Wow, these seem to be becoming a semi-regular feature. Although, it is a rant at a similar thing as my last post.
I have been working with that website (see last post) on and off for a couple of weeks. I started with a couple of days sorting out the drop down menus they had requested, which took ages. It looks great and works well. The I have had very little but the odd bug fix to do.
Today at 1730, I get an email from the woman in charge. She is concerned it isn't picking up settings from the menu control section. Fair enough.
WAIT! WHAT? Menu control system? This was not mentioned when she was showing me the system! This was not in her brief! I look into it a little and discover that the CMS has a system for setting up menus and displaying them. It would seem she wants to be able to continue to use this system. While that is a reasonable desire, it isn't really possible with the new menus. Ah well, I can talk to her tomorrow and try and sort it out.
No, no I can't. She is on a long weekend. Oh yay. No contact until she is back. At least she will be back by Tuesday, that isn't too long. She said it was going live the folowing week. Plenty of time.
Try again. It goes live Tuesday. This sodding Tuesday. I have just had a new (and probably impossible) requirement added on, and a week of time to implement it taken off. I had heard the horror stories of doing jobs like this, I hadn't realised how likely it was to happen to me. I don't even know that it is a good idea to just give instructions on how to use the new set up. I don't know that I trust her to not mess that up. I might have to try and do something else. I have no idea what, but there must be something.
Damn you Marketing.
Thursday, 20 August 2009
Saturday, 15 August 2009
A Rant at [removed]
This is a rant. It is a rant at the designers of a CMS system. It is a rant at CSS implementation (or possibly specification). It is a rant to try and make me think...
I am currently assisting in a web page redesign for the Students' Union. My role is to make it all work in a browser. They give me a design and I implement it. I suppose you could call me a web developer.
The SU uses a Content Management System by a company called [name removed to protect the guilty]. It contains a number of widgets for things like upcoming events, photo galleries and news. These are all wonderful widgets, and all extremely useful in helping people to design, build and manage a website. Along with the built in WYSIWYG editor, any fool can keep it running. Unfortunately, as soon as you try and do anything complex, it starts to get in the way.
To start with, it has a set of templates which it applies to each page. Perfectly reasonable way of doing it, allows somebody to set up an overall page design and others can just edit the content. All nice and dandy. Until you realise that it adds in stylesheets needed for the widgets automatically. Still good, until you realise you cannot edit them using any of the online interfaces. Starting to sound a little dodgy?
How about once you realise that the widget that displays the list of news uses floated divs for positioning of each headline? Is this sounding at all like it might be a poor idea?
My main problem is this: I want to be able to position the news widget as the 3rd column in a 3 column layout. To acheive this layout, I am using floated divs, as there are other elements that they need to interact with so I can't give them an absolute position. The news widget places the equivilent of <div style="clear: both;"></div> after every news item. So everything after item 1 drops down to below the rest of the content. I have no way to change the widget, and I cannot change the stylesheet as other (automatically placed) elements in the page rely upon it. This leaves me with a problem.
The only solution I can see is using an absolute position, and hoping it doesn't screw up. But for something that should just work, this is a horrible solution.
I hate this damn system.
I am currently assisting in a web page redesign for the Students' Union. My role is to make it all work in a browser. They give me a design and I implement it. I suppose you could call me a web developer.
The SU uses a Content Management System by a company called [name removed to protect the guilty]. It contains a number of widgets for things like upcoming events, photo galleries and news. These are all wonderful widgets, and all extremely useful in helping people to design, build and manage a website. Along with the built in WYSIWYG editor, any fool can keep it running. Unfortunately, as soon as you try and do anything complex, it starts to get in the way.
To start with, it has a set of templates which it applies to each page. Perfectly reasonable way of doing it, allows somebody to set up an overall page design and others can just edit the content. All nice and dandy. Until you realise that it adds in stylesheets needed for the widgets automatically. Still good, until you realise you cannot edit them using any of the online interfaces. Starting to sound a little dodgy?
How about once you realise that the widget that displays the list of news uses floated divs for positioning of each headline? Is this sounding at all like it might be a poor idea?
My main problem is this: I want to be able to position the news widget as the 3rd column in a 3 column layout. To acheive this layout, I am using floated divs, as there are other elements that they need to interact with so I can't give them an absolute position. The news widget places the equivilent of <div style="clear: both;"></div> after every news item. So everything after item 1 drops down to below the rest of the content. I have no way to change the widget, and I cannot change the stylesheet as other (automatically placed) elements in the page rely upon it. This leaves me with a problem.
The only solution I can see is using an absolute position, and hoping it doesn't screw up. But for something that should just work, this is a horrible solution.
I hate this damn system.
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Me & Her
The important one in my life decided to compare our blogs recently... Here are her word clouds.
Life in General
Well, life is good at the moment for me. Well almost good. My contract for my accommodation is coming to an end in a couple of days. That means I am having to go home. Luckily this is only and hour away, and I can drive here. However, this is an hour away from somebody I would much rather be much closer to. We have agreed to meet in the middle, but it will, but it wont be the same. All we can do is try and make the best of it.
It has just occurred to me that I have not got as many pictures of this special person as I would like. I know she is a little camera shy, but I need to bug her for some more. I love having pictures of loved ones to look at, and raiding facebook isn't quite the same for some reason. It isn't so bad when you get to see people pretty much daily, but when there is a little distance, a picture if nice.
Anyway, ending this stream of consciousness (slightly self indulgent) ramble now... I need to pack stuff up and do some work or something other than ramble on on here...
It has just occurred to me that I have not got as many pictures of this special person as I would like. I know she is a little camera shy, but I need to bug her for some more. I love having pictures of loved ones to look at, and raiding facebook isn't quite the same for some reason. It isn't so bad when you get to see people pretty much daily, but when there is a little distance, a picture if nice.
Anyway, ending this stream of consciousness (slightly self indulgent) ramble now... I need to pack stuff up and do some work or something other than ramble on on here...
I found religion!
Just to start this, I am an atheist. Have been for a long time, however, I seem to have found the joy of religion. Not quite the whole worshiping the lord thing, that still kinda creeps me out. More the "Creationists say the funniest things" brand of joy.
This probably isn't the healthiest way to enjoy religion, and is definitely not the way they would like you to enjoy it. But it is fun nonetheless. People like "Dr"[1] Kent Hovind, come out with some pretty outlandish statements, which even a primate could apply reasonable thinking to and realise there could be a problem (check out the age of the earth, or even his views on dinosaurs)...
The counter argument is given by pretty much the entire scientific establishment, with Richard Dawkins being amongst the most noticable (watch "The Root of all Evil"{4oD}, the look on his face is incredible at times, along the lines of "WTF are these people thinking?").
Anyway, as I said at the start, not healthy, but fun and kinda time killing.
[1] The "Dr" is in quotes because there are some grounds to dispute that.
This probably isn't the healthiest way to enjoy religion, and is definitely not the way they would like you to enjoy it. But it is fun nonetheless. People like "Dr"[1] Kent Hovind, come out with some pretty outlandish statements, which even a primate could apply reasonable thinking to and realise there could be a problem (check out the age of the earth, or even his views on dinosaurs)...
The counter argument is given by pretty much the entire scientific establishment, with Richard Dawkins being amongst the most noticable (watch "The Root of all Evil"{4oD}, the look on his face is incredible at times, along the lines of "WTF are these people thinking?").
Anyway, as I said at the start, not healthy, but fun and kinda time killing.
[1] The "Dr" is in quotes because there are some grounds to dispute that.
Friday, 17 April 2009
Countdown to worry
It seems to be the lead up to exam season again. Hence the additional post(s) to the blog. There may or may not be more, depending on how badly I start to worry about my exams. I expect the worry to start in about 2-3 weeks time...
In other news, I have fired off an application to be Station Manager for the campus radio station. Updates will appear on that as and when they appear...
In other news, I have fired off an application to be Station Manager for the campus radio station. Updates will appear on that as and when they appear...
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Freecycle
I have just been taken on a trip all around town to collect free laptops.
The laptops are courtesy of a selection of random strangers who have no use for them any more. As they have no use, they are giving them away to people who will have a use for them. It isn't only laptops that people do this for. They do it for pretty much anything that people think might have a use for. It seems like quite a good idea, rather than contribute to the massive amount of waste we generate, why not freecycle stuff?
The laptops are courtesy of a selection of random strangers who have no use for them any more. As they have no use, they are giving them away to people who will have a use for them. It isn't only laptops that people do this for. They do it for pretty much anything that people think might have a use for. It seems like quite a good idea, rather than contribute to the massive amount of waste we generate, why not freecycle stuff?
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