A web siteʼs 404 page is often the most neglected page of the site. Netflix wonʼt even waste CSS on it.
The CSS is 404, too
Monday, February 13th, 2023 Alive 18,920 days
Math = hard
Saturday, February 11th, 2023 Alive 18,918 days
Itʼs not even Shabbat
Thursday, February 2nd, 2023 Alive 18,909 days
Well, hereʼs something you almost never see: an error message from the B&H web site.
B&H takes its web presence very seriously, and is among the planetʼs biggest targets for criminals. But somehow the boffins on 9th Avenue manage to keep the fraudsters at bay, while maintaining a web site that is fast, complex, and fairly easy to use.
This error message didnʼt last long. Only a few seconds. Perhaps today is a good day to buy a lottery ticket.
Squee the mechanic
Friday, January 27th, 2023 Alive 18,903 days
A thorough review, Iʼm sure
Tuesday, January 24th, 2023 Alive 18,900 days
Gotta <p>
Tuesday, December 6th, 2022 Alive 18,851 days
Benin to shop
Monday, December 5th, 2022 Alive 18,850 days
It seems strange to me that when filling in your personal information on the Fortnum and Mason web site that the default telephone country code is +229. Thatʼs Benin, all the way in Africa.
It would make sense for the default country code to be +44, since itʼs a British department store. Or maybe the country codes could be sorted numerically, so itʼs easier to find the one youʼre looking for. Or perhaps use the country code of the customers who generate the most revenue for the store, whatever number that may be.
But I doubt that the people of Benin buy more F&M stuff than any other country.
ImPressed
Thursday, December 1st, 2022 Alive 18,846 days
WordPress gets a lot of flack from snobby devs who like to see their names in pixels on the internet. And while Iʼm not a huge fan of the planetʼs most popular content management system, it has earned my respect.
Due to some unfortunate circumstances, I recently had to temporarily transplant a WordPress installation from one server to another server to another server, along the way performing a number of upgrades to both the WordPress installation, the servers, and the content. And you know what? It all worked.
Yes, WordPress complained occasionally, but far less than I thought it would. And it dutifully updated and upgraded the content database at each step, while retaining all of the goodies therein.
So, itʼs not the best CMS in the world. There is no best CMS. But the code sure as heck is durable. Outside of mainframes and the scientific community, you donʼt see that kind of resiliency in coding very often these days.
Whatʼs a DVD?
Tuesday, November 15th, 2022 Alive 18,830 days
Fluff and fold
Sunday, November 6th, 2022 Alive 18,821 days
While I appreciate the Potter Country Store being creative with its web site, I donʼt think a laundry basket is quite the right icon for a virtual shopping cart.
Unless they use laundry baskets to do their shopping in Schulenburg, Texas. You never know. People in Pennsylvania call shopping carts “buggies.”
Try a Clié
Thursday, October 27th, 2022 Alive 18,811 days
I know that Iʼm not perfect. I know that while I think my web sites work on every device, thereʼs probably a configuration out there on which they fall over. But the University of Houston/Downtown really has no excuse for this.
How is it possible for an organization to put out a public web site in 2022 that doesnʼt work on mobile phones? Itʼs bad enough that this page from UH/D is cut off on the right side, but there is no way to even scroll to the right to see whatʼs missing! And this is on a recent iPhone, not some obscure open source homebrew kit.
I preview every single web page I build for desktop, tablet, and two mobile phones. Every one. Sometimes dozens each week.
The University of Houston/Downtown brags that itʼs the second-largest university in Americaʼs fourth-largest city. Surely, someone on campus must have a smart phone to test with.
Break a leg!
Friday, September 30th, 2022 Alive 18,784 days
Houston Methodist Hospital has eighty-brazillion dollars and ninty-brazillion employees. If it canʼt keep its webview from breaking a leg, what am I supposed to do?
Also, someone should fix that grammar. It's probably Epicʼs default, but that doesnʼt make it right.
Kern this
Saturday, September 24th, 2022 Alive 18,778 days
Ordinary human being: “What's the longest day of the year?”
Webdev: “In which font?”
Seattle, we have a problem
Friday, September 9th, 2022 Alive 18,763 days
Cleanup in aisle 500
Thursday, August 11th, 2022 Alive 18,734 days
Iʼve fallen, and I canʼt get up
Wednesday, August 10th, 2022 Alive 18,733 days
Watching a storm >$brew.sh
Sunday, July 31st, 2022 Alive 18,723 days
The National Weather Service has a budget of $1.2 billion. If it canʼt keep a web site from drowning, what chance do I have?
Connection over sneakernet
Saturday, July 30th, 2022 Alive 18,722 days
Iʼm supposed to have super-duper awesome benefits with United Airlines because I have a Chase credit card. A couple of weeks ago, I decided to see what those benefits are. Naturally, the link on the Chase web site was broken. It just looped though a login screen over and over.
Since Iʼm a paying customer, I moaned about it to Chaseʼs customer service.
I ended up booking my ticket on another airline, and forgot all about it until I got this in the the mail today. I guess someone at Chase figured it would be faster to mail me a book about the benefits than to fix the link.
I guess this ends up being a story about good customer service, because not only do I have the book, but I just checked, and the link is fixed, too.
Support hosed
Saturday, July 16th, 2022 Alive 18,708 days
United in failure
Saturday, July 16th, 2022 Alive 18,708 days
Food for thought
Friday, July 15th, 2022 Alive 18,707 days
A side of mystery
Friday, June 10th, 2022 Alive 18,672 days
Sick site
Friday, June 3rd, 2022 Alive 18,665 days
Try & fail
Thursday, May 19th, 2022 Alive 18,650 days
Chicken shit
Saturday, May 14th, 2022 Alive 18,645 days
Today I learned that Chick-fil-a is not interested in serving the 50 million Americans, including the elderly, the poor, and some disabled people, who do not have or cannot use a mobile phone.
Also, anyone whoʼs phone has run out of battery, or anyone has dropped their phone, or pays for data, or is from another country.
Citiborked
Saturday, May 7th, 2022 Alive 18,638 days
I think that the word “unexpected” is pretty high on the list of words you donʼt want to hear from your bank. It ranks right up there with “insolvent.”
Fortunately, Citibank is only the third-largest bank in America. Itʼs not like its web site is used for anything important.
If Citibank canʼt keep its web site from going all pear-shaped, what chance do I have?
Citibonk
Saturday, May 7th, 2022 Alive 18,638 days
Citibank is the third-largest bank in the United States. It has almost two trillion dollars. Itʼs been around for 210 years.
And yet, it still canʼt make a web site that works. So what chance do I have?
Also, with two trillion dollars, youʼd think it could hire people who can write complete sentences.
I thought they were working from home
Friday, March 4th, 2022 Alive 18,574 days
Thereʼs a big backup at the floating bridge toll booth, so there are no Amazon.com employees available to take my order right now.
If Amazon.com canʼt keep its web site running, what chance do I have?
Sour Apple
Monday, October 18th, 2021 Alive 18,437 days
Dead tree edition
Monday, September 20th, 2021 Alive 18,409 days
Upper railing
Sunday, September 19th, 2021 Alive 18,408 days
Just… wow
Thursday, September 2nd, 2021 Alive 18,391 days
I think I have found the worst government web site on the planet: New Jersey Family Care.
Its many technical faults aside, it looks like something a kid whipped up in Geocities in the 1990ʼs, not something dealing with healthcare. And certainly not something that taxpayer dollars paid for.
Gettinʼ nothinʼ but static from Channel Z
Tuesday, August 10th, 2021 Alive 18,368 days
Friday, July 30th, 2021 Alive 18,357 days
Your time is up
Saturday, June 26th, 2021 Alive 18,323 days
♫ Weʼre the Bank of America… Whoa-oh! ♫
Monday, June 7th, 2021 Alive 18,304 days
So stop shopping at Walmart
Friday, March 12th, 2021 Alive 18,217 days
In spite of all their fancy JavaScript, and invasive telemetry, I donʼt think online stores really have any idea how much money they lose every day by making their shopping process so complicated that the web site breaks.
Simplifying the stack would save development costs, management costs, and increase sales.
But nobody in tech gets promoted for making things less complicated.
Pixels arenʼt free
Thursday, March 11th, 2021 Alive 18,216 days
127 characters ought be enough for anyone
Friday, February 12th, 2021 Alive 18,189 days
Somewhere, a Walmart web developer and his database manager are learning about UTF-8 and utfmb8.
Busted bars
Thursday, January 21st, 2021 Alive 18,167 days
Sure wish I could order Dairy Queen through DoorDash, like the web site says I can.
But DoorDashʼs web site insists that I pick a size for a box of Buster Bars, which only come in one size.
I wonder how many other sales Dairy Queen has lost because of DoorDash.
Sunday, November 15th, 2020 Alive 18,100 days
Monday, November 9th, 2020 Alive 18,094 days
Sunday, November 8th, 2020 Alive 18,093 days
Thursday, November 5th, 2020 Alive 18,090 days
Tuesday, November 3rd, 2020 Alive 18,088 days
Monday, November 2nd, 2020 Alive 18,087 days
OK, Pal
Wednesday, August 12th, 2020 Alive 18,005 days
Your slip is showing
Thursday, May 14th, 2020 Alive 17,915 days
Monday, April 20th, 2020 Alive 17,891 days
Saturday, September 14th, 2019 Alive 17,672 days
Wednesday, August 21st, 2019 Alive 17,648 days
For just a dollar a day…
Friday, February 15th, 2019 Alive 17,461 days
Tuesday, December 11th, 2018 Alive 17,395 days
Ever have one of those days when you think, “Wow, my web sites are really fast today!” and then you realize you spent the last hour tinkering on localhost?
Friday, November 23rd, 2018 Alive 17,377 days
Wednesday, November 21st, 2018 Alive 17,375 days
Sunday, November 18th, 2018 Alive 17,372 days
Monday, November 12th, 2018 Alive 17,366 days
Saturday, November 10th, 2018 Alive 17,364 days
Friday, September 7th, 2018 Alive 17,300 days
Saturday, August 25th, 2018 Alive 17,287 days
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2018 Alive 17,284 days
Saturday, July 7th, 2018 Alive 17,238 days
Saturday, July 7th, 2018 Alive 17,238 days
Tuesday, May 22nd, 2018 Alive 17,192 days
If you spend 20 solid minutes trying to figure out the proper sequence for _']}');";, you might develop in a LAMP stack.