A regular reader, I’ll let her identify herself if she chooses, asked me a question about background images. Since I’ve received similar questions before, I thought this would be a good forum for answering them. Here is a short list of background questions that I’ve received. I’ve taken he liberty of rewording them so that they are more generally applicable.

• Do you make your own backgrounds?
• How do you make backgrounds?
• Can you just take a picture and make it repeat with code?
• Some backgrounds are very subtle, almost invisible, how is that done?
• Can you use more than one background?

Do you make your own backgrounds?
Yes, I do all of my own backgrounds. I do all my own image work for the most part. I’m a perfectionist, and rarely satisfied with using someone else’s work. It’s not so much that I dislike the quality of work of other designers, but that their vision of a design isn’t the same as mine. By doing my own image work, I can create an image for exactly the purpose I want, rather than adjusting the design to match the image I have.

How do you make backgrounds?
Background images come in two general types, repeating and non-repeating. Repeating images are used a lot more often than people think. It can be a great way to reduce load time. Take my sidebar image for example. Every theme I’ve put together for this site in recent memory has used a repeating image to define the sidebar. One of the things to take into account with a blog design is it’s fluid nature, you never know how long the page is going to be. By using an image that repeats vertically allows me to compensate for that. The sidebar image’s repeating nature allows it to fit regardless of page length, and it loads in a fraction of the time of a longer image.

How do I make a repeating background image? Some image by their nature can repeat. For instance a solid black box could be repeated both vertically or horizontally to make a black line, or repeated both directions in order to change the background color of whole containing element. More complex repeats like the saddle texture I like to use on the left side of this site take software like PhotoShop. I first carefully select the area I wish to repeat. Don’t underestimate this step, because the smaller area you can select, the faster your page will load when you use it. Then I use a PhotoShop filter called Offset. It’s listed under the Other menu at the bottom of the Filter pull-down menu. This allows you to shift the image so that it wraps. For instance when you offset upward, the top of the image wraps around and comes up from the bottom. This doesn’t fix the seam caused by repeating an image, but it allows you to do it manually. Just make sure to offset your image in the direction it’s going to be repeated. This is where choosing your section carefully helps out. If you’ve chosen to repeat an area that has similar colors and textures, fixing the seam takes only the slightest use of a couple of key PhotoShop tools. A little Healing Brush or Clone Stamp, and the area disappears. Other image editing software can do the same work, I just happen to use PhotoShop.

How do I make a non-repeating background image? Creating background images that don’t repeat isn’t technically difficult, but it can be frustrating. What I’ve seen to be the most important question is where is it going to be placed, and in what context? As an example, let’s consider header images. If you have a fixed width site, the header width is determined by the page width. If your page width is 760 pixels, the header image you’re using either needs to be 760 pixels wide, or look appropriate in that context. Personally I prefer fluid width blog designs. This makes the header image a little more tricky since the header size isn’t constant. Any header image I use must look appropriate at any reasonable page width. I’ve recently used two different solutions. My current solution is to use four smaller images which blend into the background color that I’ve assigned my header. This allows the background to stretch or shrink, without showing image edges because the header background color fills in between them. My previous fluid blog theme used repeating texture to fill the space and the header image had a transparency to allow it to blend into the repeating pattern. These two factors gave the impression of one seamless header image, but loaded much faster.

So, how do I actually create a non-repeating background image? The key to background images in general, and non-repeating ones specifically is mostly about context. It has to fit with the rest of the page. If you’re using a fixed width page, it has to fit the space. If you’re using a fluid width page, it has to look good at various sizes or be placed in a portion of the page that doesn’t stretch. For the actual image work I use PhotoShop as I’ve mentioned before, but any image editing software could be used. The actual techniques vary dramatically. Your can fade to a background color or fade to transparency. You can extend the image to fit into a predefined space. You can adjust color or make any of thousands of other adjustments. Your techniques will be defined by the type and nature of the image needed.

A few words of warning. Always consider load time. Big images take a long time to load. Image formats that allow for transparency tend to have noticeably larger file sizes than JPEG files with similar images. So, given the choice, fading to a background color and saving as a JPEG will give you a smaller file than using transparency and saving as a GIF or PNG.

Can you just take a picture and make it repeat with code?
Of course, however using some form of image editing software and modifying the image to better suit your purpose is always a good idea. Just because you can repeat an image doesn’t mean you should.

Some backgrounds are very subtle, almost invisible, how is that done?
Subtle fades and transparencies can be done in most image editing software. Using the GIF or PNG formats, you can give a image actual transparency, letting it fade into the background of your choice. A better choice though would be to fade the image into the background color or your choice while still in the image editing software. Then you can save as a JPEG which will save you on load time. While this doesn’t allow for transparency, it give the effect of transparency, which in this context, is the same thing.

Can you use more than one background?
No… and yes. While it isn’t possible to give an HTML element two backgrounds, it is possible to make it look like you did. The trick is to use concentric DIV elements, each with their own background. This can give the visual effect of two backgrounds, or of one background larger than either individual image. As I described above, you can use one repeating element to fill the space, and one non-repeating element for visual interest. It’s a great technique, and I use it frequently.

None of the techniques I’ve described here is the perfect solution, but used together, they’ll help you find the technique that’s perfect for you.

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Rightlinx, A Blog For All, The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns, stikNstein… has no mercy, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, The Right Nation, Pirate’s Cove, Stuck On Stupid, Cao’s Blog, The Bullwinkle Blog, , Conservative Cat, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I’ve almost gotten this new theme worked out. I can’t seem to get the load time under a minute on dial-up, but I’ve got a couple of extra pictures on the front page right now. Even with the extra pictures, it’s loading in 62 seconds on 52k dial-up. Good enough for now.

Open House time again. Comments and trackbacks are open. As usual, comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Russell Klika is making some waves with his photography, as I knew he would. The first photo of his that I posted has won an award.

His photo was the winner of the Portrait Personality division of the Visual Information Awards Program.

The Visual Information Awards Program is designed to recognize, reward, and promote excellence among military photographers, videographers, journalists and graphic artists for their achievements in furthering the objectives of military photography, videography, and graphic arts as a command information and documentation media within the military.

His winning photo and those of the other winners are available at Defense Information School website. Since I like his photo best, I’ve posted it again here.

The competitions are open to enlisted active duty, reserve, and National Guard personnel of all the armed services, including the Coast Guard, holding the occupational specialty code (MOS, NEC, or AFSC) of graphic illustrator, photographer, journalist, photojournalist, videographer, mass communicator or equivalent.

All materials were produced between 1 Jan 06 and 31 Dec 06.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Random Yak, A Blog For All, Wake Up America, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, The Bullwinkle Blog, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, LaTogaStrappata, third world county, Allie Is Wired, The World According to Carl, Overtaken by Events, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Finishing up a new WordPress theme for this blog. It’s not quite finished yet, but I’m going to force it on you anyway. I’ve put together a little from a couple of older blog designs from this site, and a couple of new things. It loads a little slower than the last one, but that was pretty minimalistic.

• The cowboy at sunrise image is not me, but I did take the picture. My hat too. It’s been edited to extend it slightly to the left.
• The wolf is stock photography.
• The image of the spurs is mine, as are the spurs.
• The texture down the left edge is leather tooling from a saddle I inherited from my father.

I’m fairly pleased with it so far, but as always, we’ll see what I think after a few days.

Update: Of course as soon as I posted this, the sunrise photo dropped out for a few minutes. All better now.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, Adam’s Blog, basil’s blog, Shadowscope, The Amboy Times, Conservative Cat, Conservative Thoughts, LaTogaStrappata, third world county, Allie Is Wired, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, Right Voices, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Monday again. Seems like only last week this happened. I’ll be making an effort to pick up the blogging pace this week, but no promises. As I believe I mentioned last week, I’m wrapping up a lot of loose ends, but I’m almost done. I can see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.

Monday Open House is now open for business. As usual, comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Extra credit given to any art of design related comments or trackbacks. Jan of CascadeExposures has been participating lately, which is a start. I’ve been trying to talk Jarrett Fuller into joining us, but so far no luck.

This isn’t going to end well…

LONDON, England (CNN) — Fifteen British Marines on patrol in the Persian Gulf have been “seized” by the Iranian navy, the British Ministry of Defense said. - CNN.com

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Right Pundits, The Virtuous Republic, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Allie Is Wired, third world county, , basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, Stuck On Stupid, The Pink Flamingo, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, and Gone Hollywood, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Update: I’m not entirely pleased with how the Iranian President has manipulated this story in an effort to make himself look reasonable to the world, but I’m very pleased that the soldiers were released.

I can’t seem to find the time I need to blog recently. When I do, I’m not pleased with the result. Sounds a bit pathetic I know, but I’m actually more annoyed than anything. If I felt that I was getting anything useful done it would be one thing… I’ve been finishing up a lot of random projects around the office this last few weeks, and nothing seems to get done when that’s going on. I know it’s part of the job, but it’s part I don’t like. Paperwork, filing, archiving finished projects… Give me problem to solve any day. These projects are done, and I want to move on.

With that, Thursday’s Open House is now open for business. Maybe someone else is doing something interesting. I hope someone is doing something more interesting. Watching paint dry would be more interesting.

I’d like to apologize profusely to the owners of A NEWT ONE for not being more clear in my latest latest design review. It was not my intention to say that your blog’s design was poor. I think the site actually has a lot going for it, but that it is not living up to it’s potential due to some structural issues.

While the list of suggestions I had seems long, it’s not as bad as it looks. Most of the suggestion I had could be enacted without visibly changing much. The site would visibly look very similar to how it does now, but load time would be noticeably reduced.

I use the Web Page Analyzer for all load time estimates. This has in the past been very reliable and consistent in it’s estimates. It does however, seem to be a little flaky today. I reran the estimates for the site, and they came back noticeably better (about 20% better), though still not good. It is currently showing estimates of 494.24 for dial-up, 164.27 for DSL, and 31.24 for T1. This coincides closely with my personal experience on this site.

I’d also like to request that anyone who read this review please re-read it in a few minutes. Several sections of my post don’t seem to have posted properly, and I’m in the process of correcting them as well as the revised load times.

Update:
The review is now fixed, and this correction has been track-backed to all sources that the original was.

Trackposted to Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Mark My Words, Faultline USA, basil’s blog, DragonLady’s World, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, and Conservative Thoughts, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I’ve been getting some traffic from A Newt One lately. My link is included in the 101rst Fighting Keyboardist blogroll somewhere on their sidebar.

Style:
The style of Newt One is based on white and colored text on a black background. This is harder to pull off than most people think. This is a much more unforgiving color scheme than its’ inverse . It’s difficult not to cross that subtle line where it becomes cluttered. I think that Newt One has gone over that line. What might be borderline cluttered on a dark on light color scheme might be cluttered on the light on dark version.

This site needs a much more unified color scheme. It currently visually breaks up into several blocks of content. This can cause it to be difficult to follow and difficult to navigate. This is exaggerated by the multiple fonts, font colors, font sizes, and varying background colors present. I think this is more because different authors post in slightly different styles than anything. Using a very tightly controlled color scheme, and a good CSS would remove the need for on the fly formatting, and would improve consistency. As I said above, the light on dark color scheme is much more unforgiving than the inverse color scheme. Variations in color and formatting are much more obvious here than they would be in another theme.

While there are a number of interesting graphical elements, they are almost entirely swallowed by other elements of this site. As an example, the 9/11 graphic on the top of the navigation bar is very interesting, but completely overpowered by other images. It is also placed incorrectly, and slides behind text when the page is scrolled.

Structure:
The site is built with a table layout, but incorporates some CSS as well. I don’t see that the table layout is helpful here. A strictly CSS layout would give much finer control over the overall style of the site.

Font tags are used extensively here, and this exaggerates the cluttered nature of the site. When each paragraph’s font styles are defined on an individual basis, differences, regardless of intent, occur. CSS controlled text styles, carefully designed and applied, would give this site a much more unified look, and significantly reduce the cluttered effect. This may seem insignificant, but this use of font tags also clutters up the RSS feeds for this site, making them difficult to read as well. Making your site cluttered is one thing, making your feed cluttered is something else entirely. An RSS feed is targeted at regular readers and people with visual impairment of some kind. These are two groups who are not going to appreciate this sort of treatment, and likely will unsubscribe.

Load time for this site is beyond unreasonable. Load time is 31.24* seconds for a T1 connection! How many of their viewers do you think have a T1 connection? I’d guess not many. DSL load time is 164.27* seconds, while dial-up is 494.24* seconds. Slow load time was caused by the 92 images and 15 scripts that were on the homepage when I tested it. This is completely unrealistic. They’re doing their traffic great harm by having load times like this. Whether they know it or not, they’re losing a lot of viewers who might have otherwise become regular visitors.

Content:
Content is a nice mix of current events and politics by conservative writers. Content has a lot of potential, and I think they are going to exceed even their wildest expectations with this website.

What would I change:
In short… everything, and nothing. This site needs to be taken carefully apart, and put back together. The general site layout is acceptable, as is the style, but it needs to be shifted to a CSS layout, with no tables or font tags. Then some simplification needs to happen.

• The number images needs to be brought under control
• Images that are used need to be optimized for faster load time
• The number of scripts needs to be lowered
• A unified posting format needs to be put together and strictly implemented
• The site navigation needs to be cleaned up
• Anything that interferes with the RSS feeds needs to cease

Summary:
This is a fine example of what not to do with a blog design. What did they do wrong? They did too much. Bigger and flashier isn’t always better. This site’s blog design is a hindrance to it’s performance, probably significantly so. Their traffic is being controlled and limited by their site design, rather than their content. I’d guess that within a short time after updating their style, their traffic will go up noticeably.

Contrary to what you might think from the previous paragraph, I think the design of this site has a lot of merit. I’m a big fan of the light text on dark background style, I used it myself for a while. Simplification and clarification are the key. This site needs to simplify it’s formatting and it’s use of images, and both clarify and simplify it’s color scheme. With those two things done, it will be able to live up to the potential of it’s content.

Update:
This post was originally posted in an incomplete manner. Due to technical problems on my end, the content section as well as several individual paragraphs were not posted. I write these posts in sections, then do an over-all revision. It appears that my last section, and the over-all revision were not initially posted. As I noted elsewhere, my apologies.

* Load times have been rechecked and revised. The resource I use to check load times may be malfunctioning, and these numbers are at best a guideline at this point. I did test this site on DSL and T1 connections, and my personal load time estimates were close to my automated test times.

Trackposted to Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Mark My Words, Faultline USA, basil’s blog, DragonLady’s World, Blue Star Chronicles, Pirate’s Cove, The Amboy Times, The Bullwinkle Blog, Dumb Ox Daily News, Conservative Cat, and Conservative Thoughts, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Monday already? Seems like it’s coming too soon. Time to get to work I suppose. While I’m finishing up a few design projects, why don’t you let me know what you’re doing. Comments and trackbacks are now open.

It’s been another short blogging week, but that should soon start improving. A lot of projects I’m currently engaged in are due to wrap up very soon.

Without further ado, here’s the Thursday edition of Open House.

Go over to Thursday Thirteen #17 at Blue Star Chronicles for today’s dose of humor. Here’s a taste.

“An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep him from falling off the earth.”

“Drink is the curse of the land.
It makes you fight with your neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your neighbor.
It makes you miss.”

456 Berea Street is linking to two interesting articles on web design. They are Failed Redesigns and Unfailed Redesigns. Very good critiques of web site designs. If you like my Design Review series, you’ll love these. I particularly like their use of the phrases like “Coding like it’s 1999” to to describe outdated coding.

I’ve mentioned before how I feel about deadlines

“I love deadlines, especially the wooshing sound they make as they go flying by.”

This is going to be one of those days. I won’t miss these deadlines, but I have a number of projects wrapping up this afternoon. I may post something afterwards… I may just lock myself in a closet instead. We’ll see how the days goes.

This Monday edition of Open House is now open.

Now a story near and dear to my heart. The Second Amendment. Apparently the DC Court of Appeals has decided that it actually says what it says it does. Brilliant!

Of course everybody is talking about it.

This looks to me like the DC Court of Appeals has essentially struck down the entire DC gun ban with this decision. - Cold Fury

In dissent Judge Karen Henderson, a Reagan appointee, countered that the Second Amendment did not properly apply to the case, as prior caselaw, statute, and the Constitution itself recognized that the District of Columbia is not a state subject to the jurisdiction of the Bill. - JURIST

If the ban is indeed lifted, I plan to exercise my constitutional right to own a gun in the District of Columbia. I can’t wait to buy my first piece! - La Shawn Barber

I have no doubt that this is going to the US Supreme Court. This is actually a very high risk gamble. IF the gun ban is struck down, it will have major implications. If not, no gun regulation will be deemed “unreasonable.” - John Lott

We almost had to create a special category named “Fan-Freaking-TASTIC” especially for this post, since “Good News” doesn’t really do it justice. - Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler

Others on the topic:

• Argghhh! The Home Of Two Of Jonah’s Military Guys..
• Right Wing Nation
• Sister Toldjah
• Cam Edwards
• and many, many more.

Blog design doesn’t matter, long live blog design!

Confused yet? Web design, like graphic design, is at it’s core, communication. Is your site communicating clearly? Here are a few things you should consider when looking at blog designs.

• Legibility
• Readability - I’ll explain why I’m listing this separately from legibility in a moment.
• Good navigation
• Consistent formatting
• Don’t annoy your viewers!
• It’s all about the feed

Legibility is a bigger factor than you might think. Some blogs are hard to read. You can play around with decorative fonts and flashy colors if you want. When you get to the content though, use something that’s easy to read. Dark text on a light background is probably your safest choice. Reversing those is also possible, but a noticeable percentage of people find light text on a dark background straining to the eyes. Do you use bold and italic a lot? This too can be difficult to read. Used as an accent they’re perfectly acceptable, but use them carefully. They are to add emphasis where needed, and not everything needs emphasis. Keep this in mind while considering blog designs… If they can’t read it, they won’t come back.

Readability and legibility are really the same thing. That said, there is another aspect of legibility that you should consider. Even when you’re using a perfectly legible font, are you adding something in the way of formatting or organization that makes your site difficult to read? To many graphics? Too much color? Unusual or confusing formatting? Look over your design and see if something can be interfering with your reader’s ability to read the text. What did I ask you to keep in mind? If they can’t read it, they won’t come back.

Navigation is also often overlooked. Someone at Websites that Suck coined the phrase Mystery Meat Navigation for a reason. Your navigation should be intuitive. Anyone with a minimum of web experience should be able to navigate your site within a few minutes. If that’s not the case, then you have a problem. If they can’t navigate it, then they won’t find what they want, and therefore can’t read it. If they can’t read it, they won’t come back.

Formatting is important in one sense, and not in others. The finer details of formatting are important for the overall style, but they won’t make or break a site’s traffic for the most part unless they’re quite atrocious. What is important is that formatting is consistently used. If you format consistently, people know what to expect, and reading becomes easier. If your formatting is always changing, readers can’t “learn” how to read the site. You may have heard this before, but if they can’t read it, they won’t come back.

Don’t annoy your viewers may seem like a stupid point to make, but it really isn’t. Animation may be cool, but a lot of people find it annoying. Splash screens have been popular before, and likely will be again, but some people hate them. Adding music on your site may seem like the perfect thing to do, but a lot of people wish you wouldn’t. Adding 478 images down your sidebar may seem like a good idea, but how many of your viewers use dial-up? While your site is designed for you, its real target audience is the viewer. Keep this in mind, because if you annoy them, they won’t come back.

Always keep in mind your RSS feed. It gets it’s content from your posts. An RSS feed ignores your default settings like font, and color, but it remembers formatting you add within your post. It remembers things like bold and italic, underlines and strikethroughs, photos, graphics, and bad links you forgot to fix. In a lot of ways an RSS feed is less forgiving than a regular web page. I strongly suggest that you subscribe to your own site’s feed so that you can make sure that it’s functioning. The people who are reading you feed fall into three basic categories. Your loyal readers, people in a hurry, and those using a reader because of some sight related disability. All three of these groups are going to be annoyed if your feed is not functioning or otherwise unreadable. What have I been drilling into you? If they can’t read it, they won’t come back.

I love a good website design. If you have good content though, and keep these few things in mind, your readers will keep coming back, regardless of your design. Blog design doesn’t matter, long live blog design!

Trackposted to Blue Star Chronicles, Perri Nelson’s Website, A Blog For All, The Random Yak, Conservative Thoughts, The World According to Carl, Right Voices, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

Cartoonist Chris Muir’s account of his embed in Iraq is now available. As humorous as you’d expect from someone who puts out Day by Day.

Report: Chris Muir from Iraq (The Fourth Rail)

We fly out on a cool C-130, which becomes somewhat less cool when the pilot does the standard “Figure 8″ missile avoidance landing in Baghdad. Everyone is strapped close together in in the cargo bay, hence projectile vomiting is frowned upon.

h/t Cold Fury

Trackposted to Perri Nelson’s Website, Allie Is Wired, Big Dog’s Weblog, A Few Shiny Pebbles, Overtaken by Events, Blue Star Chronicles, The Pink Flamingo, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

The Thursday edition of Open house is now open for business. What’s going on out there?

As usual, comments and trackbacks are open. If your site doesn’t support trackbacks, use the Wizbang Standalone Trackback Pinger.

Extra credit given to any art of design related comments or trackbacks.

Update: I promised extra credit for art related posts, and here’s the first from Jan Bussey.

Anyone ready for Spring?

He fought and triumphed over Hitler, Tojo, international Communism and a host of supervillains, but he could not dodge a sniper’s bullet.Comic book hero Captain America is dead. - CNN.com

What a stupid idea. A comic book hero since 1941, and they decide to kill him off. It’s a shame. Now I kind of liked the whole Death of Superman series, but you always assumed he wasn’t dead. It was sort of a prolonged cliffhanger. This seems to be a quick and sad death, an end of an era so to speak. Captain America is dead, long live Captain America!

Trackposted to The Virtuous Republic, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, Perri Nelson’s Website, Allie Is Wired, Faultline USA, basil’s blog, Pirate’s Cove, Blue Star Chronicles, and Conservative Cat, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

I have to admit, I chuckled when I read this story about Microsoft’s New operating system Vista in November of last year.

Apparently, Microsoft has been so focused on getting Zune out the door in time for the mad holiday rush that it hasn’t gotten around to supporting the player under its next-generation operating system. - AppleInsider

Now, while that issue has long since been resolved, a new one has come to light which involves digital images and metadata in Vista.

Vista Considered Harmful to Photographers | DSLRBlog

It turns out Windows Vista Destroys Photo Metadata. This news doesn’t add any incentive to upgrade.

Apparently if you tag a photo’s metadata in Vista, it destroys other important metadata used by image editing apps such as Photoshop.

Why does it not surprise me that Vista is a little hard on other people’s information? That Microsoft doesn’t appear to be respecting other people’s data standards?  Surely this is a mistake, because they put out great products. (They tell me this, so it must be right.) I’m sure that it will be quickly resolved, but in the meantime, photographers might want to hesitate before switching to Vista.

Trackposted to Outside the Beltway, Rightlinx, Blog @ MoreWhat.com, The Virtuous Republic, Faultline USA, third world county, The Random Yak, Big Dog’s Weblog, Stuck On Stupid, Dumb Ox Daily News, and Pursuing Holiness, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.