Burrowowl

Heidi P. Adkisson has provided a web version of her thesis paper (and the continuation of that study into the present) at her website webdesignpractices.com. Here we see a breakdown of navigation and structural practices amongst 75 sucessful ecommerce sites. Global and local navigation placement and presentation, as well as other almost-standard features such as breadcrumbs, search engines, and shopping carts are looked at in an impartial and clinical manner so often lacking in today’s age of web gurus, usability experts, and nutcases who spin everything so hard it feels like you’re reading the half-mad rantings of a Crossfire guest wonk (alternate wonks available upon request).

Our buddies at WoTC are at it again. Back when I was young an naive (ok, so I was jaded yet optimistic) they released a tome by the name of “Sword and Fist.” They billed it as a great resource for players seeking to play Fighters and Monks better than ever. Instead we got a bunch of prestige classes and feats. Woo-hoo. But that was D&D v3.0, and we have an older, wiser WoTC with D&D v3.5. Their new release, slated for November release, is entitled Complete Warrior: A Player’s Guide to Combat for All Classes and is advertized with the following lovely blurb: “Forge your name in battle! The Complete Warrior provides you with an in-depth look at combat and provides detailed information on how to prepare a character for confrontation.”

Does this mean we’ll get information about how combat in D&D can be most closely related to real melee combat? Will it be chock-full of clever tactical advice? I fear that won’t be the case. They’re going to be trying to milk USD$39.95 out of us again for a hard-bound tome-o-feats & prestige classes. None of which are usable without explicit DM cooperation, which means they aren’t useful to a player at all (unless that player has a very gullible or wealthy DM). It also apparently will include some information on running a martial campaign. Tips for running campaigns are always very helpful for players, I’ve found. What kind of “Player’s Guide to Combat for All Classes” is this to be, exactly?

Give me good, descriptive fluff, or give me real tactics. Don’t give me more rules. I defy you, WoTC: this player won’t use them.

You’ve gotta love a well-crafted disclaimer. From Eric Meyer’s Color Blender tool:

“This tool is provided without warranty, guarantee, or much in the way of explanation. Note that use of this tool may or may not crash your browser, lock up your machine, erase your hard drive, or e-mail those naughty pictures you hid in the Utilities folder to your mother. Don’t blame me if anything bad happens to you, because it’s actually the aliens’ fault. The code expressed herein is solely that of the author, and he’s none too swift with the JavaScript, if you know what we mean, so it’s likely to cause giggle fits in anyone who knows what they’re doing. Not a flying toy. Thank you for playing. Insert coin to continue.”

tlanks to the kind folks at Certicom, I’ve got my little Pocket PC 2003 device up and running through a Sonic.net Hotspots AP. It took some doing, as this connection requires proper IPSec tunelling, and the buit-in PPC2003 VPN client only handles PPTP and L2TP. Thanks Certicom! I’ll buy the non-beta version as soon as it’s out.