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Dec. 6th, 2001
WARNING: INCOMING RANT
Dec. 6th, 2001 10:26 amLook, children, if you can't be bothered to make your site completely functional in Netscape (or at least make it degrade semi-gracefully), if your shitty website then goes on to crash Netscape, and/or if your shitty website takes fifteen minutes to load over dialup, I cannot be bothered to view it. Which is probably just as well, because you probably have no content there worth a shit anyway.
If you claim to be a "professional Web designer" and you don't even HAVE NETSCAPE ON YOUR MACHINE to check compatibility, you need to be dragged out into the street and beaten with a copy of HTML for Dummies, in which you are more likely than not encouraged to test your work on different browsers. Double if your clients' sites refuse to load in anything but IE5. Death if your clients' sites crash IE. Do you know how much business you might be costing your clients if you refuse to make sure their sites are completely usable in Netscape as well as IE? According to the stats for Chao Patties, about 14% of the site's viewers. Might not sound like much, but on a site that might get a few thousand hits a week, that's a few hundred potential customers your client has lost because of your ineptitude.
Nothing--and I mean, nothing-- makes me hit my "back" button faster that one of those snotty little "your browser isn't good enough for me, you're not welcome here" blurbs (and yes, I have seen it in so many words). Excuse the fuck out of me for using Netscape 4.7, or, God forbid, Lynx.
This should be required reading for anyone who would call him or herself a Web designer. Go. Right now. Read it, initial it, and keep it taped right above your monitor.
If you claim to be a "professional Web designer" and you don't even HAVE NETSCAPE ON YOUR MACHINE to check compatibility, you need to be dragged out into the street and beaten with a copy of HTML for Dummies, in which you are more likely than not encouraged to test your work on different browsers. Double if your clients' sites refuse to load in anything but IE5. Death if your clients' sites crash IE. Do you know how much business you might be costing your clients if you refuse to make sure their sites are completely usable in Netscape as well as IE? According to the stats for Chao Patties, about 14% of the site's viewers. Might not sound like much, but on a site that might get a few thousand hits a week, that's a few hundred potential customers your client has lost because of your ineptitude.
Nothing--and I mean, nothing-- makes me hit my "back" button faster that one of those snotty little "your browser isn't good enough for me, you're not welcome here" blurbs (and yes, I have seen it in so many words). Excuse the fuck out of me for using Netscape 4.7, or, God forbid, Lynx.
This should be required reading for anyone who would call him or herself a Web designer. Go. Right now. Read it, initial it, and keep it taped right above your monitor.
Even more Web things that piss me off:
1. Body text that's set so small it looks like this:
... ..... .. .. ...... .....
and can't be adjusted up to a readable size
2. Iframes
3. Frames with no scroll bar when it's needed
4. Frames in general. One nav frame along the side is acceptable. Maybe a header frame along the top. Any more than that, you need a kick in the ass for even considering it.
5. Background MIDI or any other noise you can't turn off
6. Useless, useless, useless Java applets and JavaScript. The shit-following-the-cursor script? Useless. The lake-reflection applet? Useless. That goddamn infernal scrolling-shit-in-status-bar-script? FUCKING USELESS.
7. Sites that rely completely on Flash or some sort of Java/JavaScript navigation with no text links and no site map.
8. Unneccessary Flash (read: all Flash) with no means of egress, which, nine times out of ten, is nothing more than text doing little swirly things. Gee. You can use the text tool and you have a basic grasp of tweening, and you can even tell your useless Flash to load the next page. I am so impressed. Now let me skip the shit.
9. Idiots who think that changing the display size of an image in the img src= tag makes the file smaller. No, it makes you look like an idiot with a 100x100 pixel image that takes ten minutes to load.
10. Horrid loud backgrounds with text directly on top of them, rendered unreadable at anything less than 24pt. bold.
11. Popups of any kind. Ads? No. Little "look at me, I'm so cool, I use popups" things? No. "Vote for my site here?" things? HELL NO.
12. Begging for votes on whatever top-[x] list your site's registered with.
13. Image galleries that show little tiny 20x20 pixel thumbnails of someone's eye, and where the filenames of the images give you absolutely no indication of what the image is of. And if you've got some scrolling shit in the status bar that prevents me from even seeing the filename, you need to be beaten about the head and face with a baseball bat.
14. The "no right click" script. Nobody wants to steal the images that you probably don't own and most likely stole from someone else's site anyway. I just want to open a link in a new window. Besides, anyone with two brain cells to rub together (obviously not anyone who really thinks this script will keep people from taking their images) knows all they have to do to get around this is turn JavaScript off.
15. The obvious: ppl who rite lik this. PeOpLe WhO tHiNk AlTeRnAtInG cAsE iS cUtE. people who can't use the shift key. people who cant use the shift key or punctuation The "word" "alot." People who can't tell the difference between they're/there/their and too/to/two and your/you're.
*pant pant pant*
Now I'm done.
1. Body text that's set so small it looks like this:
... ..... .. .. ...... .....
and can't be adjusted up to a readable size
2. Iframes
3. Frames with no scroll bar when it's needed
4. Frames in general. One nav frame along the side is acceptable. Maybe a header frame along the top. Any more than that, you need a kick in the ass for even considering it.
5. Background MIDI or any other noise you can't turn off
6. Useless, useless, useless Java applets and JavaScript. The shit-following-the-cursor script? Useless. The lake-reflection applet? Useless. That goddamn infernal scrolling-shit-in-status-bar-script? FUCKING USELESS.
7. Sites that rely completely on Flash or some sort of Java/JavaScript navigation with no text links and no site map.
8. Unneccessary Flash (read: all Flash) with no means of egress, which, nine times out of ten, is nothing more than text doing little swirly things. Gee. You can use the text tool and you have a basic grasp of tweening, and you can even tell your useless Flash to load the next page. I am so impressed. Now let me skip the shit.
9. Idiots who think that changing the display size of an image in the img src= tag makes the file smaller. No, it makes you look like an idiot with a 100x100 pixel image that takes ten minutes to load.
10. Horrid loud backgrounds with text directly on top of them, rendered unreadable at anything less than 24pt. bold.
11. Popups of any kind. Ads? No. Little "look at me, I'm so cool, I use popups" things? No. "Vote for my site here?" things? HELL NO.
12. Begging for votes on whatever top-[x] list your site's registered with.
13. Image galleries that show little tiny 20x20 pixel thumbnails of someone's eye, and where the filenames of the images give you absolutely no indication of what the image is of. And if you've got some scrolling shit in the status bar that prevents me from even seeing the filename, you need to be beaten about the head and face with a baseball bat.
14. The "no right click" script. Nobody wants to steal the images that you probably don't own and most likely stole from someone else's site anyway. I just want to open a link in a new window. Besides, anyone with two brain cells to rub together (obviously not anyone who really thinks this script will keep people from taking their images) knows all they have to do to get around this is turn JavaScript off.
15. The obvious: ppl who rite lik this. PeOpLe WhO tHiNk AlTeRnAtInG cAsE iS cUtE. people who can't use the shift key. people who cant use the shift key or punctuation The "word" "alot." People who can't tell the difference between they're/there/their and too/to/two and your/you're.
*pant pant pant*
Now I'm done.