Erstwhile Muse

Jul 29, 2004

Well, congratulations Blogger...

Way to fuck things up for the rest of us.

Well, in it's continuing attempts to pander to anyone and everyone, Blogger recently implemented a WYSIWYG editor into the main posting interface. My initial reaction was to cringe in horror. It's not like this shit is that hard to learn folks, but there's always the lazy assholes who can't be bothered to pick up the bare bones basics necessary to effectively convey a thought in the given medium, so we get shit like WYSIWYG editors and the crap they spew.

After my initial apopleptic fit of rage, I went over and read the articles that Blogger's main coder for this little project had written, just to see what the explanations were for forcing those of us with half a fucking brain to deal with the short bus interface. It was a decent little article explaining the reasons why they started the project (content before code) and some of it's benefits, such as increased standards compliance in the generated code. This is where they got me, I'll have to admit. I let the promise of standards compliant code override my niggling concern for a tacked on WYSIWYG editor.

Until I used it that is...

Or more correctly, until I tried to use it, at which point I became a fount of profanity. Apparently the default choice is for the posting page to come up in Compose mode—or Retard mode as I have been calling it for the past hour or so—with the older style of HTML editing available by selecting a tab. Not very fucking useful though when errors in the javascript running the whole thing produce no tab, and leaves the text area for posting unavailable. At this point I fire up the shitty ass backup browser that is Internet Explorer, just to see how things worked in that arena. Lo and behold, what should I see, but a perfect little interface all bedecked with tabs and buttons and other overwrought useless paraphenalia. I think you can all guess what my reaction was at this point...

It went a little something like this:

Fuckity fuck fuck fucking fuckholes!

Now even in IE the post editor comes up in Retard Mode by default, so I figure, what the hell, I'll try something on a wild hunch, just as an experiment. I click yon tab to switch it over to HTML editing mode, see that it looks vaguely reminiscent of the rather more useful Post Editor of yore, and promptly get the fuck out of IE before more brain cells die from association. That part of the experiment conducted, I fire good old K-Meleon back up, this time to a vague approximation of something useful. It appears that it's rendering some weird mongoloid bastard child of Retard Mode and the HTML editor, but at least I have a text area that functions, as well as the Draft and Publish buttons. God knows yet if the spell checker works, but I already know that Preview is fucked beyond belief—it wants to put everything back to strict Retard Mode, which is not, as I have mentioned, terribly useful or usable.

Gah....brain fucking hurty. Expect there to be elaboration on this topic once my goddam grey matter has stopped hemorrhaging from rage.

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