All You Should Read

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.

This is the first of a series regarding the abuse of what otherwise would be an at least somewhat enjoyable medium (the interwebs, duh). Each part will address an often-made mistake, and go into detail about why certain things should be avoided like the plague.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

So my Windows 2000/Apache server broke, and I have no access to my PHP DEV box. Which sucks. What sucks more is that the replacement machine I have doesn’t even want to start - most probably a memory issue.

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.

I’m on a roll.

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?

Read the rest of this entry »

After the previous post, you saw this one coming a mile ahead…

' 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.