User Friendly

For the concept in software engineering, see Usability.

User Friendly
File:Userfriendly logo.GIF
Author(s)	J.D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad"
Website	http://www.userfriendly.org/static/
Current status/schedule	Updated daily.
Launch date	November 11, 1997 [1]
Genre(s)	technology and geek humor

User Friendly is an online daily comic strip about the staff of a small, fictional internet service provider, Columbia Internet. The strip's humor tends to be centered around technology jokes and geek humor.

It is drawn and authored by J.D. Frazer, a.k.a. "Illiad". It is considered to be one of the first major webcomics, and has been running since November 17, 1997. Although the drawings were shaky to start with, the jokes have been popular and the artistic style has developed. Its popularity inspired many other webcomics with similar themes, the most popular being Penny Arcade and PvP.

User Friendly is now published in a variety of newspapers making it one of the first webcomics to make the transition from the net to the mainstream.

In late 1999, User Friendly and Sluggy Freelance swapped a character (A.J. and Torg).

Main characters

For more information, see User Friendly characters.

A.J. Garrett

A.J. is the creative guy for the company, maintaining and designing their websites. As a web designer, he's uncomfortably crammed in that tiny crevasse between the techies and the marketing people. This means he's not disliked by anyone, but they all look at him funny from time to time. A.J. is shy and sensitive. He loves most computer games, nifty art, and has a big brother relationship with the Dust Puppy. A.J. is terrified of grues and attempts to avoid them. He was released from the company on two separate occasions, but returned shortly thereafter.

He and Miranda are now dating. They also have previously dated, but split up over a misunderstanding.

The Chief

The Chief is Columbia Internet's CEO. He is the fearless leader for the techies and salespeople, as well as the only calm, clear-thinking head in the company. He wouldn't be if he knew what was really going on. The Chief is also a closet guitar player, having spent years mastering the art of perfect tone, only to have computers come along and render all of his effort meaningless.

His visual design is based on the Pointy Haired Boss of Dilbert fame.

Dust Puppy

Born in a server from a combination of dust, lint and quantum events, the Dust Puppy looks similar to a ball of dust and lint, with eyes, feet and an occasional big toothy smile. He was briefly absent from the strip after accidentally being blown with compressed air while sleeping inside a dusty server.

Although the Dust Puppy is very innocent and unworldly, he plays a superb game of Quake. He also created an artificial intelligence named Erwin, with whom he has been known to do occasional song performances (or filks).

Most of the other characters like the Dust Puppy; notable exceptions are Stef and the Dust Puppy's evil nemesis, the Crud Puppy, who first appeared in the strip on February 24, 1998.

Erwin

Erwin is a highly advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) that resides somewhere on the network. He was created overnight during experimentation in artificial intelligence by the Dust Puppy, who was feeling kind of bored. Erwin is written in COBOL because Dust Puppy "lost a bet". Erwin passes the Turing Test with flying colours, and has a dry sense of humour. He is an expert on any subject that is covered on the World Wide Web, such as Elvis sightings and alien conspiracies. Erwin is rather self-centered, and he is fond of mischievous pranks.

Originally, Erwin occupied the classic 'monitor and keyboard' type computer with an x86 computer architecture, but was later given such residences as an iMac, a Palm III, a Coleco Adam on Mir, a Furby, a nuclear weapon guidance system, an SGI O2, a Hewlett-Packard Calculator (with reverse Polish notation), a LEGO Mindstorms construction, a Tamagotchi, a Segway, a Timber Wolf-class BattleMech, and an internet equipped toilet as a punishment for insulting Hastur.

Greg Flemming

Greg is in charge of Technical Support at the company. In other words, he's the guy that customers whine to when something goes wrong. He blows off steam by playing visceral games and doing Bad Things to the salespeople. He's not a bad sort, but his grip on his sanity hovers somewhere between weak and non-existent, and he once worked for Microsoft Quality Assurance.

Mike Floyd

Mike is a System Administrator, and is responsible for the smooth running of the network at the office. He's bright but prone to fits of anxiety. His worst nightmare is being locked in a room with a sweaty Windows 95 programmer, and no hacking weapons in sight. He loves hot curries, preferably ones with the same properties as Alien acid-for-blood.

Miranda Cornielle

Miranda is a trained systems technologist, an experienced UNIX sysadmin, and very, very female. Her technical abilities unnerve the other techs, but her obvious physical charms compel them to stare at her, except for Pitr, who is convinced she is evil. Although she has yet to reveal any character flaws, it is a commonly held belief in psychological circles that "perfect" people like her are deeply disturbed neurotics with sociopathic tendencies. Maybe that's why she smiles so much.

She and A.J. are now dating although she was previously frustrated by his inability to express himself and his love for her. This comes after years of missed opportunities and misunderstandings, such as when AJ poured his feelings into an email and Miranda mistook it for the ILOVEYOU email worm and deleted it unread. [2]

Pitr Dubovich

Pitr is the admin of the Columbia Internet server, and a self proclaimed Linux guru. He suddenly began to speak with a fake Slavic accent as part of his program to "Become an Evil Genius." He has almost succeeded in taking over the planet several times. His sworn enemy is Sid, who seems to outdo him at every turn. Pitr's achievements include: making the world's (second) strongest coffee, merging Coca Cola and Pepsi into Pitr-Cola and making Columbia Internet millions with a nuclear weapon purchased from Russia.

Sid Dabster

Although a relative newcomer to Columbia Internet, Sid is the oldest of the geeks and very knowledgeable. His advanced age gives him the upper hand against Pitr, whom he has outdone on several occasions; including in a coffee brewing competition and in a (rather biased) game of Jeopardy!. Unlike Pitr, he has no evil ambitions per se, but he is a friend of Hastur and Cthulhu (based on the H.P. Lovecraft Mythos characters).

Smiling Man

The Smiling Man is the company Controller. He is in charge of accounts, finances and expenditures. He smiles all day, for no reason. This in itself is enough to terrify most normal human beings. However, both the Dust Puppy and a consultant in a purple suit have managed to get him to stop smiling first. His favourite wallpaper is a large, complex, and utterly meaningless spreadsheet.

Stef Murky

Stef is the Corporate Sales Manager. He runs most of the marketing efforts within the firm, often selling things before they exist. He is a stereotypical marketer, with an enormous ego and a condescending attitude toward the techies; they detest him and frequently retaliate with pranks. He sucks at Quake. Although he admires Microsoft and frequently defends their marketing tactics, infuriating the techies, he has a real problem with Microsoft salesmen, probably because they make much more money than he does. His attitude towards women is decidedly chauvinist; he lusts after Miranda who won't have anything to do with him. Stef is definitely gormless as demonstrated on January 14, 2005.

Information on other characters and first appearance links to comics can be found at User Friendly characters.

Quality of Comics

Like many comics today, User Friendly is rarely drawn. Most images are the work of copying and pasting with humourous dialogue added to the comics. For this reason there has been no evolution of the characters since the comic came out. The characters look the same today as they did near the beginning. This technique of simply copying and adding dialogue is also quite common in today's world. There are very few comics left today where the artist actually takes the time to draw each comic. Calvin and Hobbes was well known for providing original quality work for each strip.

User Friendly community and the comment board

Every daily strip has its own comment space for people to comment and discuss the strip in, known as the comment board. A community has evolved around the comment board, which is considered by many User Friendly fans a contributing factor in the popularity of the comic.

Common threads found in the comment board are:

• Illiways, the café at the end of the Ufieverse (a pun on The Restaurant at the End of the Universe): This thread is used for café-like, general conversation. Newspapers, coffee and warm fuzzies are available daily.
• Question of the Day (QOTD): Almost 5 continuous years of daily questions.
• "I don't get it" thread (IDGIT): Self explanatory.
• Translations Thread: Translations into many real and fictional languages and dialects by the readers.

Based on the community built, some contests are held on a periodical basis, such as UFie Idol (a pun on American Idol), where the readers compete sending their recordings (in MP3 format), which are judged on voice qualily and "geekness" (i.e. technical ability such as clean recording or mixing). More occasionally, an Illiad for a day contest is held, where people are encouraged to create a new, "original" strip using artwork from previous strips. Given UF's blatent "Xeroxed talking heads" style, the title is rather fitting.

The source code for the board software, ARS (Account Registration System), is available for download.

Link of the day (LOTD)

Every day a link suggested by the community is posted to the main page. The sites selected are usually not well-known and mainly non-commercial. As the User Friendly community has grown larger being selected as the link of the day has a similar effect as being Slashdotted.

Bibliography

Several cartoon compilations have been published:

• User Friendly ISBN 1565926730 January 25, 1998 - December 25, 1998 (misses out December 20 and probably some others)
• Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell ISBN 156592861 January 3, 1999 - December 11, 1999
• The Root of All Evil ISBN 0596001932 January 1, 2000 - December 31, 2000
• Even Grues Get Full ISBN 0-596-00566-0 January 1, 2001 - November 17, 2001
• User Friendly - Die Deutsche Dialekt-Ausgabe (translation to several German dialects) ISBN 3-89721-380-X

External links

• User Friendly