The Blog that Noone Reads

But before I do, one last bit of geekery. I have made a discovery. Now, before I go any furthur, I have to mention that Safari has a very good rendering engine. It’s one of the few, proud browsers to pass the ACID2 test. The thing is, it’s scripting support just plain sucks. This is a statement I can back up.

Click Here to Crash Safari!

I stumbled across this bug because I’ve been using the wonderful FireBug while developing some stuff. It appears Safari has it’s own console functions and the api’s are not exactly compliant. Still, I don’t think any JavaScript blunder should ever be able to just kill a browser.

On Tuesday, I’m going to Hawaii. After the long hours getting ready for FORESIGHT, I’m excited to be spending a week in the sun. I’d like to say I’ll take pictures, but I probably won’t. As it is, I still haven’t taken my Seattle pics off of my camera. I haven’t even taken my camera out of my car.

There are so many companies who believe they absolutely must use AJAX on their website. Many of these companies, it seems, make this decision without actually knowing what AJAX is. I can understand that. It’s really confusing: DHTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, XMLHTTPRequest…

I’m regularly contacted by tech recruiters looking for someone who knows JavaScript AND DHTML. The reason I find this silly is, JavaScript and DHTML are almost one and the same. DHTML isn’t actually a thing. It stands for Dynamic HTML, as in HTML plus JavaScript.

So, being that these companies don’t seem to really know what they’re asking for when they ask for AJAX, how are they to decide when it’s most appropriate? There are lots of things to take into consideration when you move from the classic refresh model to a dynamic, in-page application.

One of the main problems that’s plagued web apps since the dawn of time, and one that’s especially noticable with single page appse, is the browser back button. How do you handle the browser’s back button? With most web applications, the default behavior is unacceptable. If you’re in a web application where everything happens without reloading the page and you click the back button on your browser, guess what. You’ve just lost all your work.

So what can be done about this? Truth is, I don’t really know. I’ve recently begun evaluating some interesting code in the lastest release of the dojo toolkit. Specifially, there is a package called ‘Undo’ that hooks into the browser’s back and forward buttons to use them as a sort of undo stack for the web. So far, I’ve only had a chance to read the documentation; I haven’t actually tested it, but it looks very promising.

Anyway, I was just starting to get into this when I notice this article on digg. It’s an article published by IBM specifially about this technique. If this method is as functional as it sounds, we may finally have a solution to a problem that we web developers have been fighting since the dawn of man.

You know, there are a lot of movies that show the Oval Office. And in all of those movies, I don’t think I’ve ever, even once, seen a computer in there. Not even a laptop.

Does the President not have a computer? It just doesn’t seem possible. Sure, he’s got a private office just off to the side there, where there is probably a computer. But are we to believe that they never need to google something or pull up some form of spreadsheet or anything while meeting in the Oval Office? If anybody has any sort of inside info about this subject, I’d love to know.

So, I’ve been using my new MacBook a ton since I picked it up on Saturday. I sat down at my Mac mini for a little while and it feels dog slow by comparison. Not that my mini is not a great machine, its just not a dual core powerhouse. The screen is fantastic. The keyboard feel is really nice. The trackpad is quite usable with the new right click and scroll features.

There are a few issues, though. The first one is pretty minor, but I’ve noticed it. It seems that, even with the new, lowered keyboard, the keys still touch the screen when it’s closed, leaving familiar marks when I open it back up. So far, I haven’t been able to notice the marks with the screen turned on, but they’re very visible while it’s still black.

The other issue is a much bigger one. The front edge of the system is very sharp. It’s not really an issue when I’m typing because my wrists do not rest on the case. Using the trackpad is another story altogether. When I’m sitting on the couch, or in bed and I’m using the trackpad my wrists rub against the font edge of the system and it’s very uncomfortable. It seems like a pretty big design flaw to have such a sharp edge.

I looked this up online to see if it was somehow just my system, but lots of people have made this complaint. In the message boards, some people suggest that users should just not allow their wrists to rest on the case, but that’s sort of a silly suggestion. Sure, there is a proper way to sit and type and whatnot while computing, but we’re talking about a laptop. Not only a laptop, but Apple’s smallest, least expensive, and most portable laptop. It’s the kind of machine that college student will be getting this fall. You can’t very well expect to walk into a dorm room and see a bunch of college students sitting at desks with perfect posture. This thing is gonna be used on busses, trains, and plains. It’s gonna be used on laps, in beds, on couches, and on the go.

I like the system far too much to return it becuase of this flaw, but my wrists are a bit sore already and it’s only been like 6 days. If it remains a problems, I may just have to file it down or something. I think I’ll just wait a bit and see what others do.

One of the most basic ways search engine relate keywords to content is through link text. For example, if a bunch of people were to make a link like “Silly Hat Express“, there’s a good chance you will find my site on the search results page for “Silly Hat Express.”

This is but one of the reasons it is not recommended to use “click here” as the text for a link. Another good reason is that “click here” is never (unless you’re linking to this article) a good descriptor for what that link points to. It’s more of a command, really. Also, some people don’t use the mouse at all. What are they to do? It doesn’t say “activate this link”, it says “click here”.

So, I was talking about this with somebody at work and I decided it was a good time to hop on Google and find out who the greatest offenders are. It’s actually very difficult to say. The top results will get you to places like Adobe.com, Apple.com, Netscape.com, and Microsoft.com to name a few. The really funny part is, none of those result pages actually have the text “click here” anyway on the site.

Upon further analysis, I realized that the reason for that is exactly what I’ve described above. The websites at the top of the results are all product download pages for some very popular products. Adobe makes Acrobat reader. Apple makes Quicktime. I’ll bet there are a shit-ton of websites out there that say “click here to download Adobe Acrobat” or “click here to download Windows Media Player”, etc.

I would say this is sort of a special case search string. For the most part, using link text for associating keywords is a fantastic idea. Although, being that this is a well known method that search engines use, it is very commonly exploited (see: link spam).

I’ve decided to do a little searching for common UI phrases to see what comes up. Here are some interesting results:

• Google: “click here”
• Flickr: “click here”

Anybody else got any good ones?