The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

FF3.6 already does it.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

Ben:
The firefox menu is reproducible. You have to be browsing for a while, as some certain memory condition is needed. It's replicated by right clicking, dragging your mouse cursor outside of the window area (like to your desktop), then left clicking while the right mouse button is still down. Once firefox gets in the right "mood" I can replicate it every time.

You're half right.

First, you need to have not accessed the context menu since opening Firefox (if you're reproducing it, just start Firefox from scratch). Then, right-click anywhere in the main content area (might work with some other widgets), then move the mouse outside the Firefox window and release the right click.

If you've already used the context menu, you will only see the items for the last thing you right clicked on. If you haven't you will see all items.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs.

I can think of one reason for such a feature. If you have several windows open, each with several tabs (as I regularly do), when you close each window it warns you that you have multiple tabs on that window (although it has a check box you can clear to stop it). On the last window it asks you if you want to save the tabs. I could see it be useful to merge all open windows into one and then closing it so that you don't get nagged on each and every window.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

Just like the "lacking in any context whatsoever menu" from Mozilla Seamonkey.

Pr0gramm3r · 2011-02-25 Reply Admin

As long as the bus is using TCP I'm not worried.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

The Terminator:
anonymouse:
I've seen that Firefox context menu when accidentally right-clicking and dragging on the scrollbar a few months ago. At the time, I assumed it was a feature, not a bug, but I can't reproduce it now. Maybe it was a bug after all. [image]
Yeah, same here.

Anyone using the beta version of FF? I swear it's a but with FF4b, but cant find it http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/4.0b8/releasenotes/buglist.html

but this is really spam.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

"I just don't know whether to user GET or POST to catch those trains." -

That's an easy one. Try RAILS.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

The Italian train departures remind me of the Dutch Railways, where a couple of years ago the train indicators were replaced by shiny plasma screens. Apparently the tests for the new software accompanying these screens was not tested in real conditions, a train with a large delay (>60 minutes) was announced as having NaN minutes delay. Eventually, the bug was fixed, but it made me laugh the first time I saw it. ;-)

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

Since the subject of context menus was brought up, perhaps I can ask if someone knows of browser (or firefox module) that offers a context-unaware right-click menu. I have been on the hunt for it for a while, but have found nothing. I suppose I am the only one who doesn't enjoy being given a different menu depending on whether I clicked a piece of white background, a picture of white on top of the white background or a picture of white on top of a white background containing a hyperlink, and so on. But if I am not, please help me out - or at least let me know I am not alone.

da Doctah · 2011-02-25 Reply Admin

El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs.

Only problem is that Firefox doesn't seem to have this capability right out of the box. From Mozilla's forum comes this user question:

How do I merge multiple windows into 1 window with several tabs?
In Safari it is possible to merge several open windows into 1 single window, with each window becoming a new tab within the new window, so you can easily switch from tab to tab. I cannot find how to do this in Firefox - does anyone know if it is possible? Thanks.

This plaint has but one response, recommending a certain third-party add-on.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

The REAL WTF is you idiots clogging up the comments section by quoting entire images.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

The Web is the Root of All Info:
Well, the Logout link on the 'Please Login' page is easy enough to explain:
Your cookies are half-baked. :-P

Or, to put another way, the site's cookies don't have all the information needed by the site encoded with in the cookie.

You'll see this when you haven't visited a web site in a while, and they added/changed a feature while you were away.

The simplest fix is to hit every 'logout' link that you see until it starts saying 'login'.

(I've actually had to do this on a Fortune 500 site.)

I have same problem some time ago, i just cleaned all site cache and cookies. it worked.

2011-02-25 Reply Admin

Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
captcha: transverbero....that's what happens when you manage to click every menu option

Hummm. It will merge source code of Windows Xp with Windows 7. just kidding.

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

The spell checker doesn't know 'no' and 'from'? Ah, MS-Word? Okay. No more questions.

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

Spelly Checka:
The spell checker doesn't know 'no' and 'from'? Ah, MS-Word? Okay. No more questions.

Someone making stupid comments based on a complete lack of knowledge of the topic at hand? Ah, Linux nerd? Okay. No more questions.

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

Contextually annoyed:
Since the subject of context menus was brought up, perhaps I can ask if someone knows of browser (or firefox module) that offers a context-unaware right-click menu. I have been on the hunt for it for a while, but have found nothing. I suppose I am the only one who doesn't enjoy being given a different menu depending on whether I clicked a piece of white background, a picture of white on top of the white background or a picture of white on top of a white background containing a hyperlink, and so on. But if I am not, please help me out - or at least let me know I am not alone.

You want to see "Paste", "Save image as", "Bookmark this link" and "Undo close tab" when you click on a line of text ? ... why ?

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

No. Those are all examples of what I don't want to see. "Paste" in particular - middle button takes care of that (or ctrl-v), why would I ever need it on a menu? To be specific I want the default menu (of firefox) to come up always. Actually, just the navigation options would cover 99.9% of the times I right-click.

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

Contextually annoyed:
No. Those are all examples of what I don't want to see. "Paste" in particular - middle button takes care of that (or ctrl-v), why would I ever need it on a menu? To be specific I want the default menu (of firefox) to come up always. Actually, just the navigation options would cover 99.9% of the times I right-click.

Why would you ever need those on menus ? They even have buttons, meaning you don't even have to grab hold of the keyboard. Why would you ever right click, left click instead of just left click (let alone mouse gestures) ? And how WOULD you suggest doing all the context sensitive things like copy image, save image as, bookmark link or google selected if not through right click menus ?

Daniel Beardsmore · 2011-02-26 Reply Admin

CT:
Contextually annoyed:
No. Those are all examples of what I don't want to see. "Paste" in particular - middle button takes care of that (or ctrl-v), why would I ever need it on a menu? To be specific I want the default menu (of firefox) to come up always. Actually, just the navigation options would cover 99.9% of the times I right-click.

Why would you ever need those on menus ? They even have buttons, meaning you don't even have to grab hold of the keyboard. Why would you ever right click, left click instead of just left click (let alone mouse gestures) ? And how WOULD you suggest doing all the context sensitive things like copy image, save image as, bookmark link or google selected if not through right click menus ?

Sounds like someone has a hankering for RISC OS: http://telcontar.net/Misc/GUI/RISCOS/#menus

OK here we go, pathetic Akismet again ...

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

I accidentally sent a DELETE request to my train. Now what?

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

Spelly Checka:
The spell checker doesn't know 'no' and 'from'? Ah, MS-Word? Okay. No more questions.

The spell checker thinks it's wrong because 'no' and 'from' are the first words of a new sentence (probably because the author hit the Enter key when he wanted a new line, instead of adjusting the paper width or pressing Shift+Enter to achieve the same result).

2011-02-26 Reply Admin

And why is Phil logged in as Joe? Captcha: validus: the state of being a valid Joe and a valid Phil at the same time

tgape · 2011-02-26 Reply Admin

Calli Arcale:
JasperRho:
That sounds like a nice feature. Another one I always wanted for tabbed browsing was the ability to drop and drag a tab from one window to another.

You can actually do that on Firefox right now. At least, I can in 3.6.13. I've no idea what version introduced that ability, but it is nice.

Firefox 3.5 something could do it. I'm pretty sure I was using it on Firefox 3.0 - at least, some of the later versions. However that was too long ago for me to remember for certain now.

Watson · 2011-02-27 Reply Admin

__mozzarella:
Naughty Dog looks like Christian Slater...but creepier.

Strange ... my first thought was that he looked like Don Adams.

Zecc · 2011-02-27 Reply Admin

El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs. But Firefox has the "Tear off Tab" feature, where you can drag a tab off the tab bar and create a new window.

I hate that you can't drag a tab to a Windows Explorer / Nautilus window to create an internet shortcut. You can drag the icon to the left of the address bar, but it's a lot less intuitive for me. EDIT: .URL files don't work on Linux by default, so there wouldn't be much of a point for it on Nautilus anyway.

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs. But Firefox has the "Tear off Tab" feature, where you can drag a tab off the tab bar and create a new window.

I agree that you might not want to have multiple windows open, but the Merge feature allows you to undo the WTF that is websites that force links to open in a new window (yes, there are lots out there).

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

Spelly Checka:
The spell checker doesn't know 'no' and 'from'? Ah, MS-Word? Okay. No more questions.

Red squiggle = spelling mistake Green squiggle = grammar mistake

One of the subsidiary WTFs is that the clod who typed this up has used a hard return to start a new line, so MSWord thinks it's a new sentence and so it should have a capital letter.

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

Zecc:
El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs. But Firefox has the "Tear off Tab" feature, where you can drag a tab off the tab bar and create a new window.
I hate that you can't drag a tab to a Windows Explorer / Nautilus window to create an internet shortcut. You can drag the icon to the left of the address bar, but it's a lot less intuitive for me. EDIT: .URL files don't work on Linux by default, so there wouldn't be much of a point for it on Nautilus anyway.

In IE9/W7, you can grab and pin it to taskbar, perhaps exist an addon to do it. You can also pin your Most Recent Sites in IE for lazyness, just use right click.

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

Stevie D:
El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs. But Firefox has the "Tear off Tab" feature, where you can drag a tab off the tab bar and create a new window.
I agree that you might not want to have multiple windows open, but the Merge feature allows you to undo the WTF that is websites that force links to open in a new window (yes, there are lots out there).

I always disable this in options, only crap site that use popups from flash do this. then I block the unwanted flash.

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

I am able to easily reproduce the Firefox bug in 3.6.13 under XP immediately after opening the browser. Just right click, hold down, drag to the titlebar, and release.

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

herp derp:
THIRD.
interesting to see something from Adelaide here. although, Adelaide Metro, hardly surprising.

I'd say tere's a regular Adelaide commuter on here....There was a pic of roadworks in Grenfell St some time ago.

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

BlueFusion:
I'd like to point out that this is from my corner of the world - Adelaide, Australia - and that this picture has been badly photoshopped. I can probably take a picture of the actual signs as they stand, but they really don't look anything like this. A key giveaway is that the sign, though black and white photocopied, has coloured red and green squiggles. Also the edges are badly aligned. And before anybody claims that they have been colour photocopied from a mainly B&W print - the office these were produced in doesn't have a single colour printer anywhere.

By Jove, looking at it again, I think you're right

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs. But Firefox has the "Tear off Tab" feature, where you can drag a tab off the tab bar and create a new window.

There are times when multiple windows are more useful than tabbed browsing, simply because you can have two windows side by side, whereas only a single tab can be visible at any time (off the top of my head I can't think of a specific reaosn why an nternet browser might need this functionalit, but it is usefull in IDEs and text editors)

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

I was "a" (Or, depending on which site exactly, "the") tester (yes, you heard me) on the O2 site so I feel bad for that.

However I can say that out version never had that layout so they must have changed it after I left.

2011-02-27 Reply Admin

Steve Jobs:
anon:
BlueFusion:
I'd like to point out that this is from my corner of the world - Adelaide, Australia - and that this picture has been badly photoshopped. I can probably take a picture of the actual signs as they stand, but they really don't look anything like this. A key giveaway is that the sign, though black and white photocopied, has coloured red and green squiggles. Also the edges are badly aligned. And before anybody claims that they have been colour photocopied from a mainly B&W print - the office these were produced in doesn't have a single colour printer anywhere. [image]

Yea, you can tell pretty clearly in the upper right hand corner of the sign that this isn't a real photograph. And I have to say, the person who decided to photoshop this image might be the saddest person in the world. Like, if you're going to take the time and energy to do something stupid like this, at least come up with something slightly more interesting than spellcheck lines on a bus stop sign.
I have photoshopped your image, pray I don't photoshop anything else.

I don't know about the rest of you "computer people" in your fancy-shmancy aluminium cities, with your all your WhyFy and 'alternative' music, but here in Adelaide, this sign is cutting edge.

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

Anonymous:
Firefox sometimes goes mental and displays a context menu with every single right click option for Firefox as well as all your installed addins. Not sure what causes it but most Firefox users have encountered it at some point or another.

Oh this is easy. On startup, firefox runs some javascript that will setup all kinds of things, at one point it will setup the needed data to check what context items will be displayed when. Now, this script is pretty fragile, and when one of it fails, then it does not only do so silently, no it continues with the startup. There are many more symptoms, like parts of the commands (like "view image") not working.

One of the most common issues is when you installed firefox from scratch in an earlier version and did not have a homepage option set. No, not only set it to an empty string, not set at all (you can simulate it by removing the setting from the corresponding files in ~/.mozilla).

There are several other ways to trigger it (exactly by making the startup script fail at a certain stage) with some triggering more and some triggering less bugs..

There are also quite some bugreports about it (search bugzilla!), I have even seen some detailed analysis with where in the startup script its wrong, all turned down with "when I install it on my fresh distro it doesn't do it because the homepage is set" and some with "oh, we did a checkin since your post, it is totally unrelated and I dont want to read your analysis and patch, but please try with the new version, so we can during that checkin something new to let you try it again with that ad inf.".

If you have similar symptoms, debug those startup scripts (usually by printf debugging) and you will see that it will not run through! But why make it more robust? You can easily install a new version of firefox on a fresh up2date distro instead of upgrading! Upgrading is not supported...

ParkinT · 2011-02-28 Reply Admin

The Terminator:
doconnor:
I'm pretty sure the top half is separate poster physically pasted over the existing sign, which would explain the different font size. [image]
It looks more like they just pasted that on the screen-shot copy of the image.

They should have nailed the sign to a Wooden Table !

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

Janine:
There are times when multiple windows are more useful than tabbed browsing, simply because you can have two windows side by side, whereas only a single tab can be visible at any time (off the top of my head I can't think of a specific reaosn why an nternet browser might need this functionalit, but it is usefull in IDEs and text editors)

It has been about 10 years since I used it, but Konqueror had 'tabs' a long time before most other browsers, and allowed you to have tiled windows so you could see many at once. It was a great browser at the time - shame it would crash every 20mins

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

danixdefcon5:
So it is true! Trains run on TCP/IP! ;)

So ... they don't run on time?

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

Contextually annoyed:
Since the subject of context menus was brought up, perhaps I can ask if someone knows of browser (or firefox module) that offers a context-unaware right-click menu. I have been on the hunt for it for a while, but have found nothing. I suppose I am the only one who doesn't enjoy being given a different menu depending on whether I clicked a piece of white background, a picture of white on top of the white background or a picture of white on top of a white background containing a hyperlink, and so on. But if I am not, please help me out - or at least let me know I am not alone.

Given that the right-click menu is the "context" menu, it seems to defeat the purpose of the entire exercise. If you want every right-click option available though, it should be available in the regular menubar.

Oh, your app hides functionality only in the right click menu? It's broken then.

MacOS X has one mouse button (it supports more, but the laptops only have one built-in), which imposes a rule on developers that context-menus are context aware, but functionality shouldn't be hidden in there because it makes it undiscoverable, and context-specific function should be available elsewhere. Sure in a pinch bad apps can be worked around with ctrl-click, but the underlying design philosophy is not to hide it only in context menus.

Otherwise you end up with stupid stuff like in Windows where it's not just right click, but shift/alt/ctrl-right-click can reveal more options ("Command Prompt Here" is built into Windows 7 by default, but you have to hold Shift or Alt (I forget which), then right-click on an Explorer window to reveal it).

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

da Doctah:
El_Heffe:
Me!:
On the firefox menu...what exactly does 'Merge Windows' do?
The only thing I can think of is someone having a bunch of windows open and being able to merge them into one. This seems stupid since having multiple windows defeats the whole idea of tabs.

Only problem is that Firefox doesn't seem to have this capability right out of the box. From Mozilla's forum comes this user question:

How do I merge multiple windows into 1 window with several tabs?
In Safari it is possible to merge several open windows into 1 single window, with each window becoming a new tab within the new window, so you can easily switch from tab to tab. I cannot find how to do this in Firefox - does anyone know if it is possible? Thanks.

This plaint has but one response, recommending a certain third-party add-on.

In Windows, I merge windows into tabs all the time. You must have "show tabbar always" enabled though. Then all you do is click on the tab of the window you want to merge, then drag it into the tab bar of the destination window and you'll have the tab added to the tab bar, and the old window goes away.

You can use a similar method to bring a tab out too - click on the tab you want, then drag it off the tab bar. Poof, a new window appears with the tab. You can use these two operations to rearrange a bunch of tabs and windows.

hoodaticus · 2011-02-28 Reply Admin

Contextually annoyed:
Since the subject of context menus was brought up, perhaps I can ask if someone knows of browser (or firefox module) that offers a context-unaware right-click menu. I have been on the hunt for it for a while, but have found nothing. I suppose I am the only one who doesn't enjoy being given a different menu depending on whether I clicked a piece of white background, a picture of white on top of the white background or a picture of white on top of a white background containing a hyperlink, and so on. But if I am not, please help me out - or at least let me know I am not alone.

It's probably not possible. The context menu ultimately exposes methods of a particular class. Who knows what would happen if "Save image as" got flipped to "On_Click" in certain contexts?

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

BlueFusion:
I'd like to point out that this is from my corner of the world - Adelaide, Australia - and that this picture has been badly photoshopped. I can probably take a picture of the actual signs as they stand, but they really don't look anything like this. A key giveaway is that the sign, though black and white photocopied, has coloured red and green squiggles. Also the edges are badly aligned. And before anybody claims that they have been colour photocopied from a mainly B&W print - the office these were produced in doesn't have a single colour printer anywhere.

It's not shopped. I saw this sign IRL. Would someone who knows photoshop be that incompetent?

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

For all of you claiming that the sign is photoshopped: here's the original image straight from my N900:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/13852925/20101014_001.jpg

Captcha: secundum (a second attempt at... um?)

2011-02-28 Reply Admin

I bet the person saying it's shopped is a transitplus employee

2011-03-01 Reply Admin

Alargule:
[image]
Unknown String! Naughty Dog have sexy time!

G-string?

2011-03-01 Reply Admin

Sam:
First, you need to have not accessed the context menu since opening Firefox (if you're reproducing it, just start Firefox from scratch). Then, right-click anywhere in the main content area (might work with some other widgets), then move the mouse outside the Firefox window and release the right click.
If you've already used the context menu, you will only see the items for the last thing you right clicked on. If you haven't you will see all items.

Doesn't reproduce with FireGestures installed :]

2011-03-02 Reply Admin

Great, the direct-to-web train is the first Error'd I get to experience first-hand (at the local rail station)!

captcha: erat - fuit, est, erat.

2011-03-03 Reply Admin

Obviously, you need to PUT yourself onto the train.

2011-03-05 Reply Admin

You're clearly not from Adelaide, because as someone who is, I can tell you that Adelaide Metro are that incompetent.

Yes - they have other templates for these kinds of signs, but chances are this was put together at the last minute. There's been signs in both black and white, and in colour.

Even more permanent signs in the past, for example when Nomad first was released, they pasted over all the signs for it saying that it was now free (bumming out the two people who actually paid that piece of crap software). Similarly this was done for the trains when the Mawson Lakes station was added, a sticker was put over the transit maps that was in a different font and colour to the rest of the diagram.

Likely the printing was done outsourced - I don't know of many offices that keep on hand equipment to print onto plastic, apart from professional printing businesses.

Web 0.1 Bus Signage

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