Tantek Çelic presents some interesting comments on hand-rolled blogging code, and promises to provide reciprocal links for other hand-rolled bloggers. (Clever viral marketing strategy.)

As I wrote to a friend who is moving from a hand-rolled blog to blogger:

I fall into the category of people who find the very act of writing code for their blog to be part of the creative / hedonic rewards of blogging. (See this entry).
Whenever I code, I discover something useful to put in my bag of tricks. Someday later it will be invaluable in solving another problem. That’s why I personally will stick with a hand-rolled blog.

Taken from http://www.georgedillon.com/web/netiquette.shtml, which seems to be offline from time to time.

Netiquette No Nos

Hi! This page exists so I don’t have to keep sending the same advice to my naughty friends. If you’re reading this, either because I’ve sent you the URL or because a search engine guided you here, then you may also be interested in Basic Online Security.

1. Sending HTML formatted email

HTML e-mail is always uneconomic, sometimes unreceivable and/or unreadable and it can occasionally be unsafe. There really is no good argument for sending e-mail in HTML format. If you want your audience to see an HTML formatted page, put it on your website and send them the URL. Do you really want to know what I think? HTML email is EVIL!

ACTION:
To stop sending (evil) HTML e-mail from Outlook Express
1. Click Tools > Options > Send and under ‘Sending’ make sure that ‘Reply to messages using the format in which they were sent’ is UNchecked and under ‘Mail Sending Format’ CHECK the ‘Plain Text’ box.

2. Sending (Word) .DOC attachments

Like HTML-formatted email, Word .doc files are unecessarily large for the message they contain and they can also carry viruses. In 90% of cases the contents of a Word .doc could be put in a plain text file. In 90% of the remaining 10%, where the layout of a document is important, the file should be (more safely) formatted as a Rich Text File (.rtf) which will not only be considerably smaller, but can be read by more programs on more platforms. (Word .doc files which have embedded drawing or picture objects, however, may end up larger on conversion to .rtf).
As well as the virus risk and large file size, there are 3 other reasons for NOT sending Word documents: 1) double-clicking to open them fires up the full WORD app, which may affect performance on (or even crash) slower machines or systems used for heavy multitasking 2) some users may not have the right version of WORD to open the file anyway (esp Mac or Lotus users) 3) because of the way WORD uses templates (and also fonts) the document may not lay out properly or even open at all on someone else’s machine, even if they have got the right version of WORD.
Part of the bloat in a Word .doc is is accounted for by the header. Some of it is font information but a lot of it is created when you edit a Word file. All the edits are saved as additions to the original, so Word .doc files are always much bigger than they need to be and may even be considered a security risk (as you may not wish the recipient to be able to see your earlier versions). – A neat trick is to save Word files as .rtf then open the rtf file in Word (or Wordpad) and save it again as .doc. This will remove any unnecessary bloating such as undos or font info in Word 7 files and can drastically reduce the file size, without affecting (and sometimes even improving) its appearance.

ACTION:
If you want to send a WORD .doc, ask yourself does the layout matter? If the answer is NO, choose ‘Save as’ and select ‘Text only (.txt)’ or simply copying and pasting the text into a (plain text formatted) e-mail message. If the layout does matter, choose ‘Save as’ and select’Rich text Format (.rtf)’.

3. Sending Huge / Unsolicited attachments

It would seem like a basic courtesy not to block up someone else’s in-box with stuff they haven’t asked for and probably don’t want but have to download before they can use their email again, but some people just don’t think. In recent months I’ve been sent a 2 Mb .jpg of a theatre company’s poster for inclusion on Steven Berkoff’s website (when the only listing they were ever going to get required no more than a plain text message) and a 3 Mb .mpg after a dear friend had unwisely announced the birth of his daughter by putting several addresses including my own in the To: line (another netiquette sin – see Sending To: more than 1 person) and two months later one of the other recipients got bored on Zimbabwe’s day of bank strikes and decided to mail me a Kung Fu movie.

ACTION:
1. NEVER SEND LARGE UNSOLICITED ATTACHMENTS.
2. If you have to send large attachments, it is better to post the file to a website (http or better still ftp) and then send your friend the URL. Web pages download faster than email and ftp sites are faster still. Also with http or ftp your recipient can choose when to download your monster and they can use a download manager, so if the connection is broken during a long download they don’t have to start again from the beginning.
3. If you ARE going to send a large attachment by email, it’s courtesy to send a small (plain text) message first, saying that that’s what you’re about to do (and better still to ask if it’s OK by them), so the monster is not so unexpected. The small file will get through first and allow the recipient to take appropriate steps in anticipation of your in-box stuffer.
4. If you have been on the receiving end of unwanted, unsolicted mega attachments, and you’re not using an email client with a download-headers-only option (such as Eudora), then get the freeware Email remover which will allow you to download just the headers first and even read the first 100 lines of a message’s source, and delete any unwanted messages BEFORE you download them using your default email program.

4. “Please forward this message to everyone” – NOT!

The net is choked with traffic as it is. Much of it is unwanted spam. But there’s also the net version of the chain letter – send a copy of this to everyone you know – usually with some sob story attached and an implausible (or more likely impossible) promise that the message is somehow being tracked and that everytime it is forwarded a child will be saved of dying from cancer and the world will be made a better place.
These are all bogus. At best they are benign wastes of bandwidth. At worst they may carry a virus.

ACTION:
In short the netiquette is: Do not ever forward anything unless you know for sure who it is from, who wrote it and that the recipient is either expecting it or will be pleased to receive it.

5. “Visit this URL (and save the World!)” – NOT!

“Simply by visiting such-and-such-a-site.com you’ll save a child/animal/the-whole-World. Every time you visit – their corporate sponsors/advertisers will donate a certain amount to whatever good cause you’re a sucker for…” Yeah, right! And that ‘certain amount’ is 0.000000001¢ if it’s anything at all. And I bet a DNS look-up on that domain name will show it to be an elaborate scheme, operated entirely by and in the interests of its ‘corporate sponsors/advertisers’. The fact is, if Mammon-incorporated gave a damn about anything, they wouldn’t make their contributions to good causes dependent on your swallowing their advertising. These click-for-charity schemes are always a sick, exploitative scam. At best the site owner has been suckered by the advertisers. At worst the entire thing is a fraud.

ACTION:
Treat any message about any such charitable site as spam. Delete it, and forget it! And to save you rebuking them directly, you might want to cut and paste the following URL and advise whoever sent you the sob-story-spam to read this page:- http://www.georgedillon.com/web/netiquette.shtml#charity

6. Sending To: more than 1 person

If you send one message to a lot of people by putting all their names/addresses in the To: or Cc: line the result is that everyone in the list can see everyone else’s address. Not only might some people not want this (considering their address to be ‘ex-directory’ and not wishing to be ‘replied to’ by 50 or more strangers) but there is a much more serious security issue which you should heed, especially if you care about those to whom you’re mailing your circular. Most viruses replicate by scanning address books and messages which are stored in in-folders for addresses to which they silently forward themselves from any infected machine. In other words, by putting all those names in the To: line you are exposing everyone to a greater risk of receiving a virus from someone else on the list.

ACTION:
Use BCC! If you insist on mass emailing you should put one address – (probably your own) in the To: line and use the ‘blind copy’ or ‘Bcc:’ line for all the rest. That way no-one gets to see the list of recipients (and not only is this safer, but everyone is made to feel a bit more special, since they cannot see how many people have received the message).

I wrote this response to my school’s general interest discussion list, following a controversial discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict where someone posted an email including several large image files to make their point.

From: Adam Kessel
To: …
Subject: A technical suggestion

Not to add fuel to the fire, but I would like to interject a technical suggestion:

Enclosing large unsolicited attachments is bad netiquette (see, e.g., http://www.georgedillon.com/web/netiquette.shtml #3, Action #1: “Never send large unsolicited attachments”.) [Note: this page seems to be unreliable, here is a local copy.] Students who receive their email on their NUSL accounts or from free email services such as Yahoo! have limited mailbox space, and Jeremy’s 1M attachment could conceivably block other messages from getting through. There have been cases of people actually losing job offers when the offer, sent by email, bounced because the recipient’s mailbox was full, and the employer went on to the next candidate.

A much better approach would be to post links to the images you want people to see. It’s almost certain that all of the images that were enclosed in the message are already available online. Rather than duplicate the 1M of images 1000 times in the mailbox of each and every member of the law school community (taking up 1000M or 1 gigabyte of space), you could simply post links to the images. Also consider that many people download their email over a slow modem connection, and this one message could easily take 10-15 minutes to download. For some this will also mean a higher phone bill.

If the images aren’t already online, there are plenty of free sites that will host your images, and then you can provide links to these. Just search google for “free image hosting”.

We should all support a right to free expression and debate on important issues in this community. Our message is likely to be taken more seriously, however, if it is done with respect for the resource impact of our mode of communication.

—Adam

I frequently email website owners when they fail to conform to w3c standards. It’s particularly a problem when the site doesn’t work at all with browsers other than Internet Explorer, since that’s not an option for me. I usually don’t expect any concrete results, but once in a while I get lucky.

Here’s a note I received from the very large online legal research company, Lexis-Nexis. Amazingly, they responded to my feedback within 24 hours:

 Dear Mr. Kessel: Thank you for sharing your input regarding lexis.com. We truly appreciate your valuable feedback. Due to notes such as yours, we have decided to comply with your request. We anticipate this change will be made within a month. Thank you again for sharing your comments and suggestions. Regards, lexis.com Product Development -----Original Message----- From: Support Mailbox [mailto:support@prod.lexis-nexis.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 4:34 PM To: research@lexisnexis.com Subject: Feedback for LexisNexis(TM) at lexis.com Date: 2/19/2003 4:33:44 PM From: Adam Kessel Email: kessel.a@neu.edu Company: Northeastern University Law School Phone: 617-xxx-xxxx Feedback: I am unable to click on any of the "tabs" with my web browser (Mozilla). Your HTML code violates w3c standards, and for no purpose! You have  anchor tags outside of your  columns tags, and they could just as well go *inside* the  and then (at least that small piece of code) would comply with web standards, and it would work with more web browsers. As things stand now, I've developed a filter that replaces all the tags so I can actually click on the tabs. Westlaw presents no such problems, though, so I am considering switching to their service. If I can be of any assistance in further clarifying or remedying this problem, please let me know. Mozilla has been downloaded millions of times, and there's no good reason not to support it, even if you don't do so officially. 

It’s important for websites to be accessible for people with disabilities. A lot of people just don’t “get it”, though. “Why bother making a website readable by the blind when there are so few of them, and they’re unlikely to visit my site anyway?” There are many responses to this question, but there’s one in particular that I think needs more attention.

Millions of people together build the Internet. Even an incorrigible techopessimist can’t deny that electronic networks permeate society, and that we’ve likely only seen the tip of the iceberg. We’re making a lot of important choices now, sometimes without much thought.

It’s a lot easier to get things right the first time, rather than try to retrofit a solution later after you’ve screwed up. If we make the web accessible today, as we’re building it essentially from scratch, we won’t incur prohibitive costs in the future fixing all the mistakes we made. Although the Americans with Disabilities Act doesn’t yet apply to websites, there’s a good chance that it someday will. Or at least that it ought to.

So let’s build things right from the start. The Internet was originally a text-based medium which opened up fantastic new possibilities for people with disabilities. These possibilities are being foreclosed by short-sighted “computer people” who are creating websites and services that ignore smaller audiences.

Besides, accessible websites tend to be better organized and have superior interfaces for the non-disabled as well. They tell you that the designer took care. They are also easier for search engines to index and comprehend, creating a richer informational resource for all of us.

Apparently crawler918.com (aka nameprotect.com) is a pretty bad actor. Aside from ignoring robot rules, its purported purpose is to find targets of lawsuits for copyright infringement.

If you run a webserver, please consider banning this crawler with

 Deny from 12.148.196.128/25 

Presumably this address will change over time, but it’s a start.

Someone has finally published a novel and made it available for free over the Internet. I haven’t read it yet, but the first chapter looks interesting. You can read it online, or buy a printed copy.

Check it out, it’s called “Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom”.

Rick McCallum, Producer of Star Wars, suggests that the movie industry will be destroyed in the next few years if we don’t take the piracy “threat” seriously.

I’m not sure who is more bombastic, McCallum, or Jack Valenti when he compared the VCR to the Boston Strangler.

I would suggest we take a “wait and see” approach. If we discover that Hollywood is no longer able to produce enough films to satisfy us, or that the Recording Industry ceases to give us the likes of Britney Spears and Celine Dion, then perhaps we should take a look at our policy and make some changes. We don’t even have to wait until the industries are totally destroyed, but before we bring out the big guns, let’s at least conclude that (1) “piracy” is having a material effect on creative output, and (2) we miss the stuff that’s no longer being created.

Until then, let’s just stick with stopping terrorists. And protecting our civil liberties, while we’re at it.

Declan McCullagh’s popular Politech e-mail listserv recently published an essay by James Gattuso on “Why Americans with Disabilities Act should not apply to web”, supporting the recent court decision Access Now v. Southwest Airlines, which held that the ADA did not apply to Internet websites.

Although I’m not totally certain whether the court reached the correct result (i.e., whether the result was “best” and whether the result was “right”), Gattuso’s piece was rife with misconceptions. Here’s the response I sent Declan, although he declined to publish it [update 11/13/2002: Declan did, in fact, publish the response]:

CEI Research Fellow Gattuso’s claim that making websites accessible will stunt creativity, spontaneity, and functionality is disingenuous. Accessible websites need not eschew the use of color to convey information; rather, if certain information is conveyed through color or images, there ought to be an alternative mode that also conveys the same information. This is often as simple as adding ALT tags to images, as required by w3c standards. Accessibility rules would set a baseline for website design, but wouldn’t prevent any web designer from going beyond that with non-accessible chrome if she so desires.

Furthermore, accessibility is not just an ADA issue. A non-accessible website is often one that only renders properly with Internet Explorer; the pressure to create “Best viewed with IE” sites significantly reinforces Microsoft’s monopolostic powers.

Finally, I had trouble finding a weblog that fails basic accessibility guidelines. Weblogs are mostly plain text with hyperlinks in simple tables; although they don’t always pass w3c validation, they are usually quite readable by browsers designed for the blind, for example. Perhaps Gattuso can point us to some weblogs that would be harmed by a contrary ADA court decision. (not to mention that utter improbability of the ADA being applied to non-commercial personal weblogs even had the court decided otherwise).

Although there are few enforcement mechanisms for Internet standards, good netizens are expected to comply with them. These standards don’t stunt creativity; they create a democratic space where ideas can be exchanged, flourish, and grow. If not for some adherence to HTTP and HTML standards, the Internet would not be the rich informational resource it has become. For Gattuso to suggest that these sorts of rules would limit creativity on the web is to deny these first principles.