Font Rants on Many Subjects

New Church Website

Well the Episcopal church has redesigned their website. There are many great things about this new website, and I hope if any of the creators read this blog they won't feel that I'm totally trashing them. I'll just say up front that its a vast improvement over the old page; but there still is a ways to go. I do like the fact that they are at least trying to think about the website as a tool for evangelism; and they seem to have taken a great deal of feedback from users to heart.

With that out of the way here are some general criticisms.

• General comments -- Too many things popup, and its too hard to figure out where the links are on the main page.
  
• Accessibility -- Overall I give them a C+ because most things are ok, but I want the church to be an A+; because the average Episcopalian is getting older and as we age we are all going to need more accessible websites to accommodate motor and visual impairment that come with growing older.
  
  
  
  • Alt tags -- The rule is if there is text on the image, then the alt tag should contain it. If the image is just an icon, or spacer, the alt tag should be alt="". For example "member of the Anglican communion", a graphic at the bottom with a link to the Anglican communion should have an alt tag that says "Member of the Anglican Communion"
    
  • Lack of a skip nav link. This is one of the most common web design mistakes out there. If you have navigation at the top of your site, put a hidden link in (see article) to let people skip it if they have a screen reader.
    
  • Significant text rendered in graphics. Try this trick. Go to a website in Firefox, and hit control and the plus (+) key. See how the text gets larger. Now press control and the minus (-) key. See the text get smaller. If you have poor vision you can make the text larger; but the graphic text stays the same size. Text which is significant should preferably be provided as text.
    
  • Too many popups. Look if I want a new browser window or tab I'll right click. Every other link on the home page seems to launch a new window. Folks with mobility impairment may find all these popup windows quite frustrating.
    
  
  
• Interactivity
  
  No registration / personalization -- How do I sign up? How does the site know me and present information in a meaningful way. It's kinda depressing that when I go to Amazon.com they immediately know who I am and give me a list of books I'd want to read; but the church is still just giving me a hypertext brochure. Remember the whole "personal Jesus" thing; reach out touch faith.
  
• Community.
  
  Where is the social network? Look at Friendster and Facebook. Where do I connect up with other Episcopalians on-line?
  

More comments later.

Best Fark headline this month:

Pope denounces materialism from balcony of marble, gold-domed building in midst of jewel-encrusted religious icons while wearing giant gold cross.

Perhaps he's trying to appeal to my generation's love of irony. What is the real spirit of Christmas? While some of my more pagan friends want us to go back to Saturnalia, or kill a bull in honor of Mithras' birth. While our friends at Fox seems more concerned about the war on Christmas.

Though I'm a liberal; and you're probably expecting me to join in the war on Christams. I'm not going to support it because so far I haven't seen an estimate of the costs of occupying Christmas, and I'm concerned we don't have an exit strategy. I know that some members of the liberal intelligentsia have suggested we would be greeted as liberators; much like we were in France during WWII. Some of my liberal freinds has described how wonderful the world will be with a secular and democratic Christmas and how this would inevitably lead to the modernization of all religious observance. However I think we will face a long and brutal insurgency; and a costly occupation. We will find ourselves tied down; and unable to commit resources elsewhere. I have the premonition that when and if we were to finally pull Jesus out of his spider hole; we would still face long odds and a tough fight.

Instead let us consider this holiday which is older than the reason for the season. Since time began people in the northern hemisphere have celebrated the return of longer days; and prepared for the coming spring. We have held festivals requesting the blessing of God for the new year. We've given gifts and shared in the success we had in the last year. This tradition connects us to our parents and grandparents. As we play Santa at 2am on December 24th we are connected to our children. It is a time to remember that we are one family and one tribe. If we say happy holidays it is because we are a polite people; and would not want to offend our brothers and sisters celebrating Kawanza, The New Year, Hanukkah, etc.

In closing Christmas is naturally the most material of all holidays. Jesus came to redeem the material world. His life validated the creation. The idea of God living as man; suffering as an ordinary man; and dying an ordinary death. Seriously how many people did the Romans put on a cross? Let us celebrate the idea of God living among us in the material world. God having a life that wouldn't really impress most parents (never married, couldn't hold down a job, got arrested by the authorities). [seriously think about this the next time you are asking your kids to be more like Jesus. Now that Harod there was a kid that went places. Rich, rebuilt the Temple, brought about nationwide prosperity and renewal, real estate mogul; there's someone you want your kids to emulate; but back to Jesus.] Jesus lived among us; not a life of opulence, but a life. We killed him. It turned out he was God; but rather than say "You F'ing ingrates kill me and make me live like a pauper in palestine, I'm going to f you up. Gabriel get me the legions of righteousness lets go put a can of whoop as on those biatches."

Rather than this kind of hateful revenge at the ordinary life and miserable death we gave Jesus. God said, "Well that wasn't so bad. This creation thing has its problems but all things being equal I had a nice dinners with my friends. Except for that last one, you'd think with those 30 peices of silver Judas could have at least picked up the check. Anyway I went fishing. I had some really good times in the Galalee, all in all a pretty good life. I'm not saying I'm going back there anytime soon; but I'll let a few billion more souls try it out."

And so we celebrate the renewal of this material world. We celebrate our life in it even when the days are dark and our dreams are all we have. We remember that while the wolf swallowed the sun; the sun had daughter and the daughter will shine in sun's place.