Second Salvaged Post

Here's the second post I was able to salvage from the kiddie onslaught.

> Well, I was surprised after that exchange to find
> that some details like "perfect liquid" were pretty
> much just like ED described...ED is grotesquely
> exagerrated, but most of the personal pages seem
> to have a root of truth. With your own admission of
> being a braggart, it's very easy to believe you've
> come across as "God's gift" to some community
> somewhere.

The problem I usually have is that by comparison to people who aren't web developers, or people who are just amateur web developers, I am sort of "God's gift"...compared to them. Where as compared to actual professionals I'm generally just considered a top level developer.

The other problem is that most people who aren't web developers, or people who are amateur developers often have a whole freakin slew of misconceptions and misunderstandings on a whole variety of levels when it comes to designing and coding websites. Often times these amateurs will believe they're right, even if solid evidence is provided to the contrary (often because they're Hatter Addicts who simply cannot concede that I'm right about anything). And of course their abortions of critiques are often done in an invective style, so then likewise my educating them proper is done in an equally invective style. I believe that's largely where the whole "God's gift to web development" mentality comes from. Certainly I have never claimed as such. The most I've ever claimed is that I'm a top level web developer, but that's hardly a unique position, it's shared by several hundred other people and the number continues to grow daily.

> It kind of does!

I never said it didn't. You took what I said out of context. What's screwed up is the fact that they don't think they should deserve invective attacks in return to THEIR invective attacks. Basically it's like they think they should be able to attack you (for whatever reason or justification) but then you shouldn't be able to attack them in return. It's that high school level, double standard mentality that just makes them look like complete retards and it's one of the primary reasons why I just can't ever get along with groups that are infested with a kiddie population. The adults won't do it, but the kiddies...oh they won't even think twice about running off at the mouth and not considering the consequences. Adults will consider the consequences to flaming BEFORE they try it, and as such are usually more reserved, knowing that they'll just get it right back. Tweenagers on the other hand often act on emotions and hormones without the benefit of intellect and experience, running at the mouth, often about shit they know next to nothing about and then completely blow up when suddenly they get hammered back with their own attempted attacks.

> It's, you know, not the way you
> approach a community you're not a part of. Like on
> Usenet -- you lurk, you make a post, on-topic, with
> the spirit of whatever group you're, another post,
> you establish your credentials, you build a
> reputation.

I've seen this a lot on the web over the past decade, the whole "lurk before you post"...*shakes head*...it normally doesn't matter. Lurking is generally only needed for people who have never been online before and don't understand very basic netiquette. For anyone else lurking isn't going to get you anything other than various people whining when you make your first post that you need to lurk even more. Basically those types, again often tweenagers, really don't want *ANYONE* new posting to the group. They don't like change and they'll reject any new users right off the bat, often using completely inane excuses and incoherent reasoning.

Here's a ~lovely~ example I saw on PoE a few days ago.

A bunch of regs just started hammering on this guy over the most retarded, nitpicky, inconsequential shit imaginable...to the point where finally one reg spoke up in the guys defense here.


> I see some of your points but you can't
> totally disclaim responsibility, and blame it ALL on
> people you have a history with on other sites.

Oh, I don't. I also blame tweenagers and those with tweenage mentalities. ^__^

The kiddie population *REALLY* doesn't like me much...not that I can really blame them too much, I mean they are one of my favorite flaming subjects:
http://www.backwater-productions.net/_images/_Scraps/Fauxpic_-_6.jpg

> But saying "ignore me, I might be acting like a
> delusional dickweed" really doesn't excuse acting
> like an delusional dickweed.

I never said it did, what I said was that if you're going to "play" you should be expecting a return round and that it just makes you look like a complete fuckin retard to start whining and pissing your training panties in frustration over it when you get hammered back. Granted I suppose a lot of the kiddies aren't used to losing so horribly in an invective, verbal fight. As I said before, most adults don't play so much on that level, it's normally just invective word artists like myself and then the kiddies or those with a kiddies mentality who play. As such when a kiddie faces up against someone like me, well...they lose pretty badly. And then afterwards, because they lost, they start getting all indignant and pissy over it.

> For some reason switching to IE let me see the yoga
> site and I gotta side with Tulpa on this one. I don't
> think the Yoga site was doing anything that you
> wouldn't expect future versions of Flash to support -
> they're pretty good about backwards compatability,
> and I would expect a professional site to be
> reasonably future proof and use simple "this version
> or greater" logic.

Well, a few things here. One, the purpose of that site was to provide itself as a PROTOTYPE example, it's *NOT* a finished product, not by any means. That prototype was for 2005 and was never intended for any future use. Two, the script was actually designed to detect up to Flash 10, and works perfectly on my version of Firefox and IE, which both have Flash 10, so basically that means there's a problem on your end. Are you using Vista? Or a newer version of the Mac OS? At the time Vista didn't exist, so the script wasn't ever tested on it and it was only tested on Mac OS versions up to that time period. Of course the problem might also exist with Firefox itself, newer versions than I'm using, rather than the OS, as you said the site worked fine on IE. That sort of thing happens on occasion, often because of poor program development and as I'm not Miss Cleo there's no way I can do anything about it until someone pipes up and mentions it. Certainly I'm not constantly checking every single script on every single site I have on every single new browser and OS version that gets released, that would just be stupid. Generally it falls on the browser and OS developers to keep their shit backwards compatible, so likely in this case it's the developers of Firefox that have screwed the pooch...ASSuming of course you both weren't messing around with the programs default settings and messed something up. I always only test on a browsers default configuration, so if you've been monkeying around with settings that you shouldn't have been messing with then it might not work right.

> Here's something that can't be done in Flash: work
> on my fuckin' iPhone.

Flash works perfectly on the iPhone...the versions of it that were specifically developed *FOR* the iPhone. As I said before in that other reply, an iPhone and a personal computer are two ENTIRELY separate technologies. The fact that they can both access the Internet does not make them identical or anywhere even remotely on the same level. This is why the .mobi domain extension was introduced, so you could build SEPERATE websites specifically for iPhones and other small portable devices. Complaining that you can't see a particular website on your iPhone is like complaining that you can't play a Wii game on your Gameboy. They are two entirely separate things that run off entirely separate technologies.

> But almost nothing you list is that important for
> functional, useful, usable websites.

o_O

Wow...just...WOW! I figured out in that last post that you weren't an actual web developer, so my question now is...why are you pretending to be one? Nearly *EVERY* single thing on that list was of ABSOLUTE importance to web development in this day in age. Granted if you're an AMATEUR web developer who isn't going to be making websites that do anything beyond the capabilities of HTML v2 then that list might not seem so important, but to PROFESIONAL web developers that list is of the utmost importance.

> A. But I'll bet you for those 20 things you listed, the
> size goes up, up, up. That a single toy page is a bit
> smaller than an HTML equivalent doesn't matter so
> much, it's that Flash sites, to make themselves feel
> worthwhile, tend to throw in LOTS of shit

LOL, this is funny because it started out the other way around, with people claiming that on basic websites Flash was bloatier. Don't worry, I've got examples for bitch slapping both ends of the spectrum. I'll refer you to nyah.

Which was featured here.

His version of the site was 1 MEGABYTE in total site size.

My version is 176 Kilobytes in total site size.

I've also got an open challenge to anyone who wants to try and design a website that would be bloatier in Flash than straight HTML. So far every person who has taken the challenge has lost...miserably. Flash is *VASTLY* superior to HTML is *EVERY* way, there just isn't any getting around it.

The only argument you could come up with, and it looks like you have, is that a lot of people who make Flash sites tend to throw in a bunch of useless, bloaty garbage...however that's not a deficiency of the technology, that's a deficiency of the developers...or rather amateur developers. It's no secret that the vast majority of web content is either outright amateur crap, or professionally made cookie cutter forms (like Blogger, Geoshities and the like). Not to mention the hundreds, possibly even thousands of cookie cutter website templates that are now available. Again produced usually by professionals for non-professional use.

A lot of companies are really getting burned because a lot of amateurs will just take those templates, make a couple really basic changes and then try and pass them off as their own in their portfolios. Companies that don't know any better then get duped into hiring such an individual for a job, sometimes freelance work, sometimes a real web development position. Of course they often have no real level of skill outside of using cookie cutter forms and spaghetti bitching other people's code and as such usually wind up just creating complete crap for their employers, and in some cases it really winds up costing the business a lot of money. In some instances of template use there have even been lawsuits, where one company accuses another company of "stealing" their website, when what really happened was that the company suing just got duped by an amateur who promised original content and instead just gave them a cookie cutter template. Similar problems have arisen from those $50 cookie cutter logo sites. You need to be very careful in this day in age when hiring web developers, because it's *SO* very easy for an amateur to pass themselves off as a professional, especially if you yourself don't really understand very much about website development.

> B. The typical Flash site will be a bitch to get SEO on.
> Even if Google is search SWF files, or looking at
> metakeywords, you're like at a severe disadvantage.

Again, not a deficiency of the technology but a deficiency of the developer. As I mentioned in the previous post it's very easy to use URI variables to control navigation to specific parts of a Flash file (or you could simply use multiple Flash files on multiple pages, that'd be the easiest way). Google and other search engines also have no problem at all parsing all the text content out of a Flash file, however most search engines go by metatags first, which obviously you'll still have (at least at this point). So really, you're not at any kind of disadvantage at all. If you were really paranoid about it though you could do what I do on my main Backwater site, where I have a plain text fallback version of the website for people who are blind and for search engine bots. It takes hardly any effort at all to create a plain text fall back version of your site, which can also be handy for those trying to surf the Internet on mobile, palm computing devices.