Tag Archives: Links

Links in New Windows: Websites vs. Applications

Posted on 05.12.2011 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

En 2011, c'est toujours pas bien de forcer les liens à ouvrir dans une nouvelle fenêtre. Sauf, on peut l'admettre, quand votre site est en fait une application web.

[en]

I was surprised recently to realize that in 2011, it wasn’t obvious to everybody that forcing links to open in a new window (with target="_blank") was not a good idea.

Actually, there are quite a few high-profile sites which force links to open in new windows, and I realized I actually don’t mind it that much: Twitter is one. I like that when I click on a link in Twitter, it opens in a new tab. I’ve learned that Twitter does this, and I now rely on it.

So, maybe links in new windows aren’t always a bad thing?

Here’s what I think: if your “site” is in fact an application, then it doesn’t matter much. People will learn to use the interface of your web application, and if links open in new windows, they will discover that and (hopefully) remember it. However, if your site is a real site, meaning it contains stuff that people are going to read, and that stuff might contain links to other stuff people might want to read or see, then it remains a Bad Thing.

Why is it a Bad Thing to force links to open in a new window (in your blog, for example)? Here’s the reasoning behind this.

  • Normal behavior is that links open in the same window.
  • When you force a link to open in a new window, you’re breaking that expectation — and there is no way to know, by looking at the link, that it’s going to spawn a new window.
  • Opening new windows is a user decision, not a website design decision. Windows are part of the browser, not the site.
  • A link can easily be opened in a new tab or window by holding down a modifier key before clicking on it (Cmd/Ctrl for example).
  • A link which is set to be opened in a new window cannot be opened in the same window if that’s what the reader would prefer.
  • Opening links in new windows may confuse the user (who might not notice the new window) and breaks the back button (to go back, you have to close the current window instead of hitting the back button — adding a different way to “go back”… more confusion).

Summary:

  • if your site is actually a web application, where links open is part of the application design, and forcing links to open in a new window can make sense in certain situations;
  • if your site is a “proper website” or a blog, don’t force links to open in a new window — where they open belongs to the way your reader chooses to use his browser, and not to the website design.

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Posted in Technical | Tagged interface, Links, new window, open, target, user experience, _blank | 9 Comments

Ye Olde-School Personal Blogs Are Still Around

Posted on 01.04.2011 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Le blog personnel existe toujours. On a parfois tendance à l'oublier, noyés que l'on est sous la masse des machines à audience que l'on appelle "blog" ces jours.

[en]

Yesterday evening I was winding down when I thought of checking a bunch of old-school (personal) blogs I visit once in a while. If you’re not an old hand, and you’re looking for some good personal blogs written by those who made up the blogosphere in its golden hour, read on:

There are of course tons of other great blogs out there. But most of these were around in my early days of blogging, and it warms my heart that they still are.

What are your favorite personal blogs?

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Posted in Blogging | Tagged blog, Links, personal blog | 5 Comments

LeWeb’10, ça démarre!

Posted on 08.12.2010 by Stephanie Booth

[en]

LeWeb'10 has started! Links to follow the conference online.

[fr]

Eh ben, on pourra dire que les dernières semaines n’auront pas été de tout repos. Un deuxième dan de judo, le module 2 de la formation SAWI que je co-dirige, et LeWeb’10.

LeWeb’10, c’est près de 3000 personnes qui se retrouvent à Paris pour deux jours de conférences: plus d’une centaine d’orateurs, des dizaines de pays représentés, du contenu et des activités diverses qui satisferont les participants quels que soient leurs besoins. Mais surtout, surtout, du réseautage du tonnerre: tous les grands noms sont ici, et l’ambiance un peu “américaine” (vu d’Europe) rend les contacts faciles.

Mon rôle dans tout ça: gérer l’attribution des accréditations pour les blogueurs officiels. Un sacré boulot, sur les détails duquel je reviendrai dans un billet ultérieur.

Quelques photos pour commencer: #yulbizpar (rencontre de blogueurs d’inspiration Montréalaise), visite derrière la scène des Docks avec les blogueurs officiels (ils ont clairement bossé toute la nuit pour préparer l’endroit!), et l’album d’Egobox (sur Facebook) montrant nos délires photographiques lors de la Blogger Party au Six-Huit hier soir.

Plus à venir (on parle maintenant de voitures et de l’avenir de l’automobile — le hack “iPad comme auto-radio”, j’adore), tant côté photos que contenu.

Pour voir ce qui s’écrit en ce moment au sujet de la conférence:

Enjoy, que vous soyez sur place ou bien en train de suivre à distance!

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Posted in Conferences | Tagged conference, leweb, leweb10, liens, Links, paris, ressources | Leave a comment

WordPress.com Still Messes Up Tags and Categories

Posted on 23.06.2010 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

WordPress.com se mélange toujours un peu les pinceaux entre tags et catégories, après tout ce temps.

  • les catégories sont de gros tiroirs prédéfinis dans lesquels on range ses articles; elles sont locales
  • les tags sont des étiquettes souvent ad hoc qu'on attribue après-coup à l'article qu'on a écrit; ils sont globaux

Malheureusement, les liens sur les catégories d'articles semblent pointer assez systématiquement vers les pages des tags. J'espère vraiment qu'Automattic, l'entreprise derrière WordPress.com, va réparer ça. Sinon, quel est l'intérêt de faire la distinction (importante!) entre tags et catégories? Le widget catégories se comporte correctement, preuve qu'il y a quelque chose d'incohérent dans la situation actuelle.

[en]

It pains me to say it, but much as I love them, they still don’t quite get the difference between tags and categories. Yes, WordPress.com now makes a difference between tags and categories (and have been doing so for quite some time), but they are still missing part of the equation.

  • Categories are big pre-defined drawers to sort your posts in. They’re local.
  • Tags are labels you stick on posts after you have written them. There are tons of them and they’re messy and they’re global.

Logically, links on tags should point to the general WordPress.com tagspace (they do) — and links on categories should point to the local category pages of that particular blog. Only they don’t always.

The “Categories” widget works the way it should. But the rest is a mess. Examples.

  • Look at the Coworking Léman site, which uses the Mistylook theme that I personally love. This article‘s category links to the general WordPress.com tagspace (wrong), whereas this one‘s category links to the local category page (right).
  • The La Muse site, which uses Ocean Mist, makes article categories link to the general tagspace (wrong) but at the bottom of the page, lists categories with the correct links to category pages.

I could find more.

In general, the problem seems to be that article category links are made to link to the tagspace just as tags do. I mean, what’s the point of having a difference between tags and categories (an important one, if you ask me) if you make them behave the same way in the templates? This is a major problem for me. I hope Automattic are listening and will do something about it. (I contacted support but was told, basically, that it was a feature.)

So, please, Automattic: make the links on category names link to local category pages, and the links on tag names take us to the global tagspace.

Thanks!

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Posted in Wordpress | Tagged automattic, categories, difference, frustration, global, linking, Links, My corner of the world, tags, taxonomy, theme, wordpress.com | 4 Comments

Atelier IIL sur les médias sociaux: liens et ressources

Posted on 06.01.2010 by Stephanie Booth

[en]

Here are links for the teachers who attended my workshops on social media this morning at the IIL in Geneva. Many of the links are in English, so click through them even if Frenc

[fr]

Ce matin, j’étais à l’Institut International de Lancy dans le cadre d’un formation continue mise sur pied par l’IFP, pour animer deux ateliers consacrés aux médias sociaux dans le milieu scolaire. Comme promis aux enseignants présents (j’en profite encore d’ailleurs pour vous remercier de votre accueil et de votre participation!) je vous donne ici les liens vers les deux présentations Prezi (le tueur de Powerpoint) qui m’ont servi de support, ainsi que quelques liens à explorer:

Les deux présentations en ligne vont évoluer un peu au fil du temps, comme j’ai bien l’intention de les étoffer pour mes prochains ateliers!

Mise à jour 07.01.10: pour s’essayer au blog, ou carrément se lancer dedans, je recommande la plate-forme WordPress.com, ou WordPress.org pour faire une installation sur son propre serveur web — c’est le système qu’utilise le blog que vous lisez en ce moment. Il existe toute une communauté francophone très active autour de WordPress.org. Je vous encourage également à créer un compte Google si vous n’en avez pas encore un afin d’essayer Google Docs et ses documents partagés.

Mise à jour 07.01.10, 19:30: un autre article à lire absolument (merci Jean-Christophe!), c’est “Facebook doit entrer à l’école“. Vous en avez d’autres? Laissez un mot dans les commentaires avec le lien!

Mise à jour 12.01.10: de l’importance des ses mots de passe et de protéger sa boîte e-mail, clé centrale de son identité en ligne, lisez Cette année, le père noël était un pirate (mais pas ce genre de pirate, attention!)

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Posted in Digital Youth, My work | Tagged adolescents, blogs, école, Education, enseignants, Enseignement, facebook, Links, médias sociaux, prezi, privacy, Social Media and the Web, teachers, vie privée | 1 Comment

LeWeb’09 is About to Start!

Posted on 09.12.2009 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Me voici à Paris pour la conférence LeWeb. Quelques liens pour suivre la conférence depuis chez vous!

[en]

Here I am, sitting in the 104 in Paris, surrounded by a big gaggle of geeky bloggers plugged into the ethernet cables kindly provided at the little tables near the stage.

It’s going to get crazy really soon, so here are a few pointers for those of you who want to follow things as they unfold:

And if you see a mad Scotsman in a kilt at the conference, ask him to show you his latest toy, the PsiXpda! (I just went “ooh” and “aah” and “ooooh” while he was showing it to me.)

(I will tell you later about my arrival in Paris, and escaping the metro to find myself in a huge cloud of smoke, in the middle of a crowd, with CRS cops cordoning off the streets all around…)

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Posted in Conferences | Tagged following, leweb09, Links, paris, realtime | Leave a comment

A Week After Ada Lovelace Day (ALD09)

Posted on 01.04.2009 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

La Journée Ada Lovelace a été un grand succès, avec une participation dépassant les espérances. Je voudrais remercier tout particulièrement ceux et celles qui m'ont choisie comme sujet de leur article pour cette journée: Jean-Christophe, Michel, Graham, Stéphanie, Baud, et Delphine. On se retrouve l'année prochaine!

[en]

Oh heck, it’s been a week without a blog post on CTTS again. Maybe one day somebody will write a WordPress plugin to send reminders to over-busy bloggers like me. I had decided to write a post this morning before starting my work for the day, so here we are: a summary-roundup with a few post-event thoughts for Ada Lovelace Day.

First, it was a huge success. Nearly 2000 people signed the pledge. (Not that many have marked it as completed, but to be honest, I almost forgot myself, and a friend of mine had quite a lot of trouble figuring out how to mark her pledge as completed…) 1400 people signed up for the event on Facebook. On the day itself, #ald09 was trending nicely on Twitter (see Twitter search page screenshot). About 1000 people added their blog post to the Ada Lovelace Collection (the database needs cleaning up though, so if you are comfy with databases and have a little time to space, do let us know). Not everybody signed up everywhere, so the real numbers are somewhere in the middle.

I spent the day on Twitter, mainly (and writing my blog post about Marie Curie, in French). I was really impressed with the number of people taking part in ALD09, tweeting and blogging about it — clearly, the event had critical mass in the blogosphere. Many of the women blogged about were unknown to me, proof of how useful it is to sing our unsung heroines of tech and blog about these women who can then become role-models for more of us. I had a great time hopping from blog to blog reading about the Ada Lovelaces of today.

If you’d like to read some posts, the Ada Lovelace Day Collection is of course a great place to start. People have posted links to their posts on Twitter, on the Facebook event wall, in the pledge comments, and you can also go digging in Technorati or Google blogsearch. And if you have to check out only one of the creations for this day, go and look at Sydney Padua‘s web comic about Ada Lovelace, part 1 and part 2. I guarantee you’ll like it!

I’d like to thank Suw for having the brilliant idea behind Ada Lovelace Day, and organizing it. I’d also like to thank those of you who picked me as their “woman to blog about” on Ada Lovelace Day — I’m very honoured, humbled, happy, proud, and a little embarrassed. So, a particular thanks to Jean-Christophe, Michel, Graham, Stéphanie, Baud, Delphine, who chose me for Ada Lovelace Day, alone or alongside others. Thanks also to Henriette, Lyonel, and Luis who have included me in their posts and lists for ALD09.

See you next year!

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Posted in Technology | Tagged ada lovelace day, ald09, blogging, Events, facebook, Links, pledgebank, Technology, twitter, women | 3 Comments

Ressources for Parents and Teachers (ISL Talks on Social Networking)

Posted on 17.06.2008 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Quelques liens, points de départ pour mes deux conférences plus tard dans la journée (parents et enseignants, au sujet des adolescents et des réseaux sociaux comme Facebook).

[en]

I’m giving two talks today at the ISL, one for teachers and another for parents, about teenagers and social networking (that the request was specifically for “social networking” makes me happy, because we’re finally moving away from the whole “blog” thing). I think we’re moving away further and further from the “internet as library” metaphor, and the “internet as city/village” image is the one that most people are starting to have.

I have already gathered many links with useful information all over the place, but I think it’s a good thing to collect some of them here for easier access. If you’re reading this not long after I posted it, you’ll find a whole series of quotes in my Tumblr, too.

General starting-points

Fear of sexual predators

This is by large the most important fear linked to teenagers and the internet. Thankfully, it is much exaggerated and no more of concern than fear of predators offline. Three starting-points:

The real issues

You’ll see that these are much less “newsworthy” than sexual predators.

  • privacy (in the sense of revealing too much about yourself or in an inappropriate context, which leads to embarrassement or social problems) — a look at Facebook privacy settings
  • permanence of online media
  • weakness of anonymity
  • misunderstanding of how online interactions affect communication and relationships (“chat effect”, flame wars…)
  • slide-show of a presentation I gave about the kind of mischief teenagers get upto on blogs (what I managed to lay my hands on, with screenshots — no fear, it’s pretty mild)
  • intellectual property (copyright)
  • necessary to move away from a model of “education through control” as everything is available at a click of a mouse (age-restricted content like porn, shopping, gambling)
  • rumors, hoaxes and urban legends (use snopes.com to debunk them)
  • bullying and many other unpleasant online phenomenons are also offline phenomenons, but sometimes less visible to adults; the core issue does not change — if these problems are addressed properly offline, then they will also be online
  • cyberaddiction is not common at all, despite what some articles might want to have you believe — unhealthy usage of the computer usually is not the problem in itself, but an element of a larger problem which needs to be addressed
  • the jury is still out on gaming — though it’s clearly not healthy to be spending too much time immersed in interactive virtual worlds when you’re learning to get to grips with reality, it seems that participating in multi-player online games can have a significant positive impact on ability to work in teams and solve problems creatively

Other links or comments

I will probably add to this article later on, following the requests made during the talks. If you want to suggest a topic or ask a question, feel free to do so in the comments.

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Posted in Connected Life, Digital Youth, Social Media and the Web | Tagged bebo, Digital Youth, facebook, information, Links, myspace, Online Culture, parents, prevention, resources, school, skyrock, social networking, social networks, Social Software, switzerland, talk, teachers, teenagers, teens | Leave a comment

Bunny’s Language Linker: New WordPress Plugin

Posted on 28.12.2007 by Stephanie Booth

[fr]

Un nouveau plugin WordPress que je viens d'écrire. Celui-ci vous permet de gérer les liens entre pages équivalentes de deux versions linguistiques d'un site. Par exemple, si vous avez http://stephanie-booth.com/en et http://stephanie-booth.com/fr (deux installations WordPress séparées!), le plugin vous aidera à faire en sorte qu'il y ait des liens entre http://stephanie-booth.com/en/about et http://stephanie-booth.com/fr/a-propos.

[en]

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m proud to announce the WordPress plugin Bunny’s Language Linker (zip, phps).

I’ve been wanting to write this plugin for ages, and I’ve finally done it this evening. This is a plugin for people who have a WordPress site with content duplicated in more than one language, like I’m going to have with stephanie-booth.com. For example, you have an “about” page in English, and another “about” page in German. This plugin helps you create and manage links between such “sister” pages. (“Pages”, not “posts”. It doesn’t work with posts at all.)

The plugin adds an extra field to the page editing form, inviting you to input the page slug of the sister page:

Bunny's Language Linker - Admin view

The screenshot is a bit small, but there on the right, there is a little box with “a-propos” — the slug of the French sister page. It works with more than one other language, too. You just need to edit the settings in the plugin file to specify which languages you’re playing with (instructions are in the plugin file). If I had sites in 3 other languages, say French, Spanish, and German, my settings line in the plugin file would look like this:

$bll_other_languages=array('fr', 'es', 'de');

And the little box would provide three different fields for the page slugs of the different localized sites. (OK, I’m making this sound complicated, sorry.)

The plugin then automatically adds links to the sister pages you’ve indicated. Here’s what it could look like:

Bunny's Language Linker - Page view

There’s a readme file with the plugin which will give you some more details. I’ll soon have a client site in production using that plugin, so if these explanations weren’t very clear, hopefully the demonstration will help.

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Posted in Language Geekiness, Wordpress | Tagged bunny's language linker, i18n, l10n, language, language linker, Languages / Linguistics, Links, localisation, multilingual, plugin, Real Live Code, translation, Weblog Technology, Wordpress | 30 Comments