My rant, such as it is, is on the differences between browsers, and how this creates a lack of uniform experience for everyone. I have this book on how to blog specifically on Blogger. It points out that my editing window should have two tabs: Edit HTML and Compose.
So here I am writing this post using Firefox. Firefox, for those not in the know, is a browser developed by the good folks at Mozilla. The folks at Mozilla, if I'm not mistaken, once wrote the browser, Netscape. I've read, from Joel Spolsky, that they spent a great deal of time rewriting Mozilla browsers (of which Firefox is one) from the ground up, and therefore, spending a great deal of (in his opinion) unnecessary time when they could have refactored, and leveraged all the old debugged code.
Now, Firefox is their lightweight browser, who's main purpose is to, y'now, work as a browser. See, there was a time when a browser was more than a browser. It was a mail client. It was a news reader. It was a web page editor. I suppose, if time and memory had permitted, it would have been an IDE, and you could have edited Javascript to your heart's content. But, developers realized, wow, that's a huge amount of memory (just as cell phone developers must have thought, "you know, maybe they just want to use the phone to talk". Maybe.
So, they kept the core functionality and produced a lean, mean, browsin' machine, and thus Firefox was born. (I'm sure the history of Firefox that I've presented would not past muster with a true Internet historian. My version is just a folksy retelling, with the occasional fact badly mangled. I'm sure you'll forgive my indiscretion and lack of scholatic integrity.)
Point is (and I usually get around to this), Blogger runs best on Firefox. The book I have (Visual Quickstart, or some such) must assume that I, as a good netizen, have acquired Firefox. However, my experiences in running Firefox on the Mac have been disastrous (in sum, it's start app, crash, start app, crash, start app, crash!, ad infinitum).
I run Safari on my IBook, and it's quite a satisfactory browser, but in the totem pole of what works on most webpages, Safari must be near the bottom behind Firefox and IE.
Nice editing buttons that the book claims exist, do not. So I am forced (forced!) to look up documentation on Blogger's website to find out why I am not enjoying the healthy Blogger experience I should be. It occurs to me that they could tell me, with a handy link that you're frickin tabs don't work, but no, they don't want to inform me that I might be lacking something when I clearly know that I am!
I am running this on Firefox, as we speak (or write, or read), and my tabs are available to me so I can italicize or bold or frickin add a link. I tell you it's nice to have these editing features and to finally figure out that I needed Firefox to get them, but what a pain it was to find this information.
So I implore all you web developers to take the Dave's Dad Test (I'm sure you're wondering "Am I possibly the Dave being referred to here?" If you have doubts--if you just asked that question, you're not the Dave I'm talking about). Dave's papa, so he tells me, is the most technically-challenged individual since Shamu the Whale (and his dad, presumably, has opposable thumbs). Have him try it out! Heck, have me try it out. I'll tell you what I don't like.
And this, my friends, is why it's dangerous to write rants. You (meaning me) get in a surly mood, when you should be happy that it's Memorial Day, when the sun is out, the food is grillin, and it's a day off to ponder why we sent troops overseas.
I know, some day, we will look back at today and wonder "Boy, we really didn't know how to write software!". To be fair, it's a difficult, daunting task, and I don't envy anyone who has to do it for a living.
Oh dear! I have to do this for a living!
Take care, boys and girls. Drive safely, and imbibe with restraint.
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