Toxic Elephant : Category web, everything about web

Disqualified by advertising

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 16:36:00 +0000

I was enthousiastic about noobkit for about a week. Finally an alternative to the rough style of Ruby’s standard API documentation.

Until I actually wanted to use it.

Most pages have a full width block of Google ads above the main content. This is just too much. For some methods, the text is one line. The ad block then is five times as big.

I’ll go back to using the old version, thanks.

[Also, the search function is not geared towards API documentation, but instead uses a generic Google-like method. Why not highlight the search results that actually describe the method or methods with the searched name?]

People Ready

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:27:00 +0000

First, what the hell does Microsoft’s slogan people ready even mean? The campaign’s site seems to think it means you need people to run a business. Well, I don’t see any businesses around run by small rodents, so I guess they’re right. That’s some vision

So, what’s this about? Some bloggers got paid for writing about people ready, and people got upset. Now, some defend themselves saying they didn’t endorse anything, and some defend themselves saying of course it’s an ad box (whatever an ad box is).

Well, I don’t think this looks like an ad, and it may not be an endorsement of a Microsoft product, but it is an endorsement of a Microsoft campaign. Oh, and look at the right of the page. It says “Click here to submit your own People Ready Business story”. So, that pretty much suggests that the content on the left was also submitted the same way. But of course, it wasn’t.

Luckily, at least one of the entries seems to have been written while drunk.

People readiness is something only people that are ready for people to be ready can be ready for.

All this via Mark’s translation.

Finally, back to the meaning: “people ready” means ready for people, right? Just like HD ready means ready for HD. Well, sort of anyway. But no, it means the people are ready. See?

Campaign lame.

Who told you to come to this book store?

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 22:22:00 +0000

Say you’re an online book store, and you have an affiliate program. Of course, affiliates come and go. So, what do you do when, say, slashdot stops being your affiliate, and someone clicks on an affiliate link left lying around in an old book review? Do you

Show the book anyway, but not pay the affiliate? Or…
Tell a potential customer to go elsewhere?

Hmm.

Resistance to posting

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 13:05:00 +0000

Daring Fireball talks about about an interesting post by Tantek Cilek about Human Interface Design. It’s true that there is some cognitive load in posting a blog entry as opposed to just answering What are you doing?

Partially, that resistance is good. Like forums, or blog comments, the Twitter entries are mostly like noise. A soothing background hum that lets you know other people are alive and going about their business. Unfortunately, that business is often uninteresting in the long run. So how long are we willing to store it, even for ourselves?

On the other hand, it is annoying that I have to come up with a title that covers this little post that wanders all over the place. Or that so many thoughts end up as half-finished posts in my drafts pile.

WNT Online

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 12:40:00 +0000

As of today, the `Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal’ (Dictionary of the Dutch Language) or WNT is online. It is a massive dictionary of Dutch, apparently comparable to the Oxford English Dictionary. I first heard about this dictionary when I was a young boy, and my father made a documentary about it (sorry, those links are in Dutch). At the time, the WNT was not finished and already occupied several bookshelves. People had been working on it for 125 years, and it seemed it would not ever be finished. Since then, they’ve clearly come a long way.

[Unfortunately, their interface is in Flash. Why, why, why? Three of the ten questions in their FAQ have to do with problems caused by choosing Flash. That should have made some bells ring.]

By the way, I was alerted to this historical event by the invaluable Language Log. Be sure to also read the resulting discussions of Babel Fish name mangling.

Hurray! A Forum That Doesn't Suck

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 10:28:57 +0000

Wow, compare the eye-friendly layout and colors of a Twelve Stone forum thread, to a completely random example of pbpBB.

There’s also a refreshing lack of the unwelcoming five cannot’s that grace nearly every forum I anonymously surf to.

Safe Passwords

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 11:19:00 +0000

In the have-we-learned-nothing category, the New York Times refuses my extra-safe password, saying:

Password can only contain letters [a-z], numbers [0-9], periods [.], underscores [_], and hyphens [-].

That’s almost as stupid as godaddy’s registration page choking on my attempts to use an ampersand in a password.

I wonder if “only letters [a-z]” really means they should all be lower case. Let’s try… No, upper case is allowed. So, it’s stupid and wrong.

Mark is back

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Sat, 27 May 2006 14:47:00 +0000

One of the first blogs I ever read, dive into mark, is back.

In 2004, Mark Pilgrim declared it was time to find a new hobby.

Preferably one that doesn’t involve angle brackets. Or computers. Or electricity.

Now he’s looking for ways to backup the 100GB of data he plans to generate every year for the next 50 years. Clearly, he has changed his mind.

(Actually, I noticed Mark’s return via a post on another interesting subject.)

RSS Sucks, Atom Rules

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 14:37:00 +0000

Why we need Atom now by Tim Bray (via bitworking) once again brought the horrors of RSS to the front of my working memory. I will not elaborate here, but the main problem seems to be that there are nine versions of RSS, and even more implementations. The result is that you can never get things right. Atom to the rescue.

Not wanting to be the Bitch and Moan But Never Does type, I removed all links to RSS feeds from my web site. The remaining links are all Atom feeds, but the word Atom will not be in the link text, to facilitate the fading of technical details into the background. It’ll just say feed. I will probably add the new standard feed icon.

The RSS feeds are still there, of course, since I want my URIs to be permanent.

CSS Shame

blog@matijs.net (matijs) — Thu, 25 Nov 2004 23:42:00 +0000

All this time, it turns out, people using IE5.5 (36 so far this month), and perhaps IE5.0 (44 so far this month), have been unable to read my website: The left and right sides of the text were simply cut off. I knew IE6 didn't show the vertical borders, but at least it showed the whole text.

Somehow, it feels similar to suddenly finding out you've been walking around all day with mismatched socks, or a torn shirt — assuming those things weren't part of your fashion statement. It's simply a little embarrassing. Anyway, it should all look fine now. The vertical borders even show up in IE6.

Oh, and I'm working on a new layout, so here are samples before and after, just in case the site looks completely different when you read this.