Adobe Magazine Articles

From 1995 to 1999, I wrote a column every issue for Aldus, then Adobe Magazine. I then wrote a total of three columns through 2000, when Adobe Magazine ceased publication (with the Nov/Dec 2000 issue). (I also wrote columns for the online adobe.mag publication, too, which I've archived separately.)

The column started as commentary on trends in printing and publishing, but the growth of the Internet mutated it in 1996 to "Web Watcher," a column focused on big picture Internet and World Wide Web issues.

In this forum, I discussed the distinction between hits, visits, and visitors; and talked about Net generosity; as well as given some insight into the future of bandwidth, and file delivery over the Internet.

2000

XML and the Structured (PDF)
(September/October 2000) XML will take over the world by separating form (the appearance of things) from function (what those things really mean and do).

The New Face of the Net (PDF)
(May/June 2000) How bandwidth colocation, distributed content servers, and cheap high-speed access have changed the face of the Net.

Link Before You Leap (PDF)
(Jan/Feb 2000) Sites should treat their internal links as public resources. Redesigning a site and breaking all external links back into your site destroys traffic and trust. With some planning you can help other sites update their links before you make the big switch.

1999

Cascading Style Sheets (PDF)
(Fall 1999) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) provide a Web page designer real control over type formatting and object placement a page. Trouble is, not enough browsers support it yet, and not enough features are implemented.

Nearly My Type (PDF)
(Summer 1999) How the latest developments in embedding fonts into Web pages are finally about to bear fruit and allow most Web browsers to view real type defined by a designer.

References Available Upon Request (PDF)
(Spring 1999) A discussion of how Web servers track incoming visitors and how best to figure out and use that information to understand your traffic patterns.

1998

Nowhere to Hide (PDF)
(Winter 1998/99) Your words and work may appear on the Net in places you never imagined. Read how I was ripped off in Italian, and how to find where the results of your labor wind up using search engines and image spiders.

Getting to the Top (PDF)
(Fall 1998) Several techniques for legitimately getting your site or pages to the top of search engine results - scam-free!

The Squeeze is On (PDF)
(Summer 1998) A feature article on how compression works, including methods (zlib, ZIP, Huffman Encoding, LZW) and file formats (TIFF, JPEG, GIF, PNG).

Speedy Delivery (PDF)
(Summer 1998) Why documents sent over the Net sometimes arrive in shredded and unreadable form. How encoding works, and how to test your settings.

Look Out, GIF and JPEG (PDF)
(Spring 1998) The PNG (portable network graphic) file format may not be supported by all browsers yet, but it offers some great features that might allow it to challenge GIF and JPEG's dominance of the World Wide Web.

1997

Attention, Please (PDF)
(Winter 1997-98) If no one visits, what's the point of a site? A few basic lessons on attracting the elusive browser.

No Speeding (PDF)
(Fall 1997) A few caveats about how much bandwidth we can all expect at a reasonable price in the near future. Given the fact that I had ADSL installed at my house in July 1998, my comments may have been a bit too pessimistic!

User Unknown (PDF)
(Summer 1997) Five ways to preserve your email address for a lifetime.

Stop the Paradigm, I Want to Get Off (PDF)
(Spring 1997) One of my few good prognostications: the death of push, not stated quite as bluntly as that. In late 1996, the attempt to make the Web more like TV was in high gear; in early 1998, it's passed us by.

Eternal September (PDF)
(January/February 1997) The emergence of a mass Net audience turned online forums into a bad paraphrase of Yogi Berra: It's so busy that nobody posts there anymore.

1996

Phase Change (PDF)
(November 1996) A fairly accurate prediction of the changes in the graphic design community as firms moved into accepting Web design as part of their fundamental work as opposed to a separate category that wasn't integrated with the rest of their design work for a client.

Hits, Visits, and Visitors (PDF)
(September/October 1996) At last! A clear distinction between these commonly used and misused terms. Hits are requests; visits are sessions at a site; and visitors are unique browsers (sometimes meaning people, sometimes meaning browser software).

Who Owns the Internet (PDF)
(July/August 1996) An illustrated guide to how money and information flow from a user to a web site and back again.

Viruses of the Mind (PDF)
(May/June 1996) Viruses on computers aren't necessarily just programs that wreak havoc. They can also be bits of information that people get, read, and pass on through e-mail.

Net Generosity (PDF)
(March/April 1996) Despite the commercialization of the Net, many important resources exist only out of the goodness of people's hearts.

The Internet as a Self-Correcting Mechanism (PDF)
(January/February 1996) Some sites on the Net actively collect feedback to gradually improve the quality of the information they serve up.