____Pondbrain___________________
021 . iPhone / iPad / iPod rage time.
So... I've done web development and graphic design over the years. This is probably already known. Yes yes, I don't use flash. Let me very briefly touch on why. Do you know about viruses/trojans? The most effective way since the late 90s to drop those by on people's computers has been flash/shockwave. Why, you may ask? Because the very nature of those files is an archive with the shit it needs to operate inside. That's the beef and gravy usually. Sure, many can act like HTML files and pull shit from elsewhere to display as well. Many don't. Many house all the sound and graphics and animations inside and it's extracted and played on your computer thusly. Slipping any virus or trojan in there is child's play.
Yes. All those animated and interractive ads you see easily can have viruses in them. BUT I HAVE A SCANNER HURP DURP DERPY. Yes. Every one of those scans for known things. What if it's unknown? Won't know it's there 'till it gets updated.
Thus, myself, like most intelligent computer users.... have such things blocked from ever being downloaded to their computers unless the site is trusted. This is why I don't use it on my sites. Yes yes, that makes it less flashy and shit. That's fine. I don't expect people to extend that level of trust to a nobody website they are just accessing to get info on a tiny part of a massive game on an even tinier corner of the internet.
Now that we've gotten that typed out, to the reason this entry was made to begin with.
iWare. I will say iWare, as that should obviously include iPhones, iPods and iPads. and any other iThing they fucking come up with from here to eternity because I'm sure it'll continue to be problematic. Over the years of these different projects, some even with flash / shockwave segments.... the biggest problem has always been, by far, making sure shit fucking works on iWare. Granted, years back the shit didn't exist. and I wish it didn't. Harsh? Keep reading.
So this time I'm working on http://symphonyofnoise.com - a new version of the website for my musical project. Simple. Been thinking about it a long time and have been fucking around with ways to do navigation and graphics and display.... Never really happy with autostretch shit... so I was returning to the anchoring to the top left again. Really simple shit. Damn easy to design. Decided to put all the shit you see on the background image and put a clear transparency over it for linking. Makes it a fuckload easier to control file size. Whole page in an image. Very simple. Much easier to save yourself from OH FUCK THAT PAGE TOTAL LOAD BREAKS 6MB? Yeah. I do that shit all the time not realizing it. Sorry, I like image quality and usually that comes with size.
So I test it on Chrome, Internet Explorer 7, 8, 9 (2 laptops and a desktop, baby.) - Firefox. Safari. Opera. Then I test it on a few browsers on a damn nice samsung galaxy droid and on an old ass droid i dont even remember what model it is.. i make sure it works across the board before i go full development.
The week before launch I had a few dozen people check the site out. All but three said it worked flawlessly. The one who didn't said it didn't work in Chrome and since I had no idea where to begin trying to troubleshoot it mixed with them clearly not having technical knowledge.... I let it go. The two I found out both were using iPhones. Angry but not willing to push the launch date back I let it go. One of the two said he had a different browser than Safari that loaded it fine. Pissed me off PC version of Safari worked fine but iWare version didn't. Let that go too.
Launch. Within four hours I had reports from multiple people that the site didn't work on iPods/iPhones/iPads. Worked on all the people I had try it on Macbooks and full blown Macs. even iMacs. so iMacs don't get my hate today. NOT TODAY. Tomorrow probably.
Spent quite a while troubleshooting and trying some different things on a page to see if I could find a decently easy fix without having to rework the entire site. Was already working on a mobile version of the site so I had some ideas of what I could do to make it work. None of the ideas worked for the idea I went with as far as the navigation and links on a transparent overlay.
So the rest of the 1st and 2nd was me being pretty much fully enraged about this. Took the 2nd off because if I didn't I was worried I would say fuck it to the entire web side of that project for the forseeable future. Went to bed a bit before midnight and woke up out of a dead sleep and knew exactly what I was going to do.
So the above image is going to be / is the splash image for mobile phones when they get to the site. I think it's totally fucking fair to single them out considering that's the one single mobile type system that doesn't fucking work. So as I write this I'm developing a special mobile site just for those motherfucking units. And I don't feel guilty, they're lucky I'm doing fucking shit to make a version of the site for them at all.
Don't get me wrong, it's not totally about the users. It's not totally about crApple either. If the fucking devlopers, and myself included, continue silently bending over and breaking ourselves redoing shit over and over to make shit work on their fucked up systems...... it wont stop.
I really shouldn't be making that side of the site. But It's not going to look like the rest of the site. I'm not even putting any graphics on there. Pretty much a fucking basic ass version of the site with no graphics really and only audio to download and the basic text shit. Wont even be a fucking download section. Only downloads from the Discography section. Making just the vent pages there. Fuck it.
A comment I posted on facebook reflects how I feel about this pretty accurately. Better than the post above this.
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Erik Smith
it's still painful for me.....
*repeat*
because HOW THE FUCK DOES SOMETHING SO SIMPLE WORK ON EVERY MOTHER FUCKING POSSIBLE PLATFORM ACROSS THE FUCKING BOARD BUT FUCKING iWARE AND FUCKING iWARE HAS SUCH NARROW WAYS TO MAKE SOMETHING FUCKING WORK THAT TAKES A FUCKLOAD OF FUCKING EXTRA MOTHERFUCKING TIME BESIDES FUCKING JUST WORKING NORMALLY LIKE EVERY OTHER COMPUTER AND CONSOLE AND HANDHELD THAT HAS A WEB BROWSER FUCK YOU APPLE, FUCK YOU WITH A BRICK WHICH HAS GLASS SHARDS STICKING OUT OF IT WITHOUT LUBE WITH FORCE WITH RAGE FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU
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