Duskrider's Blog

So, what browser are you using today? Internet Explorer? FireFox? Opera? Maybe Safari or Konqueror? Even Lynx? No matter what you use, if you're reading this then you can obviously view my site. This is because I don't block anyone from using my site... I allow all visitors from all countries and using all browsers. I'm nice like that.

There are, however, some people who have suddenly stopped allowing people using the FireFox browser from accessing their websites. FireFox certainly isn't the most popular browser, but it's gaining a larger and larger portion of marketshare every year over the top dog Internet Explorer. FireFox is what I use, and also what I recommend to all of my friends and anyone who happens to ask. I just like it better, it seems to be a bit faster and easier to configure for my needs. The plugins are cool, and it's just a way for my in my little tiny life to stick it to Microsoft... the big bad computer company. Just a little bit.

So why would any webmaster choose to ban FireFox users from their website? Why would you want to ban anyone at all for that matter? It's all because of a little FireFox plug-in called AdBlock. With AdBlock running, FireFox users don't see any advertisements when they surf the 'net. How cool is that? No more ads! But wait, if you can't see the ads then you can't click them, and if you can't click them then the webmaster of that site can't make any advertising revenue, and if he can't make any advertising revenue he doesn't make any money, and if he doesn't make any money he can't offer the content on his site to everyone for free anymore... can he? Hence, FireFox users are universally blocked from these sites.

I think it's pretty dumb, myself. I mean... to block an entire browser simply because a portion of the population using it also blocks your ads is pretty severe.

It raises many interesting points, and not a few hackles, however, when you start discussing the AdBlocking behavior as it pertains to the web as a whole, and stop worrying about FireFox. After all, every browser is capable of disabling advertisements like that with the right tweaks. So that brings up the question... does a user have the 'right' to block advertisements from a website? Does the website then have the 'right' to block those users from viewing it? Who should have control over the content that is shown on a user's computer, the user or the webmaster?

Those questions are pretty black and white, and this issue really deals more in shades of gray. For example, and these are my opinions as a webmaster and websurfer who both uses ads for revenue and feels they are a necessary evil, I think that the end user has every right to block whatever they wish. The webmaster or site owner, on the other hand, should have every right to block whomever they wish for whatever reason. The fact is that this site, the very site you're viewing this post on (duskrider.com I hope... else my copyright has been violated), is fully owned and operated by me. I paid for the domain name, I pay for the server it's hosted on, I wrote all the code, I used my own time to write this article, and I even pay for the very bandwidth you use to view this page... every time you view another page it costs me fractions of a cent. This money comes from my own pocket. I work at a job, and the paycheck I get allows me to fund this site (and many other things of course). I could use that money to do lots of other things, but instead I put it here because I want to and I enjoy it. The ads on this site are to help me pay for it... so I don't need to use my own money, I can use the money from the advertisers. Is it really to much to ask that you at least have the capability of viewing the ads? I mean really... what I provide is free to you... you pay nothing. How much of an insult is to to me to block the few ads that I use to try to break even each month?

I'm not asking you to look at them. I'm not asking you to click them. I merely asking for the opportunity to allow you to view them if you wish.

Now, if I found out that you blocked the ads and are still reading this content that I put out there for free, would it really be so harsh of me to deny you this content? If you don't want to see the ads, thats fine, but you also don't get to see my images. You don't get to read this article. You don't get to view my site. That's the deal. You pay for the privilege (and it is a privilege like it or not. I don't have to do this) by allowing me to show you a few advertisements.

I obviously don't do this... anyone can view my stuff regardless of if they see the ads or not, but were I to change this policy would that make me a imperialistic monster out to deny the users of the web their freedoms? No. I would merely be protecting my content.

Lots of people try to justify the blocking of advertisements by saying it's just like going to the bathroom during a commercial break on TV or flipping past the ads in a magazine. This logic makes me laugh, just a little. Perhaps if you were to go to the bathroom on EVERY commercial break in every show you watched it might relate. Maybe if you blindfolded yourself and cut all the advertisements out of a magazine before you started reading the thing it might relate. The point is that if you're running AdBlocking software (at least if you run it the way most people run it) I don't even get the slightest opportunity to make back some of the money I lost because you visited my site. You never even see an ad. You see a big gaping hole somewhere on my page where the ad was supposed to be. I won't even get into the implications of viewing my content in a manner which it was not intended to be viewed. That's a whole separate kettle of fish my friends.

The bottom line is that, like it or not, I have the right to do whatever I want with my website. I can block anyone I like, for any reason, from anywhere... that's the beautiful part of being a webmaster on the world wide web. I have total control over my server. If I want to block you because you don't want to view my ads... then I can. On the other hand, you have right to block the content, no matter what I think. Just know that when you block my ads, you might just be taking a few cents out of my pocket. If you don't care, then so be it, but don't be surprised when sites that are currently free and ad supported start asking you for membership fees.

Wow, it's been a real long time since I've written anything here... I just haven't had the time or the desire to really do any blogging. I was reading a thread today, however, that got my kickers in a bunch, so I felt that perhaps it was a good day to come out of retirement. Typically I don't express much personal opinion on this blog, but since I haven't expressed much of anything on this blog in the last 6 months, I don't suppose anyone is going to care if I get a little opinionated here.

What tripped me off today was the subject of Captcha. If you don't know what it is, it's when you need to enter some goofy looking letters or numbers to enter a website or register for something. Here's an Example from the Forest of Love. As you can see, I myself use Captchas on my own sites. The purpose of these is to ensure that the registering party is actually a human and not some program written by a script kiddie that wants to sell Viagra(tm) on my website. As of this writing I have a Captcha, 100% custom written by yours truly in Flash, that integrates with php in order to try to fool the bots. I love this little flash... I was very proud of it when I got it completed. It even has a place where you can use Audio to read the characters for you if you can't read them on the screen.

As much as I love it, I'm thinking of replacing it. Why?

Accessibility.

The Flash Captcha on the page I just linked to has several Accessibility problems, and it's likely that anyone on the Website Accessibility A-Train would virtually flame it so badly that I might as well serve it with some Favre Beans and A Nice Chianti... *slurp slurp*

For one, it's Flash based. Bad move. Flash has become a sort of 'Bad Boy' of web design in recent years because it can be loud, distracting, and a overall bad experience for the visitor, not to mention long load times. In addition, Flash isn't always installed by default on every browser, and even though it might be installed, it isn't necessarily enabled. Without Flash installed and enabled on my site, the Captcha fails and you cannot register.

Secondly, even though I have a button that plays the audio, it's likely that a screen reader (a program for the blind that reads the contents of a web page) couldn't use it anyway... making the audio fairly useless. Since it's in flash, the screen reader wouldn't be able to read it and notify the visitor (who is probably blind) that they have an audio option.

Third, it's a Captcha, and Captchas are ALWAYS bad for Accessibility. Ask anyone who is a 'Web Accessibility Expert' and they'll tell you that a Captcha does nothing but put barriers and speedbumps in the way of legitimate users who are trying to surf the web. It's annoying and an inconvenience and should be stricken from this Earth and avoided like the black plague!

Web Accessibility Experts annoy me. A lot.

They're usually the same type of people who like to tell me what my site can and cannot look like, how it can and cannot operate, and how I must follow strict guidelines when creating my website so that anyone can access it from any type of computer or any type of browser. Nevermind that the site is MINE and owned by ME and I should have total creative control over it. Nevermind that maybe I don't CARE if blind people can access my site. That's not the case, but so what if it is? It's MY site. That's what I think anyway. To the 'Expers', however, it doesn't matter. if I don't make my site accessible to even the smallest minority of web users not only am I an amateur web designer and programmer by default, but I'm also insensitive, and might even be a monster, chauvinist, bigot, or even a conservative. Well... now we don't want that, do we?

It gets worse, because, since I'm an American, I could probably be sued because someone couldn't read my blog or view my images due to being blind. Yeah, that's right. The Target retail store chain just got sued for this very thing. A blind person wasn't able to shop on their online store because Target didn't make their website accessible to the blind. Now, I'm not saying the suit against Target is totally unjustified, but I've seen some go so far as to say that there should be laws passed saying how accessible websites need to be. Imagine what would happen to mySpace if laws like this passed?

Anyway, I digress. I was reading about a new type of Captcha today that I'm thinking very seriously about implementing on my sites, replacing the Captcha I wrote myself. It's called ReCaptcha, and it's pretty cool. It uses words from books to make the Captcha, has an audio component made to work with screen readers, and it benefits the world at the same time. I think it's a cool idea, but a couple of the comments on the page regarding ReCaptcha smack of accessibility righteousness, which is what prompted me to post this entry.

Awesome idea! For wasting a sh*tload of everyone's time! Thanks for putting more roadblocks and speedbumps on the web!

But captchas are, at best, annoying! It's a shame that people that want to post a comment must pass this painful step. And I don't speak about people with difficulties.

The fact of the matter is that Captchas are the lesser of two evils. Either you endure filling out a Captcha script when you sign up for mail or any other service... or you spend your life digging through Viagra and Mobile Phone ads looking for content. Personally, if one of my visitors can't be bothered to fill out my Captcha before they use my free service, I don't miss them.

As an additional note to Web Accessibility Experts who carry the torch of righteousness, I applaud your efforts and hope that someday everyone regardless of age or impairment can have access to everything, but don't tell me how to create my websites. The day I create a background image for the blind users of my website is the day that you can take me out back and put me out of my misery. Thank you.

Giving away free advertising on my new site seems to be a necessary evil.

Have I ever said on here that I don't like link exchanges? No? Well I don't. I find the whole idea to be a little self serving. On the rare occasions that I do a link exchange with another website, I end up feeling just a little dirty afterwards... like I've done something nasty and need to wash it off before it sticks. Don't get me wrong though. In the old days doing a link exchange was a nice way to shift traffic around between a few sites that were friendly with each other, or who had similar content. I'm not opposed to the IDEA of link exchange, I'm opposed to its current incarnation.

For those of you who don't know, a link exchange is when one website links to another website in return for the second website doing the same. The sites exchange links. I link to you, you link to me. Pretty simple, and not at all dirty. I like to consider myself a sort of link purist, however. I don't like to link to other sites unless I think that the content they provide is exceptionally good and will truly benefit my visitors. It used to be that all sites thought the same way... after all, why would you want to link to a site that doesn't have anything to do with your topic?

Google.

Ah, there it is again. That word. Google. Google learned a long time ago that you can't trust a webmaster to give an accurate description of their own site. In the old days of the internet, a search engine ranked a page based on the keywords within that page. Those keywords were written into a special type of HTML tag called a META TAG, and a webmaster had control over that. To put it in perspective, how many junk e-mails did you get last week saying your loan has been approved or you can increase your breast size? Now imagine the same people that send those mails being able to tell search engines what their site contains. You'd think you're going to a site to look up information on Paris Hilton, but instead got information on how you can enlarge your penis. Shameful.

To combat this, Google needed to find a way to rank sites that was independent of that site owner's opinion. Their solution was to use OTHER website owner's opinions... by counting a link to a website as a vote for that site. The more links you got to your site, the more votes you got... and the higher your site ranked in Google. Can you see where I'm going with this? Now, the more links you have the better you're ranked. This makes a link on a site a VERY valuable resource, especially if the site doing the linking is highly ranked or has a great deal of traffic, and didn't your Mother ever tell you that you don't get anything for free. She was right.

In order for me to get a link from someone else to my page, I have to also link back to them. It doesn't matter that our content isn't the same, or that my visitors aren't looking for what they have to offer. That's just the way it is. This brings me to my original point... took me awhile, but here we go.

Giving away free advertising on my new site seems to be a necessary evil.

My new site, The Forest of Love, doesn't get any traffic. It's brand new, so it's not highly ranked in the search engines, not listed in any directories, not in anyone's bookmarks, not on anyone's MySpace page (well... one person's MySpace page), and generally not listed anywhere that anyone could find it. My job is to get traffic there, so I need to list it in places where it can get clicks. Many of those places are Free Stuff Directories, since I'm giving away a free service. Need a free way to show your significant other how much you love them? Carve a tree! etc. etc. ad infinitum.

Visitors to my site, generally, aren't looking for freebies. They're looking for a way to express their love, a way to create something for a loved one, or they're looking for a unique type of gift to give... and it happens to be free. Why, then, should I link to a freebie site? My visitors aren't looking for that! If I want to get listed in this directory of free stuff, however, I have to provide a link back to them on the FRONT PAGE of my site. Nevermind just a courtesy link... it has to be THEIR BANNER on my FRONT PAGE. 70% of those sites require that... the other 30% are more lenient, but I've only found two freebie directory sites that don't ask for a return link.

Keep in mind that this is their business. This is what they do... they list free things. That's what their visitors are there for... to find free stuff. By linking to my site, they're adding real free content to their site for their visitors, but that's not enough! NO! They have to have that return link. Nevermind that they link to me from a page buried three links deep in their site, and I have to link to them from my front page. Nevermind that their link to me is a small text link with a description and my link to them has to be some ridiculous animated .gif from the early 90's. Nevermind that my site is EXACTLY the type of content they need for their visitors and their site isn't what my visitors are looking for... the link has to be there. On top of that, I have to put their link on my site FIRST. If the link isn't there, they won't even consider putting me in their directory. The Nerve! I have to link to them and wait for a week while they go through all their junk mail and hope my request doesn't get thrown in the bit bucket. In the meantime, the link to their page is slowly burning a pit in my retina every time I look at it on my page... while I get NOTHING in return. If I'm lucky they'll add me to page #102 of their directory in the pornography section (after all, my site deals with love), and I'll get more visitors than I can handle. Meh.

I've had one banner on that site for a week and a half with no link in return. That's a week an a half worth of free advertising for a free site. I'm not in the habit of giving away advertising space for nothing.

The worst thing is that I don't have a choice. Since I don't have any traffic and need desperately to get some... I'm forced to play their filthy little game. Scroll down to the bottom of the index page at the Forest to see what I'm talking about. Ugh, it makes my eyes bleed.

Necessary evil.

Just thought I'd pop in and drop a link to the image that goes along with the Forest of Love. I used Vue to make this one and it turned out pretty good considering I don't know much about Vue and haven't done anything at all in over 6 months. Here's the Image

As for the Forest, it's too early to tell how much traffic I'll get, or how well it will do. Initial results are promising however, seeing as how I've got 3 more trees planted today than I had yesterday and it's not even listed anywhere yet. Let's hope things continue to go well there.

On a personal note, if you see this, thank you Jasmine. What you wrote was beautiful and showcases exactly the spirit of the Forest. Best to you and yours.

-Ed

Well, I'm going to call it ready to go live. www.forestoflove.com, the Forest of Love, is now open to the public. This is a project that I've been working feverishly on for the last couple of months, and it's an idea I've had since the middle of last year. At that time I was involved with someone that I cared very deeply for, and even though it didn't work out, this idea never would've become a reality without that person. If she ever reads this post, then I would like to say, in all sincerity, thank you for arousing in me the feelings that made a site like the Forest of Love possible.

In any case, the project presented a number of technical challenges in general, and for me personally. It's the first real chance I've had to work with sessions, a user account system, and a real built-from-scratch relational database. The idea is pretty simple. A user can create an account, for free, and then create a 'virtual tree carving' for someone they love. That carving is then given its own page on the site under the premise of planting a tree in the Forest of Love. The user also has the option of announcing the event to friends, family, and their loved one in several different ways... e-mail, graphical website links, and even a sort of certificate, called a portrait, that creates a printable page with a picture of the tree and carving on it.

All of the things I've talked about in this blog for the last month or so has been culminating on that site... the bot blocker, sitemap generator, and captcha script are all used there, though they were tested here first. The whole idea, for me anyway, was to use all I had learned up to this point to create something that was totally custom and unique. There are perhaps three scripts running on that entire site that weren't hand coded by myself from scratch, so it gives me a real sense of accomplishment to see the site up and running. It also gives me a real life example, both to myself and others, of what I can do as a webmaster, programmer, and graphic design artist. The only thing left to do is promote it, which isn't as big of a deal on today's internet as it was just a few years ago. Once I'm picked up by Google, which has already happend actually, then the page will filter throughout the 'net pretty fast... though I'll still submit the site manually to places like dmoz, free stuff sites, and other smaller directories.

The background used for the main page logo is a modified version of a background I made before I started work on the site, specifically for use there. Pretty soon I'll put that image up on my gallery here for everyone to use and enjoy. Feels good to be putting an image up on my site again. :)

-Ed