Proposing <bdo> for Hiding Email Addresses
There are so many methods of email address hiding, the most popular being using the MailHide service (which basically CAPTCHA-protects your email address), embedding your email address in an image, and using unescape() and JavaScript to print the email address.
All of these methods work but they all have caveats, and there is no method that can be used that will, in effect, not have caveats. By far the most usable method is the JavaScript method as it allows the user to select the email, but the downside is that JavaScript has to be enabled.
That’s why when I found out about <bdo> I was surprised people weren’t using it more. I hope with this blog post to be able to alert people to this usage, and perhaps, give myself more insight on this practice with your comments and such.
Featured on LH (What I Learned) + Affinity Update
I (or rather, my workspace) got featured on Lifehacker a while back. I got home, turned on my computer, and opened up my email and out popped 50 emails, half of them from my contact form. I didn’t know what happened until the 18th email, where someone congratulated me for getting featured.
Wow. It was amazing, seeing all the comments, all the views. Google Analytics wasn’t reporting any new views (it seems to have a day lag) but I knew people were looking: my website went down with all the views, I got more comments than before, and I felt good.
It’s amazing how the world treats us: it seems to be so passive and it waits to let us reap results. As of writing, this website has gone through its seventh revision already. Although I call it version 6.5, there’s been more, I just don’t want to look so desperate.
Why Is Software So Selfish?
I recently got a new router (D-Link DIR-655), and with it came a neat feature called SharePort that allowed me to plug in a USB printer into the router and have it shared with the entire network. I thought it was a great idea, so I plugged the printer into the router and fired up the network printer dialog.
Thirty minutes later, I wasn’t thinking this “feature” was so neat anymore: it wouldn’t work at all, no matter what I did with it. Finally, I gave in and put in the CD into my computer. Lo and behold: the SharePort installer.
Once the software was installed, everything worked, although the interface was less than sleek. But now whenever I need my printer I need to have a memory-consuming software running.
Really, guys? Is this the best you can do? And for that matter, isn’t this what all software does?
Reflections on Blogging, and New News
I’ve blogged for four years now and I started when I was eight. I didn’t know how to code; I didn’t know about design or programming. All I knew was that I wanted to write, and I wanted my voice to be heard.
That was a while ago. I’m now twelve, the creator and writer for three blogs, each on diverse and different topics. One of them, my literature blog, was the original one I had. It now has over three hundred articles (325 at time of writing) in its archives, all written by me.
Yet still, nobody knows about me. My literature blog, with its many articles, barely registers views at all.
The world is cruel yet reasonable: it makes you learn every single life lesson painstakingly and with great price. I thought I would become the next Seth Godin of blogging. To keep it short? I didn’t.
But in these writings, I’ve found out so much about how people perceive those who blog, and so much about how not to write a blog. I’ve tripped over so many cracks and stumbled over my own feet so many times. Continue reading this »
[Update] A Personal Disaster
Recently my home was hit with a disaster: a power surge that I had thought would never come hit my house. The damage was all-around, but most crucially, the complete work room was knocked out.
Things that were broken were my computer, my dad’s computer, the router, the modem, the VoIP module, the printer, the surge protector, and the light switch (now stuck on hi). It’s been a great personal blow to my family and because the router was knocked out I could not get Internet for many days.
I am now using the Internet from my laptop, my dad has stolen my mom’s computer (from downstairs) and we have purchased new routers, a new computer, and lots of other stuff while everything else that was broken gets fixed. Continue reading this »
25 Free Fonts that Truly ARE Good
So you have a bundle of fonts that came with your shiny new computer. Oh, it’s more fonts from Microsoft Office and Adobe CS4. But should you use them? Well, why not? They are fonts, are they not?
But sometimes, you need more than just the standard pack that everyone has been using since forever, but you want this without having to shell out money. Well, 16.3 can help. Here’s some fonts that really are good. I have many of these installed on my own computer. That’s how good 
Enjoy!
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Thuphap (urbanfonts.com)
– (there is more, click “Continue Reading” on the right)
6 Ways to Drive Traffic Away from Your Website
Traffic? Why would you want traffic to your website? Ridiculous viewers and people looking at your website, screwing around with the comments, criticizing you on that post you spent five minutes. Forget them! But how? It’s like whatever you do, users still come to your website.
Never to fear, 16.3 understands your pain. We’re here today to provide ten ways to drive traffic away without seeming like it. For those of you who still want traffic, well, I’ve also included a “but seriously” area below each tip. But why would you want that?
Without further ado, let’s get started. I’m sure you are very eager.
21 High-Res Textures to Use In Your Next Project
Textures are great for any project around, let it be Photoshopping, web design, graphic design, or just messing around, and here at 16.3 we want to give you the best stuff for doing this stuff. I spent a few days looking through DeviantART, finding the best textures for work.
These are some really nice textures that I’ve handpicked and viewed. This took me quite a while to compile but I think it’s worth it. I tried to have only the best, but if you need more, you can always go to DeviantART and look around. We’re against stealing, so you can find usage limitations by each picture description.
Most of these images can be used with either a simple notification to the author or an attribution in the work. Some of these are non-commercial only, and most of these are Creative Commons-licensed. We hope you enjoy this collection!
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Texture – Water Drops by Eriq (usage: notification to author)
– (there is more, click Continue reading to the right)
5 Tips to Help Create a Website Design
Many web designers out there are thinking about how to create a killer web design, one that will knock everyone else over and cause each and every visitor to bow their heads in awe of your awesomeness. Of course, most of the time, that isn’t exactly quite the case.
Maybe this isn’t a Photoshop tutorial that will detail each and every step. Maybe I’m not Jakob Nielsen (the king of usability), but I can help give you a few tips that will help you make a design that is sure to please. It all starts with a layout and a desire to create.
Without further ado, here are five tips to help make your design better.
StSi 1.2.5 Coming Soon, Affinity 1.0 Coming Soon
Updates on Stunning Silence: Stunning Silence 1.2.5 is coming soon and will be released as soon as possible. Fixes in this version include support for centering images as well as general fixes. There are no security fixes, and you are not required to upgrade (but you are recommended).
Stunning Silence 1.3 will come sometime in the future and will include support for more color schemes, multiple sidebar support, as well as other fixes and features.
Updates on Affinity: Affinity is a brand-new WordPress theme to be released soon after I finish working on a client’s work, release Stunning Silence 1.2.5. It’s super-elegant and has a layout sure to be tasty and pleasing.
Once again, I’m being bogged down by work, and I have way too many things to take care of. If you want updates on any work, please subscribe to my feed. Thanks!
HTML5 for the good?
HTML5 is a huge step forward in terms of web usability, of web coding, and web design. It makes things incredibly easy to do, clean, and makes websites suddenly have a no-frills attitude. How easy is it to type in a simple code line <video src=”blah.avi”> on your website? That wasn’t hard, right?
So I suppose you’re happy, right? And in a way, you should be happy. Because instead of hours of work, bam, that took three seconds, right? You didn’t need to convert it to .flv to watch, heck, you didn’t even need a video player to come with it. Just pow, one line of code.
But is this too easy? Continue reading this »
Firefox 3.5 Color Profiles Not That Great
I know, I know, color profiles are great for photographers, but here’s a quick rant: although colors are richer and prettier, when users mess around with the default controls in their browser and they enable color profiles, backgrounds and images that designers have color-matched to fit in are suddenly mismatched.
It’s easy to tell where a background image picks up and starts off suddenly. This is a huge problem, because a lot of people are going to want to mess around with their settings and enable color profiles. Designers will now need to save to PNGs and forfeit IE6 support (which wasn’t that important to begin with, but still).
Instead of enabling it for everything, each photograph should have a specific setting saying “yes” or “no”, and browsers should obey it. It makes sense that the developers for Firefox have turned it off on default.