Art, Technology & People

Hello everyone! Today I was giving some serious contemplation to upgrading to the latest version of CorelDraw Graphics Suite, which is the X3 version. An upgrade is $200, so that’s a pretty good deal, ESPECIALLY if the Nib management issues are fixed. So I called up Corel Support and asked and they suggested I download the fully functional 15 day trial version. I did, and guess what? Yep… the exact same issue is there and I’m really disappointed. So I’m now going to document this error for their support engineers (as per their request) so they can hopefully resolve the problem, and you guys will know what I’m talking about when I complain about the Nib management issues.

First off, the ability to have custom Nibs is VITAL to your productivity and I am absolutely shocked at how dismal the Nib management is in Photopaint and that this bug is over 4 years old and still not fixed. Hopefully by creating this walk-through, the good folks at Corel can fix this. I love brushes and I used hundreds, if not, thousands in Photoshop and the Photoshop brush management rocks (Photopaint Nibs work like Brushes in Photoshop). I won’t be upgrading until Corel can fix this… it’s really that important.

Please note that for this lesson, you can click any screenshot thumbnail to get the full version.

First off, let’s just confirm the version I am working with. I performed a fresh download and install today (January 21st 2008) of Corel Graphics Suite X3, version 13.0.0.739 trial edition. The trial is a fully functional 15 day trial version, that is supposed to be fully patched with the latest service packs and fixes and has no limitations at all for the 15 day trial period.

I have not customized the functionality in any way… this is literally a brand new install and I have not played with the settings aside from turning off color management.

The first thing I am going to do is create a new 800×600 pixel document with a white background.

Next, we will need to open up the Brush Settings Docker so that we can access the Nib Management functions. Simply click on Window > Dockers > Brush Settings, or hit Ctrl-F8 and it will open the docker… note that the docker will be blank until you access a brush tool.

Here you can see the docker is blank, so click on the Paint tool, or hit P:

After clicking P, you will see the docker is activated and you can now see the brush settings and the currently selected brush. The round circle area on the docker allows you to rotate and skew the brush, and the square shows you a preview of what the brush looks like.

When you click on the square, it will show you a list of all the current installed Nibs in this file… scroll all the way to the bottom and select the last Nib in the pack. In my case, it’s Nib 82 and it’s a spray mist style brush. TAKE SPECIAL NOTE that the small thumbnail in the list AND the larger thumbnail in the square preview box MATCH.

Now, for this example, I want you to delete this Nib… you can delete just this Nib or you can delete all of them, the bug will be present either way. To delete the Nib, click on the Nib Options button (circled in red) and click on Delete Current Nib:

Now, scroll down the list again and you will see that the Nib 82 is now gone and Nib 74 is the last on the list. So far, everything is normal…

Now, in order to start running in to problems, we’ll need to add a new Nib to our collection. Now you can download masked PNGs and such to create nibs, but for the sake of this sample, we’ll keep it very simple and just add a rectangle shaped Nib to our list. To do this, start by selecting the rectangle tool and drawing a rectangle on our canvas:

Once you have your shape, we need to mask it, so hit Ctrl-M and this will automatically create a mask around the rectangle:

Now click on your paint tool again so we can access the Nib options in the docker:

Now we can add the Nib! Simply click on the Nib Options button again and click on “Create from Contents of Mask…”:

It will then ask you what size to make the Nib… just leave it at the default and click OK to proceed:

And VOILA! We have our new Nib ready to go! Note that the square preview area shows the rectangle Nib:

But now we have a problem… Click on the square to show your list of Nibs and scroll to the bottom… the mini thumbnail to the new Nib is wrong, it’s showing the the old Nib we deleted. But yet if you click on it, you get the rectangle brush!

Even if you click on another thumbnail and then try again, it’s still wrong… the new Nib is not showing the correct mini thumbnail.

You can see the Nib works, but the thumbnail is wrong:

So that’s how the bug is created… the mini thumbnails in the Nib selection list is not refreshing properly… it’s using the original nibs that were previously in that slot. Now, for 1 Nib it’s no big deal, but imagine if you had dozens or hundreds all doing this??

Now here’s the deal why some folks may not notice this… if you do NOT delete any of the preinstalled Nibs that come with Corel Photopaint and you simply add Nibs to the pack, the new mini thumbnail will be fine. But here’s where things get ugly… if you add a dozen or so, you’re fine, but what happens if you want to use hundreds of custom Nibs? Nibs after all are HUGE time-savers, and in the world of business, money is time. Well, this would be all find and good, except for one major problem. The Nib file has a limitation, and it’s well under a couple hundred Nibs. Once you hit that limit, you’re screwed because the only way you can add more Nibs is to delete old ones, and then you run in to the mini thumbnail issue.

I’m not sure what exactly the limit is… I did hit it once when I first found out about all these problems but it was once I hot either 100 or 200 Nibs and it basically said I could not add any more Nibs and to delete some to add new ones. Now, this wouldn’t normally be a huge deal, because you can save and load .NIB files… this means you can have unlimited amounts of .NIB packs, each containing 100 – 200 Nibs. Well, the theory sounds nice, but even if you load up a new .NIB file at this point and you start adding nibs, they will all have the mini thumbnails that you original maxed out Nib pack has!!!

The only way to deal with this is to simply create nib packs and give them sensible filenames like flames.NIB, and grassbrushes.NIB… when you load them, all the thumbnails will still be wrong but at least you know which pack has what Nibs, and you can scroll through them in the Preview area until you find one you want. It’s a pain, but it’s the only way around it unless Corel fixes it. What’s worse is that you have to start using the Brush Docker all the time because the little quick Nib selector in the toolbars up top use those mini thumbnails that are wrong.

So that’s it… that’s the bug and that’s what I hope Corel fix for the next version or next service pack.

HOWEVER, I think I should also address something to Corel engineers that they can hopefully act upon. Some of us (like me) would like to be able to distribute .NIB packs to other Corel Photopaint users… heck maybe we can get more Photoshop users to check out this amazing package. But we can’t because not only are the thumbnails not working, but we have no of creating a new and blank .NIB File! So to create a Nib pack for distribution, we first have to do a “Nib Save As”, tediously delete each Nib one at a time, then add the custom Nibs we want. So as an improvement, it would be REALLY nice if one of the options under the Nib Options button was “Create New Nib File” or something.

These two improvements to the Nib Management would transform this entire aspect of the software from frustrating and borderline useless to absolutely awesome!

Thanks and I hope this gets some TLC from Corel!

Dan

I’ve been reading up on the updates and comments on this page rank update that has wreaked so much havoc, and it’s definitely a pain, but also a learning experience and hopefully some of you other webmasters can learn from what I’ve experienced. Here’s what I’ve found out since my last post and some action we’ve taken…

First off, if you don’t know what page rank is or what this post is talking about, you need to read my first entry on this problem HERE.

First, Google has confirmed what we suspected in this update. As per the post on www.theregister.co.uk:

Google has confirmed that the recent update to its “visible PageRank” system is an effort to crackdown on sites trying to rig this closely-watched web popularity contest.

Over the weekend, Google search engine guru Matt Cutts told Search Engine Journal that the company is intent on punishing web publishers that attempt to sell their PageRank currency to other sites.

A site with a high PageRank can often boost the rank of a less-popular site simply by linking to it. As a result, popular sites will often provide such links in exchange for cash. And Google doesn’t like that.

Here’s the word from Cutts:

The partial update to visible PageRank that went out a few days ago was primarily regarding PageRank selling and the forward links of sites. So paid links that pass PageRank would affect our opinion of a site.

Going forward, I expect that Google will be looking at additional sites that appear to be buying or selling PageRank.

As Cutts says, Google has changed its visible PageRank values – the scores that pop up on the Google Toolbar when users visit a site. This is merely an approximation of a site’s “real” PageRank, which is actively used to sort search results.

Cutts’ email goes a little further than the official company line. The Google PR machine gave us a slightly-less-direct explanation.

“Google is always working to improve the ways that we generate relevant search results and update our opinions of sites’ reputations across the web,” said a company spokeswoman.

“Values in the Google Toolbar can fluctuate for a number of normal reasons, including changes in how we crawl or index the web, or changes in the link structure of the web itself. In addition, Google may update the visible PageRank indicator in the Google Toolbar to incorporate not only our view on the back links to a page or site, but also to incorporate our opinion of the forward links for a site.” ®

So in short, Google is trying to penalize people that sell links on their high PR websites to people that are looking to boost their website’s own PR, which is something Google doesn’t like. Let’s be clear though… this is TOOLBAR PR, not the site’s actual internal ranking, so traffic is completely unaffected. It’s done this way so that your site’s traffic remains unaffected, but your site’s perceived monetary value is lower… Google is trying to hit you in your wallet. PR is a common measure used to determine website value… I’ll be talking about this tomorrow in regards to the “PR is just a bogus number” statement.

Now, this doesn’t mean you can’t sell links on your site to monetize your website, but if you want to be listed on Google, they expect you to take certain steps to ensure that those links you are selling are for direct click-thru traffic and not link farms for PR levels. So, how do you sell links but not get penalized for selling links for PR? You have to use the “nofollow” tag.

Unfortunately guys like me were innocently selling links purely for monetization, not to manipulate Google’s PR structure, were penalized. This is why P2L was reduced to a PR 4 from a 6. Yes it’s ignorance, but there are MANY webmasters that have no idea what “nofollow” is, and if you’re one of those, click here to read the official Wiki.

OK so now that you know what “nofollow” is and what it does, let’s look at Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Quality guidelines – basic principles

– Make pages for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, which is commonly referred to as “cloaking.”
– Avoid tricks intended to improve search engine rankings. A good rule of thumb is whether you’d feel comfortable explaining what you’ve done to a website that competes with you. Another useful test is to ask, “Does this help my users? Would I do this if search engines didn’t exist?”
– Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.
– Don’t use unauthorized computer programs to submit pages, check rankings, etc. Such programs consume computing resources and violate our Terms of Service. Google does not recommend the use of products such as WebPosition Gold™ that send automatic or programmatic queries to Google.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the main Webmaster Guidelines that says anything about selling links or using the nofollow tag to avoid penalties. For your average webmaster, you would have no idea about this.

Now let’s look at this huge post by Google’s Matt Cutts about the nofollow tag and how to use it:

Hey all, I’ve been meaning to stop by the webmaster help group, and the “Popular Picks” thread drew me in. Here’s the question I’ll tackle: Admin Aaron asked “What are some appropriate ways to use the nofollow tag other than to protect against blog comment spam?”

My short answer is that the nofollow attribute on links is a pretty general mechanism, and you’re welcome to use it how you like. Let me tell you what it does, then I’ll give an example or two. I answered a nofollow question for Rand Fishkin recently. You can read the full details at http://www.seomoz.org/blog/questions-answers-with-googles-spam-guru, but I’ll quote the important bit:

“The nofollow attribute is just a mechanism that gives webmasters the ability to modify PageRank flow at link-level granularity. Plenty of other mechanisms would also work (e.g. a link through a page that is robot.txt’ed out), but nofollow on individual links is simpler for some folks to use. There’s no stigma to using nofollow, even on your own internal links; for Google, nofollow’ed links are dropped out of our link graph; we don’t even use such links for discovery. By the way, the nofollow meta tag does that same thing, but at a page level.”

So nofollow as a link attribute causes Google to drop those links out of our link graph. If you have a nofollow link from page A to page B, we won’t crawl via page A’s link to discover page B. Note that we may still find page B via other links around the web, though.

What are some appropriate ways to use the nofollow tag? One good example is the home page of expedia.com. If you visit that page, you’ll see that the “Sign in” link is nofollow’ed. That’s a great use of the tag: Googlebot isn’t going to know how to sign into expedia.com, so why waste that PageRank on a page that wouldn’t benefit users or convert any new visitors? Likewise, the “My itineraries” link on expedia.com is nofollow’ed as well. That’s another page that wouldn’t really convert well or have any use except for signed in users, so the nofollow on Expedia’s home page means that Google won’t crawl those specific links.

Most webmasters don’t need to worry about sculpting the flow of PageRank on their site, but if you want to try advanced things with nofollow to send less PageRank to copyright pages, terms of service, privacy pages, etc., that’s your call.

I gave another example where nofollow would work well at http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/quick-comment-on-nofollow/ . Someone wrote an oompa loompa dating site as a joke, but that site started to get hit with spammy comments. If you write custom software where you’re worried that people might spam the software with links to, I dunno, Ukrainian porn sites, then you can add nofollow in your software on the links that you think might be spammed. If a spammer has a choice between your software and some other software that doesn’t use nofollow, your software might not get hit as often by spammers.

If you’d like to find out more, Eric Enge and I did an interview that touched on how Google treats noindex, robots.txt, and nofollow: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts.shtml

Hope that helps!
Matt Cutts

Great information, but again there isn’t really anything here saying that nofollow should be used not to influence PR for those of us selling ad space to generate revenue on our websites, which more and more represents a HUGE number of webmasters.

BUT then you find some information HERE! This group post is clearly starting to touch on the direct issue at hand… you can sell text ads, but you need to tell Google that they’re ads and not natural outbound links.

And then, we find it… the official word from Google on Paid Links!

Google and most other search engines use links to determine reputation. A site’s ranking in Google search results is partly based on analysis of those sites that link to it. Link-based analysis is an extremely useful way of measuring a site’s value, and has greatly improved the quality of web search. Both the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of links count towards this rating.

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such. This can be done in several ways, such as:

– Adding a rel=”nofollow” attribute to the tag
– Redirecting the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from search engines with a robots.txt file

So there you have it! You need to tell Google that any outbound links that are paid for on your site by tagging them with the nofollow tag. For small sites, this is probably a non-issue, but once you start hitting 5+ Page Ranks, you shyould start looking in to this.

So mystery solved and hopefully by adding these tags to our advertiser links, we can have our penalization removed. I’ve gone ahead and requested our re-inclusion, so we’ll see what happens. This has been quite a learning experience, that’s for sure. BUT I am a little disappointed in Google on this… they didn’t have to penalize anyone, they could have addressed this via their alogrithms. Check out this article by Eric Enge, it’s pretty much spot on about how I feel about this.

The big news remains the apparent punishment in PageRank terms of sites which are selling links. What surprises me about this is not that Google did this, but three other things:

It surprises me that they missed so many sites that are obviously selling links. I am aware of many, many such sites that monetize their sites in that fashion, without NoFollowing their links. Given the set of sites affected, it really does seem like the punishment was manually selected.
However, that makes it even more curious when you consider that influencers like Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal were selected.

It surprises me that they punished sites that sell links, but clearly labelled them as Sponsored, or as Advertisers, or some other equivalent. Google will never win that battle. Monetizing sites is something that every site owner has the right to do. Such a small percentage of site owners even know what a NoFollow is, that a policy of punishing people on that basis does not make sense to me. Besides which, cant Google detect these types of clear labels and simply discount those links algorithmically?

It was also a surprise that there was no apparent impact on traffic. This was reported by both Search Engine Roundtable and Search Engine Journal. So given the broad swipe that they took at sites as mentioned in point 2 above, I suppose that this is a good thing. But simply altering tool bar page rank in a way that does not impact traffic will get them nowhere.
The link selling market will continue to thrive without PageRank. At this point in time, selling links is more about Anchor Text than PageRank. Nothing in this update has changed that.

You can read the rest of the article HERE.

On the same token, Google is a FREE search engine, so if you want to play in their party, you have to conform to what they tell you… don’t like it? Don’t list with Google I suppose… I’m sure this is how they’re looking at it anyhow. Just remember that if you are a webmaster and you want to count on Google for search engine traffic, you are responsible to read the Webmaster Guidelines at least once. You might be surprised at what you find!

That’s it for now gang, time to go pick up the little one from school! I’ll keep you posted if the actions we took had any affect in lifting our current PR Penalty. Later on (Maybe tomorrow?) I will post my thoughts on the “PR is just a number concept”. While this may be true from a direct traffic standpoint, it’s completely false in the marketting sense and I’ll touch base on the various reasons why PR is still a critical number for your website.

Until next time!
Dan

PS. Special thanks to Nick and Jamie for their respective contributions for source material.