Sentenced to Death for Crimes Against Humanity
Was the headline I heard. I kinda wondered how they managed to say it without thinking gee, I’m sure there’s some irony in here somewhere…
Tube of You
- Paxilback – Gray Kid parody of Justin Timberlake’s Sexyback
- Pole Position Commercial! (Atari)
- Fortress Europa, fast and informative
- Rube Goldberg Officeplace Contraption
- The Bloggers
Insights Into Worlds You May Not Know
- Did Eskimos put their elderly on ice floes to die?, found while investigating:
- Eskimo kissing, interestingly enough very similar to the Maori hongi, which developed independently on the other side of the world. See it in action!
- 830! How a carpenter got the highest Scrabble score ever.
- Nachos, anyone? – Word stories – Oxford English Dictionary
- The Outsider, the story behind the latest film from the director of π
- What’s The Worst Web Application You’ve Ever Seen? I mean, wow. I couldn’t really believe it was serious until someone in the comments noted it was screen-scraping a terminal application. Still, that has to be just about the worst possible way they could have done it.
- The Non-Expert: Defenestrate Your Résumé! Fantastic. CVs are full of so much bullshit. I love people who list things like “honest” and “reliable” on their CV – gee, really? I’ll just hire you right now then!
- The internet, summarised in three panels
I have a question. I hear that you’re waiting to upgrade to firefox 2.0 because of your extensions. However, it would appear that target=”_blank” is now opening a new tab in firefox instead of a new window.
Does this change your opinion of the use of this feature?
Comment by Pete — November 8, 2006 @ 6:57 am
You have remarkably good sources. I am waiting to upgrade to Fx 2 because of extensions, but I don’t remember ever saying that. Mind you, I might go ahead anyway – lots of the essential stuff is built in now, or pref’able, and I suspect most extensions are now either up-to-date or long dead.
I think divert-to-tabs is a nice feature and alleviates the problem a little. (Note also that this has been an option/extension since before 1.0.) However, it remains a problem because the core reasons remain: it breaks the user’s expectations. And it is still forced upon people, even if they do know to expect it. So it adds surprises to and takes away control from the user experience.
To put it another way, using target=blank is good only when it is a) always what the user wants, seeing as they are unable to prevent it, and b) clearly indicated so the user is not surprised by it. Things like “See our terms and conditions (opens new window)” at the bottom of a form might be a good example. (Although you could probably improve that situation with a resized javascript popup so as not to completely obscure the parent window.)
Comment by db — November 8, 2006 @ 10:16 am
I thought that was going to be your answer, but was interested in the response anyway. It was good that you added caveat (a) since I think this is pretty commonly the case. There are always ‘better’ ways to develop things, but often (e.g. usually with forms) there are links that provide you with info you need to complete that form. You NEVER want to navigate to that page in case upon pressing ‘back’ you’ve lost all the data you entered.
I imagine there are probably other applications.
I love the session saving thing in 2.0.
Comment by Pete — November 8, 2006 @ 1:55 pm
“Former X-Man Hugh Jackman and acclaimed British actress Rachel Weisz play time-tripping lovers whose devotion spans a millennium. In the 1500s, a conquistador named Tomas, played by Jackman, is dispatched to the Yucatan jungle by Queen Isabel (Weisz) on a desperate mission to find the tree of eternal life prophesied in Mayan myth. Cut. In the present day, Weisz is a writer named Izzi suffering from advanced brain cancer, and Tom is her neuroscientist husband obsessed with finding a cure. Cut. Five centuries later, Tom pilots a bubblelike biosphere toward a star that is about to explode. Tattooed and gaunt, he’s haunted by memories of Izzi’s deathbed request to help her finish writing a book called The Fountain.”
OK. I’ll see that.
Comment by Santadog — November 8, 2006 @ 9:57 pm
Ah, this gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. Yay for blogging! Though truth be told, I still haven’t seen Pi. I am but a walking shadow.
Comment by db — November 9, 2006 @ 12:09 am