“Nothing is more dangerous than tremendous power coupled with vague language.”
—Jeffrey Zeldman. “Say No to SOPA.” A List Apart November 29, 2011

To repurpose a line from our president: I’m not opposed to laws, I’m opposed to dumb laws. And the Stop Online Piracy Act is a dangerously dumb law. If you’re new to the issue, go to A List Apart and read Jeffrey Zeldman’s synopsis of the negative implications of this legislation, currently before the House Judiciary Committee.

Throughout its brief history, the Internet has been regularly assailed by the flailing efforts of entrenched interests to uninvent it, whether through bad law or onerous contracts. Those who cannot compete litigate, those who cannot adapt lobby. And SOPA is clearly their handiwork. It’s time we put a stop to it.

If you agree SOPA is a bad idea—and if you’re a user of the Web, I sincerely hope you do—head to the bottom of Jeffrey’s article (under the “Act now!” section) for a list of actions you can take to help stop this very bad idea from becoming law.

Update

SOPA will be coming up for a vote in the House tomorrow, December 14, so if you oppose this legislation the time act is now. The team at Tumblr has put together a great site to connect you with your Representative and let your voice be heard.

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“Hey, could you design a widget for us?”

The request came through I’ll-never-know-precisely-what company channels at BusinessWeek, where I was just digging into my first job in The Big City, a fresh staffer looking to make a mark. Apple was working on these “widget” things for their next OS. They were going to show them off at their annual developer conference. Could we please build one in a hurry? Oh, and Steve Jobs would probably be approving this personally, since it might be going into his keynote. So, you know, get busy. And make it great.

Skip ahead a bit…

Have you ever been backslapped? I mean like really pop-your-eyeballs-open, jolt-your-neck backslapped? That’s what happened to me as I stood next to my boss’s boss as she watched the video from Steve’s keynote. Jobs briefly demoed our widget and quickly moved onto one from a competitor. But as he started describing it he quickly added, “It doesn’t look as nice as BusinessWeek’s…” BACKSLAP!

And just like that, I started getting more meeting invites.

I know it might sound trivial, tangential contact at best. But in Steve’s uniquely irascible way, he helped give my career a little nudge by noticing the details in my work. And for that I’ll always be grateful.

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If you’re a Facebook user, you’ve probably seen the new chat promotion running on their site by now. I’ll be diplomatic and say it’s a tad problematic, owing to the simple fact that it contains no visual cues as to how to dismiss it without first interacting with it (ie, a close button). True, clicking elsewhere on the page closes it, but as a user I have no idea that’s the case initially. By omitting an affordance to opt out, Facebook is not-so-subtly funneling many of the users who simply want to close the promotion into their sign-up process. “How the heck do I close this thing? [click] Oh…”

I Saw What You Did There, Facebook: The Facebook chat promotion as it appears on the right-hand side of a user’s homepage. Personal tidbits obscured to protect the innocent.

Removing cues to close or abandon interaction flows is something that needs to be undertaken with great care and respect for the user’s initial intent. When used in complex, multi-part forms such as retail check-outs, removing site chrome and “links out” can help focus attention and aid in the completion of a task the user has explicitly voiced a desire to do.

But when used to sculpt the flow of traffic without the user’s say-so, you risk engendering confusion and suspicion. Hence, I typically advise clients against this sort of thing. Sure, you’ll get higher sign-up numbers, but at what cost? Many of the folks who wind up making it through the process will be doing so out of ignorance, and quite a few won’t be terribly happy about it once they arrive on the other side.

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Today the smart folks at A Book Apart have taken the wraps off their fourth entry in the series, Ethan Marcotte’s Responsive Web Design. I was fortunate enough to provide some feedback on an early draft, and I suspect it’s quickly going to become the canonical text on the subject.

Every so often something rolls around that makes the field feel new, and for me, this is most definitely it. Moreover, I hope it marks the beginning of a renewed awareness—and embrace of—the inherent fluidity of the Web.

There’s been some great discussion on the topic of Responsive Web Design since Ethan first introduced us to it on A List Apart, and it’s been reminding me about our history. We arrived at the current, relatively rigid state of Web design out of a desire to impose order on a medium that began life as chaotic and wildly inarticulate (from a designer’s perspective). The Web was fluid by nature, but the tools were desperately primitive. The only way to keep the limitations and randomness from impeding your content was to lock down one side of the equation. We couldn’t control the browsers, so we bolted down the designs.

But the game has changed. Browsers have gotten, dare I say, pretty damn good. And a whole host of robust tools and devices have arrived that allow users to passively view, actively consume, or deliberately repurpose as they see fit. The fantasy we once coveted, of a perfectly reproducible canvas painted in pixels, has given way to a breathing reality mitigated by circumstance and conditions we will not be able to anticipate.

And this book points the way.

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