• LEGO (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    "compromosing"?

    Get a brian, moran... ;-)

  • pong (unregistered) in reply to Math Penguin
    Math Penguin:
    As a web designer, things like this make me cringe.

    Seriously, what possible logic goes into something like this?

    Well, to start, the same logic that gets people smoking.

  • Manic Mailman (unregistered)

    I dunno about you, but when I visit marlboro.com I am in flavor country.

    Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

  • (cs)

    Why do I love this site?

    Sometimes I find myself stuck in a difficult design situation. If I'm not sure what the best way to go is, I'll often get frustrated and convince myself I'm an idiot for not knowing what to do.

    When I read couple of articles on WTF, my morale suddenly comes back and I feel like a freaking genius.

  • coyo (unregistered)

    What were they smoking???

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to krupa

    This was too tempting, so I went to http://www.quiltednorthern.com/. No accounts, but they actually have a "Store Locator" function on their site.

  • Under Construction (unregistered) in reply to krupa
    krupa:
    Even when I was smoking Marlboro cigarettes I wouldn't have spent so much energy trying to view their website. It's like creating a user account on a toilet-paper manufacturer's site.

    "But if I submit enough Squares, I can redeem them for Quilted Northern branded merchandise!"

    Therefore it's not a WTF: They don't care about their visitors and it's still better than an "under construction" picture.

  • (cs)

    Does anybody else get redirected to the mobile version of the site when using Firefox on Linux? Because it redirects me to: http://www.smokersignup.com/signup/mobile/ WTF?

  • (cs) in reply to Maurits
    Maurits:
    Technically, the "Refresh" header is non-standard, as is its <meta http-equiv> equivalent. </pedant>

    Let me introduce you to a concept known as the "de-facto standard": if every browser supports something, and it behaves the same way in all of them, does it really matter if it's written down on some official piece of paper somewhere?

  • (cs) in reply to d000hg
    d000hg:
    I want more follow-ups from classic WTFs. Where IS Paula for instance?

    I think the evidence from Microsoft is that she's working for them... Coming up with new classes for .Net, and documenting them (she's doubled he productivity).

  • pmv (unregistered) in reply to Lazy_wonko_Not_Logging_in
    Lazy_wonko_Not_Logging_in:
    pmv:
    This is truly a gem. Clearly Phillip Morris's cousin's brother's son took a class in Bizzaro Web Development. Either that or it was a spy from the Camel Cigarettes people.

    CAPTCHA: damnum (damn-um?)

    <annoying> Wouldn't his cousins brother also be his cousin? </annoying>

    Sorry.

    Hah! Made you post

  • esjr (unregistered) in reply to Maurits

    Technically : <pedant/>

  • Sam B (unregistered) in reply to Brent H.
    Brent H.:
    Sam B:
    <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="1; url=http://the/concept/of/this/tag/eludes/smokers" />

    Or how about response.redirect("http://go/someplace/else")?

    I think that's what is implied by the edit at the end of the article. IMHO, the real WTF is that they aren't redirecting with server code.

    Yes that's certainly a solution, but if you must do something client side, at least use a meta refresh tag. I mean, really. Even Google follows those.

  • Talis (unregistered) in reply to Smash King
    Smash King:
    It's almost as if they wanted to promote IE more than their own products. Are they in any way affiliated with Microsoft?

    If they try to sell cigarettes primarily to IE users, I'd expect them to work for e.g. Firefox. In the long run, their market share increases, as the number of IE users declines. ;-)

    Captcha: plaga - well, almost plague...

  • fruey (unregistered) in reply to LEGO
    LEGO:
    Zylon:
    "compromosing"?

    Get a brian, moran... ;-)

    Brian, is he a great teacher or something?

  • Ari (unregistered)

    I think he's talking about some guy named Brian Moran. Maybe HE is Brian Moran and that is his form of a personal ad?

    Anyways, excellent code on the Marlboro site. I think they just understand their target demographic very well. They've realized that people using IE are 99% more likely to fall for cigarette marketing and peer pressure. Kind of like an IQ test.

    Did that just sound a little arrogant?

    Oh well.

  • aristos_achaion (unregistered) in reply to NorseLaQuet
    NorseLaQuet:
    Does anybody else get redirected to the mobile version of the site when using Firefox on Linux? Because it redirects me to: http://www.smokersignup.com/signup/mobile/ WTF?
    Yup. Evidently, Linux only runs on phones.
  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to NorseLaQuet
    NorseLaQuet:
    Does anybody else get redirected to the mobile version of the site when using Firefox on Linux? Because it redirects me to: http://www.smokersignup.com/signup/mobile/ WTF?
    Same here. If you aren't using Windows, you MUST be using a mobile phone, right?1
  • (cs) in reply to Lazy_wonko_Not_Logging_in
    Lazy_wonko_Not_Logging_in:
    Epynom:
    ummm...

    Response.Redirect( someURL); ?

    If you're running .Net, Use it!

    Response.Redirect sends a 302 response to the browser (Temp Redirect) Google and other search engines will pick up on this and not index the page that you redirect to. This needs to be a 301 Redirect, which Im not sure you can do in .net without fiddling)

    I wonder if the following would do the trick:

    // set the redirect, but don't terminate processing of the request yet
Response.Redirect(someUrl, false);

// set the HTTP status code, overriding the 302 from Redirect
Response.StatusCode = 301;

// flush the response and stop processing the request
Response.End();
  • d000hg (unregistered) in reply to Mitch
    Mitch:
    d000hg:
    I want more follow-ups from classic WTFs. Where IS Paula for instance?

    Paula? I prefer Irish Girl.

    Since when is Irish Girl a WTF?

    (unless WT means "Want To")

  • d000hg (unregistered) in reply to Ari
    Ari:
    They've realized that people using IE are 99% more likely to fall for cigarette marketing and peer pressure. Kind of like an IQ test.

    Did that just sound a little arrogant?

    No not arrogant. Just pathetic and unfunny.

    Plus, you don't even understand percentages. 99% MORE likely means they are 199% AS likely as non-IE users, in other words about twice as likely.

    Maybe they'd find your comment funnier on /.

  • Jarett (unregistered)

    Don't smoke, kids. It restricts how much oxygen can reach your brain.

  • (cs)

    Actually, in firefox (and with "no script"-plugin), I get a nice "here" link (without the text, since that's hidden). I can also click the link and it works.

    After enabling javascript, the auto-redirect works fine.

  • Pez (unregistered)

    Reminds me of when I was doing an accessibility review of UK council websites a few months ago, one website I tested was pretty much OK in terms of code quality (decent markup, alt tags for images, labels for forms), but when I turned on Javascript and tried to access the site I couldn't.

    Turns out they were using javascript to redirect from the root directory (www.foo.gov.uk) to another directory (www.foo.gov.uk/bar) meaning that if someone had javascript turned off, they couldn't even get to the site! I don't know what some people are smoking sometimes...

  • (cs)

    smokersignup.com has a further 404 page.

    Which comes up blank. How useful.

    http://www.smokersignup.com/signup/jik.htm

  • (cs) in reply to Ragnax
    Ragnax:
    I wonder if the following would do the trick: 
    // set the redirect, but don't terminate processing of the request yet
Response.Redirect(someUrl, false);

    // set the HTTP status code, overriding the 302 from Redirect
Response.StatusCode = 301;
    

    // flush the response and stop processing the request
Response.End();

    WTF? Why not just set the Location header directly and avoid doing dirty things with the wrong methods?

  • wonko (unregistered) in reply to Ragnax
    Ragnax:
    Lazy_wonko_Not_Logging_in:
    Epynom:
    ummm...

    Response.Redirect( someURL); ?

    If you're running .Net, Use it!

    Response.Redirect sends a 302 response to the browser (Temp Redirect) Google and other search engines will pick up on this and not index the page that you redirect to. This needs to be a 301 Redirect, which Im not sure you can do in .net without fiddling)

    I wonder if the following would do the trick:

    // set the redirect, but don't terminate processing of the request yet
Response.Redirect(someUrl, false);

// set the HTTP status code, overriding the 302 from Redirect
Response.StatusCode = 301;

// flush the response and stop processing the request
Response.End();

    Yeah, that does it.. I wonder why that was left out of the framework, surely thats someting that would be needed by quite a few people.

  • (cs)

    Motorola used to do this thing where they would have useless javascript code to load up a link, rather than using the standard html code. For absolutely no reason, other than to use javascript. It was a joke, and made it difficult to spider and map the site...maybe that was the reason.

  • David (unregistered)

    Obviously someone isn't happy about working for an evil corporation and is dealing with it in the best passive-aggressive way they know how.

  • Chris (unregistered)

    They're probably doing it because smokersignup.com, whatever that is, is tracking them through the referer header. Doesn't make it much less stupid, but there's some semblance of crazy twisted logic involved.

  • Chris Love (unregistered)

    Actually, the site seems to be running Java Server Pages (.jsp). But yep this is a useless exeercise on their part.

  • Aran (unregistered)

    This is pretty strong evidence for the effects smoking has on your brain.

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