I think we all know how to “lift” pictures from the web. If you use a PC, you just need to right click with your mouse on the picture. A dialog box will open and you will have the option to copy the picture or save it on your local drive. Of course just because you can copy these pictures don’t mean you should use them – you always want to consider copyright!
I am working on a site that wanted to make it difficult for users to copy their logo: (www.mn150years.org).
It was a lot easier to set up than I had thought it might be. I downloaded the “disable right click” java script (http://javascript.internet.com/page-details/disable-images-click.html). I pasted the first half in the header and added the second part to the tag. Once you look at the code it makes sense. On the Sesquicentennial site I actually posted the changes in the template so that it would work across the state. This isn’t a failsafe way to protect images – but it’s an easy, good first line of defense.
have two Bytes in one today – for web owners and non-web owners:
I haven’t looked at Usability much lately but I had reason to look into it this week. I ran across a study from Jakob Nielsen. He tracked how users look at web sites (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html). Nielsen is a well respected web site usability guru. He found that people tend to scan web sites very quickly and generally in an “F pattern” across the site. You can see an image of this pattern on the site listed above. He also found that people tend to gloss over content that looks like an ad – something to remember when posting important info on your site (whether it’s an ad or not). Pictures were a non-issue to some degree although people were more attracted to pictures that featured regular people (not models) looking straight on in the picture. I just thought this was interesting enough to share.
For those without a web site I found a good reason to dip your toe into an RSS Feed:
The US Consumer Product Safety Commission has a web site that tracks recalls on various products. You can search their database by date, product type, company name or product description. Or you can do a keyword search of their press releases. I expected to see an option to receive email updates. They don’t provide updates by email but they do provide an RSS feed. So, if you have an RSS reader you can get automatic updates. Visit the site and check it out. Lots of new browsers embed an RSS readers – so you could simply try clicking on the orange R and see what happens. (Sorry I can’t provide more directions – but with so many different browsers, versions and computers that would be a lot of guess work.)
Last weekend I got a sad call from a client. His web site had gone down. Sadly it happens. It shouldn’t happen often or for very long – but it happens. Unfortunately the web host selection predated me here – but I had some advice and comfort that I thought I’d share with folks.
First, I had a copy of his web site on my computer. So there was no way he was going to lose the web site permanently. Unless you use a content management system, your web developer probably has a local copy of your web site. It wouldn’t hurt to ask. You might also ask your web host if they have a copy and/or how often they back up their servers. If the worst happens you can always go to www.archive.org; they archive lots of web sites and with any luck they’ll have an old version of your site. It’s not perfect, but I used it after a desperate call from a new client and it was better than nothing.
Second, if the domain name and web site are hosted with different companies you might be able to forward the address to a temporary site. Luckily it didn’t get that far but the host of this site seemed small enough that they possibility order domain names from a third party – so I had offered to post the web site or an abbreviated version to my server if we could redirect the domain name to the temporary address. Luckily we didn’t get that far.
Third, now that I know that we may have problems with this web host I have pointed a monitoring service (www.freewebmonitoring.com) at the site that will send me an email every time the web site goes down and again once it’s back up. The “back up” email will tell me how long the site was down, which is helpful if/when you need to talk to the web site.
While it’s never a good day when you’re web site goes down – it doesn’t have to be the worst day either.
