Back to the Top

Every once in a while I see something on a page and think how out of place it is; how archaic; how 1990s: for example the “Back to the Top” links one sometimes see at the bottom of a page, or worse at the bottom of every section. It got me to thinking - is there any good reason to have a "Back To the Top" link?

There are a lot of reasons to have a page split up into several smaller pages including tracking readership as users click through the article; and increasing advertising views. What possible reason could there be for keeping long articles on a single page? Outside of the expense of changing legacy files I can’t think of any. All new site designs should allow for multiple pages.

There is one reason to have a document all on one page - and that is for printing. It’s more than a little irritating to have to print out several files instead of one, and then to have extra pages for each of the footer sections. Government agencies seem to go out of their way to accomplish just that.

A counter argument could be that the link is simply an additional affordance; useful to those who want them and invisible to the rest of the population. An interesting aspect is that I’ve had many clients who’ve requested such links - even though they weren’t necessary – and not one have found the “Back to the Top” links to be annoying.

Of course one could simple press "HOME" and go back to the top of the page. But ... how many people know of this, or any other, keyboard command?


Edit: February 2, 2011

As iPads and phones are quickly gaining market share the 'Back to Top' links may come in handy as there may not be a keyboard command to quickly get the reader to the top of the file.

These devices have screen resolutions of 1024 x 600 pixels or much, much less so even average length files would be be considered to be a long page.

B versus using Span and Class

I have a client whose company name is bolded for branding purposes. It got me to thinking - ought the company name be bolded using the <b> tag or by attributes in the <span> tag?

Some have argued that <b> has been deprecated (or will be shortly) in favor of <strong>. It has not been deprecated although w3.org discourages its use in favor of stylesheets. The key difference between <b> and <strong> is that

EM and STRONG are used to indicate emphasis. ... These phrase elements add structural information to text fragments.

What are the relative merits of <b> versus <span>? If ever there was a case for the use the <b> element, this might be it as this its use is first and foremost a visual element. After all one cannot know how a browser will render <strong>. Still I would recommend <span> as the branding may change in time. <span class="logo"> maybe longer to write than <b> but it would solve all issues as rendering information will be located in the style sheets.

<b class="logo"> is an alternative. It will rank higher in today's SEO ranking (although is that really necessary for a logo?) and can be easily changed with a search and replace should the need arive at a later date.

Looking at .Net

I’m told that .Net is the future. It may very well be. There are some aspects that I like: namely the attempt to separate code from content, but I wonder if it actually accomplishes this task better than existing languages. I can do the same thing in CFMX. There is no reason to switch to .Net for this reason. There are some minor changes that I appreciate. I like that the default for their forms is POST and that the form refers back to the same file and automatically keeps the form data in state. But again – this is minor.

There is one thing that looks very interesting and that is .Net' conversion of standard HTML tags into server-side objects. I’m not certain how I would play with that but it is intriguing.

Overall my first impression of .Net is positive. I don’t know where they’ll be in 5 years but I think MS has dramatically improved its ASP product.

MailTo Link and Usability

Too often I go to a site, select a link, and have my email client activated. I find this very intrusive. Asking around, I found that this sentiment was widespread, especially among more experienced users. [See table below.] The browser should not open the email client without first giving warning to the end user. For instance the link “send an email” is more than sufficient to warn the user that a mailto link is being used. I think that usability would be increased by adding the mailto link. For instance

If you would like to know more please contact us at info@glmdesigns.com/

Contact Us links ought to take the user to a contact page from which mailto links are listed. Forms should also be included in case the end user is on the road and does not have an email client or does not wish to make his email address known. This is not a recommendation for eliminating mailto links. Site owners must be aware that contact forms are distrusted by many web users. [See previous post]

Bothered A Lot	Bothered Somewhat	Not Bothered	Experience Level
22	16	2	Very/Professional
14	16	4	Yes
2	5	11	Novice

What's the difference between using a class inside a table cell tag and using a span tag in a table cell?

In other words what is the difference between:

<td class="myClass"></td>

<td><span class="myClass"></span></td>

In the first case you are applying your class to a block level element (<td>) whereas in the latter case the <span> creates an inline element.

The first example will apply to all the content in the td (or the cell itself) whereas the second one applies only to the items wrapped in the span and does not effect the cell itself.

As to whether it matters, it depends on what you're doing with the style. If you are just setting font styles, then either is probably fine. If you're going to do a background color or underlining or padding effects, you need to consider if you want that applied to the text block or to the cell. See the example below.

There are still a few browsers which won't apply styles within a <td>, including NS4.x.
In general, unless you’re designing for these browsers, use the class in the table tag. The span is just an extra piece of code. Try to reserve using span to very discreet items. For instance: a word that receives special treatments.

Why do we still have <u>?

Is there any reason for the <u> tag to exist? Underlining text was a means to highlight typewriting text. Typewriters, as useful as they were, were limited to a single font and size. Underlining text in these pre-published manuscripts was a kludge, allowing users to emphasize a particular portion of the text.

We understand why <u> was initially created: the web was originally conceived as a means for academics to exchange ideas. Since academic papers used underlines as a means of emphasizing reference titles; and since the people who created the original web standards still thought in terms of the typewriter they naturally included the <u> tag.

However a decade has gone by since Mosaic / Netscape revolutionized the web. What do we need the <u> for? Underlines are the default means of displaying a link and will remain that way for the foreseeable future even though underlines deface the types’ descenders. Still, usability trumps aesthetics in this case. As a result of underlines being used (almost) exclusively to designate links few professionals use the <u> tag anymore except when designers mean to evoke the look and feel of typewritten text.

This is a minor issue as there is no overriding reason to pull the <u> tag. Still, Web Standards are an evolving project – and this kludge from a bygone era needs to go.

How to deal with spam, unsolicited email?

As with pornographic pages it should be easy for the recipient to automatically delete or block it.

Legally spammers are protected by first amendment rights of freedom of speech. This right however doesn’t let them to force others to accept their solicitations.

There are precedents – flyers placed in mailboxes and on doorsteps. As with the flyers a no thank you sign should be an acceptable compromise. Granted, all other things being equal, it would be the same with spam.

On the surface there is a simple solution. As Senator Schumer suggested all unsolicited email should have ADV (short for advertisement) as the first 3 letters of the subject line. Then people could delete or filter the email without first seeing them.

There is a slight problem with the application of the law. It doesn’t apply to non-US citizens and from marketers based outside of the US. Nor is it possible to prevent the email from “crossing the border.” For those unfamiliar with the internet, the internet was designed to keep information flowing in case of accident or attack. There is, for all practical purposes, no way of preventing spam from entering the country.

The end result is that companies in the US would place “ADV” or some such indication that it is an unsolicited advertisement and companies outside would still be able to send their spam unhindered. Unscrupulous American marketers would then move their base of operations, or hire foreign firms to send the spam.

Is there a way to deal with this? Yes there is. It’s a wonderfully evil way, and that is to spam the spammers. How do we do this? There are anti-spamming organizations that do just this. The only thing is that it’s not legal for them to do so, so involvement is tricky.

How does, or could, the anti-spamming work? When you get spam you forward it to the anti-spamming organization. They would then, after checking to be sure that it is spam, send your email back to the spammer. Now just sending it back won’t discourage the spammer, but if they send it to him 1000 times a minute for a couple hours, perhaps the spammer will get the point. The more spams the person sends out, the more spams he gets back. In time those sending unsolicited spam will get so frustrated that they will change their ways. Thousands upon thousands of useless responses will do that. Especially as it will cost time and money for them to go through all these responses.

That leads to a little problem. It costs money to send these fight-back emails. To fight back you, the recipient of these emails would have to pay a little to fight back. It won’t have to be much; if millions contribute it would only be at most a dollar or two for everyone and probably a whole lot less. After the first few rounds I think the out-of-country spammers will see that it’s not worth the hassle.