Give Your Comment a Gravatar

Posted October 3rd, 2008 by Albert Banks

Many of us peruse blogs across the Interweb. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by the need to comment on a post or comment.

When that urge hits you, don’t be caught unprepared. Make sure your gravatar is ready.

What the heck is a gravatar? From the gravatar.com website: “A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?” Your gravatar is tied to the email address you provide when commenting.

Sign up is easy. All you need is an email address and password. Once your account is active, you can setup multiple personalities email addresses and a different image for each.

Get yours today »

Web Layouts – Where’s the Beef?

Posted August 1st, 2008 by Albert Banks

men.style.com blog

men.style.com Blog

I check out a diverse range of websites.  Recently, I stumbled onto the blogs on men.style.com. As I viewed an article I was stunned by the layout of the blog.

The actual content of the article was squeezed into a tiny column. The blog layout is 1000 pixels wide. Yet the main content is tucked into a 355 pixel (including padding) column. Why so small? Even the oldest monitors have at least a 600 pixel viewing width…

This is a result of an ever increasing trend of cramming as much “additional content”, and more specifically advertisements into a layout.

Yes, users can use ad-blockers in their browser, but they can’t regain the visual real estate lost by such layouts. I believe we’ve reached a point where sites are going to loose visitors.

That certainly won’t improve ad revenue…