Category Archives: Opinion

A Review of MSN’s New Search Interface

MSN has created a new version of its search engine and along with that comes a new interface. On first glimpse it looks nice, it’s rather blocky feeling compared to the last iteration and minimalist which is better for load times, but it feels naked compared to Google.

Usability
The new interface is usable, you can get what you need done relatively quickly because they’ve not got a lot of extra interface distractions, but leaves room for improvement. To MSN’s credit they didn’t add an advertisement to the inital search page, which is atypical for MSN, they love to make money on any page they show.

However, the search results page leaves me asking, “Are there only 10 results?” You get your default number of results and then you have to turn your search engine on: you must locate the ‘next’ links. The ‘next’ links were carefully placed in the right hand side looking inconspicuous rather than prominently displayed. To MSN’s credit there are not a lot of ads on the results page either.

Speed
The MSN search speed is pretty quick, not quite as quick as Google, but close enough that most users will not notice a difference. I did not do a benchmark test because I didn’t see that as a huge difference from my user perception.

How Good Are the Results?
I’m not sure how good the results are compared to Google on a full scale comparison because as one guy without some powerful application, I can’t do a head to head comparison. I searched for two phrases I know link to my site from Google: ‘Randy Peterman’ and ‘Women of Walmart.’ The Randy Peterman search returned almost identically to Google, however ‘Women of Walmart’ turned up nothing for my site on the first several pages (at which point I stopped). To MSN’s credit www.randypeterman.com is probably not where most people want to go for ‘information’ on ‘Women of Walmart’ 🙂

Spider-Man 2

We saw Spider-Man 2 today. Great Movie! Definitely a strong contender for my favorite movie of the year (we’ll see how Bourne Supremacy goes, that looks excellent as well). The effects are excellent, as you’d expect, but the plot was fun, the acting was good and the tension between the characters was great.

I have to say that I was really impressed by ‘Doc Ock’ and his wife’s interaction before he goes evil. It was a short moment but the two of them conveyed a love for one another in that short bit that was excellent!

The moral of the story, and the moral of most comic stories, is that you can do good no matter who you are and no matter how old you are. I definitely don’t agree that all people are good, but I will say that the idea of doing right because it’s the right thing to do comes out in this movie just like it did in the first movie.

There were several parts that were funny and we laughed and there were other parts that were almost tearful because of compassion or sadness. The two worst parts of the movie for me were the dozen or slightly less shrieks that women let out in terror (too many for my taste) and Kirsten Dunst’s teeth at 2000% magnification. Her teeth bother me… I’m retarded for it, I know.

There wasn’t a lot of prophanity as they were focusing on the plot line and comic book nature of the story and not stretching the boundaries of PG-13.

I loved Doc Ock’s arms – they’re incredibly well done and the switch between real and computerized arms is unnoticable. You will like the CGI, if you notice it.

Go see this movie, it won’t be a waste of your money!

GMail Invites

I sent out more invites to GMail today… honestly I don’t find it that powerful or amazing. It is a nice, clean webmail interface, but that is what we try to do with WorldClient as well. I’m working on a Standards based theme for WorldClient that should be able to use CSS and DHTML easily and create a powerful, fast theme that people will want to use. It won’t be browser specific either (though I do use some Mozilla tricks here and there, but only to enhance style and not limit functionality to one browser). We’ll see what happens, hopefully people will receive it well.

XHTML 2.0

As XHTML 2.0 is obviously not too near on the horizon this article is for discussion and further thinking on forward compatibility and standards.

Others have been having a discussion as to why you should have your site in valid XHTML 1.1 or 1.0 or 1.0.1.1.0 markup, which has not borne any fruit (in my opinion). The critical issue comes down, for now, to pragmatic issues such as time and workflow/CMS. I propose a third, more critical issue: XSLT and forward thinking. IF your site is valid XML (which valid XHTML 1.X is) then you can run an XSLT process on it’s code and you’ll find yourself with a WAP version, or an XHTML Basic version for phones. Or you could run an XSLT process on it and turn your XHTML 1.X site into an XHTML 2.0 site. Or you could turn it into plain text and wrap it with a <pre> tag.

An important reason to keep this set of standards is forward compatibility… not for 2005 but 2010. We need to be pragmatic, make it work now, but also be ready for the future. If Zeldman‘s new book on future compatibility doesn’t say this I’m going to be sad 😉

Count of Monte Cristo

I just finished The Count of Monte Cristo (Buy it at Amazon.com) last night at 12:40 or so. Great book, but I’m incredibbly tired now (that’s a lie, I’m not that tired, but I will be this afternoon). The ending had me realing, I was just wondering “what?!” Not because it was a bad ending, it just caught me off-guard, which is fabulous. In the end you see that even Edmond, who is after revenge, is still susceptable to error and his actions have a weighty consequence. Very good reading and if you don’t want to buy it, it is available at Project Gutenberg as a text file. Also, you could get it at your local library. Whatever the case, after reading this I want to read some more fiction. Jessica and I are considering the ‘Bourne Identity’ since we liked that movie as well.

Stopdesign Redesign Phase II

Stopdesign
has updated ‘their’ look. And when I say ‘their’ it’s like I say ‘we’ for Randy Peterman. Because primarily I work alone. Doug has done a good job of keeping it nice and clean, but I also think that he needs to widen up his middle column on the front page because otherwise it’s just too narrow and I have a hard time focusing in on what is sub-navigation, what is content etc.

Furthermore, in this impromptu critique I love his navigation link mouseovers on the ‘seealso‘ page. Each section of the site has its own look which allows Doug to show off his design style without asking you to pick a stylesheet (a la CSSzengarden.com).
Good stuff over all.

Please Consider Firefox

If you use AOL, Microsoft Internet Explorer or MSN, please consider switching to Firefox or Opera. I don’t hate Microsoft, they are how I make part of my income as a programmer, but they have been actively ignoring their web browser, Internet Explorer for over two years. Other than fixing (some) security holes they have said that a new version of Internet Explorer is being postponed until the release of Windows Longhorn (the next version of the Windows Operating System). This means that as new technologies come out, you’re hosed. You can do nothing about this except move to another browser as Microsoft management has basically ignored their responsibility to standards.

I read an article recently about how management at Microsoft was feeling a real pinch because so many people (and Microsoft applications) were not standards compliant, and to convert their engine to render things in a standards compliant way would break things. I see several things wrong with that logic:
1) What did Microsoft do when they prepared for Windows XP Service Pack 2? The posted this announcement stating that web developers may have to change their code for the web pages and applications to work with Internet Explorer after this service pack (due to fixing a plethora of security holes and adding a popup blocker).
2) Web Developers are used to having to change things when a new site comes out.
3) If you’ve been developing your site to work with any other browsers (like any good developer should) then this probably won’t break anything, but instead will make development faster AND easier.
4) Microsoft has a big role in the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C), why be involved in setting standards if you don’t actively promote them and instead actively ignore them?

So, in short, if you’re my reader and you want to make my life just a little easier consider using Mozilla or Opera – they’re actively developed so that when you need a fix or a technology update – you’ll get one relatively soon.

A Trip to the Bookstore

This noon we went to the Barnes & Noble and looked at their discount books (which can sometimes be rewarding). I saw two ‘treasures’ there that I must cher about.

  • 18 more vampirical erotic stories
  • A Civil War Popup book

If your mind is as overactive as mine you’ve already had a good time with the given descriptions.

I looked at the first book and I thought, “More?” Did America respond popular to the first eighteen vampirical erotic books? Were American’s looking for that sort of material? I saw Van Helsing, I enjoyed a little vampirical novelty, but adult vampire books? No thanks. I can only imagine what they could do with that sort of ‘food for thought.’

And regarding the civil war popup book. Close your eyes and imagine a grandchild on their grandpa’s lap saying, “Grandpa turn the page, I want to see the guy get his head blown off with the cannonball.” What do we need a popup book of death for? Really. “Mom, can you please read the civil war popup book to me again? I really love to see the flames leap up as Georgia burns.” I vote we not sell silly books like that.