Site Information: December 2003 Archives

I'd like to say thanks to everyone who's been linking recently. I try to maintain a constant level of spectacularity at all times, but it's more fun when other people read it! And special thanks to the generous folks who've hit the tip jar.

I'm proud to announce that my "An Open Letter to Hawthorne Police Chief Stephen Port" was selected by the Watcher's Council as last week's best blog post in the entire world by a non-Council-member, receiving 333% more votes than the second-place entry. I'm glad to have these fellows watching those wascally weasels for us, so I'm adding them to the blogroll.

Thanks also to all the other people who have noticed my plight and shown their support. Lots of people linked to that post -- as well as to the various other nonsense I write here on a minutely basis -- and it's a great pleasure to interact with you all: makeoutcity.com; Deltoid, even though he thinks I'm foolish; AlphaPatriot and other supportive Bear Flag League folks like Xrlq, the Angry Clam, Patterico, Absinthe & Cookies (of course!), and Baldilocks; Say Uncle, who's got us all in check; The Smallest Minority; Hunter Amor; Who Tends the Fires (someone's gotta do it); John Hayes; Miller's Time; Hell in a Handbasket (sounds like California); Today I Blog, Tomorrow I Sleep; murdoc online.

There are a lot of other people who've linked to me recently, and I appreciate it; I only have so much time in the day to read blogs, but I'm sure I'll get to you shortly. I cycle through all my referers every few days (and come on, it's not like you come here every day either!).

Here's a tip for bloggers (particularly those who use Movable Type).

As most computer users know, the [tab] key can be used to move between fields and links on a webpage. If you go to any page and hit [tab] repeatedly, you'll eventually cycle through every selectable item and get back to where you started. The order that you visit each item is called the tab index order, and each item has a number called a tab index. Basically, these numbers start at 1 and go up to whatever the total number of items is on the page.

If you don't specify any tab indexes on your page (and you probably don't), then the browser will try to figure out what order to go in by itself. Sometimes this works fine, but sometimes it doesn't. Movable Type blogs have a particularly annoying feature in that when you hit [tab] from the main comment text box, you're taken all the way up to the first link at the top of the page rather than to the submit button, which is probably where you want to go after you finish typing your comment.

This can be fixed pretty easily, and here's how. In your comments template (you know how to find that, right?) do a search for the word "form", and you'll find the form that's used to submit comments. There are five (or more) input tags in the form, and what you want to do is add a "tabindex" attribute to each one, indicating the order in which you want to be able to tab through them.

For example, here's how mine look (notice the tabindex attibutes, in bold):

<form method="post" action="http://www.mwilliams.info/cgi-bin/mt/mt-comments.cgi" name="comments_form" onsubmit="if (this.bakecookie[0].checked) rememberMe(this)">
<input type="hidden" name="entry_id" value="1139" />

<table border=0 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr>
<td width=180px align=left valign=top>
<label for="author">Name:</label><br />
<input tabindex="1" id="author" name="author" /><br /><br />

<label for="email">Email Address:</label><br />
<input tabindex="2" id="email" name="email" /><br /><br />

<label for="url">URL:</label><br />
<input tabindex="3" id="url" name="url" /><br /><br />
<!-- Security Code Check -->
<input type="hidden" id="code" name="code" value="12" />
<img border="0" src="http://www.mwilliams.info/cgi-bin/mt/mt-scode.cgi?code=12" align="left"> Enter anti-spam<br /> code below:<br />
<input tabindex=4 id="scode" name="scode" /><br /><br />
<!-- end of Security Code Check -->

</td>
<td valign=top>
Remember personal info?<br />
<input type="radio" id="bakecookie" name="bakecookie" /><label for="bakecookie">Yes</label><input type="radio" id="forget" name="bakecookie" onclick="forgetMe(this.form)" value="Forget Info" style="margin-left: 15px;" /><label for="forget">No</label><br style="clear: both;" />
</td></tr></table>

<label for="text">Comments:</label><br />
<textarea tabindex="5" id="text" name="text" rows="10" cols="50"></textarea><br /><br />

<i>Only press the "post" button once -- it's slow, but don't worry.</i><BR />
<input type="button" tabindex="8" onclick="window.close()" value=" Cancel " />
<input type="submit" name="preview" tabindex="7" value=" Preview " />
<input style="font-weight: bold;" tabindex="6" type="submit" name="post" value=" Post " /><br /><br />

</form>

If you look at my comments, you can use the [tab] key to see how this all works. It's a minor usability issue, but it does make leaving comments a little more convenient for your readers.

Mark O'Keefe quotes me and the site in his article "Do All Religious Paths Lead to the Same God? Bush Remark Renews Old Debate" in relation to this previous post.

Update:
Bill Hobbs points out that Bush was probably making a political statement rather than a theological one, and I think he's right. Although he caught some flak from the religious right for his statement, the fallout was far less severe than if he had given the opposite answer. That's not to say that Bush may not really believe what he said; in fact, I'd have to say that he probably does, since I've found him to be pretty honest in general. He could have demurred from the question as irrelevant or too theological, and probably not gotten much of a reaction from anyone.

I've noticed that when I write about religious matters, lots of people comment; posts about other issues, such as politics, current events, economics, blogging, writing, &c., don't get the same response. If you look at the page of most-commented-on posts, about 20 of the top 50 posts are related to religion.

I don't really write this stuff just to get comments or attention from people, but I am curious as to why you all respond the way you do. Is it because my writing on religious matters is more compelling, more controversial, more informed? Or is it because the topic is more interesting than others? In other words, do those posts get more of a response because it's a topic I'm good at writing about, or does the topic itself just draw more of a response? I hope I'm phrasing the question clearly.

In the grand tradition of self-congratulatory, incestuous award presentations, Wizbang! is hosting the 2003 Weblog Awards. I joke, but I think it's a great idea. There are tons of categories, so go take a look and nominate your favorite blogs.

Apparently you can nominate yourself, but who would sink to such depths? Even if your blog could be reasonably nominated for, say, Best New Blog of 2003, Best Conservative Blog, and/or Best Ecosystem Large Mammal Blog, it would be quite gauche to put yourself forward for such an honor. On the other hand, if some loyal readers were to generously choose to take a few minutes to nominate your blog, that would be an entirely different matter.