[thelist] What's causing a psychological block?

Shawn K. Quinn skquinn at frogger.kicks-ass.net
Sat Jun 28 06:47:38 CDT 2003


On Saturday June 28 2003 05:03, Peter Small wrote:
> This week I put up the first fully working prototype of my Web site.
> Altogether I had something like 1000 visits.
>
> http://www.stigmergicsystems.com
>
> When I did a Web log analysis, there was a satisfactory spread of
> hits all over the site and about two thirds visited the most
> important part of the site - where I explain and demonstrate a
> "Kempelen Box".
>
> So far, so good. However, when I test to see how many people actually
> tried out the "Kempelen Box", to see the agents and see what answers
> the box gives to questions, I find the results shockingly poor.
>
> Where am I going wrong? What psychological block is stopping people
> playing around with the box? Or, is the whole concept so boring that
> nobody bothers to see how it works?

Maybe this is part of the reason?

<a 
href="javascript:newWindow('kboxexamplephp/starterA.php?mr_aaa&Example')">

This, as an example, could just as easily be replaced with

<a href="kboxexamplephp/starterA.php?mr_aaa&Example" 
onclick="javascript:newWindow('kboxexamplephp/starterA.php?mr_aaa&Example'); 
return false">

so browsers without scripting would get something instead of nothing.

Of course, now that I plug that in by hand I find the content is buried 
under yet another layer of Javascript, that appears to do nothing that 
can't be done on the server in some fashion, especially since you 
appear to be using PHP.

There may be something beyond that; if I could actually get at the 
content I could tell you, but I don't run programs (Javascript) unless 
I trust its source for security reasons.

-- 
Shawn K. Quinn



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