It's too complicated!

Gotta disagree with you on this one, James. Google is actually CHANGING web pages. You, as a web page designer, will never be sure that your pages are being viewed the way you designed them. You will never be sure that your pages are being viewed the way you intend them. Test all you want, on every web browser in existence, and Google will take it upon themselves to alter your content the way THEY see fit. I don't care what color or font the links are.

What's the next step here? If you have links to other web sites, those web sites have to pay Google or Google will delete them? Or Google will alter them, replacing them with links to sites that DO pay Google? Just keep walking; that slippery slope is just ahead. Try to keep upright.

Sorry, not acceptable. Gotta change the title from "It's too complicated!" to "It's just plain WRONG!"

You, as a web page designer, will never be sure that your pages are being viewed the way you designed them.

You have never been able to be sure. Are you going to tell me to quit using my newsreader because it has stripped out your design? The web is not just browsed by standards-compliant browsers (that each render pages in their own way) anymore. You only have a limited control over HOW your page displays. If you have beef with the google toolbar changing your design, you have beef with just about every client software out there that changes your design, which is pretty much all of them since no two clients render 100% the same, and there are a lot of clients that completely strip out the design.

The user has to download and make the software work. What are people missing about this?

/\Are you going to tell me to quit using my newsreader because it has stripped out your design?/\ Replace "newsreader" with proxy browser.

Comment by James Robertson

Thomas,

You had best send me your replayTV then - you are modifying content in ways that I am sure the content producer doesn't like. As a TV producer, in a world with PVR's, how can you be sure how your content will be viewed? Or when? Clearly, they must be banned.

Better stop using Pop up blockers and News Aggregators as well. Better never use a highlighter on a document either - the original writer didn't see it that way.

The bottom line - it's an optional component that you have to go out and get, and then, once you've got it, you have to actually use.

Sorry, your analogy doesn't stretch that far. You are mistaking ME changing the content I see with SOMEONE ELSE doing it.

You say I am modifying content when I use ReplayTV (I actually have Tivo, but the argument would still hold). No, I am not. I am watching the content that the producers have produced. It's their content in front of my eyes. What Google is doing is analogous to Tivo changing my content for me.

Yes, you have to download AutoLink and install it. Same with Tivo. I have to buy it and install it. And if Tivo changed my content, I'd be pretty honked off about it. Tivo allows ME to see content MY WAY. It doesn't require me to watch content THEIR way. This is two totally different things.

@Tom: James' analogy about Tivos and PVRs might not be perfect but you ignore the one about pop up blockers, text selection in browsers, ... OH, and BTW what about those nasty accessibility tools like screen readers? Oh yeah... and you'd better write your browser vendor too, because most (all?) browsers have a feature that is just as "bad": "Custom CSS"; you can set a CSS that the browser should use instead of the one linked by the website; ... if you think that's not changing content, then wait till I override the default CSS sent by your website with my local CSS that turns off half your div elements (visibility:off, or something like that) and sets a body background image that shows Pamela A. eating a large banana...

And if Tivo changed my content, I'd be pretty honked off about it.

Ever used a text-based web browser? Ever transliterated a page using an online translater? Ever used google cache? Ever used a Firefox extension? How about a custom stylesheet?

All of these have the potential to change your content from a client's perspective. What you put up on your server contains hints as to how it should be displayed, but how the user's local copy of your content is displayed is left up to the client. It's always been that way.

Would you be mad if Firefox included a right-mouse button extension that looked up a word on your page in answers.com?

Comment by James Robertson

Not to mention that 30 second skip (or commercial skip in older replays) most assuredly changes the content. The content producers want you to see the ads that a PVR allows you to skip - and in terms of promotions, they often want you to see it immediately.

Not seeing something is different than seeing an altered version. Skipping a commercial with TiVo is a bad analogy. A better one would be if TiVo replaced a recorded show's existing commercials with its own.

Comment by James Robertson

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