Web 2.0

This is by way of being a response to the Web 2.0 blog. I have to agree with the view that people don’t usually want all-singing, all-dancing websites. They particularly don’t want to return to them.

I accept that this isn’t strictly true for novelty websites. There is always room for sites that you visit to go “Wow, what a fantastic effect!” and recommend to your friends. However, this is a very limited market. It’s hard to see where money can be made from these sites. They only have value to business when they are promoting a band or a movie. So, there is no one to pay for the development time. This means that these sites tend to exist only as student exercises.

Otherwise extreme use of the newer capacities of the web usually only exist to promote web design companies. Even more, they mainly exist to promote web design companies to other web design companies, which seems a bit pointless.

If there are problems with the Web from the end-user’s perspective, these are not usually along the lines of “If only there was more pointless moving around of icons and text and a few more flashing lights” Most problems are more like – This doesnt work as I expect. I have to log in to do anything. Do I really have to enable Active X to buy a mouse online and so on? Why does it take as long to buy a train ticket online as to go to the trainstation and buy one?

My main whine about the web is that sites are all starting to look the same. And this is not notably pretty. There used to be a much wider range of web aesthetics, from much more beautiful to much uglier. Now most of the web is just boring. The web has settled down to a common dull aesthetic. Maybe if some of the genius needed to pick up on a dozen new technologies went into a more experimental approach to the look of web pages, we’d all start to get excited about it again.

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Trojan horse

A new form of Trojan holds your files to ransom (according to http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6066636.html). Not having files of value >= 10p, this doesn’t exactly put me in a flap. But, as I am fair game for getting almost any malware, I could still find myself horribly inconvenienced.

According to zdnet, this is the third such attack in about a year. There are lots of details about the new Trojan attack on Sophos. (http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/04/ransom.html) Its characteristics include a seemingly modest $10.99 ransom demand, together with a pretty unreasonable demand to pay within 30 minutes, which must be unmeetable unless you live in a Western Union office. Oddly the messages don’t inpire much trust in the promise that paying up will halt the trojan, as the message provides a Yahoo email address for you to contact if the removal code doesn’t work.

The basic design flaw in all this from the criminal’s viewpoint must be the same problem faced by all extortionists – picking up the cash. Western Union may be international, but it is not anonymous. There can’t be a Western Union office in the developed world that isn’t covered by the currently ubiquitous cameras. A huge influx of $10.99 Western Union orders to one office would be its own trail anyway, unless, there is a computer wizard isomewhere so bored that they would bother to write and propagate a Trojan for $10.99. In which case, they could probaly get away with it but might be better advised to get a more profitable line of work.

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Final Fantasy VII

Finally fantastic film.

Like the other FF films, everything is computer-generated. The graphics are just superb. It is visually stunning and the images just keep getting better and better.

(No I didn’t understand the storyline. It doesn’t matter if the story and characters are silly or the facial animation is sometimes wooden.)

You still can’t take your eyes off the screen. It’s almost the pinnacle of artistic expression using three-D graphics.  I’ll write more on this when i have watched the dvd-extras and may be more coherent and less gushing.

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My email used by scammers – GRRR

It’s not often that your email can make you feel sick but seeing a returned as undeliverable email that was supposed to have originated from my account and which was a Barcalays Bank scam fills me with a mixture of rage and horror.

>:-(

Checking my traffic logs for the past few days I have found a huge pile of IPs with Afrinet domains apparently sending and receiving packets from my coomputer plus a huge number of malformed and bogus packets today. I seem to have sorted that out or its stopped of its own accord.

Any sensible ideas about what I should about it? I have already run a virus checker and I have a firewall and my browser is supposedly so well defended that I can barely view a web page without having to enable a scripts for every dozen words on the page.

The remaining choices seem to be (a ) ignore it – the most likely given my life track record ( b) complain to my ISP (c ) do something else that I haven’t thought of. So – anyone who’s reading this, and has any ideas at all, please tell me.

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Sitepoint Quote

Found this from the sitepoint link posted in a previous article:

Ajax is meant for those situations where you have a small part of a web page that you want to update with information from the server without reloading the whole page (often a single word or a small set of links). If you are looking to replace more than say 10% of the page then you need to rethink whether Ajax is the appropriate way to do it. At least some of the Ajax that people are currently writing is more so they can demonstrate that they can write it rather than that the page actually needs it. Once Ajax ceases to be flavour of the month then it will go back to being used only in those situations where it is appropriate (the way people used to use it several years ago before the name Ajax was applied to this particular technology).

(Posted by felgall – URL: http://www.sitepoint.com/forums /showthread.php?t=371856)

I thought that was an excellent summation.

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Sitepoint

Today, I have been wasting most of my life on the sitepoint forums. Not wishing to be some one who encourages others to while away ten hours reading about things they will never put into practice I am loathe to suggest you visit them yourself.

However, being someone who likes to encourage others to idle their lives away – I have to say, check them out yourself if you dont believe me 🙂

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More on AJAXian Issues…

Sorry to keep beating this one – but the site at http://www.lastcraft.com/blog/index.php?p=19 “Listen Kids, AJAX is not Cool” is excellent. If you are planing to ajax-ify your website or application then it is well worth adding the Last Craft site to you list of research material (you do research dont you?). This article highlights some of the more common AJAX-esque mistakes and, to an extent, typifies what is at fault with the web 2.0 buzz.

In a well written manner the article goes into what is wrong with most of the AJAX demos and, alludes to the general pointless-ness of it all. For me, the idea behind the new technology is to make life easier and improve the “user interface.” From what I have seen to date, AJAX does neither.

Strangely, when you read the comments it appears some people have taken an active dislike to the author, is this die-hard AJAXers defending themselves? 🙂

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Another AJAX link

Sorry, I forgot to add this to the last one.

If you want to use AJAX, then it is definitely worth your time checking out http://alexbosworth.backpackit.com/pub/67688

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Web 2.0 Nonsense

Having tried to avoid ranting about the “web 2.0” nonsense that is being thrown around the web and USENET at lot these days I have finally had to succumb to the temptation and rant a little.

If you have an even passing interest in web design, and you haven’t had your head buried in sand for the last twelve months, you cant have missed the hype surrounding how Web 2.0 technologies (mainly AJAX) will be the future of the web. Internet (and to a lesser extent general PC) magazines have been falling over themselves to hype the “new” way of doing things (even though the XMLHttpRequest it hinges on is ancient) and websites which have adopted the web 2.0 mantras are pushed remorselessly. (Flickr, del.icio.us etc.,)

Now, generally speaking here at Why Dont You we are more than happy to adopt (pointless) new technologies just for the sake of it. I mean, we even use Ubuntu… 🙂 However I cant help but think the Web 2.0 obsession is getting out of hand. It’s “poster child” is AJAX and, while this is useful, there are massive limitations to its implementation. Add to this the potential learning curves involved and round off with the browser problems (what happens if the client doesn’t have a JS enabled browser…) – all of a sudden it seems that this is actually a niche technology.

If you are designing a cutting edge site, geared to impress other web designers with your jedi-like editing powers then go for it. Web 2.0 your site to death.

If however, you are designing a site for the general public then steer clear. When people are trying to do their online shopping they dont want fade in / fade out effects. When people are using the browser provided by their ISP along with whatever net-paranoia software they can get their hands on, all that finely crafted event-driven JS vanishes. This is the sad reality of the internet, away from the excitement of web magazines. People want websites which function. All the glitter that Web 2.0 / AJAX provides is (IMHO) pointless.

Most sites (and most designers) have enough trouble getting their sites to work in two different browsers when it is plain HTML and CSS. Add in the new platforms we are constantly being told are “the way forward” and it just seems that Web 2.0 is all hype and no function.

For thoese who have converted, some decent enough AJAX sites are:

Enjoy.

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Linux HTML editors

I know I have complained in the past about the poor standard of web design “IDE” software (see the sulk about NVU for more) and sadly in the intervening week very little has changed.

This is a shame because I really do like linux and much prefer working on the SuSE machine to any of the others. (I will try not to let this become another anti-Ubuntu rant :-)), I am sure that if anyone could proprerly reproduce the functionality and capabilites of Dreamweaver for the *nix platforms they would be on to a winner.

Bluefish ScreenshotHowever, until the day when nirvana arrives, the best alternative I have come across so far is Bluefish. (http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/) While this doesn’t have the capabilities (ie. site definitions and inbuilt ftp etc) that dreamweaver offers it does provide an excellent set of text editing functions. It deals with a variety of formats including C, HTML, PHP and SQL. It has good, useful, syntax highlighting and is generally an excellent bit of software. I really cant recomend it enough!

Sadly this software is only available for POSIX compatible operating systems because, from what I have seen of it so far, it would be great even on a Windows PC.

While there still isn’t (currently) something I can use to totally replace DW and the Windows PCs, this is certainly “the next best thing.” If you know of any other good *nix web design IDE / HTML editors please let me know.

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PC Magazines continue downwards

Sorry if things look like “WhyDontYou” are taking offence against PC magazines in general but somethings are too annoying to pass over! Take this months PCW for example.

Previously, we have ranted at some length about the crackpottery that is involved in “pricing” cover disks – well, we have had no impact on the market 🙂 and this months PCW proudly boasts software worth “more than” £365 on its “massive” 8GB cover DVD. I have already posted about the pricing of cover disks (read more) so I wont do much on that for now.

The made up value aside, this is definite proof that they now have much more space on the disks than they know what to do with. This month’s cover disk includes an amazingly esoteric array of pointless things – for example four (count ’em) linux distributions – Ubuntu 6.04, Slax, Gentoo and Fedora Core. Not that getting any of these to work will be easy – you have to load the DVD and then burn off the iso you want (is that really easier than DL’ing the iso in the first place – especially as the magazine gives no advice on this).

This leads me to the critical tipping point of the magazine. I can let most of the nonsense and padding it fills itself with slide. It is a magazine after all. I can ignore the vastly over priced cost of the magazine (although only just…). I can ignore the mountains of advertisments (which are there to keep the cost down…..) but its getting close now.

The killer is the Linux/Unix section.

What a surprise. PCW dedicates (and has done since the dawn of time) a whole two pages to the real operating system of choice – LINUX. Now, this is a magazine which has felt the need to put four distros on the cover disk so you would think they were up to speed with providing information and advice on the open source OS. Sadly this is not the case.

Once more, this is just another case of two more pages on Ubuntu. Argh. Why!?!

I could understand it if this was either a one off, or if Ubuntu had some quirks which were common to Linux. Neither is the case. I ranted about this last month – obviously PCW dont listen to me though 😉 and they have done it again.

The title of this months section is “Resolving Ubuntu Screen setup” – what madness this is. There is nothing they go on about that carries over to other distros – it even begins by mentioning how “one of ubuntu’s biggest drawbacks” is the lack of admin utilities other distros have… The whole article is written as if Ubuntu sponsor PCW. Maybe they do…

Is this the thin end of the wedge? Has Ubuntu been working behind the scenes to achieve Linux domination?

Well, I have no idea but I do know that the only way I will get next month’s PCW is if someone gives it to me…

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Ruby on Rails Book…

Well, having recently come accross the Feed Digest block of RoR links (see RoR Post), you can imagine my surprise when I found the link pointing to “Ruby for Rails book now available.” Now this was apparently posted “2 Hours ago” so it cant be a book I have ever found before.

Looking at what is on the blog (and its subsequent links), it seems quite good. I am not 100% sure it is worth US$22.50 for a PDF version though, so I will almost certainly wait until it is on Amazon (and / or Ebay… :-)) before I give it a try.

Hopefully this will go some way towards changing my opinion of Ruby (and Rails) – at the moment it strikes me as an interesting toy and not really much use for 99.9% of “real world” applications. I can’t think of anything Ruby on Rails can do, which cant be done better and easier with a different language. The framework (so far) is (IMHO) far from an enhancement and certainly doesnt add rapid application development.

Still, I have been wrong in the past. Time will tell 🙂

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Ruby on Rails

On an unrelated quest (regarding RSS) I came across this excellent little RSS feed (converted to HTML via feed digest). Well worth investigating:

http://feeddigest.com/digests/ruby-on-rails.html

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Easter presents – a message to pets

Don’t read unless you are a cat or dog. Dead rats, birds or other mammals do not make acceptable inter-species Easter gifts.

if you are a dog, feel free to bring home dug-up gold doubloons. If you are a cat, just don’t bother. There is nothing you can kill that will bring as much pleasure from your food providers than you could give by just not scenting every corner of their living rooms.

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50s Sci-fi

Interviews with Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, George Lucas and James Cameron – the ultimate blockbuster sci-fi directors – connected 50s movie clips in  “Keep Watching the Skies,” broadcast  in the UK on the Sci-fi channel this afternoon.

This could have been unwatchably dull. It turned out to be an excellent programme. The clips were well-ordered to present a narrative about early sci-fi. The uniformly - if oddly -white-bearded directors discussed the films that had influenced them as children. In the process, they explained a lot about the ideas and references in their movies, as well as contributing to a coherent argument about  how postwar sci-fi films reflected the social and political fears and hopes of the time.

For example, there was a fascinating bit where Spielberg discussed a film in which a group of kids were the only ones to see and communicate with a benign alien, which showed where he’d got the inspiration from ET and explained part of what he was trying to express in it. (Sorry, I wasn’t taking notes. I didn’t catch its name.)

The directors drew parallels between the two movie approaches to aliens – either childlike innocence repaid with evil, as in War of the Worlds, or human suspcion of outsiders, which leads to unnecessary wars against the Other. Inevitable comparisons were drawn with the expansion of Western cultures and the way the West reacts to the Third World .

There were a few unconvincing moments that I’m just putting in here to tone down the effusive raving. It’s hard to accept that even the most obsessive movie-goer could remember so much about their responses from 50 years ago. These directors could discuss scene details that their 6 year old selves allegedly noticed better than I can remember the broad plots of a quarter of the films I saw last year.

George Lucas claimed that his Star Wars robots owed nothing to Robbie the Robot in the Forbidden Planet, despite his admiration of the film, but was based on Fritz’s Lang’s Metropolis. This kept to the film directors’ union rule 43 – “A director must always reference at least one 1920s art film as an influence.”  This reference would be convincing from the director of Tron (a real nouveau Metropolis.) It beggars the imagination to connect R2D2 with the Metropolis robot images I have. Lucas’s words were undercut by being voiced shortly after a clip from the Forbidden Planet, where Robbie the Robot looked and acted exactly like R2D2’s big brother. (My bad here, it has occurred to me too late that he may have been referring to C3P10, which i suppose is a bit like a Metropolis robot. However, I am not going to spoil a good criticism, just because it’s contradicted by the facts.)

The movie clips were great. It had the seminal scenes from  movies which would be probably too boring to watch all the way through – now we’ve got used to better special effects and sci-fi that’s not shot mainly in a studio. They were connected in a way that gave me a deeper insight into the effects of their social context (fear of nuclear war)  than the tiny predictable sci-fi section of a Film course that I did at university x years ago.

Basically, it was a programme that had the acknowledged geniuses of mass-market sci-fi paying homage to their influences. It made you want to look at the originals and to reconsider the sci-fi from the 70s. It being on SciFi Channel, it will be repeated to death – it’s probably already been on a dozen times. It’s well worth watching out for.

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