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I don’t think people know how to use the Internet

I was just looking at my stats today. They are fairly unremarkable as usual. 9 people today used a search engine to find Reality Me by searching for "naked women" and 3 people used a search engine to find Reality Me by searching for "naked females cutting tree chainsaw" for a total of 12 people mistakenly thinking this is good place for finding naked pictures of women. Somehow, of these 12 people, 14* actually ended up at 32 naked women with chainsaws which is a textual, not pictorial, post simply linking to a art piece with 5 women composited into looking like 32 women are wearing only boots and hardhats while cutting up a fallen pine tree. Here’s why I think people don’t know how to use the Internet: Of those 14 people, only 2 actually clicked through to the picture. So here’s my conclusion: a large number of people think using the Internet consists of doing a Google search and clicking on the link Google gives you and never going any deeper. So, if that is true, how should our web design/site presentation change? This seems to imply that typical hyperlinks don’t make sense to common users.

*These numbers are based on the WordPress Stats plugin and not a detailed analysis of the server logs.

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I do not like Flash sites

As a developer, I steer clients away from relying upon Flash for anything on their site. Adobe would love Flash to be the medium of choice for everyone but the truth is Flash doesn’t bode well for deep linking, navigation is often slow and clumsy, and it is not as portable as straight HTML to mobile devices and other non-traditional browsers. Granted, Opera mini, other tools, and Adobe are trying to make Flash more readily usable on all platforms.

I do like Flash! I think it should be used to enhance the overall user experience on a website. Perhaps certain navigation elements could be done in Flash but if the browser cannot detect the Flash plugin then it shows a regular HTML navigation. Keep it small and light. Now, all that aside, the Sony Bravia Flash site is cool! And just when I was getting comfortable with the 2D web, someone had to go and add depth.

Ah! I put my finger on it as I was commenting at ProfessorFalken:

It adds the z-axis to browsing to bring us closer to that 3 dimensional hokeyness we see in computer movies like Hackers and Johnny Mnemonic. [Source]