30 October

Don’t underestimate the value of “pissing in the ocean”

I usually agree with John Gruber. Usually. Not always.

Like many, I was outraged this week when word got out that Jeff Bezos killed the Washington Post’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris.

I am not and have never been a Washington Post subscriber, so I couldn’t cancel my subscription in protest. I was, however, an Amazon Prime subscriber. So I canceled that instead. (Even before that action was suggested by The Atlantic.)

Gruber says that canceling your Prime subscription over this is “like pissing in the ocean.” Which, eww. But also, yeah, so?

Perhaps I should clarify.

I know canceling my Amazon Prime subscription isn’t really going to hurt Amazon. And it’s even less going to hurt Jeff Bezos, even though I would point out that while he’s no longer the CEO of the company, he’s still the chairman of the board and largest shareholder. But let’s be real. There is absolutely nothing I am personally capable of that would have the slightest impact on Jeff Bezos.

Gruber does go on to say:

If you feel better personally cancelling your Prime membership, do it. But don’t think for a second it will matter one iota to Amazon’s bottom line.

Yes, exactly. I didn’t do it because I thought it would affect Amazon’s bottom line. I did it because this was the final straw for my willingness to participate in the retail world Amazon has created. I’ve been conflicted over using Amazon for years, but I still did because it was so convenient. Not having Amazon Prime makes it less convenient, so I’ll spend less (hopefully nothing) with them in the future. That’s not going to hurt Amazon. But it’s going to help me, to know that I’m opting out of participation in a system with which I fundamentally disagree.

As it happens, I also owned a bit of Amazon stock. A very small bit. Three shares, to be precise. I sold those this week as well. (Some portion of my retirement is tied up in mutual funds which I also know for certain are partially invested in Amazon. There’s only so much a person can do.)

I’m generally not one to engage in boycotts or other forms of protest, because I don’t think they do much good. They rarely get the message across to the intended target, and only cause disruption for innocent people caught in the middle. In some ways that may be the case here. But I doubt any Amazon delivery drivers or warehouse workers are going to need to be laid off just because I’ve stopped shopping there. I mean, I bought a lot of stuff from Amazon over the years, but not that much.

Ultimately, your individual actions are more about your own life than anyone or anything else. Do the things that matter to you, and try to avoid participating in things you disagree with. That’s all you can really do… unless you’re a megalomaniac.

After all… if you gotta go, you gotta go.

The Guardian gets newspaper web design right

Most newspaper websites are cluttered but utilitarian at best. Many, like my local paper, have undergone elaborate and expensive redesigns in recent years but still suck ass, if for no other reason than that they can’t really get the interface right and so are interminably tweaking it, not to mention that they allow their advertisers to shit all over the page layout with intrusive Flash overlays that jump out unexpectedly and cover what you’re reading if you let your mouse hand drift across the wrong spot on the page.

I’ve noticed in general that the British media seems to have more design sense, in that they actually seem to care about making things usable — in other words, facilitating the dissemination of information — as opposed to first and foremost making a buck, no matter how crass the means.

I don’t think I’ve ever looked at a newspaper website, though, and said, “Wow, that’s really good design!” but that all changed today when I saw the new site for the Guardian.

Maybe it’s the fact that there’s no advertising whatsoever on the home page. At least that’s a start. The layout is clean and well-organized, and doesn’t feel crowded or overwhelming, even though there are four columns and approximately 85 gazillion links on the page. Something else that helps: color coded sections. There’s risk in using a lot of different colors in a design. The page could easily end up looking like My Little Pony barfed all over it. But the nine different thematic colors are represented solely by colored type in the navigation bar at the top (no colored rectangles or obnoxious 3-D tabs) and by thin horizontal bands identifying the beginning of each section’s home page real estate.

True, on my 1280×800 display, the home page scrolls to the height of seven screens. A bit much, but the aforementioned organization keeps things manageable.

Ultimately, the designers have somehow managed to find the optimal midpoint between bland, utilitarian black-and-white monotony and retina-scorching, brain melting sensory overload. And in the land of newspaper websites, the space between the two is surprisingly small.

It’s no wonder that they won Website of the Year in the British Press Awards. Kudos!

OK, I’m convinced Steve Jobs fired all of his UI designers in a fit of rage…

Much has now been written, a smidgen of it by me, regarding the various design faux pas committed by Apple with Leopard, but here’s another new inexplicable one I just noticed:

Weird drop shadows in Mac OS X Leopard

What’s wrong you ask? Well, if you think about it, this just plain makes no sense. I’m not complaining about the weird blur effect on translucent elements in this new version (although that bugs me too). It’s this bizarre drop shadow on the little slide-down alert dialog box. Why is there a drop shadow here? Presumably it’s to make us realize this dialog is attached to the window (as they’ve been ever since Mac OS X debuted, albeit without a gratuitous shadow). But the effect is to make it look like the title bar is casting the shadow. Yet, the title bar does not cast a shadow on the rest of the window itself. So it therefore appears that the dialog is recessed below the window itself. And yet, the dialog casts a shadow on the window as well. It’s M.C. Escher’s worst nightmare. As others have already said about other UI elements in Leopard: Why, Apple? Why?

On the other hand… I have to admit, I’m actually starting to like the translucent menu bar. The horror!!!