An Anti-Ode

Let me preface this with a caveat: I am not a professional webdesigner. At best, I’m an enthusiastic amateur. I don’t ever want to be more than that; I actually have a lot of sympathy for people who do that kind of work, and deal with the kind of muppets they need to. Really, really truly.

However.

We’re currently in the process of a rebranding at work, and the website (which is in desperate need of it) is part of that project. The whole thing has been dragged out for an awfully long time, and at this point, I’m not sure whether the fault for that is with us or with the company we’ve engaged to do the work. Either way, it’s ridiculous.

Finally, however, we have a working mock-up of what the new website will look like, which has been handed over to us for approval.

And it looks good.

Except…

It uses dropdown menus, which is fine, but only if they’re done well. They’re… not. I haven’t looked into the code to see how they’ve done them, but whatever method they’ve used, the submenus tend to disappear before one can actually click on them: as soon as your mouse is not hovering over the top-level menu, they’re gone. Most of the time, but not always, leaving me utterly confused. And if I’m struggling…

Moreover, not everything lines up perfectly when you’re using, for example, Chrome. Isn’t cross-browser testing standard these days?

And then there’s the problem that the design breaks when viewed on a mobile device. I can only assume they’re intending to create a second version of the site that is mobile friendly, and simply haven’t done so yet… but since they’re supposedly about ready to hand it all over to us, I’m not sure.

Validation fail

Validation fail

It certainly doesn’t pass W3C validation checks. (Admittedly, neither does this blog, but I didn’t design it, and I’m still intending to go through and try and fix it, because that annoys me.)

I get so tired of sloppy webdesign. So tired of websites that don’t work in all (modern) browsers.

It really shouldn’t be this hard.

/rant.

Attempt at a blog, #2838923812.5

I am not good at blogging.

Every few years, on average, I create a new blog. For a while, I post regularly, regaling my (non-existent) readership with (supposedly) funny and interesting stories about my life. I plan out new entries in my head, and get excited about the words I’m going to use, the phrasing.

And then I start getting bad at actually writing down the head-planned entries.

And then I stop even thinking about it.

Before you know it, the blog is dead, dead, dead, and I’ve gotten embarrassed, shut up shop, and gone away.

I really did used to be better about it. I wrote an online journal for many years; I even met my boyfriend through writing it. Later, I started using livejournal more often, relieved at the ability to show posts to only certain people. As time went on, though, I posted to it less and less.

And anyway, there’s something more satisfying about having a blog that you have complete control over. I love wordpress. I can’t begin to count the amount of installations I’ve set up over the years. Before that, there was MovableType, and Greymatter, and…

I have a blog problem.

And here I am, once more, writing a first post and feeling hopeful.

Yeah. Right.