Technical problems

Annoyed today by news that buttons on my site don't work in PC version of explorer. I've been developing the site in Firefox on my Mac, but have been careful to check that everything also worked in Safari, Explorer and Chrome, but it now appears that the buttons only work in the Mac version of Explorer, but not the PC version. Stupid PCs. Why can't the world just use Macs?

So back to the drawing board. Wish I'd found the problem before building 31 different pages all using the same nonfunctional structures -- looks like I'll have to recode something on the order of 300 links before they will work for Explorer PC.

I still code everything by hand. It makes for tiny files that load instantly, and they are (usually) compatible with everything because I keep things basic. Given the purpose of the site, SFeditor.ca doesn't require flash or java or anything very sophisticated, just plain old text. And they are similarly easy to maintain and update. And if something goes wrong, it is usually easy for me to figure out because I know what all the code I wrote does. Using something like Dreamweaver never really worked that well for me because when the program did something unexpected, one can never really figure out what the hell the software thinks it's doing.

I have noticed a trend to try to make many of the commands I use obsolete and to make web building more complex so that the professionals can exclude the kid in their parent's basement from competing. A classic example of Ivan Illich's deskilling hypothesis. But most of what I've written over the years is still up and still viewable even in the latest browsers, so I'm still good. [My site on test design still gets 600-900 hits a month a good decade after I last touched it; my curriculum site on the Acadians still gets about 2,500 grade 2 students (or about 100 Grade 2 classrooms) a year using it, so I'm pretty pleased with that.]

Anyway, back to re-coding.