#129b W A R N I N G Follow links in this article at your own risk. They will open in a new browser window so you can click them closed quickly if you need to. So let's play dumb, and take a little cruise for some clip art... Do a quick search in AltaVista for "ClipArt". Ah, our old friend desktoppublishing.com site pops up, so we'll click there. After an incredibly long load time, we arrive and find a link amongst thousands called "Clip Art Servers" -- sounds good to me. Here we're greeted with another link page and three links. They list "The Clip Art Connection" as "the ultimate clip art resource. This is without a doubt, the largest collection anywhere on the net!" (A claim we'll prove false in just a moment.) We click. Upon arrival we peek into the source code, you find more than 80% of the links go to ArtToady.com, or an ArtToday mirror. The front page alone has more than 137 links to ArtToday, including many with the Rankem code utilized. Both of desktoppublishing.com's other clip art server links are dead. So we click a random link on a link called "Animals." We're whisked off to www.Clip-art.com. Here we see dozens of other clip art site links. As the page loads we watch carefully as dozens of off-site calls flash by as you wait (up to 90 seconds) for the page to load. You click a link thinking you're digging deeper into the site, but instead you jump to another site, then are redirected to another site. We ended up at: www.free-clip-art.net. But it was only a shell portal page. So, click on the link there called "Clip Art Island"... you'll be taken to www.clipsahoy.com/cgi-bin/AutoRank/rankem.cgi?action=in&id=freeze. Here we get ranked, and slammed with three cookies from BannerMania. Okay, back button. We returned to ClipsAhoy to try another link. One that called itself "Enter Here for Clip Art" gets redirected to a site called http://www.clickheretofind.com/index.php3?l=clipartcom. Arriving here we get hit with five cookies all from other sites, including TrackStar, but NO description. Masked cookies! We move that window aside and find a smaller window hidden behind it which is completely empty, but the gauges on the remote access panel say we're talking to the server and the server is talking to us. Hmmmmmm. We close that window and another pops up to take its place -- this one with no menu bar, no icon bar, and no scroll bars. It too is conversing with the server. In a moment we're redirected to... you guessed it: Clip-art.com AGAIN... only this time to index2.html which looks like a totally different site. This site has only two links. One of them says "Thousands of FREE Clip Art Files" ... it goes to http://www.clipartsite.com/cgi-bin/autorank/rankem.cgi%3faction%3din%26id%3dclipca, which is not a web site at all, but another portal page. It has a banner ad from burstnet.com. Here we get a several more masked cookies, so we decline and give the back command from the keyboard. Arriving back we check the other link which says "Dyno's Clip Art Site" with a cute cartoon of a dinosaur holding a paint brush. This one goes to www.clipartsite.com/index6.html. This new page has your traditional look, loaded with links. But with close scrutiny, all of the links but six go to ArtToday.com We click on a link that says "12,000 clip art images today" and go to http://www.clipart.com/cgi-works/rankem.cgi?action=in&id=abfrcl We don't do that one yet, but back out and return to click on a text link called "Construction Clip Art" -- once again, we're whisked off to a new pop-up window with no menu bar, no location, no scroll bars. At this point we don't know where we are. I open the location of this image and it's originating from http://www.clip-art-center.com/images/splash.gif. We haven't been to clip-art-center.com yet have we? I send that window away, and find another smaller window hiding behind it called "Clip Art Gallery" and voila... here are the CONSTRUCTION images I've worked so hard for. But they're not construction images at all... just three yield sign construction graphics you've seen a thousand times on amateur web sites "under construction." Credits at the bottom (as if they were proud of it) say it came from "The Clip Art Warehouse" which links to http://www.clipart.co.uk/ ... but arrives at an About.com page! (You know how About.com is, it won't turn us loose for nothing, so we merely close that window!) We return to the Construction page and see other two "images" come from TDFI ART and AllOriginalClipart.com TDFI goes to a 404 page not found, and "All Original Clip Art.com" goes to Cknfo.com, and all the links and art on that site link directly back to www.Clip-Art.com this time index4.html. Interesting. We back out of all these leaving our www.clip-art-center.com window behind, and we try the link that says "Search Our Clip Art Library" -- which takes us to http://onlyfreestuff.com/ slapping us with 6 cookies, two each from three different "ad" servers, and two new pop-up windows asking us to "Subscribe" or "Play Lotto" -- now they're moving in for the kill. Still playing like dumb surfers, we close those, and back at onlyfreestuff.com, we click the "Top 20 Clip Art Sites" link and arrive at www.top20free.com/cgi-bin/rankem.cgi now the explosion begins... 12 cookies -- including one from "Spy Log" and one from "Beam Me Free Redirect Service", four pop-up windows -- none of which have menu bars, icon bars or scroll bars, and all of which make a shady offer... like "Play Lotto and WIN up to..." but doesn't say what else, but does supply a listing of free stuff at the top of which is "Thousands of Free Clip Art Images" and links to ... guess who: www.Clip-Art.com! Also included in our rash of pop-ups is: Free-Clipart.com (with no fewer than 50 catagories of clip art, all linking back to the SAME exact link, an index5.html in Clip-art.com, and a new blank pop-up that's chatting with my browser, but displaying a completely blank page. At this point, I'm out of here -- 90 minutes have gone by, and I've seen only three crappy construction sign clips -- all of which I saw five years ago, and a thousand times since. Let's take score: The history log tells us we've been to 23 web sites. My cookie tab is 72 and in all this, only three lousy images. I open the pages in BBEdit (I saved the source of them all, folks!) to find most of the links on all of the pages, are shrouded in code hooks that call ArtToday.com or one of the sites mentioned above. When they actually expect us to see some art is beyond me. Forget it -- I'm gone -- never to return. Whew. Time to go home for dinner. Fred Back to the top . . . or return to the parent article * If you think I'm kidding, try these: at your own risk www.1-clipart-graphics.com/ www.absolutely-free-clipart.com www.allfree-clipart.com/ www.cksinfo.com/ www.clip-art.com/ www.clipartsite.com/ www.clipsahoy.com/ www.e-clipart.org/ www.eclip-art.com/ www.free-clip-art.net/ www.free-graphics.com/ (all were listed separately as if different clip art sites, with different descriptions sounding like unique sites with all different clip art. All turn up in the search engines, repeatedly -- a classic case of search engine spamming. There were 28 others as well.) Fred Showker is a designer, consultant, writer and speaker. He has published 60-Second Window and DT&G Magazine online since 1990, and is director of The Graphic Design Network which includes The Design & Publishing Center at www.Graphic-Design.com. (1994) He was a co-founder of both The User Group Forum on America Online (1987), The User Group Network at www.User-Groups.net, (1994) and the Designers' Bookshelf (1996) He originally founded Showker Graphic Arts & Design in 1972, has been an avid computer activist and supporter since 1984. Got Comments??? back to the 60-Second Window Index, 60-Second Lobby . . . or: The Design & Publishing Center. / . The User Group Network. / . Design University. / . The Designers' Bookshelf. / Would you like to carry the 60-Second Windows column in your newsletter or web site? Ask us about our syndication program... join hundreds of others who now publish 60-Second Windows! Thank you for visiting http://www.60-second.com/ DT&G: The Electronic Journal for Design, Typography & Graphics c/o Showker Graphic Arts 15 SouthGate, Harrisonburg, VA 22801 TAD, Voice, FAX: (540) 433-8402 Thank you for visiting 60-second.com, graphic-design.com, user-groups.net, and all of the sites including The Design & Publishing Center, The User Group Network, The Graphic Design Network. We bring you 100% spam-free content for designers, illustrators, publishers, photographers, and visual graphics arts professionals from all corners of the world. http://www.graphic-design.com/DTG/ -- Contents Copyright (c) 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001. 60-Second Window is trademark, copyrighted since 1990. DT&G Magazine, and The Design & Publishing Center invite you to visit Photoshop Tips & Tricks at: http://www.graphic-design.com/photoshop/. Reproduction or reuse of parts or all of this manuscript without prior written permission is expressly forbidden.