Research by usability consultant Jakob Nielsen, the results of which have been published in a book, Eyetracking Web Usability, which he co-wrote with Kara Pernice, have found that text ads make for the most effective method of advertising online.

The headline result: simpler is better (not to mention probably cheaper to produce). Participants in the study looked at 52% of ads that contained only text, 52% of ads that had images and text separately and 51% of sponsored links on search-engine pages. Ads that got a lot less attention included those that imposed text on top of images (people looked at just 35% of those) and ones that included animation (it might seem movement is attention-grabbing, but only 29% of these ads garnered a look).

This may surprise those who thought advertising consisting of images, or even animation, would garner more attention, and hence click-throughs, but the preference for viewing text ads is attributable to what Nielsen refers to as the “nature of the web coming into play”:

Unlike television, which is a passive medium, the Web is all about taking action – searching, clicking, registering, buying, downloading. It might be the case that as we’re out there on the Internet, what we’re attracted to is content that gets us to where we want to go. That’s one possible reason the man presented with the dating-service ad quickly moved past the woman’s body and fixated on the text surrounding it. “Even in a case like that, the real information is still the strongest point,” says Nielsen.

Via Lone Gunman.

I have so much reading to get through that there’s no time for TV anymore…

The amount of reading people do, previously in decline because of television, has almost tripled since 1986, thanks to all the text on the internet.

Readers of Slate have helped devise a protocol determining when we should read, or send, text messages while in public, or social, situations:

If you’re in a situation where you’d excuse yourself to go to the bathroom, you should also excuse yourself before reaching for your phone. Otherwise, go ahead without asking. Either way, don’t play with your phone longer than you’d stay in the bathroom.

A zoomable infographic comparing a carbon atom against the size of 12 point size Times text (which is just a tad smaller than the text you are reading right now), together with a range of other items in between.

After reading this I feel as if I’ve been linking the wrong way all these years. :)

How do we select the particular words that are linked within a sentence or paragraph, and does it matter for the user?

Since I’m upon the pinnacle of learning and wisdom that is the UNSW campus, I’d better watch my grammar… a very scholarly sort scowled at me when I inadvertently dropped an apostrophe while drafting a post earlier.

I thought I’d highlight Alex’s comments on paragraphs though, as some people seriously need to find their computer’s enter key…

This can be a problem on the web, as apparently the ‘enter’ key is a little hard to find. We’ve all seen those sites, where someone posts an article that isn’t broken into paragraphs correctly. The problem with this is that your text needs to breathe, flow well and look smooth – a lot of this is achieved by well spaced paragraphs.

A not so short story about making a cup of tea. Great reading… if you’re taking an extended tea break.

Dummy Text Generator

Lorem ipsum getting you down a bit?

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Aenean commodo ligula eget dolor. Aenean massa. Cum sociis natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu, pretium quis, sem. Nulla consequat massa quis enim. Donec pede justo, fringilla vel, aliquet nec, vulputate eget, arcu.

Assuming Latin is not your first tongue, perhaps you’d enjoy your website mock-ups all the more if you could actually read the filler text? Here’s some “Far far away” dummy text as a comparison:

Far far away, behind the word mountains, far from the countries Vokalia and Consonantia, there live the blind texts. Separated they live in Bookmarksgrove right at the coast of the Semantics, a large language ocean. A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary regelialia.

The Dummy Text Generator has ten “language” options, plus a heap of other formatting option.

Next in text

Would you believe I use my email program rather than WordPerfect or Word, to draft my articles and blog posts?

Why? Not only does Thunderbird spell check my work, it is simply far easier to use. Latter day WP programs are so overladen with features I’ll never use in a million years, not to mention hog so much disk space, that they have become worse than useless.

Plain text appeals to geeky types partly because it is a lowest common denominator. It travels smoothly between applications, operating systems and devices. For example, sending a Word document to a mobile phone is difficult, sending text is trivial. Text is compact, efficient, quicker to search and easier to manage than word processor documents. Text editing programs are far simpler than word processors. Many have been around for 30 years or more with roots in the pre-graphical-user-interface computing world. They use esoteric keyboard commands.

Before “switching” to WordPress last June, I also for many years used NotePad to code my XHTML and CSS. Actually I still do, but that’s another story.