Tag Archives: webdesign

I’m Weary of This: Seven Things that Just Bug Me

Posted on June 6, 2012 by Kelson

Randy Cassingham of This Is True has been driving a weekly Twitter event he calls Pet Peeve Wednesday, with the hashtag #PPW*. Some items I’ve posted about things that Just Bug Me(tm). I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that they fall into two categories, tech and language.

Tech Annoyances

  • Mobile websites that change the URL so you can’t reshare the page on Twitter without sending desktop users to the mobile site. Or worse: the ones that redirect you from a full article to the front of their mobile site, so you have to hunt around for the article that someone was trying to share with you.
  • New password forms should always spell out the password policy before the user tries to pick something it doesn’t like.
  • If you have to cite a bogus law to claim that your email is not spam (or worse, that recipients can’t callit spam), it’s spam.

Language Annoyances

  • “Weary” means you’re tired of something, not concerned about it. You’re thinking of “wary” or maybe “leery.”
  • If you’re going to reference “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”, remember: she’s asking why, not where. (Think of it this way: The answer to “wherefore?” is “therefore,” and you know what “therefore” means.) It’s a lead-in to the “What’s in a name?” speech.
  • What do people think an “intensive purpose” is, anyway? The real phrase, “for all intents and purposes,” at least makes sense.
  • The word is “foolproof,” as in even a fool can’t mess it up, not “full proof.” (As opposed to what, half-proof?)

*There’s a hashtag collision with both “Pet Peeve Wednesday” and “Prove People Wrong” using the same tag.

Posted in Annoyances | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Comic-Con Hotels 2010: Reviewing the Reservation Form

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Kelson

It was fast. Anticlimactic, really. It took a few reloads to get the Comic-Con International home page up, but once I could click on the reservation link, everything went smoothly. I was done by 9:05.

The reservation page was actually optimized!

  • Just one image: a banner across the top.
  • Everything was on one page, including the list of hotels, the personal info, and the hotel choices.
  • Hotel selection was done by client-side scripting, so there was no wait for processing between selections (and no risk of typos confusing their processing system later today).

This is a huge deal, especially compared to Travel Planners’ horribly overdesigned 2008 forms — yes, forms, plural — that kept bogging down. (I never even saw last year’s, though I tried for an hour and a half to get in.)

On the downside, that one page does load a half-dozen script files, but that doesn’t seem to have slowed it down much.

In case none of your 12 choices were available, they asked for a maximum price you’d be willing to pay for another hotel that’s not on your list. I vaguely recall this being a feature of the old fax forms, but I don’t remember being asked this on the phone last year.

I was surprised to find that they didn’t want credit card info immediately, but that’s good from a streamlining perspective as well. The hotel choices, room type, and contact info are critical in order to make the reservation in the first place. Payment can be done later, so in a rushed situation like this, it’s better to handle it later. Plus, not asking for credit card information means that they could run the site without encryption, speeding things up a bit more.

I would have liked to have gotten a confirmation number for the request, or an email, just so that I could be sure that I was in their queue. And to be sure that I entered the right email address. And the right start and end dates. And…well, you get the idea. I’m a little paranoid about the process at the moment.

Here’s hoping that the back end of the process, and sending out confirmations, goes as smoothly as the front end did.

Update: Short answer: it didn’t. Long answer: I’ve written up what went wrong, at least from the guests’ point of view.

Posted in Conventions, Web Design | Tagged , , , , , , , | 17 Comments

TV, Smoke & Flash

Posted on September 22, 2009 by Kelson
  • TV: Castle good. Bones OK but more Katie’s thing. Still undecided on Glee. Excited about Flash Forward. Not sure on Heroes or Dollhouse. #
  • The “Mind the Gap” monster in Neverwhere sounds a lot like the smoke monster on Lost now. #
  • Speaking of smoke, I’ve been trying to figure out where all the crud in the air is coming from today. Norco maybe? #
  • Flash-only sites are also invisible to smartphone users, even with iPhone & Android. #sbbuzz #

Posted in Entertainment, General | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Reinstalling Windows, etc.

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Kelson
  • Taking the opportunity to do a clean Windows installation (i.e. old box died). Downside: reinstalling a bazillion apps & updates. #
  • Hmm. Firefox spellcheck underlines Hiro but is perfectly OK with Nakamura. #
  • Ah, a clean desktop! Only 2 icons: Recycle Bin and my rebuild to-do list. #
  • I agree with @rzazueta:

    Also – PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE refrain from building sites all in Flash! Treat Flash like you treat images – enhancement. #sbbuzz #

Posted in Computers/Internet | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Smoothie in the Rain

Posted on January 23, 2009 by Kelson

Drown NBA (Naked Babbling Artists)

  • Beginning to think walking to lunch today wasn’t such a hot idea. #
  • Dedication: drinking Jamba Juice in the rain. Real dedication: without an umbrella. [Edit: alas, it wasn't me.] #
  • Sticker found on a light pole (photo at right) #
  • SciFiWire, why build an iPhone app instead of a high-functionality mobile site that would work with iPhone AND Android? #

Posted in Annoyances, Signs of the Times | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Foolish Links

Posted on April 1, 2008 by Kelson

IE9 to include alternative CSS.2012 standard instead of following anything remotely like the rest of the world.

Social tagging initiative from WaSP to physically tag bad web designers.

Opera hits 106/100 on Acid3 after discovering an Easter egg in the test.

The openSUSE mailing list announced OpenSUSE 4.1, with KDE 4.1, GNOME 4.1, MP41 support, OpenOffice 4.1, XEN 4.1, VirtualBox 4.1, and a 4-in-1 CD install.

Added: The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent out a newsletter detailing its findings on a Congressional Listening program (apparently they monitor citizens for their opinions—who knew?), plans to move the EFF offices to an armored zeppelin, an NSA-sponsored social networking site (to “allow ordinary Americans to instantly share their private data with the government”), and Homeland Security’s conclusion that Wikipedia is a “Larger Threat Than Terrorism, Dixie Chicks Combined.” Sadly, the newsletter does not appear to be archived on the website.

Added: Virgle, a Virgin/Google joint venture to establish a permanent colony on Mars. Now seeking applicants for Martian pioneers. Takes the Google moon base from 2004 to the next level.

Added: A co-worker pointed out that all of YouTube’s featured videos are Rickrolls today. And it looks like Google is going all-out with some 15 hoaxes today. *whew!*

The Internet Storm Center is keeping a list as well.

Posted in Humor, Web Design | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Webbish Links

Posted on February 7, 2008 by Kelson

The WaSP Buzz recently posted several links to CSS resources, including a rather thorough CSS Reference at SitePoint.

The ISC reminds us that IE7 will be pushed out to WSUS next week, which should help get rid of IE6. Yeah, I’d rather more people switched to Firefox or Opera, but I’m at the point where I’d love to be able to stop worrying about IE6′s shortcomings when trying to build sites. IE7′s shortcomings are much easier to work around. (Sorry to keep harping on this!)

The inventor of Norton Antivirus talks about computer security and has some rather interesting ideas on what policies are worth pursuing…and what policies aren’t. Long passwords? Great for protecting a stand-alone machine, but on a 10,000 machine network, they only need to crack one. Patch everything? Not every vulnerability gets exploited. I’ll have to read the Slashdot thread when I have time; that should be really *ahem* interesting.

Posted in Web Browsers, Web Design | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Web Design is Like Pizza

Posted on January 15, 2007 by Kelson

When web designers switch from focusing on a single browser (usually Internet Explorer) to developing cross-browser sites (usually adding Firefox, sometimes Opera or Safari, ideally all three), they often find that things don’t work as expected in the “new” browser. This can be for a number of reasons, including:

  • Bugs or “missing” features in the new browser (whether incomplete support in the new browser, or proprietary features in the familiar browser).
  • Broken code on the website being handled differently.
  • Different defaults where behavior isn’t well-defined in the specifications.

A big problem is that when you get into the code, a lot of pages aren’t as specific as the authors think they are. When you write code and test it on one browser, you’re not testing that the code is correct, you’re testing that that browser makes the same assumptions you do.

It’s like ordering pizza.

No, really. Let’s say Internet Explorer specializes in Chicago-style pizza, with a thick, chewy crust. And let’s say Firefox specializes in New York-style pizza, with a thin crust. But each can make the other style of pizza on request.

So you call up Internet Explorer and ask for pizza. They deliver you Chicago pizza, and if that’s what you wanted, you figure your order is fine. If you actually wanted New York style, you make sure that next time, you tell them you want that style of pizza.

But let’s say you like Chicago pizza. You get used to calling up IE and just asking for “pizza,” until one day you’re busy, and ask your roommate to order it. He likes to get his pizza from Firefox, so he calls them up, asks for “pizza,” and you get New York style. That’s not what you wanted. Obviously, Firefox pizza is inferior, because they got the order wrong! Well, no, it’s not, and no, they didn’t. They delivered what they were asked for. If you’d told your roommate to ask for Chicago style, Firefox would have been perfectly happy to deliver that style of pizza.

The moral of the story: always be specific with your code. Make sure it’s asking for what you think it’s asking for (validation helps here). And if something doesn’t do what you expect, make sure you didn’t leave that expectation out of your order.

See also: No, Internet Explorer did not handle it properly

(Expanded from a comment I posted at Mozillazine.)

Posted in Web Design | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Why your website should support Opera

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Kelson

[Opera Logo]In an interview at Opera Watch last week, Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner responded to the eternal question: with less than 1% of global marketshare, why should web developers make the effort to support Opera? His response demonstrates another perspective on the numbers:

I believe we have something like 10 – 15 million active desktop users. That is actually quite a lot of people.

If you try to think about it, the place that I’m come from is Iceland. I was born in Iceland, that’s three hundred thousand people – we have a lot more. The place I live is Norway – we have a lot more. Actually if you look at it, the US has about 300 million people that live here, 50 states, about 6 million in each state on average. So which states have people that you would like to ignore?

He goes on to add that Opera Mobile is installed on 40 million mobile phones, with an additional 7 million people actually using Opera Mini. And then there are devices like the Nintendo DS and Wii…

Going by 2005 numbers, only four states have 15 million people or more: California (36M), Texas (23M), New York (19M), and Florida (18M). So take the 10–15M desktop users, the 7M Opera Mini users, and even 10% of the 40M mobile install base, and you’re looking at 21–26 million—the equivalent of the population of Texas.

Put that way, it doesn’t seem so small.

If you’re already supporting Firefox, in most cases the changes to support Opera 9 are minimal. The recently-launched Opera Developer Community has has tools, articles, and other resources to help build cross-platform sites.

Unless, of course, you don’t mind writing off a potential audience the size of Texas.

Posted in Development, Software, Web Design | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Advantages of standards-based design: Compatibility

Posted on October 12, 2006 by Kelson

Microsoft is really pushing for people to make sure their websites and apps are compatible with IE7. Apparently this is a real concern for a lot of people who relied on certain proprietary features, bugs, and quirks in IE6. I guess they figured they wouldn’t have to worry about future versions. (Hmm… I wonder where they got that idea?)

The fact of the matter is, I’m not worried. I tested my personal sites and the sites I’d built for work months ago, using the IE7 betas, and more recently with RC1. I made a couple of minor changes to some stylesheets, but that was about it.

Why? I’ve been writing standards-based code for years. I validate it from time to time, and I test to make sure it works in the latest versions of Firefox, Opera and Safari as well as IE. So the code was already portable.

Plus, anything new I’ve built since January has been designed with IE7 in mind from the beginning.

Most of the changes were to workarounds for IE6. Either stopping them from running on IE7 (if the bug was fixed), or keeping them running on IE7 (if it was done using a CSS hack).

Posted in Web Design | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment