robert hoekman, jr. / blog
Note: This is the old blog for rhjr.net. The new one is here.
"SurveyMonk ... made easy!"
I notice this at least once a week, and it's become time to start complaining about it.
As anyone who has worked with HTML can tell you, the text used to create bookmarks is whatever is used as the title of a page. If the page title in your HTML is "Save 40% on all your printing needs with SuperGeniusPrinting.com!", then that's what shows up as the bookmark text. Too often lately, I've found myself deleting quite a bit of text before I approve the bookmark title, because the title text is truncated when it displays in your bookmarks bar, and long titles can often come out quite silly. And the example I just stumbled across is one of the silliest.
I just bookmarked SurveyMonkey.com. The title of the homepage is "SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy!" (It seems SurveyMonkey has decided to use the title of their page as an point of advertising.) But what displays when I drag the URL to my bookmarks bar so I can reference it later?
"SurveyMonk ... made easy!"
As you can see, the advertising loses its meaning quite a bit. And aside from stripping all the meaningful context away from the new bookmark (what the hell is a SurveyMonk, and why did it need to be made easier?), even the truncated text takes up a lot of space in my bookmarks bar, and that annoys me. So to make the bookmark meaningful, I have to go through the text and pick out what I want, or write something myself. So I type out "SurveyMonkey" and click OK. Now I have the bookmark I want. The one they should have given me.
This isn't a big deal, really, but SurveyMonkey and everyone else that uses long page titles should consider the user a little more. Since I'm being nice enough to use SurveyMonkey instead of some other online survey service, I strongly feel that SurveyMonkey should thank me by not being annoying.
I don't need a SurveyMonk made easy. I need a survey service. And I almost never read the title of a page, so advertising there isn't going to do you any good. Title the page "SurveyMonkey", and be done with it.
As anyone who has worked with HTML can tell you, the text used to create bookmarks is whatever is used as the title of a page. If the page title in your HTML is "Save 40% on all your printing needs with SuperGeniusPrinting.com!", then that's what shows up as the bookmark text. Too often lately, I've found myself deleting quite a bit of text before I approve the bookmark title, because the title text is truncated when it displays in your bookmarks bar, and long titles can often come out quite silly. And the example I just stumbled across is one of the silliest.
I just bookmarked SurveyMonkey.com. The title of the homepage is "SurveyMonkey.com - Powerful tool for creating web surveys. Online survey software made easy!" (It seems SurveyMonkey has decided to use the title of their page as an point of advertising.) But what displays when I drag the URL to my bookmarks bar so I can reference it later?
"SurveyMonk ... made easy!"
As you can see, the advertising loses its meaning quite a bit. And aside from stripping all the meaningful context away from the new bookmark (what the hell is a SurveyMonk, and why did it need to be made easier?), even the truncated text takes up a lot of space in my bookmarks bar, and that annoys me. So to make the bookmark meaningful, I have to go through the text and pick out what I want, or write something myself. So I type out "SurveyMonkey" and click OK. Now I have the bookmark I want. The one they should have given me.
This isn't a big deal, really, but SurveyMonkey and everyone else that uses long page titles should consider the user a little more. Since I'm being nice enough to use SurveyMonkey instead of some other online survey service, I strongly feel that SurveyMonkey should thank me by not being annoying.
I don't need a SurveyMonk made easy. I need a survey service. And I almost never read the title of a page, so advertising there isn't going to do you any good. Title the page "SurveyMonkey", and be done with it.
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