The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2013-06-21 Reply Admin

TRWTF is using a Mac.

2013-06-21 Reply Admin

faoileag:
The first one is not a WTF. It's what you get when you index news sites and run a query for a name associated with one of the stories. So one site makes that story a headline, others just show a teaser next to their main story. ...

Therefore teasers and (news) search engines not knowing not to index them (or at least not knowing to not include them in the search results) is TRWTF. (oh how many irrelevant search results that would prune out if only search engines obeyed this - If I'm searching for some subject and that subject happens to show up in the teasers that various news sites display on all of their pages, I don't want to see the pages that have the teasers, I want to see the pages whose actual (main) content is relevant to the search query)

2013-06-21 Reply Admin

xaade:
qazwsx:
Thanatos Complex:
faoileag:
but also for the fact that the calendar is opened with the current month on a web form that asks for your birthday. I wonder how many freshly born babies usually visit the site...
What month was it supposed to open to? Should it try to guess how old you are? Should it open to 1913 because 100 years ago is probably safely before anyone's birthday? No matter what, its choice of month was going to be completely arbitrary, so the current month is as good a month as any.
How about a set of dropdown menus like every other personal info form uses?

Ah... no.

Much faster to give me the option to type and provide a calendar for a visual reference.

By the time you've selected from your comboboxes, I've submitted the form.

You can type into combo boxes to make a selection. Knowing is half the battle.

chubertdev · 2013-06-21 Reply Admin

I'm feeling evil today.

DateTime dt = System.DateTime.Today;
while(dt >= new DateTime(1900, 1, 1)) {
   liDOB.Items.Add(new ListItem(dt.ToShortDateTime(), dt.ToShortDateTime()));
   dt = dt.AddDays(-1);
}

2013-06-21 Reply Admin

Anon:
If Word wouldn't open a .docx, it probably wasn't actually a Word file.

Sorry, but it says it is a Microsoft Word document. What sort of product would Word be it if didn't know what a Microsoft Word document looks like?

poopdeville · 2013-06-21 Reply Admin

moz:
Anon:
If Word wouldn't open a .docx, it probably wasn't actually a Word file.
Sorry, but it says it is a Microsoft Word document. What sort of product would Word be it if didn't know what a Microsoft Word document looks like?

A Microsoft product...

Gurth · 2013-06-22 Reply Admin

Someone:
There's a definite conflict of interest there -- both companies want an expanded user base (MS wants Mac users to at least run Office, and Apple wants Windows users to be able to use an iPhone and iTunes) but they also seem to want to make the native platform more appealing.

I'd say that last bit is the WTF: the end result is programs that require the user to switch from the conventions of the operating system they're using to something else, and that leads to confusion. Adobe is even worse, if you ask me — they're somewhere halfway between OS X and Windows with their UI conventions, meaning that you need to learn how to use Adobe apps regardless of which OS you prefer. (Luckily one good point is that Adobe apps allow you to redefine nearly all keyboard shortcuts, but why these aren't carried over when you upgrade to a new version, I would very much like to know.)

Fjp · 2013-06-23 Reply Admin

Gurth:
... Adobe is even worse, if you ask me — they're somewhere halfway between OS X and Windows with their UI conventions, meaning that you need to learn how to use Adobe apps regardless of which OS you prefer. (Luckily one good point is that Adobe apps allow you to redefine nearly all keyboard shortcuts, but why these aren't carried over when you upgrade to a new version, I would very much like to know.)

'Sobvious. Adobe put all that work into inventing their own UI conventions. They know you really want to do things their way. So you couldn't really have wanted to redefine those keyboard mappings, and the kindest thing is to put everything back the way it should be any time there's an upgrade.

2013-06-23 Reply Admin

Rob:
Luckily the submitter was in New York, so the correct time zone was actually there, even if the choices are a bit limited, and... odd. Just imagine if you were in California, or Europe.

Not to mention most of Australia.

Adelaide (South Australia - total pop less than 2Mill for entire state) is on Aus Central Standard Time (along with Darwin (Norhtern Territory - probably less than 1 mill for entire territory). Assuming it wasn't during daylight savings (which NT doesn't believe in so that further isolates Adelaide) then SA + NT = 3 Mill out of about 23 Million Australians (ie about 1/8th).

I'm sure Sydneysiders and Melburnians (of which there are over 5million each) would be annoyed that their clocks were half an hour out.....

2013-06-23 Reply Admin

Mike:
Rob:
Luckily the submitter was in New York, so the correct time zone was actually there, even if the choices are a bit limited, and... odd. Just imagine if you were in California, or Europe.
Not to mention most of Australia.
Adelaide (South Australia - total pop less than 2Mill for entire state) is on Aus Central Standard Time (along with Darwin (Norhtern Territory - probably less than 1 mill for entire territory). Assuming it wasn't during daylight savings (which NT doesn't believe in so that further isolates Adelaide) then SA + NT = 3 Mill out of about 23 Million Australians (ie about 1/8th).

I'm sure Sydneysiders and Melburnians (of which there are over 5million each) would be annoyed that their clocks were half an hour out.....

Wiki corrects me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/States_and_territories_of_Australia)

SA = approx 1.7Mill NT = approx 250K (both over estimates).

so the other 11/12th of the coutry should be pretty pissed.

Kuba · 2013-06-23 Reply Admin

capio:
A slightly friendlier way could be to open the calendar in the mode that shows years or year-ranges first (unless there is a date in the textbox already) - then the user can drill-in quicker.

Next thing we know will be some hotshot "designer", having just discovered what all those bits and bytes inside of computers are about, decide that 16 binary selections are optimal. After all, there is no one alive who has been alive longer than 65536 days, right?

2013-06-23 Reply Admin

RichP:
"Thirty days hath September, April, April, and whenever?"

"Thirty days has September, April, May and June definitely does"

Kuba · 2013-06-23 Reply Admin

chubertdev:

I'm feeling evil today.

DateTime dt = System.DateTime.Today;
while(dt >= new DateTime(1900, 1, 1)) {
   liDOB.Items.Add(new ListItem(dt.ToShortDateTime(), dt.ToShortDateTime()));
   dt = dt.AddDays(-1);
}

The only reason we don't see it everywhere is that creating such long fully populated drop-downs used to take forever in many browsers. As the browsers are getting better, this anti-pattern may see a comeback. Don't say I didn't tell ya :/

2013-06-23 Reply Admin

No news is good news, no message is good message.

2013-06-24 Reply Admin

RichP:
"Thirty days hath September, April, April, and whenever?"

+10 This one brought tears to my eyes from laughing so hard!

2013-06-24 Reply Admin

And being from Adelaide, Australia, am I supposed to know what the heck "Groundwork" is? I must be favoured as 1 out of 3!

2013-06-24 Reply Admin

Can I vote for the two 30th April pattern to be adopted for every month? It would make it SO much easier to hit end of month deadlines.

2013-06-24 Reply Admin

chubertdev:
faoileag:
The "April" one is great - for the two 30s obviously (I would love to see the calendar page generated for May), but also for the fact that the calendar is opened with the current month on a web form that asks for your birthday. I wonder how many freshly born babies usually visit the site...

What date would you have as the default for a DOB field?

A DOB that matches the minimum age required to use your website, of course!

2013-06-25 Reply Admin

bwaahahahaa, but in their defense most of the images are pngs.

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