Last day of winter

Winter, in its final twitchings of death, has dropped a chilly, overcast day on us. Even so, the sun peeks through a ragged hole in the grey firmament, as if to reassure the damp city-dwellers with their dogs, children, and grande café lattés, that the vernal equinox arrives tomorrow, bringing cheer and green and drying the sidewalks and streets and dogs and children, but not the lattés.

It’s times like this when, in spite of winter’s hacking death rattle, a watery sunlight warms the sides of homes and buildings and the scalps of balding men, and people smile at each other without provocation and are prone to humming “Here Comes the Sun” at length while they go for jogs across still-squishy soccer fields, because their minds are on the equinox and the renewal of spring and not at all on how the mud is seeping into their 300-dollar running shoes.

For my part, I’ll take long walks past the daffodils, irises, and the other ones — the little purple and yellow ones that I always forget the name of — and appreciate the lively crop of algae on the roof of my car that signals that the frost is truly gone, because tomorrow… tomorrow, spring will kick winter’s cold, wet ass.

Scientists find way to block out sun

Astronomers have discovered a planetoid beyond the orbit of Pluto, more than eight billion miles from the sun. It’s the largest object to be discovered in our own solar system since Pluto was discovered in 1930.

At more than 8 billion miles from the sun, the temperature on Sedna never gets above minus 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

“The sun appears so small from that distance that you could completely block it out with the head of a pin,” said Mike Brown, an astronomer at California Institute of Technology, who led the research team.

I hate to nit-pick, but I believe you can block out the sun with the head of a pin on Earth too. You just have to hold the pin right in front of your eye. Or inside it.

Link: Wired.com: “Welcome to S-s-s-s-edna”

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A contentious issue in the blogging community is whether a hyperlink should open a new window or replace the current page. It’s a heated debate that’s rife with outrage and moral indignation on both sides of the issue.

A while back, I decided that links in this blog should spawn new browser windows. It’s something that I thought about carefully first before making it a habit. To me it’s a usability issue. I start with the assumption that the user wants to read my article. After all, if nobody wants to read my articles, then why do I have the site in the first place? (Hmm. If nobody responds to this, then maybe I should address that issue at a later date.)

Here’s the no-spawn scenario: User is in the middle of reading my article, and clicks a link in the middle of a sentence. My article (my entire site, in fact) is replaced by the new page. If the user does too much surfing in the new site, it’s difficult or tedious to back out of it and return to the unfinished sentence. My no-spawn hyperlink is like a trap door for unsuspecting readers.

Here’s the spawn scenario: User is reading my article, clicks a link, and the new page opens in a window overtop of my site. In their detour from my ariticle, the user can click around in the new site. When they’re done, the user can close the new window and finish reading the article.

Some people feel that it’s enough that IE users can SHIFT-click (Mozilla users can CTRL-click) to spawn new windows, and that website designers shouldn’t force a new window. That’s fine for expert users who know that poorly-documented trick, but I would like to think that my readers don’t need to be experts just to browse my website. The web should be a novice-friendly place.

So… to conclude my ramble, unless your audience is comprised of highly technical types, not spawning windows makes browsing difficult for regular people.

Technical writer and user advocate

As a technical writer, I’m a strong supporter of undocumented features. Not only does it make my job easier, but it also enriches the end-user’s experience when they discover that the feature exists. And in that way, I add value to the product by doing nothing.