Archive
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Dispatches from 2004
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The year that was
The Internet turned 35 this year yet somehow 2004 managed to create an air of excitement about the medium’s potential. The sense of possibility is almost as rich as it was a decade ago. In fact, some of this year’s trends harken back to then, too. -
Canadian relief sites clogged
The Globe and Mail listed five sites accepting donations to help ease the horrors occuring as a result of the South Asian earthquake and tsunami, half are slow or not responding. Although it could be coincidental, I’d like to believe Canadians are flooding humanitarian aid sites. -
ICANN killing the domain name system
I now believe ICANN is intentionally trying to destroy the domain name system. How else can you explain the ludicrous, opportunistic creation of the new “mobi” TLD? And why “mobi”? Is it supposed to be hip? What’s wrong with “mobile”? Web-Graphics outlines one of the largest problems with the “mobi” TLD (as did did Tim Berners-Lee earlier). -
ITunes Canada has finally arrived.
After a lot of stumbles, Apple has launched a Canadian edition of it’s iTunes service. With 700,000 songs available for only 99¢ it maintains the less-than-a-buck/pound-a-song model here in Canada. The result means it’s cheaper to buy the same songs off of the Canadian iTunes than it is in U.S. or the U.K. -
Firefox’s Monster: the Netscape Browser
The Netscape browser has been resurrected and the limited beta was released today. The good news: it still uses the Gecko rendering engine and is based on Firefox 0.9.3 — the final will be based on Firefox 1.0. The bad news: its interface is horrible, and has mangled everything usable and friendly about Firefox. -
News.com does TrackBack
For the uninitiated, TrackBacks and pingbacks are MovableType-popularized technology that lets one site know another is linking to its content. The TrackBacks appear as an excerpt of the what the linking site says about the other’s content. Like commenting, TrackBacks provide quick feedback on a particular post and allows for an ongoing, open dialog. Until now, blogs have made the most use of it, but now News.com is doing it and I must admit, I admire their moxyie. -
Blogging Toronto
(The following are all via Carl Wilson’s “The Empire Strikes Blog.”) Toronto blogging goes big-time with the arrival of the franchised “metro” blog, Torontoist. Too bad they didn’t call it TOist. So far nothing wild; but nothing too sad, either. In the logo is, from left to right: -
Dow Jones buys MarketWatch
One of the sites I work on was heavily modelled on MarketWatch; in part because the former site’s editor worked on the latter, but also because the latter’s approach to covering the markets works. -
Firefox 1.0
Mozilla is a marvel. Six years ago it was born. Eighteen months ago its browser suite roared across the Web. Today, Mozilla released its “tiny, perfect browser,” Firefox. -
What is the GBrowser?
Will they or won’t they? The GBrowser rumour mills are churning again with the CEO Eric Schmidt’s outright denial Google is building a browser. -
Google and you
Google unveils the next front in its advance to ubiquity: the desktop search. -
Google’s desktop search
Did a quick hit about this in my blogmark feed this morning, but I thought it deserved a bit more room, so read my latest rant on Google’s desktop search tool -
In a state of flux
To repeat what once uttered to a confused hostess for a chain restaurant in some suburban mall: “Ummm, just a minute; we’re in a state of flux right now.” -
Coulda been blogmarks
The project consuming most of my time got a one-week extension, meaning I had a long weekend to enjoy a few days ago, but also meaning my focus is still concentrated elsewhere. So, once again, is a list of worthy links (in my mythical next design I’ll have blogmarks to deal with this): -
Offshoring hits journalism
Offshoring hits journalism, with Reuters moving analysis-based editorial positions to India from the U.S. and Europe. For some comparison, creating three Indian positions was cheaper than keeping one of the original ones -
Checklist for the ideal news Web sites
Need a checklist, part II: last month, Steve Outing dreamt of the ideal news Web site -
Checklist for standard-based Web development
Need a checklist? Get a one for standard-based Web development; it’s good to use when producing quality CSS in a team environment. Meanwhile, Signal vs. Noise offers some rock-solid suggestions on what to do for every new feature added -
Capitalization quandary: Internet and Web
Tony Long may be a fine copy editor — no doubt he’s better than me — but his style decisions confound. As you may have heard, Wired News now sets in lowercase Internet, Net, and Web because there is no earthly reason to capitalize any of these words. David Akin aptly explains why Tony is wrong -
Bye-bye BugMeNot
Well, it was bound to happen: BugMeNot has vanished from the Web, apparently ending the first big public attempt to circumvent online registration walls. MetaFilter has some eulogies and speculation. -
Mozilla’s multi-columns, and an IE7 update
There’s been a lot of news during the past week or so that has almost tempted me to break the posting silence, but only one managed to break the floodgates: the release of Mozilla 1.8 Alpha3. Forget the awkward name, this is, for me, the most important release since 1.0. -
Links, links, and more links
Since I’m getting a bit hammered at work by projects whose deadlines conflict with my planned escape paddling the near north, posting will be of sporadic frequency, and like this entry, quality. -
Two tutorials
There are many self-styled tutorials on Web building on the Web — probably more tutorials than developers. That being said, occassionally one emerges worth a bookmark from even the most cynical “seen-it-all” crowd. Rarely do two appear, but that’s what has happened. -
Participatory journalism in T.O.
David Akin is blogging (and moderating) a Toronto conference on participatory journalism that is going on all day today. Although I missed the registration deadline, some of my co-workers are attending; it should be interesting to see how views of Dan Gillmour, Warren Kinsella, and Jay Rosen will affect them -
Forbes’ dumb contextual ads
So Forbes.com, thanks to Vibrant Media’s IntelliTXT system, is going where even Microsoft feared to tread. Like the software company’s ill-fated SmartTags, Forbes.com highlights individual keywords in a story. These words are then sold to advertisers. -
Condensed Glossary of Internet Terminology
A glossary of words, phrases, and jargon related to the the Internet as a whole. -
The value of a protest
Responding to another writer’s complaints against public protests. -
Willingness to get personalized
A “personalization technology platform provider” recently surveyed some Americans and found that a large majority wanted personalized content online. Not surprisingly, their desire dropped when asked if they’d be willing to supply information about their preferences. When asked about supplying demographic data, interest dropped even more. -
Resurrection
Webmonkey, like the Netscape browser, looks to be back from the dead. I happened to hit the site today and noticed it was on the “wired.com” domain instead of a directory of “hotwired.lycos.com”. Plus there’s this note: “We’re totally back! Webmonkey is alive and kicking, serving up new articles all hot-n-fresh like a stack of banana pancakes. With syrup.” The site will has been publishing new articles every other Friday since the beginning of July: -
No consensus on design survey
François Briatte did a survey. What he discovered is that key [W]eb sites agree on implicit, internalized layout and design norms. In a flurry of coincidental posts, the staff at webgraphics post three different views. The survey, variously: -
Registration pro: FT; registration con: Newsbot
Registration is a buzzworthy topic these days, and I’ve just written a longer piece offering evidence for and against it. -
Get off the table
Doug Bowman, after learning how many Web designers don’t use tables for layout, urges people to throw tables out the proverbial window. To bolster his case, he use the microsoft.com homepage to demonstrate the savings that can be achieved. -
WAT the?
Just as the buts had begin to settle after Matthew Somerville–Odeon conflict, IBM releases a tool that converts normal Web sites automagically into accessible ones. The Web Adaptation Technology is a non-specific-site extension that is currently available only to a select audience, but it may inspire others to release a similar tool via open source -
Registration pro and con
Registration is a buzzworthy topic these days, and there’s some fresh evidence for and against it. -
Making space
The latest issue of Usability News has two studies on the use of white space. -
Selling Slate
Is Microsoft retrenching? Rumour has it that the company wants to sell Slate, possibly to the New York Times or the Washington Post -
Ironically, it bugs me not
In a delicious blend of irony and self-protection, BugMeNot requires registration for people who “are an employee, partner, affiliate or legal representative of any site which enforces compulsory user registration.” The form itself is model registration form -
It’s a “GOOG” thing
Well I was wrong, Google will be “GOOG” on the Nasdaq, after its IPO — pegged at between between US$2.65-billion and US$3.3-billion based on a proposed price US$108 and US$135 a share -
The W3C’s XHTML FAQ
Ever wonder: what’s the deal with XHTML? Now you can find out thanks to the W3C’s YABA-compatiable HTML and XHTML FAQ. Once you’ve digested, that enjoy the brand new draft for XHTML 2.0 -
Blogging success may endanger the indie Web
Thanks to the American political conventions’ decision to accredit some bloggers (which in turn was helped by a leadership campaign by Dean Edwards), the mainstream media (and the Internet Explorer development team) has finally accepted the format. (The media also seem to recognize blogging will force them to improve the online efforts.) Although pundits might herald CNN’s partnership with Technorati, the network’s founder offers a warning. Ted Turner wrote a lengthy article in Washington Monthly decrying how big media. The article argues the consideration has crushed independent voices in the broadcast world, and although the online world still seems free, we’d be wise to watch for similar indicators. -
Securing registration
Another note on registration: DeWayne Lehman mentioned on online-news, in a detailed post, the extreme weakness of most registration systems. Few newspaper sites do the following: -
Clark on the Star on Firefox
Joe Clark dissects Richard Morochove’s Toronto Star column on alternatives to IE (which was teased with the Firefox logo on the @Biz front page). Joe’s piece is an erudite example of Firefox’ latest “grassroots” marketing initiative: talking back to the press. -
Fixing the All Music Guide
The buzz around the Web standards community last week was the awful All Music Guide redesign which exclusively targetted IE 5.5 and higher on Windows and used a mess of JavaScript. To help fix things, Adrian Holovaty has built a AMG-specific Firefox extension that brilliantly undoes much of the damage; his colleague, Simon Willison riffs on the idea of such site-specific extensions. -
Viola not prior art for Eolas patent
One of the big arguments against the Eolas patent (the one potentially costing Microsoft US$560 bmillion and Web developers a lot of headaches) was the existence of prior art in the form of the pre-Mosaic Viola browser (ironically developed at UC Berkeley) -
Redesigns on a theme
Two new redesigns showcase some interesting features, and point to a larger trend. -
Browser Wars II: an overview
The Guardian has published an extremely well-written overview of the new browser wars. Although the piece is targetted at a mainstream audience, but is comprehensive enough to provide a summary to those Web designers not up on the latest shenanigans (Firefox, Longhorn, Dashboard, WHATWG, etc.) -
Adding value to registration
A passionate thread within the online-news list has encouraged two co-workers to post their well-informed responses on their personal sites. Adrian Holovaty talks about how registration isn’t adding value and Simon Willison explains why BugMeNot is not the bad guy. (I’ve also thrown my somewhat restricted thoughts on this inevitable trend online.) -
Registering your voice
As more and more new sites move toward registration, who really benefits? -
Mutli-columns with Mozilla
One of my most desired CSS features is coming to a browser near you — Robert O’Callahan has checked a patch into Mozilla that implements the three-year-old CSS3 multi-columns working draft. -
WebStandards.TO July meeting
WebStandards.TO meets tonight at Spring Rolls at the Atrium on Bay around 7 p.m -
The new Web design gurus
What did I say about lists? Anyway, here are two visions of the top minds in the Web design world right now. The first, selected by Eric Meyer’s readers, are those CSS experts whose writings people would most like to read in a book. The second is actually two “top Web-design blogger for 2004 (so far)” lists (one from Digital Web Magazine and one from Scrivs). -
Time-sharing and terminals back in vogue
HP steps into Apple territory (again) by offering computers to schools. The difference is these computers are for African schools and are designed to save the schools up to 60 percent of their computer costs. It manages this by harkening back to the early days of computing: one CPU can be used by four people. There are no plans — for now — to make the HP Multi-user 441, though -
More on Dashboard
The Dashboard fallout continues across the Web. Mike Davidson nicely echoes my own initial feelings (“get further by getting along”), but Ian Hickson forced me to do a rethink (“a new DTD does not magically make you standards compliant”) -
Google on Nasdaq
Google chooses the Nasdaq, meaning “GOGL” might be the biggest ticker symbol since “NSCP.” -
Saving BBC Online
Although some British Internet companies are happy about reducing BBC Online’s presence, many in that country’s online media industry are not as pieces in the Guardian and Digital Media Europe indicate. I wonder if the BBC is still a bit timid after the suicide of Dr. David Kelly. -
Lists for Web geeks (and some Dashboard, too)
Lists, like questionnaires, seem destined to be perfect blog food, so here’s a double dose for those Web designers out there: -
Mozilla not perfect!
So, Mozilla had a security flaw — the browser’s not perfect after all. However, unlike some browsers, the patch was made within four-and-a-half hours. Eleven hours later, the vulnerability was reported and the codebase was fixed. Less than 24 hours later, updated versions of (or patches for) Mozilla’s software was available. (The timeline is summarized from sacarny’s own work.) -
Freeing the GIF in Canada
Finally, the GIF is patent-free in Canada -
Registering the Star
As promised, the Toronto Star is encouraging its users to register — in method sadly reminiscent of another paper’s attempts -
Big BBC Online cuts
A few weeks ago, when talking with someone who worked at the BBC Online, I was stunned to learn the massive scale of its operation. Now the government is ordering the broadcaster to shut down some of those reported 20,000 Web sites. The BBC is shutting five down, and is promising to limit its online budget to about �21-million-a-year, down from a �73 million this year. A cut that size will have a dramatic affect on the services offered by BBC Online, but still leaves them with an budget many Canadian sites would envy. -
New IE5/Mac filter
Doug Bowman tapped Tantek Çelik’s brain and out emerged the IE5/Mac Band Pass Filter. The result causes the former to eulogize the browser the latter helped build -
Comments re-enabled
With this entry I give thee comments… (Which are still in beta, bugs can be sent via the feedback form.) -
Comments a’comin’
For those that care, comments are returning soon. But before they do, I’m taking some time off -
Redesign watch
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ISPs freed
Just in time for Canada Day, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against ISPs paying royalties for music their users download. The move, pushed by SOCAN, was deemed impractical, unfair, and unconventional. One of the judges, Justice Ian Binnie, wrote: -
Comments on a summer vacation
Comments have been greatly improved for the new site. -
Obsolescence and W3C
On the heels of the of the first call for comments on Web Forms 2.0, comes a News.com story touches on the issues behind that specifications development. Although the article focuses on Office documents, PDFs, Flash, and RSS the so-called Web standards face a similar problem. With XHTML, SVG, and XForms still born, and real progress being made by WHATWG, the W3C is risking obsolescence. (Ian Hickson writes a bit more about this in his latest posting, too.) -
Two more seats
Two more seats, two more seats would have made things much better. Stupid FPTP -
Go vote
Election day in Canada, so stop reading this Canadians, and go vote. (Find your local polling station.) One more thing, if you’re thinking of voting Conservative in protest against the Liberals, make sure you understand the ideas of the Calgary School. -
Internet Explorer evangelist
Apparently, Microsoft has quietly appointed an evangelist to the Internet Explorer development team. Dave Massy worked with IE prior to getting transferred over to Longhorn work. Although he claims it’s not big news he does say he’ll be fielding user requests to the Internet Explorer development team. -
50 top (foreign) magazines
Unfortunately, Canadian magazine stands are crammed with American titles, forcing out quality domesitc books. But, if you have to buy foreign titles, the Chicago Tribune has compiled a list of its favourite fifty magazines. Wired top’s the list, no doubt helped by its surging ad revenue. -
Post out
As promised, the National Post will be pulling out of CP June 30 because the paper can’t afford its dues. Since its establishment 1917, the news service has grown to include more than 600 Canadian newsrooms and news agencies from around the world and its style guide and spelling guide is the standard for Canadian writers, journalists, and editors -
Love-ing new media journalism
Mr. Holovaty points to a days-old site from Gary Love on new media journalism. The site looks to be the kind I was first hoping to create with this one; that is a content-rich resource on the unrealized potential in online journalism. Love has a lot of experience in the field, but has decided not to tie his name to the project (depsite using his personal’s site design). The result is a site whose pseudo-anonymity weakens the integrity of the well-thought out articles. Still worth a bookmark, though -
Lessons from Weblogs.com
The brouhaha over Dave Winer’s decision to pull the plug on weblogs.com-hosted blogs offers three axioms about the Web in specific, and life in general: -
Redesigns for BoingBoing, FOXNews, and the Mozilla Store
When planets collide: BoingBoing and FOXNews both redesign. Neither is stellar, and one is downright awful (hint, it’s the one done to look more like a TV channel). Both sites should have talked to Steven Garrity (he of the excellent post “How Websites Learn”) and his co-workers at silverorange; that crew’s work on the Mozilla Store is terrific -
Bloomsday
“Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.…” -
Registration doubts
As the wave of registration-only Web sites roll forward, questions about registration’s benefits are seeping into the mainstream -
“Standards-friendly” ads
The company behind XStandard, the WYSIWYG XHTML editor, has cleverly used some stock photography to create some “standards-friendly” ads -
Rewarding openess
Today Tim Berners-Lee receives €1 million from the world’s largest technology prize, the Millennium Technology Prize, for — in part — not patenting his most spectacular invention, the Web itself. -
JavaScript scrap
Bert Bos really dislikes JavaScript and Brendan Eich reacts by questioning the W3C’s relevance -
Meet Sympatico/MSN, register at the Globe
The Canadian Web is changing: Sympatico is MSN and get ready to register at the Globe and Mail’s sites -
New Mozilla releases
Two new release candidates from the Mozilla Foundation: Mozilla Suite 1.7 RC3 and Firebird 0.9 RC1 (the latter features a controversial new theme). -
A Royal pain in the…
The man behind the RBC crash and Eric Reguly on how the bank reacted -
Man knows news (from blogs)
One Steve recently went on a news diet and restricted himself to the blogosphere. Later, another Steve tested the first’s news knowledge of that period. The results indicated you can get the news from just blogs. Of course, the same positive results would likely be obtained if the diet was restricted to discussions with friends at bars and cafes, too -
Stick the stinger on the WaSP
The Web Standards Project wants to know what effect it and Web standards in general have in your working life. For most of the Web-developing readers of this little site, standards are a way of life, and it’s easy to forget we are in the vast minority. Filling it out the WaSP’s brief survey will help the organization reach out to the majority. -
Do’s and don’ts for online newspapers
MediaSavvy continues its survey on why a newspaper can’t be more like a blog, this time discussing why so few of online newspapers have ability to track stories and add comments. Barry Parr also mentions Jonathan Dube’s list of 101 things to improve a news site. “We” have done at least nine on the list -
Stopdesign restarts
When Friday Mr. Bowman said there was another redesign underway at Stopdesign, few suspected the entire foundation would be replaced. -
mono redesigns
Another notable redesign: the subtly-changed mono. Mr. Holst describes in detail both the influences and hurdles in this design -
Introducing WHATWG
Some frustration, perhaps, has lead to the creation of the YABA-friendly WHATWG. The idea is, in essence, to create new technologies to extend the core Web standards (HTML, CSS, DOM and ECMA Script) and allow developers to created Web-based applications. (MozillaZine offers a good overview.) -
TodaysPapers: a new news aggregator
TodaysPaper merges GoogleNews with a community-blog-like interface. Though it’s still in its infancy (tracking only 100 feeds), TodaysPapers is the second project from BlogLabs — Cam Barrett’s personal business incubator. Barrett knows the medium, and it should be very interesting to see if how the users editorializing (via comments) will effect how readers digest the news as the site grows. -
Tiananmen at 15
Fifteen-years ago today a pro-democracy protest was brutally suppressed as the world watched in horror. Hundreds or thousands died demanding reforms that China is finally, but slowly, making -
Normandy at 60
Sixty years ago this weekend, thousands of soliders (including my grandfather) prepared for a massive invasion on the beaches of Normandy. The CBC’s online team imagines what its coverage would have been like had they been there. The clever project is not only a unique way to present a well-known story, but also a brillant way to tap into its archives (including a long-lost CBC recording of a broadcast by the late Katharine Hepburn) -
Firefox 0.9 release date
Firefox 0.9 will be released in about ten days, a release candidate should be available next week. This version will essentially be 1.0; in other words, no new features will be added to 0.9 and only bug fixes will be applied to create 1.0. The more that use and test these versions, the better the final product -
RSS and newspapers
RSS’s relationship with online newspapers is on my brain, and the topic seems to be appearing everywhere: -
Redesign update
For those wondering about the redesign of this site, I’ve posted an update -
Elections sites fail validity test
As I mentioned yesterday, Canada’s in the midst of a federal election so Joe Clark and I (along with some other members of WebStandards.TO) thought it’d be a good idea to see how accessible and valid the five major parties’ sites were. -
Will it ever launch?
Laying out the plan to launch this new design. -
Rare political rant
I’ve also posted a rare (for this site, at least) political rant about a disturbing trend emerging in the current (Canadian) federal election -
New IE7 better than the old
Dean Edwards continues his admirable work on IE7, and has released version 0.6. Though still an alpha, he’s added support for fixed positioning and IE 5.0. One big change is IE7 can now respect CSS precedence and specificity. Any questions can be posted in the support forums -
Widgetopia relaunches
Widgetopia has relaunched as collaborative site in which anyone can post examples of user-interface elements; the site also has its own domain: “widgetopia.net” -
New IE will be the same as the old
Ian Hickson is at the W3C’s Workshop on Web Applications and Compound Documents where he learned the version of Internet Explorer to be included with Longhorn — a.k.a, the next version of Windows — apparently still won’t support XHTML with a MIME type of “application/xhtml+xml” nor will it natively support SVG. As well, the Microsoft representatives said, according to Hickson, “significantly more comprehensive test suites” are needed before Microsoft will work on standards compliance again -
Purple numbers
Joe Clark famously did it when moving his incredible book, Building Accessible Websites online, and Eugene Eric Kim made them visible with “Purple.” Chris Dent turned Tim Bray onto them, and, in turn, Simon Willison made the technique dynamic while improving it visually. The purple numbers idea makes Joe’s work usable and will most likely be seen on the new version of this site -
Catching-up with the news
In the weeks since I’ve posted anything substantial here, it seems almost every notable blog has redesigned. (Where’s this one’s? Still sitting, unfinished on a test server.) There’s also been an election called in Canada, and a number of interesting developments in the news world. With my dad’s recovery progressing quite nicely, it’s about time to kick this blog back into gear and start covering these events. -
Wha’ happened?
Although part of the reason for the extended quiet here was due to the Digital Web Magazine redesign I was involved in, it mostly had to do with my dad’s unexpected, but much welcomed, transplant surgery. As he recovers — which he is doing quite nicely — we’re keep a blog-record of it to keep people informed (to visit, enter www.saila.com/ and then his first name, in lowercase). Ironically that blog will be pushing this blog to finally repair it’s comment system. -
Blogging the CAJ national conference
David Akin is blogging the CAJ national conference in Vancouver this weekend, covering sessions he’s leading and attending. There are already posts on Kirk Lapointe and obligatory blogging and journalism session -
Wire evolution
Newspapers and portals have traditionally swallowed the wire copy whole, allow design to overwhelm the origin of content. Increasingly though, those stories are becoming commodities, and that threatens the wires’ business model. Mark Glaser explains how the industry is reacting to these changes -
New designs for the Walrus and the W3C validator
The Walrus almost managed to turn an oops into a marketing ploy when one of its newsletters yesterday pointed readers to the development site. After realizing what happened the magazine quickly sent out an explanation (in fact, it was sent twice): -
Thomson eyes the Globe while Shafer eyes e-editions
I was going to blog about the Thomson’s renewed interest in The Globe and Mail yesterday along with the other newspaper stories, but rumours of the sale of the paper have been swirling since Mr. Monty left the scene. However, combined with the announcement the sale of BCE’s e-commerce company and the improved financial performance of Bell Globemedia, maybe the Globe really will have a new owner. -
RSS review
Push is back, and I don’t know what to make of it this time around. As it begins to reach mainstream penetration, I can’t help wondering whether it will suffer the same bandwidth waste that killed it the first time around (although solutions are being sought). Nevertheless, the kids like it, and J.D. Lasica reviews some of the popular aggregator. For what it’s worth, I just installed the RSS Reader Panel extension for Firefox encourages me to read the updated posts on the original Web site -
Labour woes at Toronto’s newspapers
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Nonsensical note
Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t; either way, let it go -
Nielsen’s visited links
Guru Nielsen has already received well-argued flak over his latest column on visited-link colours, but don’t dismiss it outright; there’s a kernel of truth to be found there. Normal users do rely on links changing state once visited, especially in non-navigational elements (such as the content of a page) — I’ve seen the email to prove it