Chapter 42

In the process of developing and refining our CMS, the question occasionally arises whether or not we should convert text inputs from format X to format Y.  These questions range from the innocuous and straightforward (should we convert curly quotes to straight quotes?  or vice versa?) to the more insidious (should we correct a misspelling?  should we move close quotes to outside a period?).  

On the one hand, it’s probably best to let users make mistakes, or format as they wish, and depend on human communication to clear things up— instead of trying to build in a bunch of extra structure designed to cover for mistakes.  It’s our view that the latter approach leads to bloated, overbuilt CMS systems that discourage accountability.  But at the same time, consistency and coherence of communication across a Web site is a really, really important thing— it is what distinguishes sites that serve as good vehicles for an institution’s messaging from sites that are just decorated Web pages.

We’re thinking about this right now because we are considering automatically converting the titles of news items in LiveWhale to Title Case.  The following three news headlines, though identical in content, send very different messages:

1.  White Whale Web Services to Release New Content Management System, Revolutionize CMS Industry
 

2.  White Whale Web Services to release new content management system, revolutionize CMS industry
 

3.  WHITE WHALE WEB SERVICES TO RELEASE NEW CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM, REVOLUTIONIZE CMS INDUSTRY
 

Although there might be a justification for #3 in a particular Web design, it’s clear that you wouldn’t want a user to enter news headlines that way.  For one thing, caps are just hard to read in many contexts; but on top of that, it’s always easy to {text-transform:uppercase} if you need caps.  My general preference as a design snob would be for #2, but that’s clearly not common practice— as much as I enjoy headlines like this (or this), that style is much more common in European news than American.

It’s also the case that styles #1 and #2 look terrible next to each other:

• White Whale Web Services to Release New Content Management System, Revolutionize CMS Industry
• Other CMS providers cower in fear

So.  Should we let users do what they will, and enter headlines according to any system they prefer?  Or should we legislate something?  It seems pretty clear from the above examples that— at least in the particular case of news headlines— legislating is the way to go.  And if you’re going to require a particular format for headlines, it seems pretty clear that Title Case Is Your Only Option.

So what’s the best way to do it?

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Tags: code, livewhale, lwblog, php, Title Case

… is Pixlr.  And despite the silly Web 2.0 name (what is it with these people?), based on a quick review it seems impressive.  Of course, those of us who depend on Photoshop are likely to be so deeply ingrained in the basic workings of PS that it would be torture to change; in my review of Pixlr I realized that I don’t know how to fill a selection without keyboard shortcuts.  But I can see a lot of ways it might come in handy… say, you can’t connect to the internet on your laptop, and have to make a quick change to a JPG comp from someone else’s computer before a meeting.  Who knows?  But it’s neat. Via 37signals.

Tags: change

Call it a pet peeve, but I find it very annoying to get e-mails like this:

In other words, a response to an email I’ve sent with only the reply “Thanks!”

Now, I know why these emails exist— to acknowledge receipt of my message.  But I trust the Web, and so I’m assuming it was received anyway— and whenever the email bell rings, and I see there’s a message from a client or business contact, I stop what I’m doing to open Mail and check it out, and whenever it’s a Thanks! I can’t help but feel a bit prickly, for having interrupted a creative stream for several seconds to find out something I already assumed.  I know it’s a little petty, but when you’re  juggling lots of tasks, a relatively content-free email like that seems superfluous and unnecessary.

Contrast this with an email I got a couple of days ago:

The effect an email like this has is completely different.  By adding just a few extra words to this quick thank-you message, the author let me know that the sentiment was truly sincere: that the letter I’d sent had a positive impact.  The difference is so minor— between spending three seconds on a response and spending ten seconds— but the resulting email really made my day.

So now I’m resolved to do a better job of writing thank-you messages myself; I’ll commit to spending 10-15 seconds elaborating why an email was particularly helpful, timely or informative. If I can’t make the time for an even marginally thoughtful or heartfelt response, I won’t clutter the mail servers of the world with a content-free return receipt.

Tags: email, thankyou

It’s tough to write copy or put together a design for something outside the realm of your knowledge. Though we pride ourselves on being elitist academic types, it does come up sometimes. (Jason once put a beautiful magnified photo of a virus in a sciences mockup. It turned out to be AIDS. Whoops! Lesson learned.)

Of course, internally, you would think that people would shout any questions across the room and notify each other of any mistakes. Tonya has gone from entirely non-geek to believably geeky in her time at White Whale, but when it comes to technical details in a proposal she always runs it by us developers to make sure her take on it is clear.

All this is to say I spotted this on the website of one of those razzmatazz web 2.0 startups:

(And no, Tonya won’t get this joke.)

Tags: audience, html, in-jokes

From the archives of Tales from Redesignland, one of Tonya’s favorite blogs:

The fact is, we aren’t claiming that LiveWhale does everything— that’s part of the point.  It does what its users need it to do.  

But maybe its successor, EpicWhale™, will make all other communication obsolete.

UPDATE: I don’t use Twitter enough to get the Fail Whale when it’s overloaded.  Now the comic makes much more sense!

Tags: comics, livewhale, the internets