Rants

I've had enough of HTML pages "optimized" for a fixed window size. I'm sure you've seen them... "This site is designed for 640x480, you may need to resize your screen", or "Resize your window to this width" [an inline GIF presents an example of the proper window width]. These people should be slapped.

Here I am, an overtaxed web surfer already trying to deal with tons of chaff to get what I want in the limited time I have, and this web page is giving me commands. How rude! Secondly, what it is trying to do is make my viewing area smaller! I paid a lot of money for a large screen so that I could more easily deal with all this information, and they want to force me to look through a tiny window and fiddle with a scrollbar. Did these people go to the Microsoft School of UI Design? They seem to be fond of cramming 2000 items into a three-line-high scrollable list box. Who wants this nonsense?

Back when I used Emissary, if I came across a page that moronically constrained the text to wrap in a tiny little column, I could switch into edit mode, right-click on the table, remove the cell's width constraint, and voila!, the page was suddenly much more readable! With IE or Navigator I don't have any such control over the appearance. The saddest part is that someone went to the trouble of making it less easy to read! I guess they think it's so print-like and cooool to wrap text in narrow little columns that snake way down past the bottom of the window.  [Slap!]  Wake up! Print is dead. If you have text to deliver, don't be ashamed about it, be honest about it. Are you afraid of the text being wrapped differently? That its meaning might change if its lines are broken between different words? I have more respect for people that put everything in one gigantic image map, and that's enough said.


I've had enough of Active X. Every one of those Microsoft content sites tries to infect my system with more of its DLLs. Where do they go? Do I really want to deal with this? Should I have to? Other sites don't seem to have such a problem. If only they would lay off it eventually, but no! With every single link you click: "Hey, you don't have our super-snazzy audible mouse-over Active-X™ component! Where did you come from? How did you manage to get along without it? Surely you want to download it don't you? We have ways of making you download."

Fortunately, I still have the choice of avoiding MS sites. Are they really making a serious go at being a media player? If so, why do they let their sites suffer so badly for the sake of Active-X. Perhaps they think of the several hundred million dollars-per-year they pour down this hole as part of the IE marketing budget?

I have to laugh at that innocuous little "Always trust software from Microsoft Corp." checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box. Hah! As if the latest version of IE4.0 wasn't enough code bloat. Marc Andressen's "60 megabyte furball Microsoft coughed up" description was the best thing I've heard from him in a while. Hmmm, if only Microsoft had some serious competition... Oh well, that's enough said.

-bhk

The opinions expressed herein are mine, and not those of George W. Bush, George Stephanopolous, or George "Goober" Lindsay. This text cannot be recorded or redistributed without the express written consent of myself or Major League Baseball. Microsoft is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation, its assigns and/or successors.