Oh Dear
How does one back out of a verbal contract made in jest? It’s not binding, right?
Making Bold Claims: The Wrong Way
Some time in 2005 I passed comment on a website. A website that loaded so terribly in Firefox — well, any browser that wasn’t IE actually — that I was rendered speechless. I know! Me! Speechless! It’s as if pigs had learnt to fly and my cold frosty heart melted a little.
OK, maybe not so much the second one.
Baffled by what lay before me, I uttered three simple words: oh. my. gosh. Thankfully, my readers saw my plight and rescued me, filling in the gaps with many pleasant summaries of the site in question. Lo, the world was right again… pigs lost their wings and all was well.
Apparently that site still exists today. Apparently it even works in Firefox. I wouldn’t know; I don’t dare look for fear of repeating the torture that still plagues my very existence 3 years on (I jest). I do know, however, that said site owner is now preaching compatibility to all and sundry. Behold the following words of wisdom, taken from a review she completed for Rhiannon of PSGR:
Even my own website, mallorymaloney.com — Which is well known for its complete disregard of standards compliant coding and use of iFrames — Will load correctly on every single version of Internet Explorer, as well as all versions of FireFox, Safari, Opera, Netscape, Camino, Konqueror, and even obscure browsers such as Iceweasel and SeaMonkey.
…and thus, here is where I take a break from my mocking to … oh wait, no, it’s more more mocking from here on out:
Hahahahahahahahahaha
See, the problem with making such a bold claim is that there’s always someone around to point out the flaw in your argument. That, ladies and gentleman, is where I come in… the problem with claiming your iframes-based website works in every single version of Internet Explorer
and all versions of FireFox, Safari, Opera, Netscape, Camino, Konqueror
— or worse Any browser Any operating system
— is that Internet Explorer didn’t support iframes until version 3. Netscape 4 support was lacking, and it wasn’t until Opera 4.0 came out that iframes were introduced as an — albeit disabled by default — option. Most mobile phone browsers, such as the one included on the LG Viewty, also don’t support iframes, and text browsers like Elinks also lack support (obviously).
Because no demonstration of LOLworthy claims is complete without a little graphical evidence:
If it hadn’t already been done, I’d award our brave little compatibility warrior a LOLcat 
Fuse Magazine: A Brief Look
Fuse: An Online Magazine, a new collaborative web project created and compiled by Sarai (chiklita.net), went live today.
First up, I’ll admit that most online magazines annoy the crap out me. It seems that all a person has to do to gain a little link-popularity these days is create a few lists derived from other people’s content, slap it together on a WordPress blog and tada… watch the talentless monkeys come rolling in expecting to gleam some sort of inspiration and skill.
That said, Fuze Magazine has started off reasonably well. Instead of doing the regurgitated list-format BS à la Smashing Magazine, we seem to have a format that more easily identifies with the likes of A List Apart. 4 out of the 5 core intro articles are reasonable in overall size, are non-list based, and the layout is easy enough to navigate/text easy enough to read.
Pleasantries and compliments aside, I do think there are some minor things that I personally would address (if I were hypothetically running an online magazine).
The intro at the top states “We rely on contributors like you.
” It therefore strikes me as a little odd that the only place to contribute as a visitor is via a tiny comment link at the bottom of the home page. Although accepting comments brings a whole new level to the tedium that is managing a website, I find that most of my best content (thoughts, feedback and intelligent reasoning) comes from the very people I write to.
There are a few inconsistencies in overall style. The author “by …” text on the homepage is coloured the same as the links but are unclickable, but the names are linked on individual article pages. There’s a note about the author on the articles provided by Becky and Jenny but none on TWD’s or the Creative Spotlight by Sarai.
The first articles are a great taster for what comes ahead, although I didn’t find any of them particularly “on the edge of my seat” exciting. I’m sure this is more likely because I’ve heard it all before rather than because of any lack of talent from the contributors.
Spelling, grammar and basic sentence structure is above average for the most part, despite sentences like “You need to find a balance between the new and experienced user and quite frankly I don’t think that FanUpdate does a very good job of this
“. I find it simply reads as redundant word-bloat… no emphasis is needed on the fact that this is lacking after pointing out a balance is needed in the first place. Likewise “The next, and biggest change, in my opinion, was the Awesome Bar
” reminds me of “new and improved”, something I ranted about last month. Enzo lets the side down a little with “they’re design
” (should be their) and “.. could mix in with your design without it stealing the show of the design
” (ugly repetition of the word design); while his first language is not English these mistakes should have been caught by a proof-reader before the page was published.
Technical accuracy is not really an issue as none of the articles provide any code, although Becky’s suggestion to keep Cutenews over FanUpdate makes the security fanatic in me scream (especially as the entire review is based upon the assumption that FanUpdate is anything more than a basic blogging script designed for fanlisting owners — definitely not worthy of being compared to major CMS/blog engines — although that’s another topic altogether!)
All in all, I think Fuse has started off positively. It’s certainly not every day I compare a website to the mega-brilliance that is A List Apart. I think with each edition, providing that quality is maintained to a suitably high standard, Fuse has the potential to be one of those websites that appears in everyone’s link list. Like jemjabella. 
I Loathe JavaScript
Given that my current course module thingy is on JavaScript, I expected to unearth a love for JavaScript that I didn’t know I had. I wanted to use the time to explore the quirks of the language, and its uses beyond the basics which I’ve picked up working in web dev.
Quite by coincidence, a client wants a JavaScript fisheye effect menu for a website due to go live next month, but given a limited amount of space it also needs to “carousel” left and right. I’ve found fisheye menus, and I’ve found carousels. I’ve positively spammed my del.icio.us account with JavaScript reference material and examples. However, I have not found a fisheye carousel menu.
After several hours of mashing my keyboard trying to combine two public scripts, and several hours of overtime pulling my hair out, I enlisted the help of JavaScript guru whizzmaster Mat. You may remember him as the guy who Ajaxified BellaBiblio v2. He has been fan-fucking-tastic and I think we’re actually starting to get somewhere… but if this is what JavaScript is about, it can kiss my ass!
Cheesy Scones
After the piss-pouring rain put a damper on my pottering about in the garden, I decided to do a spot of baking. I don’t have much in the way of ingredients so I made scones, which are about the simplest thing you can bake. I found the original recipe in the Vegetarian Student Cookbook — which is brilliant even for non-vegetarians, but that’s a topic for another post — and adapted it to suit my needs.
Ingredients
- 250g plain flour (plus some for the surface)
- 50g butter
- 2-3 handfuls grated cheese
- 4 (slightly heaped) teaspoons baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 200ml milk
Instructions
- Turn oven on at 230°C (446 fahrenheit) / gas mark 8
- Mix the flour, salt and baking powder in a bowl
- Add the butter bit by bit, working it into the flour-mixture with your fingers
- Add the cheese to the mix
- Create a well in the middle of the cheese/flour mix, pour in the milk
- Stir it all up to create a dough, dust a work surface well with flour
- Knead lightly then roll out the dough evenly until approx. 1-1.5cm thick
- Cut into round portions, or do what I did and use the rim of a glass to create evenly sized shapes
- Cook on a baking tray in the middle of the oven for 7-10 minutes
That’s it! You can serve with a variety of dipping sauces or my personal favourite: chopped in half and spread thick with butter. If I hadn’t run out of flour, I think I’d have tried another batch with a touch of garlic in the mixture just to make them really savoury.
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