My two most recent contracts have been triggering the reflective urge in me. I’ve been a user of Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal, as has been noted in these electrons before. But I’ve never been entirely satisfied with them.
I can go down a long list of little things that annoy me about each one of them, but the root cause for almost all of it is they’re just too complicated.
Been spending way too much time with Capistrano recently, and it stops now. It’s quite possibly useful to me in my current projects, but its user-hostility makes it not worth the time.
As I searched and read page after web page, trying to find a pointer to how to use Cap in my environment (svn is on my development machine, not on a server somewhere else) without success, I began getting a feel for the attitude surrounding Cap, and frankly, I didn’t like it much. One article about doing this had several comments to the effect of “this capability is built in to version 2; this article is deprecated.” Of course, not one of them pointed to where I could find out about how to make version 2 use it.
The moment of my departure from Capistrano came when I ran across several exchanges about the (lack of) documentation for version 2. One of the respondents suggested the person looking for information could always read the code. (more…)
I’ve tweeted this a bit, but decided it’s time I start a catalog.
Been working an assignment on location at an ASP.Net shop (they’ve teased about it being a full-time gig, but no action on that front; honestly don’t know what I’d do, because the folks there are great to work with even if they do use VS) and so I’ve been having to deal with Visual Studio.
Now, I’d used VS a lot in my previous life as a software developer. What I wasn’t prepared for was:
(Both Joshua Porter and Eric Meyer have been musing on this theme, and it struck a chord here, as well. This should not be construed as a rebuttal to either piece, just some musings their writings have spurred here.)
In the beginning was the individual. If Og wanted something for his cave, he fashioned it himself, from the materials around him. Chair a little uncomfortable? Get out the hammer and chisel away a little more here and there. Sit down. Chisel away a little more. Finally the chair and Og’s bottom made their peace, and happiness reigned.
But Og had friends over, and they complained about his chair. Og didn’t understand this at first. After all, wasn’t the chair really comfortable when he sat in it? Eventually, Og realized his bottom wasn’t universal. Not everyone’s bottom was like his, so chairs built specifically for his bottom wouldn’t be comfortable for everyone else.
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Yes, Oliver there is a bug in Safari3. It’s a javascript issue, to be precise. And it’s annoying.
I have a design relying on Inman Positioning. The javascript is supposed to execute at load time. Problem is, when it does execute, the CSS has not yet been applied to the columns, so it gets an incorrect figure for the height of the div.
The only workaround I’ve got so far is to use setTimeout to set a delay of over 1/3 of a second on the executing of the positioning script. Yes, it’s ugly. But at least it works. And yes, Oliver, I checked the Safari3 tracker and I see 2-3 reports that look like what I’m seeing, so it looks like it’s been reported.
Andy Clarke of Transcending CSS fame convinced me Inman positioning was the way to go, but this makes we wonder. Is it worth it, now?
(BTW, if you haven’t seen that book, see it. The epitome of how a book on design should be not only useful but beautiful. Superb job, buy it, you won’t regret it. Not ever. I promise.)
Was at the Flex show last night over at WCTC. It was very apparent I’ve had my head inside Rails lately. Kevin Hoyt, the Adobe demo guy, did his database access schtick (writing just a few lines of code and — hey, presto! — a fuctioning CRUD db screen appears) and while the rest of the room was going “Oooh” and “Aaah” I was simply thinking “Scaffolding.” Heh.
Seriously, the Flex demo did scaffolding one better by activating sorts on the columns (along with the gee-whizz-bang but of little practical use trick of being able to rearrange the columns on screen) so I can’t say it was just like scaffolding. But it wasn’t a big enough improvement to raise my eyebrows.
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The current issue of A List Apart has an article by Aaron Gustafson, one of those brave articles that is sure to cause a storm of un- and mis-informed comment. It’s a real attempt to solve a problem, and one that shows more than a little bravery.
Eric Meyer’s reply (published side-by-side in a point/not-quite-counterpoint approach) covers a lot of the thought process I went through when encountering it. I’ll freely grant that Meyer, having had more time than I did to come to grips with the idea, may have thought this through deeper than I, but I’m still at the “Ooooh, ick” stage with this idea.
I can see the point, and as I said I congratulate Gustafson for taking the bull by the horns in such a bold manner, but I cannot agree that he escaped goring.
I’m afraid I see this as an attempt to offload the responsibility for good design, to pass the buck, as it were, from designers to browser makers.
I’ve created a new web design project as a giant learning experience. As a result, I’m making progress learning simultaneously a new language (Ruby) and a new framework (you guessed it, Rails).
I like learning new programming languages; To be honest I’ve lost track of how many this makes, but it’s over 20 now. I haven’t done it for a while and those skills have atrophied a bit. Still, the knack is coming back to me, and I’m enjoying myself immensely.
At the same time, I’ve let myself get talked into writing a book (for chess coaches, if you simply must know). So for part of everyday, I’m immersed in two completely different disciplines.
Or so I thought
Just ran into an interesting quirk with Inman positioning.
I was using it with Safari 3, and noticed the same bug in Firefox 2.0.0.11 while testing. I loaded the javascript file in the document head and when the document started to load,, apparently it loaded a document and triggered the script before the body had loaded. The script failed, claiming document.body was null.
After ripping out handfuls of hair (”Whaddya mean null? I can see the tag right there! Open your eyes you stupid machine!”) I realized the timing issue and moved the script deeper into the document, so it would be triggered after the body tag was loaded.
Success.
Every now and then, someone comes up with a solution that seems so obviously wrong you immediately open your mouth to object. But by the time your mouth opens your brain has done some more processing, and you realize what you’re about to say isn’t really an objection. Nor is the next thing. And you realize he’s thought it through a little more than you have. And you’re left with your mouth hanging open and nothing to say.
Derek Powazek just did that to me. On first hearing, his proposal to put images in pages as div backgrounds is just so wrong that my tongue trips over my teeth in its haste to make the declaration. My lungs fill, my mouth opens.
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OK, Andy so you’re mad about the Opera Lawsuit. I get that. You’re also frustrated with the inability of MS programmers to follow a spec. I get that, too. But this just doesn’t make sense to me.
I just don’t see how it’s a practical idea to exclude from the creation of a standard the very people whose job it will be to implement that standard. I’m sorry, I just don’t see how that can work. Is there another working group at W3C that does that? For example, the XML protocol working group includes Oracle, the HTML group includes Microsoft.
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Eric Meyer recently posted an update to his CSS reset file, and that plus other commentaries I’ve been reading made me ask the obvious question: Why?
I know the logic behind it, I’m just not sure I buy into it wholeheartedly. Why add yet another file, yet another http request to the pages? I’m serious. I don’t see the reason.
Been processing some thoughts about CSS files and workstyles, and I think they’re about to bubble up and out. They’re still a bit inchoate (nice word, that; I learned it from a comic book back in my adolescence, so take that you literature snobs!) but I generally need to type them out in order to clarify them in my own mind, much less communicate them to anyone else.
But I think the pot has been simmering long enough.
Managed to clear most of the table cruft out of 1.5, only the content component to go. That one will be non-trivial but possible, nonetheless. I’ve been wrestling with a view other ideas along the way.
The first is a question born out of frustration: Why do I have to do this? The Joomla developers built in a way to remove tables from some of the pieces, and then created an override capability so someone like me can do the rest without having to hack the core. OK, but since they clearly know this is desirable (this is derived from the fact that most of the pieces have a simple argument on the load call to eliminate the tables) why haven’t they gone whole hog with it, and provided that capability built-in, rather that force me to provide it myself?
The next version of Joomla has hit RC2, and it’s still addicted to tables for design. How long will it be before they stop pretending they know what the end design is going to need, and just pass the content out to the view and let the view logic do what it’s supposed to do?
OK, I can understand retaining them for the time being in the component piece. While it’s extremely possible to do what they’re trying to do in there without the tables, it requires just a little effort, so if they don’t want to go to that effort and tag the 2-col items with different classes than the full-width items, I guess I can cut them some slack.
But Newsflash and Polls? Come on! A poll isn’t a table, it’s a list of choices! And a newsflash is simply a few paragraphs of text! Why do they want to keep inflicting tables on us there? It’d actually take less effort on their part to deliver those modules properly.
I’ve been waiting so long for this upgrade, and what I’m seeing is extremely disappointing.
I’ve got some questions for you. Let me first set the stage:
I have new idea for a node type. I’m going to create one that will embed javascript-replayable chess games in a block on a page. Data entry will require uploading two files generated from another application. Both of those files will be slightly modified., and one of them will be parsed into component information chunks.
How do you even begin to write that for Drupal? Note, I already have written php code that can take the files being input and create the chuncks I need. But they are two files, not one, and Drupal only lets you store one blob per node, as far as I can tell. (more…)
Been using Macromedia products, a lot. Started out with Freehand (BM, Before Macromedia, version 3 to be precise). Kept going to 10, then decided to go whole hog and went to Studio MX.
One of the things I liked was MM’s “two-machine” license. I could have it on desktop and latop, without muss or fuss. Great.
Since i throw rocks without hesitation, I should be equally quick to acknowledge progress.
Drupal 4.7 includes a new module installation bit, which is a very big step forward from the previous version. It’s actually friendy, something I’ve not run across very often before. Since I’ve compared Drupal and Joomla before on this blog, it’s only fair I do it again.
Add new module to Drupal:
Add new module to Joomla:
The two procedures are similar in complexity. Though Joomla doesn’t require you to copy the files up there first, it does require you to fill out a form with the file to upload. Joomla’s still seems subjectively easier because you do it all from within the web site’s interface, but the difference is hardly significant.
Now if only Drupal had a “remove” function that would clean up after the installation. The tables the module requires are still left in the db. If the module installer is well written, that won’t be a problem, but Drupal leaves the install code up to the module writer, rather than having every install follow a standard procedure. Makes for a high risk of variability in the installation of modules.
Nonetheless, it’s a distinct step forward for Drupal. Well done.
I’ve been having intermittent email outages at a client site that I’ve been trying for months to diagnose. Finally managed to get my hands on enough information to do so, and I find the problem is spamcop.
The client has a lot of field people, who have yahoo email accounts. The web hosting service the client’s domain is on subscribes to spamcop. And among the million or so email yahoo emailers is a spammer.
So, spamcop blacklists one of the Yahoo email servers, effectively shutting down communication between my client and the field people. Server blacklisting is effective when aimed at an organization, but in the case of Yahoo, or Google, or any one of the large concentation email servers out there, it fails. It punishes thousands, even millions, of people because of the misdeeds of one, hardly an efficient measure.
Yes, I’m familiar with the contention that this sort of “death penalty” is meant to be sure hosts police their customers. But it’s hogwash, pure and simple. If we start with the assumption that a company can predict with 99.999% accuracy whether a potential customer is a spammer (completely bogus, I’d expect a number far less than 90% to be more likely) that still means that one customer in 100,000 will get misdiagnosed. Which is still enough to keep a server like Yahoo or Google blacklisted forever.
Remember, the spammer doesn’t care if the server gets blackisted; he just moves on to another server. It’s only the poor suckers who have built a contact list based on that email address that get burned. It’s like nuking Kabul to get bin Laden; you kill lots of innocent bystanders while the real target slips away, laughing.
Yes, spam is a problem. But so is this. Yes, if they hang ‘em all, they’ll get the guilty. But before you applaud, think: that means they’re going to hang you, too.
I do. Love letters, that is. The tender shape of the “s”, the strong curve of the “G”, the broad back of the “m,” all these and more draw my eye and fill my mind. Which is one of the things that makes web design so tedious.
I look forward to discovering new, beautiful, fonts. I dig through the collections of hundreds (even thousands) of fonts on the CDs at the local discount store, hunting for the one or two diamonds among the piles of garbage offered for sale.
Fonts are, after all, the “voice” of written communications. The choice of font affects the message just as the tone of voice. It’s hard to take you serious if the information you have is presented in “Comic Sans” or “Marker Felt” or the like. Similarly, royal pronouncements seem so much more royal in a black letter font.
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