RasterWeb!

I’ve seen a few sites that try to “help” you find your way when you get lost… If you happen to request a page that does not exist, you get a 404 error, which means “Not Found.” The typical response (or at least I think it is) is to present this information to a user, and perhaps provide links to the home page of the site, or a sitemap, or a search box, or something of use, but I’ve seen sites that use a meta refresh to whisk you off to the home page after a few seconds. As the old saying goes “this is broken.”

The first problem is, I may never see this error in time. I often load pages into the background, into new tabs, and by the time I view the page, the message about not finding what I’m looking for, and being automatically redirected to the home page, is gone and I’m at the site’s root, and I don’t know why. Bad.

Bad number two, is that in some cases I can no longer see the URL of the page I requested. I’ve even seen a few sites that seem to redirect the 404 to a page that does not maintain the URL you requested, so you lose that information. I don’t care for that either.

(Don’t even get me started on sites that send you a 200 OK status code with a page that says 404 Not Found because that’s so backwards it makes my head hurt…)

(A good browser should allow you to disable the meta refresh “feature.”)

First Macromedia bought Allaire, and now Adobe is buying Macromedia.

First off, I really wish I could have convinced someone to choose PHP instead of ColdFusion 5 years ago when building a web application I still, to this very day, have to fight with… Really. I really do.

Second, as brought up at What Do I Know, what does this mean for SVG now that Adobe will have all that Flash-mojo under it’s belt? (Note: I am very pro-SVG, and somewhat anti-Flash…)

Once again, this should aid to illustrate why I am so in favor of open-source software and open standards… Sigh… at least things are never boring.

Are you in this photo? Know anybody in this photo?

If you do, please leave a comment or note pointing out who is who… Thanks!

I an teh lame and slowness, but I finally updated the Where Are They Now page.

Updates came from Kathy Belan (aka “dug belan’s sister”), Dan Gatewood, Jason Tertadian, Jay Geils, and a really old one from Julie German that I almost missed… (Thanks everyone!)

There’s been talk of a “Where Are They Now” party sometime in June, so if you’re interested, let me know…

Ok folks, you remember the last time, Wifi Adventure #3 right? Time for a new installment…

One of my neighbors asked me to come over and help them figure out wifi on their new Dell laptop. They told me they could see a few networks, but could not connect to them. Yes, it’s a Windows machine, and I still said I’d help. (This is the sign of a true friend, because if I am not really your friend, I won’t try to help you with Windows.)

So I get there and we stumble through the dialogs in Windows, and eventually I ask where their “wireless access point” was located. This confused them, so I asked where their “router” was located. This confused them again. I then realize they have neither. Oh, they do have a cable modem, it’s plugged into another Dell that sits on a desk. Ah, I get it…

See, they are about to take a trip, and want to be able to log in from cafe’s with wifi, etc. So, they just plugged in the card and tried to join a network. Mine showed up, but since I use encryption (and the signal was too weak) they couldn’t join it. We also saw the network named “linksys” which we (still) assume is another neighbor, but it seems that they’ve since protected their network as well. (See Wifi Adventure #2 and Wifi Adventure #3)

I told them everything appeared to be working, they just needed an open network to connect to.

On a sidenote, my neighbor also said that he’s bought 5 computers from Dell, and he completely, with all his might, hates Dell. I’m working on turning them into “switchers” every time I help them with Windows…