When not using IE + nothing sucks

Clare and siblings have supposedly finally set up their webcomic on keenspace. Except for one problem, on my end. Keenspace is being a complete bitch to me. (excuse my language. no other way to express it.) First off, nothing shows up, which i figure out is becuause of settings that need to be changed for keenspace on Norton's firewall software. Easy enough; i've done it before. (But you'd think they'd be smart enough to build a system that didn't require that. It's been only the second time I've had to make that change, and the first site had an excuse for doing it.)

So I change the settings, and everything shows up but the comics themselves. And i get aggrivated, and start posting to my blog. Before I remember to check IE to see if it's a compatabiltiy problem that's the culprit. Which I shall check now.

*insert Jeopardy music*

ohhhhkay now. I'm getting the alt text in firefox, and the box-with-red-x in IE. so it's not compatability that's the problem. But oh well. I get the feeling it's not me and my system that's the problem, so it'll probably get cleared up eventually.

*shifting gears to more general rant*

I am completely sick of web designers not creating pages geared toward any sort of web standards. You want to use tables? Fine. That'll create lots of problems on your end eventually, but that doesn't really apply to me. I'm just completely sick of sites creating stuff that assumes that the whole audience is using IE. And even some big corporate sites don't support, or semi-support any other browsers (think: Yahoo). Look at magicthegathering.com in FireFox for a prime example of why IE-only based design sucks. IT'S NOT THAT FREAKING HARD, PEOPLE! Designers should stop ignoring FF, Safari, Mozilla, etc. (especially now that FF has 5% of the browser market), and start ignoring IE v5.0 (whereas IE v6.0 can be changed from quirks mode to compliance mode with a correct doctype declaration).

I am completely sick of sites that use PDF where HTML/CSS/Whatever would do just fine. PDF is for print. And only print. I don't wanna go on and on on this, so here's an article on why PDF used for web pages is just wrong.

I am completely sick of sites that require the use of IE to access them. This is quickly disappearing. Thank god.

I am completely sick of sites that use those ads that use flash/etc. to animate and cover up the information that you want to make you pay attention to them. (I forget what they are called.) They are just as bad as popups, and need much more extreme precautions to block. (Think FireFox extension goodness hooray for the mozilla foundation w00t.) Now, I don't have anything against ads on web pages. (Remind me sometime to blog about why I think adblockers are bad.)

I am completely sick of sites that are just one freaking huge advertisement to try to get me to buy x book or y software when what I really want is information.

I am completely sick of having to rant on and on about websites that suck.