GUADEC 2012, A Coruña

This will be my first GUADEC, and I'm looking forward to it. Thanks to my employer Collabora for sponsoring this trip!

I'll be around from 25th evening to 30th morning. Hope to see you all there. :)

Wired, headline click area

Something has always bothered me about the story links on Wired magazine's home page. Today it bothered me enough to write about it.

I don't know if they do this on purpose, or whether it's just an oversight. If it's on purpose, I'd love to know the reason why.

So here's a story; and I hover over the text:

There you go, it lights up and I can click on it… Oops! I moved my mouse by just a few pixels, and:

Ew, I missed! I can't click on it any more.

Fitts' law, my friends, is being violated. Why are they making it harder for me to click on their headlines?

Ars Technica doesn't seem to have this problem. No matter where I hover inside a headline, it still lights up as a link, and I can click to view it:

The difference comes because Ars Technica surrounds the entire span with the hyperlink anchor, whereas Wired only surrounds the text.

I find this somewhat upsetting.