Web Design and Sin

Article for netConnect, a supplement to Library Journal, by Leo Robert Klein (pub. date 7/1/2000)

Slashdot (1), the popular news and discussion site for programmers, web developers and peripatetic librarians, recently hosted a discussion on web design with Jeffrey Zeldman. Zeldman, billed by Slashdot as a "Web Design Luminary", is well known for his work on A List Apart(2) and the Web Standards Project (WaSP)(3) among other things.

The discussion, alas, quickly degenerated into a series of rants against Zeldman for having committing various "cardinal sins of design" on his personal site(4). He committed the "cardinal sin" of "putting [up] an 'entry page' that does nothing but suck bandwidth" ran one complaint. He committed the "cardinal sin" of "taking away the status bar with JavaScript" ran another. The level of (geek) rancor here and in the 230 or so comments that followed was extraordinary.

The topic after all was web design. How could something so seemingly innocuous as web design provoke such a reaction?

Continue [article through Archive.org] ...

Roy Announces New Additions to the Current Cites Team

Included in the March 2001 edition of Current Cites (link):

Editor's Note: It is my great pleasure to announce that Charles W. Bailey, Jr., Margaret Gross, Shirl Kennedy, Leo Robert Klein, and Eric Lease Morgan have joined the Current Cites team. All of them combine significant writing experience with awareness of current information technology issues and challenges. Welcome, all! Also, starting with this issue, only those who have cites in any particular issue will be listed as a contributor. A complete list of team members will continue to be available [link to list].

Follow-up: here's a link to my first contribution(s) one month later: April 2001 edition of Current Cites.