Dan OC

Six Technology Sins

So I feel like winging today after coming across the same few grievances again and again. Here are my top technological irritations of May 2010.

-moz- vs -webkit
As if web designers don’t have enough grievances with creating cross browser compatible sites, we now need to define up to four CSS classes for a single element; -webkit- for Chrome/Safari, -moz- for Firefox, -o- for Opera and *insert some stupid javascript hack or a fall back image here* for Internet Explorer.

Firefox is an open source browser. Webkit is an open source project. So why Firefox is insisting on developing it’s own CSS rules when webkit has such a strong community, as well as being backed by Apple and Google. What makes it even more irritating is, most of the -moz- and -webkit- CSS rules are identical apart from the initial identifier, so you are just duplicating CSS and effectively slowing down the web.

Internet Explorer
Yes, what a suprise, stupid adverts aside, I am yet again irritated by IE.This time it is Google’s fault, in the form of Chrome Frame. How is it that one of Microsoft’s biggest competitors have made Internet Explorer better than they can?

Chrome Frame supports most of the new HTML5 and CSS3 features, finally making Internet Explorer usable, however there is a dark side, as with everything to do with IE. It takes way too long to download, but more importantly, the meta data used to activate Chrome Frame in IE does not comply to web standards.

“Download Internet Explorer 8 – Upgrade your Internet experience.” Please note, this browser does not support HTML5 / CSS3

Spotify Adverts

I love Spotify. I don’t pay for the service (yet) and I have no problem with them playing adverts in between songs. What I do have a problem with, is that the advertising is very repetitive and completely irrelevant to my interests. Spotify have even created a new advert in response to an old one, mentioning it’s premium service enables you listen to music when you are in your ‘summer house’ without an internet connection. They are correct, most British people do not in fact own a summer house, but what I cannot get my head around is why they have hired American Voice actors to do the advertising, when Spotify isn’t even released in the US yet. I find such a strong New York accent highly irritating when he interrupts my morning playlist.

I would imagine this is going to improve now that the new Spotify client has Facebook integration. Facebook ads are really smart, so this seems like a good move for everyone involved. (Lets hope the artists see some of the profit)

Facebook “Like This” to see content

The latest fad on Facebook is to create groups with enticing titles and force users to “like” the group, to view the content. This is irritating in a number of ways. First of all, it defeats the entire point of the like button, how can a user “like” content, if they havn’t actually seen it yet. Secondly it has been around for at least a month now and Facebook have not done a thing to stop it. Thirdly it creates a huge amount of spam on your feed. Finally, you really want to see the content, but it is too much effort becoming a fan, looking at the content, then having to go onto your feed, delete that item then “unlike” the content.

WordPress’ “HTML” edit view

Yes I am using it now, but what gets me is that it is supposed to be a HTML editor, yet it does not ignore white space. I can use use return, write a new line with no break, yet when I save the post, it will have a break in. This might seem like a minor problem, but it can get annoying when you need to insert Javascript into some of your posts. It really doesn’t approve of indentations.

One way around it is to install a post code executor. ( I use EXEC-PHP )