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2015-08-19 Stupidity around the Web

Sometimes I stumble upon pages with stuff that looks like this:

Three red-ish circles around the web

These are actually links.

I'm not sure who did that (most likely the author of this website just used some library or engine which already had this), but this problem is very common nowadays.

So, let me help you to understand what these circles actually stand for:

When you are stupid enough not to put any text on your buttons

First circle stands for “ignorance”

I have no idea what were they thinking, perhaps they are not thinking at all (brain death is a common reason to become a UI designer). When you are creating an interface, there are several things you have to think about:

  • Color-blind people
  • Blind people
  • Text-based browsers

And much more, actually. But these ones are actually essential if you want your website not to suck. Color-blind people might not see your flat buttons in the way you are seeing it. They might confuse it with decorative elements or even not see it at all.

Blind people might have better luck, since some screen readers will read the link out loud.

And it does not matter if you style your circles differently or not. Text-based browsers don't understand this shit at all, because there is no text to represent these circles. These circles, however, are rendered… as circles! At least that's how it looks like in w3m:

Some might consider it as a feature. No social links – no worries.

You can actually follow these links! Either place your cursor into the right spot or use tab to get to it.

Second circle stands for “inefficiency”

Although I prefer textual buttons, I'm OK with all kinds of pictograms or other visual elements.

But this is just complete nonsense, I have to hover over every button to find one that I actually need. I don't even know which links are there before I hover over all of the links.

This is just nuts.

Third circle stands for “insanity”

The first question that pops up in your mind when you see this – what is going to happen if I hover over these buttons? Maybe the icon will appear?

This does not really help to find the right link you are looking for, since you still have to hover over these buttons. But it could make your life a little bit easier, right?

This is what happens when you put your mouse over one of the buttons:

Yellow stands for pee - that's what represents the user interface on that website

Now guess what happens when you hover over other buttons.

…

Yes, they become yellow.

Please design your websites consciously.

UPDATE

It seems like there was a bug when the icons were not being loaded if you used https. That's good. It means that the author did not do that shit on purpose – it's just a bug! This, however, does not really make it better. See HTML Hell section “menus made entirely from image maps”. You see, today even text-based browsers can display images. BUT NO, NOW WE DO ICONS WITH CSS. And what this CSS does? Sure, it loads a custom font! Nothing has changed… In other words, if every icon on that website had a little text near to it, then there would be no such blog post.

“You really should research something like that before writing an entire article on bashing someone.” says the author. And he is right! He is so right that I've even deleted this post. But it is a wiki, so someone reverted it back. I find this post funny so I would not delete it again. :)

UPDATE (2017-04-30)

1.5 years later and the problem is still not fixed. That being said, if you have an ad blocker (and you're retarded if you don't), then you will see “AROUND THE WEB” without any circles. Nothing around the web.

Comments:

Hahaha

-- AlexSchroeder 2015-09-01 12:00 UTC

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2015-06-05 Asshole Driven Development

This is old, but if you haven't seen it (like I did) then check it out:

http://scottberkun.com/2007/asshole-driven-development/

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2015-06-02 Low Contrast

Just stop that, guys. Unreadable text does not make your website look cooler.

http://contrastrebellion.com/

Ironically, this website has a low contrast. It seems like it is acceptable for black backgrounds? White text on black background shines like a light bulb, you do not want that.

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2015-04-14 Switch Today, Switch Tomorrow

This page is being updated continuously.

Note: there is a high chance that you already know some of that stuff. In that case just skip to the next point, sorry for spending two seconds of your life.

Things you should start using today:

  • Use Matrix/Riot instead of Skype, Facebook, etc.
  • Look down. Do you know the meaning of every key on your keyboard? Home, End, Alt Gr? Ctrl+Arrows/Backspace/Delete, Shift+Arrows? If not, please educate yourself! You're using the keyboard every day, how come you don't know half of the functionality?
  • Look forward. Do you know why some letters on your screen are underlined? Hit Alt if you can't see it. Also, did you know that there is the same thing for web pages?
  • Look down again. Do you know why the letters on your keyboard are arranged in this order? If not, learn about the history of Qwerty layout and search for alternatives (Dvorak keyboard layout is a sane choice).
  • Have you ever caught yourself on repeating the same text editing action over and over? No more! Learn about advanced text editors (Emacs is a sane choice, but you may also try Vim).
  • Internet ads are annoying, especially on youtube. Install an ad blocker! (Adblock Edge is a sane choice, but it will be discontinued in favor of uBlock)
  • Are you still using !WinRar? Come on, we are over it for so many years (7-zip is a sane choice).
  • Do not send .rar files to others, please. Seriously. It is a pain to use.
  • Speaking of Win-things, there are enough better operating systems than Microsoft Windows. Learn about other operating systems and start using one (GNU/Linux is a sane choice, Debian in particular).
  • Haivng spell cheking tunred on makes your text look way better .You may also find out that you were writing smoething wrong for the whole life!
  • 360° is one turn, right? But where does the number 360 come from? Learn about gradians (400ᵍ is one turn) or use radians (2π is one turn).
  • Hold on, 2π? Why two? This does not sound right. Learn about Tau.
  • Have you ever thought about inefficiency of language varieties in our globalized world? It is pretty obvious that in the end there will be only one or two languages. Start using a popular language for your public works (research papers, blogs, documentation), even if you can't speak it flawlessly. Choosing one is not hard as well (English is a sane choice).
  • In some countries they will bring groceries right into your house for little or no price overhead. Start using it today and support it by all means, this is the future.
  • In most window managers Alt+Tab is very useful because it allows you to go to the previous window. This, however, does not work in browsers. Set browser.ctrlTab.previews to true in Firefox to get the same behavior on Ctrl+Tab. [1]

Some things are not ready today, but they will be ready eventually. You should keep an eye on these things:

  • Open up a calendar, can you explain why the months are arranged like that? 31 28(29) 31 30 31 30 31 31 30 31 30 31? Hint: there is no reason. Learn about other alternatives (International Fixed Calendar is a sane choice. Also, there is an episode of 99% Invisible about this).
  • Look at the clock. Can you spot a problem that is similar to 360°? Right. Additionally, one day is 24 hours. Learn why and search for alternatives (Decimal time is a sane choice).
  • A lot of websites are using HTTPS now. Learn why. However, paying for the certificate does not sound like a right choice. Keep an eye on https://letsencrypt.org/.
  • Gmail -- doesn't provide even a slightest bit of security. Encrypt everything today (unfortunately it is hard to setup)

And don't forget to be conscious. The problem with degrees, time and calendar could have been solved hundreds of years ago.

Comments

2015-03-14 The Downsides of Free Food

This post was extracted from https://alexschroeder.ch/wiki/Comments_on_2014-06-23_Oddmuse_Migration

It all started like a simple bash refactoring, but look! This time was special because someone decided to post a link to google style guide and claimed that it is a "nice resource". Well... I just had to explain everything. At first, I didn't think that my answer is worth a blog post. But hey, it seems like a lot of people worship these guides... So I decided to extract it into my blog.

I suggest you not to read their guide

It is plain bullshit.


Well, I can quickly go through most of the mistakes:

for dir in ${dirs_to_cleanup}; do

Clearly $dirs_to_cleanup is not quoted, this indicates that there is something wrong. Better use array and "${dirs_to_cleanup[@]}".

Also, what is the point of using curlies like ${var} everywhere??? They'd better teach to put quotes everywhere. Such style is propagated only by Google style guide (a guide written by people who think that you're stupid enough not to understand the two exceptions when ${} is actually required, but at the same time these guys don't even know how to quote variables correctly). If that made any sense then we would be doing the same thing in perl and php, but we don't.


rm "${dir}/${ORACLE_SID}/"*

That's rm without -- . Well, not a huge issue, but that's a styleguide or what?


if [[ "$?" -ne 0 ]]; then

Funny. Left side of the expression is quoted when it does not have to be. But even if it had to be quoted, what would be the benefit to quote $? ? It is always an integer. Oh, and if it is an integer, then it would be better to use (( )) for arithmetic expressions, like: if (( $? != 0 )); then


case "${expression}" in

Does not have to be quoted, actually, but at least it does not hurt.


while read f; do
  echo "file=${f}"
done < <(ls -l /tmp)

WHOA! Holy sh...!!! That's amazing... Bash pitfall #1, parsing ls, read without -r. It just couldn't be worse.


# -z (string length is zero) and -n (string length is not zero) are
# preferred over testing for an empty string
if [[ -z "${my_var}" ]]; then
  do_something
fi

But hey, it is as simlpe as if [[ ! $my_var ]]; then , why would they complicate things so much?


# Instead of this as errors can occur if ${my_var} expands to a test
# flag
if [[ "${my_var}" ]]; then
  do_something
fi

What??? Which error?? Am I missing something?


zip_version="$(dpkg --status zip | grep Version: | cut -d ' ' -f 2)"

A rule of thumb is that you should never pipe any of these commands together: sed, awk, grep, perl, cut and some others. The reason is that we usually need such functionality that is present in most of them, and indeed with a little trickery these tools will usually do each others' job. However, they use completely different approaches.
In this particular case you can use grep with -P flag (perl regexes! Woohoo!). Like this:

zip_version=$(dpkg --status zip | grep -Pom1 'Version: \K.*')

But there are other solutions as well.


if ! mv "${file_list}" "${dest_dir}/" ; then

Just look at that variable. It says "file list". Aha, sure, this would definitely work.


addition=$((${X} + ${Y}))

Stupidity all over the place. This should be:

((addition = X + Y))


At least that "$file_list" example will give me a good laugh for the next few days. 😂

Maybe they should stop eating their fucking free food and go through BashPitfalls instead?


Also, I feel like this post is lacking some image. Well, you can look at this image, if you wish.


(Originally posted on 2014-07-02 08:09 UTC)

Comments

2014-09-27 Sand in the Butt

A lot of people ask me, "how did you spend your summer?". Well, here is how:

And what about you?

Yes, I had a lot more fun than those dumbasses who were exposing their bodies to the sun radiation.

Our bodies do not require such moronic activities.

Seriously, what's the point? Why would somebody want to do that? Some people claim that they require rest. Well, okay, a rest from what? That's a shitty excuse for your procrastination. My body requires constant intellectual activities and learning. Shame on you if your doesn't.

Hmm, maybe...

Maybe I can understand that if you were doing something useful for the whole year, you might want to take your female/male somewhere and spend a day or two together, just enjoying your lives and doing something fun and interesting. But shit, three months? That's ridiculous! And why summer? You can do that on any weekend.

However, don't take this graph too seriously.

It does not represent any precise information about my productivity (for example, it does not show commits to the projects that do not use github), but I still like that graph. I don't find it necessary to fill every block of the graph, it is just a good motivation to make at least something small every day. Sometimes I don't feel like doing anything at all, but after I make a few simple changes just to fill this graph, I get caught on it and end up programming for the whole night. Well, sometimes I don't, but even small changes to readmes and help messages or tiny refactorings are better than no progress at all.

Try it yourself!

Even if you're not a software developer, you can use that trick for anything else. Like "do at least one push-up every day" or "read at least one page of a book". You can keep the same graph on a paper calendar, if you wish. In that sense github is a bit better because it is more strict, it will not allow you to fill missed days without any dirty tricks.

Please be conscious.

Comments

2014-08-30 ALS Boobs Challenge

I was challenged by Anatoli Belski. Here is the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRidbVgKMoo

I nominate Steve Jobs, Osama bin Laden and Jesus Christ. Remember, you have only 24 hours.




While morally unprepared people from all over the world are washing their raw heads with cold water, I am trying to cope with my sadness about the disaster we are all heading for.

Sure, I am glad for researchers, scientists and thieves who will get this raised money, and I have no doubt that this is going to have a positive impact on ALS research too. But how is this going to help globally?

And why ALS? Lets look at what they say:

"It is estimated that ALS is responsible for nearly two deaths per hundred thousand population annually."

Oh, that's why it is so important.

Wait...

2/100000 ?

That's 0.002%, right?

Don't get me wrong, I am glad that some people who usually spend hundreds of dollars on computer games will now donate 10 bucks for ALS research. But I am not sure if this low-efficiency short-term trend will cause more benefit than harm in a long run. Just imagine, all these noncaring heaps of meat now have a justification for their lives. They've done something potentially useful, now they can peacefully procrastinate till their deaths. It is like no one can shame them anymore.

But shame is good. It makes us not to do silly stuff and for some people it is a great motivation to start doing something smart.

However, some people have no shame:
Surprisingly, all of these videos were removed. What a coincidence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EnqAHbUViE – completely or partially naked chicks showing off their breasts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54aWEQjSRwA – partially naked chicks showing off their breasts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0UaUTdiSsE – partially naked chicks showing off their breasts

And some people are just plain stupid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQlvW0aFnKo – lots of people hurting themselves. Because it is so damn hard to turn a bucket over.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YEGZXT5SLvE – lots of people hurting themselves. Because it is so damn hard to turn a bucket over.

I thought that the days of chain letters are over, but it seems like I did not take into account that there is a new generation of youngsters who don't even know what is a "letter".

Please be conscious.

Comments:

Hahaha.

-- AlexSchroeder 2014-09-12 15:38 UTC

Comments