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Marketing Looong webpages
Over the past three years, I’ve become convinced that long webpages are better than short ones. Even Nielsen says that scrolling is now allowed (as long as it’s not horizontally); and long, honest copywriting beats vague marketing-speak, even if it is above the fold. Today, Seth Godin said:
It’s okay to be long, if you’re chunky. The great lesson of direct mail was that long letters always do better than short ones. That’s because once you’ve sold me, I’ll stop reading. But if I’m not sold and I get to the end, you lose. The web is infinitely expandable. So go ahead and tell your story.I’d just add that it’s important to make sure users know what to do when they’re done with your content-and they may be done with your content before they get to the bottom of the page. Make sure that Back isn’t the easiest button to hit when they’re ready to move on.
Culture Possible reasons we keep getting email in ALL CAPS
- Developers
- Author is a SQL programmer
- Author is a COBOL programmer Gamers
- Author has deployed Star Trek cloaking device Windows users
- StickyShift malfunction Insufficient ASCII support
- Author is writing on Wyse brick
- Author is writing on Apple II
- Analog output from Latin printing press
I can’t really think of any other reasons.
- CAPSoff, an online campaign to remove the CAPS LOCK key
- One Laptop per Child machine doesn’t have a CAPS LOCK key.
Culture Two Classes of Software Developers
or, “I can’t believe I’m writing about jwz.“
(Aside: Kent, our CSS guru, just complained that he didn’t know who jwz was. I only quote him because he’s been around the block with regards to software development, so if you don’t know or care who he is, don’t worry. He’s not important to this post.)
Back in the halcyon nineties, Jamie Zawinski resigned from Netscape Communications Corporation (which had become an AOL company, and long since ceased to be called Mosaic Communications Corporation). In his resignation letter, he famously states:
And there’s another factor involved, which is that you can divide our industry [software development] into two kinds of people: those who want to go work for a company to make it successful, and those who want to go work for a successful company.
When I read that, my first thought is that every programmer (or any important worker in any field) should strive to be in the first category, even if they aren’t.
Culture The Work/Life Balance
So I recently returned from a four-day weekend, over which I turned 23 — which is I fear an old age for software developers, despite my older coworkers’ feelings on the matter.
Age isn’t the point though — the point is that while I was on this four-day weekend there were several instances where I was tempted to fire up the VPN connection and crack out a quick piece of code. This worries me greatly.
Design, General From the “In Case You Missed It” File
There was a great blog that come across the web this past week that I wanted to pass on. This one was on the subject “Best Practices for Newbies” but it applies for all of us, really.
Well… All of us who work with web sites, anyway…
aclevercookie.com is a pretty recent blog, but it looks like they have some pretty good advice.
Along with some of the typical advice, it also has some resources for web devs.
One of the things that this article brings up is some of the new changes going on like JQuery. Looks like web development is taking some great turns.