In creating the web ring page for this site, I noticed a lot of web rings are placing restrictions on where you can display their ring graphics and code. I have something of a problem with this. Linking from your site to other sites is something of a black art, and I think a lot of people are doing a rather bad job of it; now, with this trend, I think that bad job is being enforced.
Something I deal with all the time in my job is the problem of people stating a requirement which is bad, and then refusing to remove it. Right now, I'm developing a web application which will implement a revolutionary new type of shopping cart; in the government contracting field, there can be a period of several months between constructing, placing, and receiving an order, and when between phases other orders also need to be constructed and placed. As a result, a normal shopping cart is inadequate, and what we really need is a system that allows the user to have an arbitrary number of shopping carts. On its face, this is not a complex problem, and only requires that we implement some system which allows multiple carts. (It's been done before, but not quite the way we're doing it; I can't go into much detail, but this shopping cart application is not only one of a kind, but makes every other shopping cart I have ever seen look positively anemic. I can legitimately request one hell of a raise once we pull this off.)
One of our initial requirements was to support Netscape 1.1 and all later versions. Another requirement was to minimise the impact on the server through the use of cookies and client-side scripting, and to use SSL3 for all communications. The problem, as some of you old-timers have no doubt noticed, is that Netscape 1.1 does not support client scripting or SSL3. The task, as set, was impossible.
It has taken us almost two months to convince them to relax this requirement to Netscape 2.02, and we're now trying to convince them that we need to relax it further to Netscape 3 in order to properly support the things we need to do. The project can be completed in Netscape 2 -- badly. Our position at this point is that if it isn't worth doing well, it isn't worth doing at all, and the requirements must be re-evaluated. If they are not, the end result will be a site which is visually unappealing and vastly bug-ridden. Netscape 2's memory management and garbage collection schemes are fatally flawed, and will require some serious acrobatics to prevent problems. The development time will increase exponentially; the maintenance of the code will be next to impossible; and by the time the project is completed, we can expect that most people will be using Netscape 6. Tying our development to Netscape 3 will be a hurdle, but we can make a properly designed and working site with it. With 2.02, we are assured that the site will carry legacy code in large quantities that makes it unattractive to the end user.
Which brings us to the web ring requirements. It seems that many ringmasters have decided in their infinite wisdom that the ring code and graphics must be displayed on the same page that contains the appropriate information. So, for example, if the Graphics Kitty were to join several web rings about graphics, they would all need to go on the front page of that particular site. This is just plain not a good idea. It's a matter of design. All the ring graphics and code would drastically increase the size (and therefore loading time) of the page. This makes it appear that our page is badly designed, when in fact it is the overly large ring graphics; everyone seems to want something that's about 100 by 200 pixels, which is good for a logo but a bit large for a link to a site -- and virtually NEVER properly optimised, since the people who start web rings are by and large NOT computer people, NOT artists (which leads into the question of just how good the graphics are to begin with and whether I want that piece of junk on my site in the first place), and NOT terribly conversant with the ideas of color palettes and bandwidth and load time. So the image looks like hell on the page, is too large on the screen for proper layout and display, is too large in file size to load quickly, and by the decision of someone I don't even know absolutely has to be displayed on this page in this location.
Where do links belong? It's obvious, from my perspective. A link, after all, is an exit. Do you locate an exit on the outside of the site? No. You locate your exit on the INSIDE of the site, clearly marked, so when the user is done at your site he can go somewhere else. Ad banners are more or less the same; they shouldn't be on the front of the site for the user to click on immediately, but on the inside where the user has found what he wants and now desires to go someplace else. Perhaps he's undecided. Advertisements here will give the user ideas. If the provided areas don't give him ideas, then he should be provided a links page in order to choose someplace else to go. Should it be divided by alphabetical order? By date? By server? No! It should be divided by subject, just like Yahoo and other internet directories -- so the user can find a category that interests him, and go there.
When you separate the meaning of a site from its representation as a link, the link will not be interesting to the user. The site will be confusing. This is to be avoided; many people using the internet are confused enough as it is, and don't want any help with it. Shena's mother, newly introduced to computers, recently asked what the 'alt' key did. While I was not present for the actual discussion, Shena reports that her mother became extraordinarily confounded trying to understand it and virtually fled the room. Those of us who use a computer daily often forget just how incredibly complicated the things we take for granted actually are. There might be an easy way to explain it -- I'm fond of saying that the 'alt' and 'control' keys are just a different kind of shift, myself, which is true at the system level and somewhat easier for a newcomer to grasp than any explanation of what you might use them for -- but knowing how something works isn't always a guarantee that you can explain it, and knowing how to explain it doesn't mean you can do it. (Case in point: I'm a very, very bad network administrator. I know exactly how it works, and exactly how to explain it, but I'm very bad at actually doing it. Nevertheless, my ability to explain it and my obvious knowledge of the subject has placed me in charge of more networks than I care to admit for much longer periods of time than anyone as incompetent as I am at the task should ever have been allowed to remain in that capacity.)
Obviously, the links from a site to other sites belong either immediately in the context they refer to, or on a separate page. However, it is absolutely unforgivable for the link to detract from or adversely affect the context itself -- if every link to a site is required to be attached to a graphic, then how exactly are blind users expected to recognise the link? What if the graphic is terribly, terribly ugly on the page? Should I subordinate my desire to create a site according to my desires in order to accommodate your blind and dictatorial ruling about who can link to your site and how?
I can understand a certain degree of qualification. When I go to your site through a web ring, I need to be able to find the web ring code. When I go look at the web ring code, I should be able to quickly and easily find the content it refers to. I may have a site which deals with several bands -- Metallica, Marilyn Manson, Nine Inch Nails, Jethro Tull, KMFDM, Alice Cooper, the Spice Girls, Hanson, the Beatles, and others -- and sign it up to several web rings, say one for each band. When you go through the ring, should I place you right there on the page for the band? What if I want you to read a disclaimer before entering the site, or see the current news about the site? If I want everyone to enter through the front page, can you legitimately tell me to do things some other way? It's my site, isn't it?
It makes sense, in this case, to have a link to the rings page so people can quickly and easily find the band they were interested in. After they're done, they should be able to go back to the ring page and get back to browsing through the ring. Or, alternately, the ring could be placed on the page using a graphic that the site designer has created or had made; while it would be polite for the site designer to then provide this graphic to the ring's owner for anyone else to use, he should not be so required. While it would be nice if every ringmaster had decent graphics for his users, this is not always the case, and I should not be required to use graphics I dislike.
Some people say, then don't join those rings. That's what I do. But I'm being deprived of the benefits of those rings, and they're being deprived of my membership. There are those who say that this is entirely okay for the ringmasters to do, and I agree that they have a perfectly legitimate reason to ask whatever they want as requirements, but I still don't think they can tell me exactly where to put their graphics and code.
I'd like to tell THEM where to put their graphics and code, to be honest.