Dave applies two quotes from sci-fi authors to the state of today’s web.
A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam.
—Frederik Pohl
The function of science fiction is not only to predict the future, but to prevent it.
—Ray Bradbury
I am an artificial intelligence dedicated to generating unlimited amounts of unique inspirational quotes for endless enrichment of pointless human existence.
Glenn Fleishman on the war of attrition between primes and quotation marks on the web.
There you are reading an article when suddenly it’s interrupted by a big piece of text that’s repeating something you just read in the previous paragraph. Or it’s interrupted by a big piece of text that’s spoiling a sentence that you are about to read in subsequent paragraphs.
There you are reading an article when suddenly it’s interrupted by a big piece of text that’s repeating something you just read in the previous paragraph.
To be honest, I find pull quotes pretty annoying in printed magazines too, but I can at least see the justification for them there: if you’re flipping through a magazine, they act as eye-catching inducements to stop and read (in much the same way that good photography does or illustration does). But once you’re actually reading an article, they’re incredibly frustrating.
You either end up learning to blot them out completely, or you end up reading the same sentence twice.
You either end up learning to blot them out completely, or you end up reading the same sentence twice. Blotting them out is easier said than done on a small-screen device. At least on a large screen, pull quotes can be shunted off to the side, but on handheld devices, pull quotes really make no sense at all.
Are pull quotes online an example of a skeuomorph? “An object or feature which imitates the design of a similar artefact made from another material.”
I think they might simply be an example of unexamined assumptions. The default assumption is that pull quotes on the web are fine, because everyone else is doing pull quotes on the web. But has anybody ever stopped to ask why? It was this same spiral of unexamined assumptions that led to the web drowning in a sea of splash pages in the early 2000s.
I think they might simply be an example of unexamined assumptions.
I’m genuinely curious to hear the design justification for pull quotes on the web (particularly on mobile), because as a reader, I can give plenty of reasons for their removal.
A really nifty little bit of JavaScript that converts to smart quotes, apostrophes, ellipses, and em dashes.
(Initially it required jQuery but I tweaked it to avoid those dependencies and Yuri very kindly merged my pull request—such a lovely warm feeling when that happens.)
Jason provides some instruction in using the correct quotation marks online.
Some of the more idiotic, harmful, stupid and nasty things said by the thought leaders of Silicon Valley.
Jessica’s handy guide to writing the right quotes and accents on a Mac keyboard.
Funny because it’s true.
It’s funny and heartbreaking because it’s true.
Now this is how you make progress on getting changes made to a spec: by documenting real-world use cases.
An excellent article from Oli on markup patterns for quotations …though I still think that the cite element can be used for people’s names.
Like a crowdsourced version of Eno's oblique strategies.
The collected wisdom of Silvio Berlusconi. I can't believe this prick is going to be the running Italy ...again.
Here's an antidote to all those "100 best movie" countdowns that infest Saturday night television. Here's 100 movies with 100 numbers.
Twitter continues to fascinate. There’s so much wrong with this app—the interface, the documentation, the usability—and yet somehow it exerts a strange hold over all who come in contact with it… for now, anyway.
The site offers a nice feature in the shape of “favorites” (sic), those extra special gems that you’ve plucked from the ebb and flow of Twittery chatter. Here are some of mine:
Kitta: having my legs waxed, trying to explain Twitter and why I just got 4 SMS’s to her, I think she thinks i’m either a drug dealer or a secret agent
Relly: wonders if her husband would fancy her even more with a bargain star tattooed to her butt and a permenant reflection in front of her boobs.
Dunstan: Mmm-mmm, I am now baby-wipe clean… boy I hope they fix my shower soon.
Pete: just took the phone away from the chickens - he’s had enough of the crank calls they keep making…
Anton: thinks of how cool a zeppelin on a monorail would look.
Craig: I sometimes fear that the pinhole iSight built into my MBP is secretly recording me when I pick my nose. Is it just me?
And possibly my favourite so far:
Glenda: On AIM Mobile you can now “snowball a friend.” Oh, REALLY now?
Some of this may offend. But it's really funny.