Posted in Rants on 03. May, 2010
Have you ever been listening to some of your favorite tunes, or Pandora radio, or something similar, and arrived upon a web site only to have some cheesy music blaring over top of your own playlist?
In an attempt to stop the madness, you try to find some sort of “mute” or “stop the music” button on the offending web site, only to realize that you are going to have to listen to the background music, even though you have no desire to.
Your impression of this offending web site is now negative, just because of the music.
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Posted in Rants on 07. Apr, 2010
Ah yes, Gary. And his many counterparts. They all have the same name.
Web sites under development need testing. Testing often requires creating user accounts and users. I like to use Gary and his clones as testers on my projects.
Who is this Gary that I keep mentioning over and over again?
This guy:
It’s a long story, but basically there is a vault full of clones in Fallout 3, all named Gary. It’s a silly place. There’s 14 of them if I remember correctly.
I can log into my applications in development as any one of the Gary’s, most of the time. I have a hard time keeping track of who’s who though, there’s so many of them and they all are only known by their number.
That helps me keep track of those guys.
I’m glad that baseball season is finally back in gear. Twins games will now be on TV/radio almost every night, yeah! These West Coast games are a little crazy though, I gotta stay up late to catch the whole game.
Web Form Tips
Have you ever used a web form that just left all kinds of things to be desired? I have, and it wasn’t a fun experience for me, or probably any other people that were using it. A bad form can ruin a web site experience quickly.
Bad forms are easy to avoid though, they just need to be easy to use and easy to understand.
Check out these 8 rules for effective web forms to get an idea of what I’m talking about. If you have experience designing usable web forms, a lot of these points might be nothing new. Do you already think that the idea of a reset button is just not a good idea?
If you are looking for ways to improve your form building approach, give it a quick read.
Don’t Tweet Drunk
Not a good idea, I probably don’t need to even get into the details.
In case you’re not sure why drunk tweeting might not be a good idea, check out these 5 reasons to not do it. The picture at the top of the post is pretty awesome too, I must admit. I feel sorry for that guy.
Inspiring Web Design
Web design inspiration is always a good thing, right? I love to check out different web sites to see what people are trying to do on the web. There is an overabundance of awesome design on the Internet, hidden among all the weird (bad) design that is out there as well.
My latest inspiration came from viewing this massive list of top women web designers. Very nice design work abounds.
Wow, it’s actually nice outside today. No more snow. The sun is out. Very little wind. I was driving around with windows down. And yet due to being an Internet fiend I’m sitting here typing on my keyboard.
Ah yes, the life of an Internet user. I’m gonna type this fast so I can get back to standing on my not-so-awesome apartment balcony.
New Gmail security feature
Gmail recently added a new feature that allows it’s users to detect suspicious account activity. This I like.
Half the battle in regards to keeping online accounts secure is knowing who is accessing them, and this feature allows you to keep tabs on whether or not your account is being accessed where it’s supposed to be accessed.
Got somebody logging into your account from another country? A country that you’ve never visited in your life, much less accessed the Internet from? Gmail will tell you if it happens.
Are you taking yourself too seriously?
I think this is a question that every person should probably ask themselves, at least as far as the Internet is concerned, which is why I laughed when I read this.
However, I think that some of the points being made in that post are not actually so bad. Posing for a social media profile picture? Aren’t most people posing for pictures anyways, regardless of where it ends up?
I don’t think that it’s a bad thing for people to take themselves too seriously on the Internet, however. Many different approaches have worked for many different people with both good and bad results, for many things. I can’t just cut a solid line down the middle of that argument myself.
Retro web designs
Check out this list of retro and vintage web designs. There’s 50 sweet examples. This is appropriately titled as “inspiring”.
Retro web design isn’t cliche yet is it? I hope not, I still like it.
There’s just something cool about designs that play off styles of the past, they can have a haunting look and feel.
Closing note -
If I spent the last 5 minutes tweaking the heading sizes on this post, as opposed to spending only 10 minutes writing this, am I taking myself too seriously on the Internet?
