The whole virtual gift thing seems pretty pointless to me. Spend real money to send someone a standard-issue bunch of pixels? Why bother? And after the Pepsi-Max fiasco one might expect a certain hesitance and maybe even some thinking things through. One might. One would be overestimating the folks at LJ. There is a new set of virtual gifts that seems designed to result in drama.

the_lj_herald has a post about upcoming changes and one them is a new set of virtual gifts. Many of them are signs: Ban Me, De-Friend Me, Kick Me, and Troll Me. Virtual gifts can be sent anonymously. With all the people LJ has ticked off, is this really a good move? Or has LJ realized that they no longer have to be concerned about anyone and might as well sell stuff to jerks?

There is a setting to disable receiving virtual gifts. It's near the bottom of this page. The settings are limited: Do not disable, disable all, disable sponsored. There's no 'disable anonymous' or 'allow friends only' so I've just turned the works off. I had only disabled the sponsored (advertizing) stuff, but with this crap coming I'm not taking any chances.

LJ sure does a dandy job of making IJ look good.

Current Mood: disgusted

One of the web sites I check on fairly regularly has a message that is seen if it is viewed without Cascading Style Sheets (CSS):

If you can read this, either the style sheet didn't load or you have an older browser that doesn't support style sheets. Try clearing your browser cache and refreshing the page.

Well, it's actually right: the style sheet didn't load. I don't want it to load. I want to read the page in my color scheme, with the text at a legible point size, and not have the content all squished over to one side with a big column of advertising taking up useful space.

Other sites have similar, often more insulting, messages. "Hey, go get a real browser." only worded slightly better (listing a few browsers, generally none of which I choose to use). It's not that I can't view it the way the site author thinks I should, it's that I do not desire to view the site that way. With a single click I can view it "as designed" and at many sites I have and clicked right back to get something I can stand to look at.

The whole freaking point of CSS was to separate the information content from the decorations and let people choose to see the content as they prefer. It was not meant to inflict some so-called web designer's idea of kewl on the site viewer. But that seems to be the way it gets used.

A simple "No style sheet loaded" message would be fine. The "You are not getting the full experience of this site..." sort of message (which covers CSS, javascript, and Flash abuse) makes me think of some documentary that called it "the Vietnam experience" rather than a war. Most site "experiences" seem to be like the "Vietnam experience": a poorly thought out, ugly, bungled mess.

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Current Mood: annoyed

LiveJournal still doesn't have something it ought to: a means to search for something within one's own entries. This would allow searches to include friends-only and private posts which the Google Blog Search cannot do. (Addendum: InsaneJournal also lacks this, alas.)

Instead, a crude work-around of tags was put into place a while ago. Alas, it was recently limited to 1000 tags per account without a counter to let you know how many you had. You either get to count them yourself, or hit the wall. I hit the wall. Okkay, so just delete a couple redundant tags to get under 1000 and add the new one, right? You'd think so. I've just deleted a bunch. And LJ says I'm still trying to exceed the limit by adding one. Huh? 1000 - 6 + 1 is not 1000+. Conclusion: Not only is LJ's tagging system poorly designed, the limiter is broken.

And no, it's not that I had over 1000 tags when the limit was put into place. I ran into the wall before and deleted a tag or two and added the one I wanted.

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Current Mood: annoyed

That message is one I expect to see if I made changes to some file and tried to exit the program without having saved the file. That's fine. I like that reminder. It's useful and has saved me headaches and re-work.

What I do not like is using Word, saving the file, printing it, and then being asked if I want to save changes. Huh? I made no changes. I printed the file. Printing is not editing. Or with Excel, I open a spreadsheet, look at it, make no changes - not even moving the highlighted cell or scrollbars! - and when I close the thing I get asked if I want to save changes. There were no changes. Why ask if I want to save changes when there aren't any?

Is it any wonder I prefer to use third party software whenever possible?

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Current Mood: annoyed

A bit of IRC gets posted...

Y: OK, rant mode ON: Why the bloody CRAP do sites have to have flash with sound when you don't expect it?
Y: I can see sites like Homestar Runner having sound in every flash, because... um... it's ENTIRELY flash!
Y: But these sites that use flash to make nothing more than a glorified animated GIF, then *BAM* sound from nowhere...
KT: 'cos they wanna grab yer attention so maybe yoo will buy their stuff.
KT: Seems a strange way ta do business. "Hi, potential customer! You need Special Software to view our site. Don't have it? Gee, f--- you, potential customer!"

Y: Dell uses ActiveX as navigation on its "premier" site.
Y: I guess they don't wish to do business with everyone.
Y: Because there's no way in hell I'm using IE just for a navbar.
D: You're not a dweeb using IE? Then you're probably too intelligent to fall for our sales gimicks - we don't need your kind - go kill a few braincells.

* KT goes to a car dealership to buy a car. He enters the building, but there's just this bare room with no other doors, just one bored-looking guy sitting in a chair.
KT: Um, this the car deelership?
Guy: Up there.
* Guy points to a hole in the 20-foot-high ceiling.
KT: Wot thee hecko?!
Guy: You gotta go through that hole.
KT: How?
Guy: Don't you have a jetpack?
KT: Ummmmmmmm nope.
Guy: Go buy a jetpack, then maybe we'll see about selling you a car.
KT: Me got a ladder at home. Me go get.
Guy: You sure? A jetpack is recommended.
KT: Howcome?
Guy: The owners of this dealership recommend a Zip-Away jetpack for the full car-shopping experience.
KT: Woodnt a ladder werk just as well tho?
Guy: Um... no. Of course not. Gotta be a Zip-Away jetpack, as recommended by the owners of this dealership.
* KT goes off to look for a car dealership that actually wants to do business.
* D climbs the building across the street and looks into the showroom with binoculars, with the sales guy none-the-wiser. They're selling old trucks chassis tarted up with lots of chrome and bright paint.
D: (This is seeing what the javascript does from the source and using the info to navigate).

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Current Mood: tired

There is a web site I visit from time to time. One of the graphics on the site is a U.S. flag, which is just fine as the site is run by a fellow who has served in the military and is for him to express his opinions.

What gets me is that that the graphic is not a simple red, white, and blue rendition of the flag. It only almost is. The blue field is indeed blue. The stars, which are just dots at the small size of the graphic, are indeed white. The red stripes are indeed red. All good so far. But where there should be white stripes there are not white stripes. Instead there is the background color. I see black stripes, or gray stripes depending upon which browser and which computer I'm using.

"But, Vakko, you override things normal people don't." you might point out. Ah, but even if I turn off my overrides and forego my choice of background color it still doesn't work. The site itself uses a cream or parchment background! So even if looked at it "as the designer intended" it's wrong. Red, white, blue, and cream? The web designer overlooked the choice of the graphic maker to use transparent rather than white stripes. Really, the graphic maker goofed by assuming a white background when he could have made the stripes the same white as the stars.

It's odd that someone made a flag graphic with transparent stripes. It's also odd that it's been up on that web site for some time with that problem. It wouldn't be difficult to fix - it's not a fancy PhotoShop effect or anything.

The lesson: Don't count on a white background if you want white in the image. That goes for any color, not just white.

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