Rhonda Bracey: At Random

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I don’t know Amber Simmons, but I sure like the way she writes. A few days ago she published an article of hers—”Reviving Anorexic Web Writing“—on A List Apart.

She has some powerful things to say, although I think that ultimately it all comes down to “knowing your audience”. While she takes issue with the basic elements of good technical writing—chunked writing, bullet points, scan-able headings, and the like—I definitely believe they have a place. But they’re not applicable to every website out there.

She also has some valid points about writing text for use in ALT tags. And I particularly liked her anatomical analogy: “The content is the heart of the website. I can’t build you a body until you give me a heart.” I’ll have to use that sometime soon.

I’ve been working on a website for a client and had everything working using CSS except for some issues with the left column. This left column contained some navigational elements and I was using a background colour (I also tried an image) and a small right border to visually separate it from the main content area.

The problem was that no matter what settings I applied to the CSS, I couldn’t get the background colour (or image) and border to expand to the length of the content in the main section. I was able to set a min-height to force it to be at least a certain length for the shorter pages, but for the longer pages, the left column colour and border just stopped at the 600px minimum height I’d specified.

After some Googling and not finding anything (mostly because I didn’t know what terms to search for!), I called my friend Char in Boston… who happened to be in California at the time… and she helped me with some sites that she’s used. (She has had the problem too but couldn’t remember what quirky thing she had to do to solve it, and not being at home, she couldn’t access that info easily either.) After a bit more sleuthing using those sites as a starting point, I found the answer here: http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/onetruelayout/equalheight

As I’m only testing in Firefox and IE6 at the moment, I ignored some of the warnings about interesting things that happen in other browsers and went ahead. All I had to do was add about 4 lines to my CSS – and it worked!

Here’s what I added:

* added overflow: hidden; to my wrapper (#content) DIV
* added a new style definition as follows:
#MainContent, #ContentLeft
{
padding-bottom: 32767px;
margin-bottom: -32767px;
}
(My elements are called #MainContent and #ContentLeft).

I then tested in Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 6 – and it works in both for long and short pages!!! Now to download IE7 and test there… If that works too, then I have a winner!

Thanks Char!

Update: Yep, works in IE7 too!

Jeffrey Zeldman wrote an interesting blog post a week or so ago on the problem of offering too many choices, especially in 5-star rating systems where users will invariably pick “3” because it’s neutral. To quote from his excellent post:

Three is the little bear’s porridge, neither too hot nor too cold. Three is neutral—a safe place to hide. Even in the virtual world, where nothing more consequential is being asked than an opinion, many people would rather equivocate than commit.

But present these same users with a four-star spread and you leave them no cover. Two stars out of four is not neutral. Neither is three stars out of four. Any star rating they choose will reflect an actual opinion. There is no place to hide.

His post reminded me of Kathy Sierra’s “zone of mediocrity” where, to paraphrase Kathy, she said that any passion (love or hate) about a product/piece of software/website is always good – what you don’t want are users who feel nothing, who are in the zone of mediocrity. When most users are in that zone, you can pretty much kiss your product goodbye.

Some of Kathy’s posts on this subject:

• Be brave or go home
• Dilbert and the Zone of Mediocrity
• Death by Risk Aversion

It’s official. One of my clients – Fractal Technologies – has been acquired by Runge, a Brisbane-based global mining services company that offers mining consultancy and software. All the Fractal staff and contractors (including me) are now part of Runge. I’ve been contracting 2 days a week to Fractal for the past 2.5 years, and Runge are happy to have me continue under the same circumstances, and are OK with me working remotely for them. Contracts have all been signed.

No doubt my role in Runge will become more evident over time; for now, I’ll continue doing what I was doing at Fractal until told otherwise! I’m expecting to go to Perth next week to meet the Global Communications Manager, but there’s a possibility that I may have to go to Brisbane instead.

It’s all good!

Update (3 July): More likely I’ll be going to Brisbane next week…

Second update (4 July): Brisbane flights and accommodation are now booked. And I’ve been able to get a points upgrade to Business Class on the return flight on Qantas. Unfortunately, the flight over is on VirginBlue via Sydney, so it will be a long haul. However, I haven’t flown VirginBlue before, so it will be interesting to see how it compares with Qantas. The other staff fly over on Sunday; I couldn’t get on that flight so will be going on Monday, which means an early rise Monday morning to drive 3-4 hrs to Perth, then hang around the airport for the 3-4 hour flight to Sydney, then wait in Sydney an hour or two for the I-don’t-know-how-long flight to Brisbane.

It seems this piece has been around for a few years, but I only heard of it and read it today. Very funny, but if you’re offended by certain four-letter words, be warned.

Here’s the article: http://www.guidenet.net/resources/wanker.html

(BTW, a “wanker” is a vulgar term used in Britain and Australia, and perhaps a few other places as well. Check Dictionary.com.)

I heard some sad news today. George Mena, a Californian technical writer I met at the 2001 STC Conference in Chicago, and with whom I had corresponded on and off over the past 7 or so years, passed away last December aged only 53. Another of the Californian tech writers on one of my email discussion lists found out and posted the sad news.

George was a man who was larger than life in every way. He was a big man with a big heart. He was incredibly knowledgeable about tech writing for manufacturing and the military, and willingly shared his knowledge with our group of lone writers. When you asked a question, George never just gave you a quick answer – he’d give you chapter and verse, with references and citations. Sometimes you just needed a quick answer! Despite the extra information, you always learnt something from George.

I fondly recall meeting him at that conference, and him falling asleep during the very early pre-breakfast business meeting of our Special Interest Group! He really was up long before his usual time. We chuckled over that and gave him a hard time about it! George joined in all the networking activities – at the bar and at the lunches and dinners – and his presence was felt by all who met him.

53 was way too young. Rest in peace, George. You touched many lives.

George’s obituary.

One of my daily technical writing Google Alerts (a great service, BTW) listed this “RIP into a Good Book” blog entry yesterday. Once I’d ignored the political mumbo jumbo (‘mumbo jumbo’ to me as I’m not an American and do not live in the US), and looked at the essence of what this guy was saying, I had to agree for the most part. Here are some of his pertinent points:

What the hell are these people [Library of Congress, Disney, et al.] thinking? WHY do they automatically assume that fiction is the highest form of reading?

As a writer of fiction — novels, short stories, “true” first person stories, etc. etc. — I decry but accept the reality that the vast majority of “reading” is nonfiction. Even more so when you include all of the reading that is never documented as “books” read or “magazines read.” Emails, notes from your spouse, cable TV synopsis screens, signs, instructions, medicine and food labels, and, yes, ads: all are writing that we read on a regular basis. And blogs, like this one.

But for many years, the well-intentioned institutions have been missing the point. Who cares if “Reading Is Fun?” Reading Is Power, baby. Why aren’t we advertising that?

Now, when you are selling “reading” why aren’t you selling the fact that reading and writing are the keys to power in nearly any field you care to name? The Southern Plantation aristocracy considered reading so dangerous to their power that it was banned on pain of DEATH. And you’re selling this … power as “fun!” That’s like selling Coke because of the neat swash on the can. It’s like selling a vacation to the Caribbean for the neat seashells you could find.

Bill Gates may have dropped out of college, but I have a feeling that without an amazing capacity for wading through reams and reams of dull technical writing he wouldn’t be playing gazillionaire globe-trotting philanthropist today. And many of us wouldn’t have the software that’s allowing this to be read over the internet.

Throughout history reading rates have fluctuated greatly, but one fact remains unyielding amidst the chaos of history: the literate classes have always ruled society. If there is 2 percent literacy, that two percent will be running things.

What has possessed generations of “educators” and “librarians” to try and sell reading as a competing media? You know, like playin’ on the computer, watching TeeVeee. Watching videos. Playing videos, surfing the ‘net … (All of which are better the better you know how to read, BTW)

Reading isn’t “fun.” It’s the power at the base of our entire civilization.

Reading ain’t “fundamental.” It’s elemental, and that’s power.

“Reading is Power, kids! So RIP into a good book!”

That’d sell reading. Might not sell a lot of copies of the Narnia trilogy, but it WILL sell reading. Not reading novels. Not even reading books. Sorry librarians, and sorry fiction writers.

Instead, what we have is a series of free ads for the Disney ‘Narnia’ movie (which they hope to turn into a franchise), coloring books, happy meals, fruit rollups, backpacks, notebooks, glitter pencils, etc. etc. etc. Why are our public airwaves being turned into a free ad campaign for a series of … books, and a WORSE movie from Disney?

That shouldn’t be what we’re selling. We need to sell that reading is essential to attaining power, status or celebrity in this society. That’s what we should be selling.

READING is power. Reading manuals. Reading news stories, reading supreme court decisions, reading the AP Stylebook and Libel Manual. Reading instructions, reading regulations, reading signs, reading charts, reading Monopoly Reading Railroad cards, you name it.

Reading is power.

Now, I have to add here that I was a school librarian in a previous career. One thing that always bothered me was the ‘holier-than-thou’ attitude of some of my colleagues at the time who thought that the only ‘good’ reading was reading fiction. My view was broader than that. I figured that if a kid was reading – whether it was the side of the cereal box, the Illustrated Shakespeare, comics, car manuals, books on snakes, or whatever – then that was the most important thing. Not whether they were reading a particular type of writing – fiction.

I don’t know whether the “reading fiction is good” brigade was a uniquely female construct, but I suspect so. Most school librarians at that time were female, and girls  at school were always the biggest readers of fiction. Most pre-pubescent and adolescent boys (except those into fantasy and science fiction) avoided fiction like the plague. So all those well-meaning female librarians spent a lot of time and energy on trying to get boys to ‘read’ (read fiction, that is), when they weren’t the slightest bit interested in it. In some ways, their English teachers (again, mostly female) and the English syllabus were worse, as they forced certain fiction texts onto kids. At least in the library, reading fiction was optional.

Of course, I’m making some sweeping generalisations here, but in my long experience in schools and school libraries, I can’t recall it even being hinted that the ability to read was power. Reading (fiction) was promoted as a leisure activity. Maybe those days have changed – I sincerely hope so – but on reading this guy’s blog post, I suspect not.

Following on from CommonCraft’s excellent video on how RSS feeds work, they’ve added a new one on how Wikis work.

If you can’t see it from this site, view it directly on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY