Monday, July 19, 2004

Note to the Peter Deutsch Campaign (or why Flash is a bad idea) Today I was looking at referrers to my blog and was mildly surprised to see a link from an MSN search on the term "peter deutsch's position on the federal marriage amendment".  Out of curiousity I checked the search and sure enough, my blog is the top result, even though I have never disclosed the Representative's position on the issue (I have mentioned both the Federal Marriage Amendment and Peter Deutsch but not the two together).  I was intrigued to see that there was only one other hit in the results that actually mentioned Peter Deutsch (and it wasn't his campaign's website, which would ideally be the top hit). At first I wrote this off to a poor search by MSN, but after a search on Google returned similarly poor results, I was hit by a "flash" of insight. Peter Deutsch's campaign  website is enclosed in Macromedia Flash.  If you go to the site and you do not have flash installed, you are faced with two boxes saying "click here to get the plugin" and one link to a press release.  Nowhere is there a link for those who do not have the Flash plugin installed.  (I have it for my Firefox install, but not my Mozilla Suite).  When you make a website that is Flash only, without a regular HTML alternative, there are a few negative consequences.  One is that you greatly restrict the number of people who can access the site.  For example, if I remember correctly, the computers in the libraries here at Florida State do not have Flash installed, and one cannot opt to install it (for general security reasons). (and this is the case at most publicly accessible computers).  The second negative consequence is the pertinent one for the curious case of the MSN search.  A website enclosed in Flash is opaque to the spiders of search engines.  Because of this, it does not return hits that are inside the website.  For example, a search on "Peter Deutsch Fighting Bioterrorism" does not return any hits to the campaign website, even though the phrase is present in his Homeland Security platform.  The campaign's website would be much more useful for all concerned if an html only version of the site were available. Lastly, a note to whoever did the afformentioned MSN search.  His platform contains the following: For over two decades, I have worked to ensure that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, receive equal protection and equal rights under the law. I have opposed – and in the Senate, I’ll continue to oppose – efforts to amend the Constitution to restrict marriages to those between a man and a woman. Politics comment []11:37:08 PM   trackback []

Georgia Senate Primaries tomorrow Steven Taylor's post reminded me that the Georgia primaries are tomorrow. I haven't followed the race too closely, but I've looked around for some reading to do in front of the vote. It is telling that searches on Technorati and Feedster for the Republican candidates turn up many more hits than searches for the Democrats. The Chicken Whisperer has a decent roundup of the Republican candidates. Also, for those interested he has also written about some of the House races as well. BlogoSFERICS predicts a runoff between Cain and Isakson. Political State Report has tidbits from races at all levels in Georgia Southern Appeal has several mentions of goings on on the Republican side. Captains Quarters has a post about the debacle of the Democrats. Confessions of a Political Junkie says that the Republican race is tighter than polls indicate. (Zogby has Isakson at 46%, with Cain at 16%) Politics comment []10:43:42 PM   trackback []

Johnnie Byrd for Senate campaign news 20040719 Today the Byrd campaign released that it has received an endorsement from the National Right to Life Committee and that Byrd received the "Go To Guy Award" from the Florida Sheriffs Association. Florida Senate Campaign, Politics comment []3:20:14 PM   trackback []

Senate Campaign News 20040719 It's been pretty quiet for the past three days. Here's what the press has been writing about the race: Nearly one third of Betty Castor's cash has came from the fund raising group called Emily's List. Peter Deutsch is unhappy with this, according to the St Petersburg Times. An article in Jacksonville's Florida-Times Union says Deutsch got the attention stolen away from him by Representative Corrine Brown at a round table discussion on health care held by his campaign The Miami Herald writes about Mel Martinez' Cuban background and how his support of the Bush Administration's policy sometimes conflict with the views of the Cuban community. The St Pete Times has a biographical article about Martinez. Florida Senate Campaign, Politics comment []10:39:45 AM   trackback []