Tiny Pineapple

The folks at Google News really need to work on displaying the correct photo with the correct headline.

My friend, Dan, who for some reason is incapable of inviting me to lunch (though that has nothing to do with this particular story), recently got a T-Mobile Sidekick.

The Sidekick is an OEM version of Danger’s hiptop communicator, a funky PDA/phone combo with a full QWERTY keyboard. (It’s also available in Canada as the Fido hiptop.)

Soon after he got it, he called to tell me that when he viewed the Tiny Pineapple web site with the Sidekick’s web browser it was all messed up.

“Well, if by ‘all messed up’ you mean that it looks kind of plain, it’s designed that way. I hide the CSS stylesheet from brain-dead browsers, so what you’re seeing is the bare-bones HTML.”

“No,” he countered. “It’s not that. Everything in the first column is squished and the second column runs completely off the side of the screen. The same thing’s happening on my site, too.”

Well, so much for relying entirely on the @import restriction hack to hide CSS stylesheets from brain-dead browsers. It seems the Danger’s browser is smart enough to understand the @import directive, but not smart enough to know how dumb it is at handling layouts with fixed-width columns.

There was a bit of discussion about this problem back in October when the Sidekick was first introduced (Messrs. Dash and Lepera provided some good insights at the time), but there still doesn’t seem to be a decent, standards-based solution to the problem.

So, as painful as it is, I’ve had to resort to sniffing for the User Agent string so
Dan
can
view
the
site
without
it
looking
like
this
.

Just in case anyone’s interested, here’s the snippet of PHP code I’m using to hide the stylesheet from hiptop devices:

<?php if (strpos($_SERVER[‘HTTP_USER_AGENT’],’hiptop’) === false) { ?>
  <style type=”text/css” media=”all”>
    @import url(/style/tinypineapple.css);
  </style>
<?php } ?>

I got my Bush-Cheney 2004 Reelection Enticement Coupon (sometimes referred to as a “child tax credit refund check”) in the mail yesterday and, like the good little supply-side drone that I am, I headed out to Borders today to pump that money back into the economy by buying Jeffrey Zeldman’s “Designing With Web Standards.”

When I took it up to the cashier, the young lady behind the counter grabbed the book, took one look at its cover and asked, quite excitedly, “Is that Eminem!?!”

“No, I’m afraid not,” I replied. “It’s Zeldman.”

“Who?”

“Jeffrey Zeldman.”

“Oh,” she said, obviously disappointed with my answer. “With that hat, I thought it was Eminem…”

The hat notwithstanding, how in the world could you confuse Eminem with Jeffrey Zeldman? One is a chart-topping artist whose work has redefined an entire genre and who has rabid fans all around the world that will travel thousands of miles to see him whenever he makes an appearance; the other is a rapper.

But it got me thinking…

Zeldman

Zeldminem

My daughters have become sweepstakes monkeys.

We’ve taken to listening to Radio Disney in the car and right now they are in the middle of their Party Up with Hilary Duff Sweepstakes, the grand prize being “a VIP party invitation to help Hilary Duff celebrate her birthday and the release of her new album in Los Angeles, California!” Every day they announce a new Code Word of the Day on the air (yesterday’s was “music”) and if you go to the Radio Disney Web site and enter the correct Code Word of the Day you’ll be entered in the sweepstakes. So, the girls have been listening dutifully and we’ve been entering their Code Words of the Day each and every day.

Since this is the first sweepstakes they’ve ever entered, they were originally a little sketchy about how the whole thing works. After Emma had successfully entered her first Code Word of the Day, she looked up at me and said, “Does that mean I win?”

“Well, not exactly. We have to wait and see. A lot of people are going to be entering the contest. When the contest is over, they’ll pick one name out of all of the entries and that one person will win the prize.”

Emma thought about this for a little while and then looked up with a pained expression and asked, “But, Dad, what if someone else wins?”

“Well, I guess that’ll give you a taste of what life is really like then, won’t it? When it comes right down to it, you can type in Code Words of the Day from now until hell freezes over, but when little Ms. Duff takes a deep breath, makes that Lizzie Mcguire raised-eyebrows/hesitant/perplexed/exasperated face she does so well, and blows out those candles, you’ll be a thousand miles away crying into your Kraft Macaroni and Cheese because life isn’t fair. It’s nothing but an endless procession of dashed hopes, bitter disappointments, and un-won sweepstakes and the sooner you learn that little lesson, my dear, the better off you’ll be.”

At least, that’s what I was going to say, but what came out was, “Well, it’s fun to enter even if we don’t win. Besides, you’ve got just as good a chance as anyone else, and we’ll come back and submit a new entry every day. That’ll increase our chances of winning even more.”

So, that’s what we do. Every day. But the sweepstakes monkeys and I ran into a bit of a snag yesterday when we tried to expand our sweepstakes horizons. After Zoe had entered her Code Word of the Day we decided to hop over to the Pirates of the Caribbean Web site and while we were there we came across the Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl Sweepstakes. Being sweepstakes monkeys, we had to enter, but when we clicked on the appropriate link we got the following:

Sorry

You are not eligible to enter the
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of
the Black Pearl Sweepstakes.

That’s it. No explanation, no help…just “No!” The monkeys were not happy.

After thinking about it for a second, I was pretty sure I knew what the problem was, but I was surprised at how poorly they were handling that problem on the back end. You see, the Disney sites store your identity in a persistent cookie. This makes it possible for kids to go the Radio Disney site every day and enter their Code Word of the Day without having to re-log in every time they visit. That’s great if only one person is using the computer, but if you have two girls visiting the site on a regular basis, it’s going to get it wrong about 50% of the time.

In the case of the Get Off Your Duff Sweepstakes, it’s not that big a deal because they give you a chance to correct their incorrect assumption. After you type in the Code Word of the Day, you’ll see something like this:

RadioDisney.com Member Name: Zoe
Not this user? Click here to log in

If Emma’s the one who’s visiting this time, we just click on the link and it takes us to a login page where Emma can correctly identify herself.

But this is where the Pirates of the Caribbean site blows it. It’s smart enough to know that you have to be 18 or older to enter the sweepstakes. It’s smart enough to know that Zoe is only 5 years old. But it’s not smart enough to know that its assumption about Zoe’s identity might be wrong, it’s not smart enough to explain what that assumption is, and it’s not smart enough to give us the option of correcting a faulty assumption.

So, how did we solve this problem for the little monkeys? Well, there was certainly no way to solve the problem on the Pirates of the Caribbean site, so we went back to the Radio Disney site and this time, after typing in the Code Word of the Day, I tried logging in as myself. That generated the following message:

UH OH! TOO OLD!

Bad News: You’re just too old to win. You have to be 14 and under to win a prize on Radio Disney.

Good News: We love your company, so continue to listen, surf and hang out on RadioDisney.com!

I’ll admit that I may be a little hypersensitive because I just turned forty, but that “you’re just too old to win” line is a low blow…even if it’s true. But at least it knew who I was, so we went back to the Pirates of the Caribbean sweepstakes site and, sure enough:

Confirm the account information to make sure that we
are recording the correct information in the sweepstakes.

First Name:?Grettir
Email Address:?

Not this user? Click here to log in

Great. Now that there’s no problem, they’ll give me the chance to correct it.

As I’ve mentioned once before:

That’s always the danger of trying to be too clever when automating processes on the Web. You’re going to get it wrong occasionally, and if there’s no easy way for a user to recover from your unhelpful attempts to help, they’ll just get in the habit of visiting (and spending money on) sites that aren’t quite so clever

Disney’s sites are especially prone to this problem. Still flying under the long-defunct, now-meaningless go.com banner, they’re attempting to give you a seamless experience across all their web sites but, more often than not, they only succeed in creating persistent problems that dog you wherever you go.

I’ve been waiting for quite some time (patiently, mind you) for the folks at Disney to get their Web act together, but it’s becoming clear that they need some outside help. And, since I’ll be…um…”pursuing other career opportunities” at the end of September, I ought to give Mike a call. I’m sure we could come up with some mutually beneficial arrangement where he would pay me huge sums of money and in return I would keep the monkeys off his back.

I’ve always had a hate/hate relationship with Macromedia’s web site. On three different occasions I’ve gone to their online store, credit card in hand, wanting to buy their products….and on three different occasions they have steadfastly refused to sell me anything.

There is something about my credit card that their online store simply doesn’t like. This is the same credit card that I’ve used for every online purchase I’ve made for the past three years without incident. This is the same credit card that I have used to buy products from Adobe, their staunchest competitor. But they will have none of it.

Me: Hi, I’m trying to buy an upgrade copy of Macromedia Flash MX from your online store and it doesn’t seem to like my credit card. I’m a little pressed for time because I was hoping to purchase and download the product by the end of the day today. Today is the end of our fiscal quarter and I was just informed that there’s just enough money left in this quarter’s budget for me to buy the upgrade. The problem is that I need to have the product in hand by 5:00pm tonight so it can be counted against this quarter’s budget.

Them: I’d be happy to take your credit card information and ship you the product.

Me: That’s probably not going to work since I need the product today.

Them: You can visit our online store and download the product immediately.

Me: Well, I already tried that, but it won’t accept my credit card information. Can I just give you my credit card information and then go to the online store and download the product?

Them: No, that’s impossible. We aren’t connected to the online store in any way. All I can do is ship you the product.

Me: So there’s no way I can get the product by the end of the day today?

Them: Well, sir, like I mentioned before, you can go to our online store and download the product immediately.

Me: Well, like I mentioned before, that’s not working. Is there a number I can call to talk to someone at the online store?

Them: That would be this number, sir.

Me: But I thought you just said that you didn’t have any connection to the online store.

Them: We don’t, but we handle all of their phone calls.

Me: <pause> <click>

But despite their concerted effort to keep me as a non-customer, I have been able to circumvent their anti-purchasing systems long enough to become the owner of two of their products. Unfortunately, I still have to visit the Macromedia web site on occasion to check for product updates.

In fact, I went to their site last night to do just that. I remembered reading that Macromedia had recently redesigned its web site to use Flash technology almost exclusively. The redesign had caused a bit of a flap in the Mac community because it wouldn’t work with Apple’s new Safari browser, so I knew in advance (as a Safari user) that it was probably going to be an “interesting” experience. Sure enough, even though the home page loaded fine in Safari, as soon as I clicked on “Downloads” I was presented with a screen listing “Macromedia.com’s Site Requirements”:

You may not have everything you need to view certain sections of macromedia.com. To address issues with your browser or media preferences see below:

Please Use a Supported Browser

Your browser (Safari) is not supported by macromedia.com. For the best possible experience, please use the latest version of one of the following browsers:

• Microsoft Internet Explorer
• Netscape Navigator
• AOL

No offense, folks, but if I have to use AOL “for the best possible experience,” this is probably an experience not worth having.

Anyway, I killed Safari and launched Camino (ne Chimera) and pulled up the Macromedia site again. This time I didn’t get a message telling me to use a different browser. Instead, I didn’t get anything. It got to the the ever-popular “Assembling Interface Components…” portion of the end-user experience and froze. So, I exited out of Camino and pulled up Internet Explorer (ugh). By this time, I was getting rather anxious to see what I had been missing with the other browsers.

What I was missing was a lovely “Loading Navigation…” message, followed by that ever-popular “Assembling Interface Components…” tidbit, which lead in turn to the the crowd-pleasing “Processing Content…” pronouncement. While I appreciated them keeping me up to date on what was going on behind the curtain all that time, their real purpose was not to provide useful information to me, the end-user. How do I know? Because I’ve tried to fool people with those same “progress indicators” myself. “Progress indicators” are really just small, shiny objects meant to distract end-users from the fact that what they really came to see is still loading like molasses in the background. (This wouldn’t have been nearly so annoying if I had been using a dial-up connection, but I was at home using my semi-blazing-fast DSL connection.)

Finally, after over a minute of these highly-informative “nonprogress indicators,” I was presented with a simple list of the 15 Macromedia products for which I could download updates. (That’s right, a one minute wait for a list of products that could have been presented with 1200 bytes of HTML code.) I clicked on the Macromedia Flash MX link and I got another 30 seconds of “Processing Content…”, followed by a Macromedia ID login screen, followed by an Account Details screen, followed by a Survey screen, followed by a Communications Preference Screen.

Good grief! Three browsers, 10 minutes, and 58 mouse clicks later, I just wanted to get it over with. But wait…even though the banner at the top said I was in the “Downloads” area, the only downloads available were Macromedia’s free trials. So, I hit the Back button to wend my way back the way I came, but a single click on the back button took me clear back to the home page. I could have sworn I had to go through five rings of hell to get to where I was, but since it was obvious by this time that I was not on a “real” web site I probably shouldn’t have expected it to act like a “real” web site and let me follow my breadcrumbs back.

It didn’t matter at that point, anyway. I’d already given up. All I wanted was a simple download and I’d gone through three browsers, 10 minutes, and 59 mouse clicks just to not find it. I don’t have the time, bandwidth, or patience for rubbish like this. [Note: OK, I do have the time and bandwidth for rubbish like this, but still…]

Macromedia is trying very hard to convince web developers that old web standards just don’t cut it anymore. They believe that in order for the Internet to make the next quantum leap, web developers need to abandon the boring, static world of HTML and embrace the rich, immersive world of Flash technology. And what will we get in return? Apparently browser incompatibilities, usability nightmares, and glacial performance…in a proprietary format. Gee, where do I sign up? Oh, that’s right….I can’t. They won’t take my credit card.

http://maddog.weblogs.com/stories/storyReader$68

“I have seen one of the finest instances of user interface design ever, and I saw it in the men’s room at Schipol airport in Amsterdam.”

A few weeks ago they started getting a little too fancy over at the Moviefone Web site. For certain “featured” films they started using a graphic image where before there was a plain, boring, text link of the films title. These featured films were also moved to the top of the listings where they can get better exposure. Here’s part of a screenshot:

This has had some unintended consequences. Let’s just say I want to get show times for “Red Dragon.” This shouldn’t be too hard.

Problem #1: I pull up the Moviefone page that I have bookmarked and do a quick text search for “Red Dragon.” The search comes back negative. I’m pretty sure it’s playing, so I check my spelling and search again. Still, no dice.

Reason: Since the title of the film is no longer in plain text, it doesn’t show up on a search of the contents of the Web page.

Problem #2: So, I scroll down to the listing of the theater I want to go to. Since “Red Dragon” starts with an “R” I scroll to the end of the alphabetical listing. It isn’t there. The listing goes from “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” to “Signs.”

Reason: Films are no longer in alphabetical order. Or, rather, each theater listing has now been broken into two alphabetized lists, with the featured films being listed first followed by the rest of the films.

Problem #3: I try scanning the page visually. “Oh, look,” I say, “some film titles are showing up as images now. That’s kind of cool. Look, there’s a listing for ‘Red.’ I didn’t know they were re-releasing Krzysztof Kieslowski’s trilogy. I’ve gotta see ‘Blue’ in the theater when it comes out. I love that film. Wait, what was I looking for? Oh, that’s right. ‘Red Dragon.’ Where is that thing?”

Reason: I don’t think that anyone bothered to think about what these images would look like against the background colors used in the listing. As you can see in the screenshot above, the world “Dragon” almost disappears into the light blue background.

Problem #4: Maybe Moviefone is having problems. I know Apple’s Sherlock 3 has moving listings. I’ll pull it up and see if I can get show times from there. Uh, oh….wait a minute. There are four big blank spaces at the beginning of the list of films in Sherlock 3. That’s weird, but I’ll worry about that later. I’ll just scroll down to find “Red Dragon,” it’s gotta be near the end of the list. Nope, it’s not there. It must not have opened yet.

Reason: Moviefone obviously didn’t bother to tell its partners about the change because it broke some services like Apple’s Sherlock 3 that use Moviefone to get their information. Apple finally fixed this as of today, but for the past few weeks all of these so-called “featured” films’ titles didn’t show up at all in the movie listings in Sherlock 3. There was just a blank space where the title should be. If, out of curiosity, you clicked on one of these blank spaces you’d find information on one of the four “featured” films, but it would be a matter of trial and error to find the one you wanted.

I’m pretty sure that when the folks at AOL/Moviefone came up with this brilliant little revenue enhancement scheme, it seemed like a brilliant idea: Moviefone gets a new source of revenue and the studios get better exposure for films they want to push. It’s just that, if I had a movie I wanted to push, I probably wouldn’t be paying Moviefone to make it invisible.