This is where unsuspecting users are getting lost in the slums. Roads that lead to undesirables. Highways fall into ruin from the pressure. Infrastructure crumbles at our feet.

So how to we save these lost people. We can shout them directions, but unless the understand they get even further lost. We can put ourselves on a pedestal as the best, but that just makes it further for us to fall. Or we can show them our badge, take their hand and guide them through the dreggs of society.

What is this crazy woman talking about you ask???

Licensing! There has to be something that shows the public that you can be trusted. A mechanic has to be licensed, so does an electrician, a builder a plumber. I’m not talking about formal qualifications. A License that says you can do as you claim.

There are mega bucks exchanging hands for websites & their infrastructure, with unsuspecting clients not knowing that they could not be getting what they pay for.

A license wont save the day, but it may provide street lighting so that it gives the unsuspecting user a fighting chance!

Accessible & Usable websites in 2007!

I would hope that most people by now are aware of accessibility & usability when it comes to websites, but there still are some shockers out there that come no where near obtaining it!

Personally, I would even appreciate designers at least designing so it doesn’t crash in my default browser (Firefox). I never use IE (unless I am checking my own sites), and I got to say how pretty disgraceful it is the amount of broken, or pages that just simply don’t work in Firefox. Especially ecommerce sites! Don’t even try to combine that with larger screen & resolution sizes! If I have frightened you so far.. then don’t try using a widescreen!

Sound terrifying?? It should! It’s terrifying that there are web designers out there fleecing unsuspecting clients. Make your design & development team accountable. Ask your designer of all the pitfalls of websites they might want. Ask if they have tried it in a few browsers & on a few resolutions to see if it will hold. Even be as bold to ask them for a check list if you like of components & situations they have tested. Like an other merchandise you buy, it is your right as the customer to get a tested product! Why then are businesses possessing so many inferior products?? Appreciate there will be glitches from time to time, but expect them to be rectified.

Now I have heard the same old argument that the majority of users are able & use IE, but IMO, thats a pretty lame excuse! 100 users of IE making you $10 income each time, is still only a $1000. You could be sending a non-user of IE or a physically or mentally challenged away who could spend that in one transaction. Many physically or mentally challenged people use the net for a lot of ecommerce. Many use it as a prime source of entertainment & education. In most cases it takes very little effort to make a site even “A” rated (the lowest one) in accessibility. There are many finer points, and many arguable ones …. but an attempt should at least be made.

For usability, at least try for things being in a logical order, even if you cant get it pixel perfect. Having text disappear under images is just tacky. Your site is of no use at all to people who cant read it.

No ones asking for perfect …. just an attempt.

So, just is case you are willing, but unsure or haven’t got the resources to check,. or you think your site is accessible & usable, and just want to make sure, then post your site HERE asking for it to be checked. You could find you are only a step away from being correct.

You might find it better to check these things early in construction, because you can save yourself a lot of changing if you catch it early.

Australian’s take to Fire Fox

Firefox’s share of the Australian market is now higher than it is globally. It seems that Australians are more concerned about quality than conventionality.

In a recent article in Australia IT, it reports that the number of Fire Fox users in Australia is growing, with many users using 2 browsers, especially for websites built only for IE.

Personally I can’t figure out why it has taken so long for Fire Fox to capture a greater chunk of the market! Websites built to standards look so much better in Fire Fox than IE. Add that to Fire Fox actually being customizable and not chaining you down with what comes out of the box, and you have a so much better browser.

Don’t not change because IE “seems” ok and you know it. Change because it simply is just a much better product!

Spamhaus court decision a bad precedence

It’s been plastered all over the Net, so no doubt you have probably heard about the Illinois (USA) court decision ordering Spamhaus, a UK company, to pay damages to the value of $11.7 million to the supposed (cough cough) non spamming e360 Insight email marketing company in the US.

I can’t begin to count how many things I can see wrong with this, including the bad precedent it sets on US courts being able to control Internet content!

Yet Microsoft can quite legally throw warnings up on their browser stating that legitimate websites could be phishers, and the website owner has to “ask” MS to remove them.

Spamhaus has been providing a worthwhile service in fighting spam. The fact that an “email marketing” company is on their list as spammers, in my opinion, should be their right just as much as it’s Microsofts right to throw dirty big warnings at you on their browser for “supposed” phishers. I’ve got these IE7 warnings on a few of my sites I have been told, and I have to wait until I feel like polluting my system with IE7 to request that Microsoft remove them. I am wondering if in the meantime I can take out a court order against Microsoft requesting damages also???

But apart from the abhorable double standards here…. let’s look at the implications that this kind of decision can evoke.

A US court making an order against a UK based Internet company?? And the audacity of trying to get ICANN to de-register Spanhaus?

We all know that the US would love to lay claim to be the law of the Internet, but my dears…. this isn’t the case yet! I’m with Spamhaus. I wouldn’t have wasted my time dealing with this matter, because IMO what an Illinois court has to say lays no claim to me. If it was an International crime like paedophelia, then yes. But unless I have been asleep recently & missed a lot of action… the last time I looked being on a list is not an International crime.

So… what are your thoughts on this? How many mistakes can you spot in this whole process? Discuss them here >>>

Thanks to Vinnie!

Vincent Marcello from Southbourne Internet kindly lent his expetise to making the WDC blog more SE friendly, and added a few plugins along the way.

I was a little busy & distracted at the time, so didn’t get time to thank him, so decided I would do it here