Yes, we can, indeed.

Lemme tellya sumtin’: I’m a developer (and my boss pays me to do just that: develop. I haven’t been laid off or demoted yet, so I must know what the fuck I’m doing, I suppose), and I never claimed to be a designer (in fact, on several occasions it’s the first thing I admit before explaining why I think something shouldn’t be done.)

But here’s the thing: just because I’m not a designer doesn’t mean I don’t have an eye for aesthetics, and when code is wrong (ugly, non-compliant, incorrect, bloated, crap like that), well, now… that has nothing to do with design - that’s the development part… the part I am well-versed and seasoned in. Yes, I do know what the fuck I’m talking about code-wise, but if I were an actual designer, d’ya think I’d stick with a slightly modified version of a ready-made WordPress template?

And just because you’re not pleased with the way my stuff looks (which doesn’t hurt me in the slightest, because I didn’t create it, myself), that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to make things work, or that my opinion on the use of certain “tools” isn’t valid.

Which is a nice segue for my next post, coming to a monitor near you soon:

Biggest Crimes In Web Design: People Who Use Microsoft Office To Create Web Pages Should Be Shot Dead.

How to save form info to text files, and retrieve them in a single CSV file, using Classic ASP.

Coming soon (after we are done moving our home and all our lecktrickety is back up and running, and all that fun stuff): The PHP version of the same tutorial.

Keep watching this channel!

my question was about creating a csv file based on fields on a website that would be populated by people, voting for their favorite songs. We want to be able to avoid typing the votes into excel.
Your answer was “You’ll need some server-side scripting…

From Tom, at Yahoo! Answers
You know what?

I’m overdue with a technical article, anyway. This week, I’ll tell y’all exactly how to go about this. How’s that sound?

Huh? Huh?

Open Source Development Times

So I’ve pretty much given up on developing an ASP CMS, simply because ASP is severely lacking in certain options (Yes, I could use ASP.Net, but where do I find the time to study that crap?)

The most important reason for me to develop something like this was work - to generate something our Morale Committee and HR could use to issue communications - and our server uses IIS and MSSQL.

Screw it. I’m the administrator of the box, and I installed Apache and PHP… and thankfully, there’s an MSSQL port available for PHP. Saves me a lot of hassle.

But it looks like I still have to develop the CMS, myself, as the one CMS that looks promising has been waiting for a PHP/MSSQL port for over two years, with no solution in sight.

Shame.

Getting closer

So, yeah… I have been infected with the Xeno Tactic Virus… what you see there is the result of a tactic that I think should work… and it may have, if I had paid attention about halfway ’round, and hadn’t let about 8 land creeps escape… I will beat this game.

Oh, yes. I will.

We’ll start with perhaps the most evil of ‘em all:

THE BLINK TAG

Never include page elements that move incessantly. Moving images have an overpowering effect on the human peripheral vision. A web page should not emulate Times Square in New York City in its constant attack on the human senses: give your user some peace and quiet to actually read the text!

Of course, <BLINK> is simply evil. Enough said.

Jacob Nielsen, 1996

MySpace. Fundie sites (both the religious and political varieties). Knock-off product sites. What do they all have in common?

An incessant assault on the optic nerves, by means of animated GIFs, flash banners… and the <blink> tag.

An often asked question on Yahoo! Answers is about “how to make text blink”. Sadly, there’s always some ignorant dimwit that, instead of rightly berating the questioner, answers the question.

Blinking text - when used properly - can be an asset to a page. When? Well, when something changes - infrequently - and you need to draw some attention - briefly - to what changed. An intermittent AJAX page-update, for example, can be followed by a short double or triple blink.

There is NO other reason to make things blink, ever.

Why?

• Continuous blinking defeats the purpose; people turn blind for it.
• For those who don’t, a continuously blinking piece of text is highly distracting.
• Holy crap, people, what are you trying to achieve, anyway? To look like a total n00b that just discovered he can add annoying tripe to a page? Do I really need to explain this?

Watching a page that has never-ending blinks is like being forced to watch the question mark costume infomercial guy promote a never-ending round of Billy Mays commercials. It serves no purpose. There is a reason that the <blink> tag has been thrown out of the HTML standard.

Read all about it:

• http://ars.userfriendly.org…
• http://www.builderau.com.au…
• http://www.mcmorran.org…
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_508…

And finally:

[The BLINK tag in HTML] was a joke, okay? If we thought it would actually be used, we wouldn’t have written it!

Mark Andreessen

Plus I got myself a new keyboard (a Logitech, on the cheap), which…

… has a VERY big DELETE key, that sits in the same place my old keyboard’s HOME key was situated…
… has no Scroll-Lock key, rendering my KVM useless.

Right now, I’m very frustrated (I also sprained my back while moving crap around to make room for the replacement server on my desk), so for everyone’s sanity and well-being I’ll refrain from answering questions over there. I’ll also refrain from doing anything over here until I get stuff working again, and I’ve gotten used to the new keyboard. That, or I’m gonna get a new one.

Seriously, what is with the ever-shrinking keys and weird layouts of new keyboards?

Give me one of them ole IBM ram-pads any time.

Same cause… the n00b: “I use anchor tags to start JavaScript because IE requires it”.

Two words: Bull… shit.

This is how many people start JavaScript (and it’s still being propagated all over the place (*points accusing finger at DynamicDrive and About.com* Stop it, you fools!):

<a href="#" onclick="doStuff()">Clickable stuff</a>

This is wrong, mmmmkay?

Granted, it’s not as bad as the (fortunately deprecated, unfortunately still used by MySpace n00bs all over the place)…

<a href="JavaScript:doStuff();void(0);">Clickable stuff</a>

… contraption, but it’s still pretty bad.

The link itself (the "anchor" for those in the know) is still active. Every time you click the link, the page will attempt to jump to an unnamed anchor. It may not refresh the page, but it’s an action the browser doesn’t need to perform. It can also make applied styles act in an unexpected way, because you have an actual link that changes states (:link to :active to :visited)

Some people add some extra JavaScript (namely void(0);) which, by itself is fine… except that most people get it wrong, by leaving out the 0 or putting it in the wrong place…

If the JS function you’re calling does not require a page event, but simply needs something to wake it up, do it the right way:

<span onclick="doStuff();">Clickable stuff</span>

If using a link is unavoidable (for whatever reason), use the same option that is available when submitting a form using JavaScript: utilize the return function:

<script type="text/javascript">
   function doStuff() {
      // do stuff
      return false; // <- THAT is the ticket that replaces "void(0)"
   }
</script>

<a href="#" onclick="return doStuff();" >Clickable stuff</a>

This will ensure that the browser (which performs the onclick before the anchor) will ignore the anchor.

Oh, and for the love of Pete… use semi-colons to end your commands properly. It’s just clean programming.

' A confabulated function that only the extremely
' intelligent and well-seasoned web programmers will
' be able to understand. Using it wrong will make the
' universe collapse onto itself. There is really no
' other way to add double quotes to a string in any
' Visual Basic-based language.

StringWithQuotes = "A quote: "". That was a quote."

Are you impressed?

You damn well should be.

Seriously. Licenses. Consider it.