Archive for the ‘Venting’ Category

Apple’s Secret

Sep 09
8

Apple is generally great at keeping secrets. They love to break the news and wow the audience. They are amazing at this and control the media experience with precision. The process starts with the invitation, carefully crafted with just a hint of what’s to come.  It has the exact effect that Apple wants. Everyone is speculating and getting excited. It’s like opening a present on your birthday… What could it be?

The problem is that controlling this experience requires secrecy. It means that within Apple there are people who know the secret and people who do not.  The secrecy creates dividing lines between groups. The groups that are not ‘in the know’ then go off and create their own secrets.  This is what has happened at Apple and it’s getting out of control.

Everyone gets paranoid about saying too much and in turn says too little. This secrecy has created a particularly deep divide in the iPhone part of Apple’s business. The cloak and dagger secrecy behind the ways that Apple runs the app store have made me question if the secrecy is ‘worth it.’

I appreciate the show and the magic that goes on to make it happen. That said a clearer line needs to be drawn between what’s good for hardware sales and what’s good for the rest of the business.

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Posted in Apple, Venting | No Comments »

CSS Zen Garden of Dreams

Apr 08
11

A reader, Josh Weinberg, wrote in to comment on my CSS Sucks article. The article gets a ton of traffic mostly from people typing: “CSS Sucks” into google. I think I’m onto something.

Josh put together a number of example of how broken CSS is by showing examples of the CSS Zen Garden with different content. He literally took the CSS markup with no modification and simply changed the content to be smaller. The results broke some designs beyond recognition other designs had varied results. Take a look.

The point here is that CSS Zen Garden is an artificial utopia that doesn’t exist in the real world

  • Content is dynamic
  • You can’t rely on the content length or it’s presence
  • You can’t expect a custom class for every text element
  • You can’t do image replacement if the text is dynamic

Thank you CSS Zen Garden for helping prove my point that CSS still sucks.

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Posted in HTML/CSS, Venting | 3 Comments »

Photoshop can’t Copy Paste into Word

Apr 08
8

If you make a selection in Adobe Photoshop and try to paste it into Microsoft Word it won’t work well (and sometimes won’t work at all). Microsoft and Adobe are trying to use OLE (object linking and embeding) a novel concept from the 90′s that just doesn’t work very well. Once you paste the PhotoShop file into Word it’s litterly embeded and you can double click the object to open it back in Photoshop. Nice concept but it doesn’t work well. Once pasted in Word you can’t do even simple manipulations in Word such as resizing, cropping or anything else using Word.

The file size gets significantly larger because you have now pasted a bunch of extra info into Word and in addition the quality tends to be much lower. As an extra bouns instead of just loading Word you’re now loading Photoshop and Word at the same time. Ugh. OLE is pretty terrible and only programs that have been around since the 90′s still support it as a legacy thing.
The solution is to copy from PhotoShop, Paste into MS Paint, Copy from MS Paint and paste into Microsoft Word. The extra step is a pain. I’ve been using this trick for years and every time I get a new version of Word or Photoshop I hope that someone will have fixed this ‘feature.

P.S. You can also use Word’s ‘paste special’ to work around this as well but there’s nothing special about what I’m doing. Pasting an image without the embeded part should be the default.

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Posted in Design, Venting | 3 Comments »

Things to Love & Hate about Vista

Apr 07
18

Love

  • New start menu – In general the new start menu is easier to navigate. By typing a few letters you can quickly find an application. Alternativly you can navigate the menu structure without filling the screen with cascading menus.
  • Better system searching. Finally. – You get relatively fast results without too much pain. It has room for improvement but it’s 100x better then XP searching.
  • File-system meta-data tagging – You no longer have to create sub-folders for everything. Just save all your stuff into one core location and use tags and meta-data to find it. This in conjunction with searching moves away from hierarchical storage. This makes it much easier to manage 100,000′s of files without having overly nested folders.
  • Better photo browser – Along with the generic file-system meta data there are photo specific attributes and a photo browser that makes it easier to look at large collections of pictures.
  • Other things I loved? Nothing really.
    • Tablet and Media Center are great if you’re using Vista as either a tablet or a media center. Having these features built in didn’t really change anything.
    • Aero is nice. It looks better then the XP theme but doesn’t dramatically impact how you use the computer. Flip-3D is also nice but slower then the traditional Alt+Tab. Whenever I see Flip3D it reminds me of the “Window->Cascade” menu in Windows 3.1. The more things change the more they stay the same.

Hate

  • Security dialogs, warnings and confirmations. I generally don’t turn security features off but it’s so awful I just had to disable it in order to actually use my computer. Security shouldn’t impact the user experience unless the user is actually doing something that could harm the computer. These security dialogs are now all over the place.
  • Stuff that used to work in XP may no-longer works (my scanner from HP doesn’t work, my web-cam from Logitech doesn’t work, certain software applications such as Quickbooks’05 are not supported, my standard dell sound card driver didn’t work without a lot of tweaking. etc, etc.)
  • Stuff that changed but didn’t improve. There are many example of dialogs and interface screens that got re-vamped and didn’t add significant improvements. In fact many of these seem to have lost some features or gotten unnecessarily complex.
    • Windows explorer used to have a film-strip view when viewing photos – gone
    • You used to be able to select the photos you wanted to print from the photo printing wizard – gone
    • You used to be able to change the date/time from one dialog, now it’s four separate screens .
    • You used to be able to adjust your screen/display/theme from one dialog, now it’s five separate screen.
    • Remote desktop forgets my multi-monitor resolution when I re-connect to the desktop.
  • There are now 50 different control panels. That’s 50 different places that you could screw up a setting. (Win2000 and XP had about 23)
  • Sidebar. – Anything that takes up permanent screen space should help users work with their computer. The sidebar is a classic example of a distractor. Google desktop and Yahoo both have their own versions of this same ‘tool.’
  • Business/Home/Ultimate differentiation. – Business should be a super-set of home so if you wanted home plus some other stuff you would get business. Now certain features aren’t in business but they are in home. You can’t have Windows business and still play games during lunch like solitaire.


Should I upgrade?

Probably not. Unless you like living on the edge or are developing Vista sotware there really isn’t a compelling reason to migrate. Tools like Google and Yahoo desktop fill the gap for desktop search and ‘sidebar widgets’ (if you like that sort of thing) Picassa is a good photo stop-gap for XP machines. The time saved by other improvements across the system are outweighed by the time lost due to security dialogs, re-learning and incompatibilities.

If you are really itching to improve productivity I would instead recommend the upgrade to Office 2007.

Posted in Microsoft, Venting, Windows | 4 Comments »

More on the CSS sucking

Oct 06
2

More on the CSS sucking

A couple weeks ago I managed to get a bunch of people upset by saying that CSS sucks. The comments were A) I don’t know CSS B) The web and CSS isn’t about design. C) Don’t blame the CSS blame the browser and D) Back-up your claim by proposing something better.

In short I’ll point out that A is not an argument, B used to be true perhaps in 1994 but is no-longer true. People who suggested that I should blame the browser and not CSS should take a close look at the actual CSS spec. I’m not at all surprised that browsers interpret the standard differently and have mistakes in how they render HTML & CSS. Specifications and standards can be overly and unnecessarily complex. CSS has a lot of good concepts but the fact that no two browsers are able to nail the spec it is a huge problem.
Ok. Enough complaining. To propose solutions.

The flash format is actually a fairly large step toward a better overall web-design tool.
It’s much more consistent across browsers and platforms. It handles graphics, design and animation with precision. Flash isn’t ideal for flowing large amounts of content and it doesn’t integrate with the navigation of a page. The largest obstacle to flash is that you can’t link between pages of content. Multiple pages of Flash content is treated as a single page within the browser. Adding a navigation element to Flash could allow sites to substitute HTML pages with Flash based pages. This would also allow Google and other search engines to parse and link to specific content.

Ok, idea #2… Beyond the flash story how could you address the CSS issues within HTML?
I’ll break that problem into two parts. Part A is the things that have to be done within the browser. There’s no easy hack around these things and it’ not something that can be fixed in a blog post. These are intrinsic things that should be available in the core HTML rendering platform:

  1. JavaScript drawing primitives (boxes, lines, gradients, canvas objects, etc)
  2. Font control and font embedding (Mozilla & Apple don’t have this and perhaps a better implementation for IE is in order)
  3. Anti-aliasing control on fonts/text/images
  4. Rendering effects via JavaScript (Rotation, reflection, scale, animate)

I put these in this order because #1 will allow you to do almost anything you want in terms of layout and design as I will discuss later. #2,#3 will help accessibility by pulling fonts out of images. #4 is optional and would help performance for real-time rendering and effects.

Part B is the styling attributes, look and feel and layout. There are two possible solutions. The first possible solution is to start from scratch. While this is desirable it’s perhaps too far reaching. Instead I’ll propose a solution to style pages that that:
- Doesn’t involve CSS in the traditional sense
- Is accessible – for screen readers or alternative devices
- Allows for semantic markup
- Is optimized for tools
- Is cross browser

Before I get into my proposal a bit of history. Back in 1998 as part of my college senior project I designed a cross-browser HTML editing and animation tool. At the time Microsoft had just introduced DHTML and Netscape had recently made layers possible. Although the two technologies were different they made it possible to position elements on the screen in somewhat predictable ways. The program created layers and absolutely positioned elements and allowed the user to both position and animate objects across the screen.

The editor tool created a library array of objects and then set the position of those objects on the screen using a JavaScript timer. The key thing about this method was that the browser didn’t manage the layout of the screen. It was up-to the designer at design-time to decide where objects would go. At run-time the position of the objects was simply a result of the JavaScript execution.

Back in 1998 the problems with layout sounded similar. Thee were incompatibilities in using tables and transparent pixels to create web-pages. There were all sorts of browser hacks to try to get things to line up right.

The solution I used back then and the solution I propose now is to use JavaScript to render the layout instead of having the browser position screen elements. You still use CSS classes to style fonts & colors but you don’t allow the position to be specified in CSS. Instead you position and size elements in the design tool and allow these properties to be set at runtime via JavaScript (or even AJAX if you’re so bold).

There are many nice things that happen when you use CSS just for fonts and JavaScript to control the layout.

  • The page loads fast. Since all elements are absolutely positioned and you’re not cascading the browser doesn’t have to wait long to render.
  • The styles are deterministic and predictable.
  • The placement, margins and positions are easily editable (assuming you’re using a tool)
  • You can have consistent sizes that are re-used across the layout.
  • Your layout can be parameterizes so elements line up and stick together as designed even when the browser resizes and content flows.
  • You can specify alternate element positions for smaller sizes making it possible to use the same content for mobile applications. Since the position is set in JavaScript it happens at runtime and adjusts to the device it’s running on.
  • You fight less with the browser because you only use a few primitives. In addition any browser hacks or tricks are done by the JavaScript compiler and not by the page designer. The page just works.
  • You can re-order the content tags anyway you like so that accessible browsers read the tags in the order you specify. This level of control is often impossible with CSS.
  • The approach is future friendly. As new browser features are exposed the script can progressively and safely expose these features.
  • You can mix traditional HTML/CSS with this new approach
  • You can think outside the box-model.

In many ways you design the page and then compile it down to the appropriate JavaScript that would render the content. This is similar to how PDF/PostScript documents are created. The postscript file is actually a programing language and your document is represented as a series of function calls, loops and procedures.

The concept address many of my own complaints but there are some drawbacks to this approach.

  • Hand coding page layout in JavaScript is slower then writing CSS. To do this properly you need a tool. My college project wouldn’t cut it although a similar approach could be used to create a rich-tool. In theory if you had the items #1,2,3 &4 you could even write a printer driver that would convert any document into a web-page.
  • View source won’t tell the whole story. This is because in some sense the page is pre-compiled from the editor tool into the JavaScript representation. The compiler may optimize the layout or code and may even discard certain editor specific meta-data that doesn’t need to pushed into the web-page. For people who insist on hand coding this may be a drawback.
  • Different tools could produce pages that don’t necessarily transition well from one tool to another. This is because the pre-compilation step and the resulting JavaScript file would vary between tools.

These are two possible approaches to the problem. I’m sure there are many others. It’s easy to poke holes in these ideas but I’d rather hear your concepts.

Posted in HTML/CSS, Venting | No Comments »

Ten reasons why CSS sucks

Sep 06
25

CSS is certainly an improvement on plain old HTML but it’s limitations are staggering and the lack of industry support will continue to hold back designers for many years to come unless we begin to build and design something better.

  1. For all that CSS has been able to do it’s a technological failure. CSS just doesn’t work as expected. How can I say it’s a failure when millions of sites use it? CSS can be used to style basic text attributes but browsers aren’t consistent in how they use this technology. Even though there is a “standard” and some browsers partially adhere to the standard to truly be a useful standard you need two things: Predictability and Consistency. CSS has neither. Any designer who has tried to create a large and complex site using CSS will tell you that all popular browsers interpret the standard differently.
  2. CSS is ‘markup centric’ not ‘design centric.’ I have this idea that designers should spend more time designing great looking sites and less time fiddling around with markup tags and browser compatibility. When I say ‘markup centric’ I mean that every CSS design tool forces users to go into source code mode to create an attractive modern site. Many designers take pride in hand coding CSS. Tools for designers should be design centric. PDF/postscript is a good example of a design centric markup , (unfortunately not very suitable for the web.) Designers don’t argue about how to create semantically correct postscript tags they just create great designs using great design tools. CSS sucks because it forces designers to think about how to make it work technically rather than how to make it work from a design perspective.
  3. Why on earth do we think that cascading is a useful feature? The way that styles cascade from one level of layout to a deeper layout makes it difficult to figure out why a particular item is styled in a certain way. By contrast non-cascading style sheets would be equally powerful and more predictable. The cascading makes it harder to interpret the page for both the designer as well as the web-browser. In fact the complexities in cascading is one of the reasons why so many browsers screw up the standard. In theory cascading could save bandwidth but in practice it creates bloated documents to get around the cascading issues.
  4. The box-model is too simplistic. The high level idea of CSS is that you can create attractive pages using margin, border, padding and content attributes. While this is a nice theory it’s primitive in it’s understanding of both layout problems and design. Highly developed design tools have layout engines that offer multiple layouts, non-rectangular margins, proportional layouts, dock-able layouts, table layouts, column layouts, etc. etc. It’ll be years before these features make it to CSS and many more before browsers implement them with any consistency. If browsers keep spending so much time on CSS they’ll have a well polished turd. Tools like Aldus Page Maker had better design tools, font tools and layout capabilities 10 years ago. This is because good design tools start with the design, not the markup.
  5. When writing software you learn what works and what doesn’t. You get new and better ideas and you throw away the old ones. This process of starting fresh is absent from the current CSS way of thinking. Each version of CSS builds on the previous one without acknowledging any fundamental flaws. CSS and its HTML sibling are the ultimate designs by committee. Any enhancements to CSS/HTML are piled on top of the old standards. This makes it progressively harder to create powerful, compatible and consistent browsers. This also makes it harder for designers to create sites that target the new platform because they are constantly trying to satisfy the compatibility with older browsers. Version compatibility has to be all or nothing. If you support V3 it has to be 100% supported and tested. Supporting some of the features actually makes things worse.
  6. There shouldn’t be multiple right answers for a visual design. The way CSS works there can be many ways to do the same thing. In fact there seem to be endless debates about the proper way to hack together trivial things like rounded corners. Rounded Corners? I mean really! Again I refer you to Aldus and even MS Word circa 1997. These features are not that hard to develop but getting them to work in a “standard way” seems to be all but impossible.
  7. CSS captures styles not semantics or design intention. A design intention would be something like: “I want to balance these two columns” or perhaps “This text should line up with the logo image in the first column.” When designers do things like this: 
      #content{position:relative;top:32px;left:20%;width:40%;}

    They are capturing the style specifics not the design intention. Why 32 pixels? Why 40%? Perhaps the logo is 32px tall? Perhaps the other column is 60% wide? When the logo changes size or placement how will you know what styles to touch? There is a basic concept called parametric design that can be used to specify the parameters of the design. This concept helps embody the design intention as a set of rules that can then be preserved as the design changes. Even a very simple parametric design allows you to preserve design intention rather then hard coding sizes and dimensions.

  8. Design should be declarative not interpreted. Again CSS has to process a large number of rules before it can figure out where things are supposed to go. After these rules are interpreted this data is thrown out and each and every browser that opens up the web-page has to re-interpret the data. This is incredibly inefficient. First of it makes web-pages load very slowly. Even when you’re on a fast connection the browser can’t figure out where to place objects until the entire web-page has finished loading. Secondly this interpretation is very prone to errors. A declarative design isn’t open to as much interpretation allowing it both render quickly and consistently.
  9. CSS is a pain to work with. Take a look at some of the designs over at CSSZenGarden. The designs are both attractive and sophisticated. A good designer could take these designs and mock up similar designs in PhotoShop or Illustrator in a matter of hours but take the same designs and ask for it in CSS and it may take a couple days. Each time you make an edit to your CSS you have to refresh your browser to see what it’s actually going to look like. Then after you get one browser working you need to double back and get the other browsers working.
  10. If you can’t get consistency across browsers then you can’t rely on CSS to accurately and properly design your site. If you can’t get the site to look exactly the way you want on every single browser then how can you claim that CSS is a good design tool or even a success? The fact that there is no alternative to create attractive websites doesn’t make CSS a good tool. There are two ways to solve the problem. The first is to continue to hammer on standards and CSS asking for a better solution. This has been happening for the last 10 years and it just doesn’t work. The alternative is to realize that CSS is flawed in it’s intrinsic design and begin to ask the questions of how could you do it better?

——–

Archived comments from the original posting

39 Archived Comments:


Chris Moritz said…
Well put. Someone had to say it.Not that I’d recommend heading back to table-land…

*sigh

September 25, 2006

Jordi S. said…
Greg, I think the problem is not exactly CSS but the lack of good CSS tools; advanced CSS editors should manage cascading, consistency, etc.Yes, editing CSS “by hand” is really painful, but no more than editing an image pixel-by-pixel; that is what tools are created for.

And about this:
—
“If you can’t get the site to look exactly the way you want on every single browser then how can you claim that CSS is a good design tool or even a success?”
—
Ups, “to look exactly the way you want”? That is not what a web site is for. What about usability and accesibility? Users should be able to change font size; and they may have big or little screens; or … If you want control what users exactly see, give them a paper-sheet.

September 26, 2006

Greg Raiz said…
Jordi S. – The lack of a tool is certainly a problem but Adobe/Macromedia is quite capable of creating high-end design tools. The reason that HTML/CSS is a disaster isn’t because Dreamweaver isn’t a good tool, it’s because it’s trying to design a tool around a technology rather then creating a great design tool then figuring out how to express that freedom using technology. The formula is backwards, it’s markup centric and that’s the flaw.The web is for creating designs that look exactly as designers want. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at any high-end site like espn, msn, yahoo, abc, nbc, microsoft, apple, dell, amazon, etc, etc. All these sites are all designed down to the pixel and they all care about usability and accessibility. It’s not a trade-off you can have good design, accessibility and usability.
The problem is that it’s a an enormous pain with css.

I didn’t touch on accessibility but let’s call it a potential #11. People abuse css by turning lists into hover menus, fixing font-sizes so they don’t scale when the font increases and all sorts of other tricks that are totally not-accessible.

September 26, 2006

Jordi S. said…
Greg;
well, I use Dreamweaver and let me tell that it’s not ‘great’ editing CSS. It’s probably better than any other editor, but there’s a lot of things that could be improved (although it’s a hard hard work).Sorry, I don’t exactly know what you mean by ‘high-end site’ (poor English, you see), but let’s take the model-for-ecommerce one: Amazon.

In Amazon users can change font size, the design ‘flows’ depending on screen-size, … Well, if you mean that designers want exactly “an usable design”, then I agree with you :) But Amazon is not controlling design to the pixel (and they are doing right!).

Yes, you’re right: CSS may be wrong used against usability. But… it’s powerful, so it’s dangerous (as nuclear power is).

So I won’t say CSS sucks… No more than some tools suck, or some designers suck. CSS simply is not perfect :)

September 26, 2006

Ross Johnson said…
“The web is for creating designs that look exactly as designers want. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at any high-end site like espn, msn, yahoo, abc, nbc, microsoft, apple, dell, amazon, etc, etc. All these sites are all designed down to the pixel and they all care about usability and accessibility.”Most of those sites are fluid and/or scalable sites. When you start designing sites that look differently dependant on browser/text size you are far far from pixel perfect design.

Every time I read posts such as this there always seems to be more of a “frusteration” than a good understanding and criticizm.

Your proposal to design a tool around the technology is a bit unrealistic. Shall we just convince all browser makers (including the ones that can’t even get CSS right) to just adopt a new technology?

Oh but wait, there is flash – and flash has it’s share of problems as well.

Once you get the hang of CSS it all makes sense and it is not frusterating anymore.

September 26, 2006

Mike G said…
This is a very, very good article. CSS is a disaster.
September 26, 2006

Montoya said…
Sorry Greg, but your post only shows how little you understand about the technology and the implementation of it, as well as the nature of the web and information exchange. Your “design centric” view of web design is limiting you and preventing you from adapting to a technology that offers improvements, not setbacks.It’s easy to argue about problems in any language, be it programming, markup, or a description language like CSS. Your post sounds very similar to an inexperienced programmer having trouble with the intricacies of the C language or someone who has never dealt with OOP before and encounter Java for the first time. If you had the experience, you wouldn’t blame the tool, but rather you would recognize that all of your complaints are the fault of both the implementation and simply the young age of the technology.

As a junior educator contributing to a college course with over 100 students learning CSS based design (as well as PHP programming), I can assure you that CSS is neither hard nor painful; if 100 students can learn it every year, and produce highly flexible, lightweight, and attractive designs with it, then maybe you just need to go back to school (and I say that without intending to offend you).

September 26, 2006

Greg Raiz said…
Montoya – Sorry but I do understand CSS, Java, OOP, C++, PHP and other languages. I don’t consider myself a CSS guru far from it but I do know the technology well enough to know it’s flaws and limitations. I’m also pretty familiar with it’s implementation having worked at Microsoft and having worked on a project for Firefox.I know that it is possible to create great looking designs in CSS. That’s not the point. The point is that creating these great looking CSS sites take significantly longer in CSS then in most other design tools even if you are a Guru.

I can design something for print production in roughly 1/10th the time it takes to design something for the web using CSS.

The fact that you are blaming me for not understanding is just funny. Your own portfolio proves my point:

html { font-size:100.01%; }

As a designer you shouldn’t have to fight the CSS and the browser to get what you want.

September 26, 2006

Montoya said…
greg: If someone came to you with a rant about C and all the intricacies of it, and posed those as problems in C and complained that something new and better is needed, you probably wouldn’t waste much time with them, but simply explain that if they understood the language better they would understand the how and why for everything.I never said you were not an expert in everything *other* than CSS, but my point still stands: you don’t know much about CSS. For people who learn it (and I can tell you, it’s not hard to learn when you have a good teacher), the development time is significantly less than what could ever be achieved with tools like Dreamweaver or Frontpage. Time spent fixing bugs, on the other hand, is not the fault of the technology but the fault of a certain browser which is 8 years old. Anyone in the software world knows that 8 year old software is very difficult to deal with, and blaming a new technology for problems with outdated software is putting the blame in the wrong place. An example like:

html { font-size:100.01%; }

wouldn’t be necessary if it wasn’t for IE 6 being so common, but who do you blame that on? The W3C CSS group, or Microsoft? Mind you, it’s a bug in Microsoft’s software. Maybe that will help you shift the blame in the right direction.

You said: “I can design something for print production in roughly 1/10th the time it takes to design something for the web using CSS.” Will your print design scale to the user’s window size? Will it allow the information to be used by multiple user agents (machines as well as humans, including humans who access the web in alternative ways rather than just visually)? Will it offer multiple styles? Will it be easy to modify in the future?

Or are we comparing apples and oranges?

The truth here is you don’t understand the web. You understand print design, and client side software, and even browsers, but that doesn’t give you any knowledge of how the web works. I still challenge you to really learn the medium, the technology, the research and the philosophy behind modern web design practices and why things work the way they do. If you did, you would understand why “problems” like cascading are actually features, and why this new way of looking at websites is a step ahead, not behind. Until then, you are entitled to your opinions, but you have no credibility to back them up.

September 26, 2006

Anonymous said…
I 100% do not agree with you.
September 26, 2006

Greg Raiz said…
To those that don’t agree…I don’t mind that you don’t agree. The fact that there seems to be a range of opinions means I touched on something that is perhaps partly true. I doubt that I’m 100% wrong but I’m fairly sure I’m at least partially right ;)

Counter all 10 of my points if you want. Explain how a markup centric
language is better for design. Explain why consistency is not a problem. Explain why cascading is a good thing. Explain how things like CSS hover menus are a good for accessibility.

Go ahead and convince me. I’ll try to keep an open mind.

September 26, 2006

Scott said…
Nice job stirring the pot Greg. Hope it gets you some business. I’ve taken the time to
rebut your ten points on my own blog (not trying to spam; I felt it would get a bit long in the tooth to do it in your comments section).Mr. Montoya is corrent. You have a limited understanding of the medium. (Oh, and his website kicks ass.)

September 27, 2006

Greg Raiz said…
Scott, good comeback.I didn’t write it to be provocative. I think CSS limits what designers can do. I see these limitations everyday. There are many designs that are difficult to do in CSS but there are others that I have found impossible.

I believe CSS limits the creativity of designers by imposing technological constraints on visual designs. This may be because I come from a print background but that doesn’t change the fact that I still feel limited.

While CSS can be incrementally improved I personally think it’s important to think about how to make large improvements rather then incremental ones.

September 27, 2006

Michelle said…
These are very valid points. I’ve actually seen people praise a website redesign that was nothing more than a small menu, background gradient and an input box on the page. I think there is an “elitist” attitude when it comes to table-less CSS sites that is getting in the way of advancing this technology. If you speak up about the problems with CSS and how you have to learn all these hacks and tricks to get a somewhat usable site, you get the typical answer that it will get easier in time. How long do we have to keep waiting? The reality is that most people don’t have time or patience for complex workarounds. Designers and developers should demand better.
September 28, 2006

Anonymous said…
CSS is merely a means to an end, and the best one for the way the WWW is supposed to be at that.CSS has nothing to do with design whatsoever IMO, and thus shouldn’t be judged by design.

Also, it is very easy to make your website look the same in all browsers.

September 28, 2006

Brett Mitchell said…
And your alternative? You’d prefer to use tables?CSS is a standard, which all browsers (with the exception of IE) try to adhere to. As they get closer to meeting that standard (like Opera9, the new Firefox 3 (Gran Paradiso), the ability for code to be handled identically across platforms and browsers is getting better.

Of course, IE is and always will be the exception. While it is consistantly behind the other major browsers, support is slowly improving.

The point of the internet has evolved to be a source of information and entertainment that is widely available to everyone, everywhere – be it on a cell phone, by a visually impaired person with a braille keyboard, or your average citizen.

The internet isn’t a newspaper. You don’t have absolute control over what your viewers see. You seem to miss the point that the fact your viewers ultimately have control is the benefit of the internet – it’s customizable by individuals to meet their needs. If they need the font size larger, if they need to lower or raise the contrast, or they can’t see and they can have a browser speak to them.

CSS isn’t the be-all and end-all of design – you’re correct. If you want a design that aligns down to the pixel and has the perfect colours on every monitor/browser/platform, HTML is not your best bet to start with, and NO interactive language with the flexability of HTML could do that anyway.

HTML and CSS are easy to learn, cheap on bandwidth, viewable in every browser made in the last what, 6 years, including PDAs/cellphones…

What is your alternative?

September 29, 2006

Phillip Ryals said…
Greg, as I read your thoughtful list, I came to the same conclusion that Montoya has voiced… that you are essentially a print designer who might not fully understand the web world.I absolutely agree that web design using CSS is horribly lacking from a design perspective, but just because it doesn’t give a designer a WYSIWYG interface doesn’t mean it sucks.

You push the idea that ‘something better’ should be created, either by fixing CSS or replacing it outright. I challenge you… how would YOU create this fictional superior method of describing a complicated design using RAW TEXT?

You see, from a designer /and/ programmer’s perpective, CSS is a very good tradeoff. No, I can’t draw a few boxes, apply some drop-shadows, scale some fonts, and see the results in a web browser. That’s life. Vector graphics for the web has been tried before in many many ways (anyone remember the Xcalibur BBS?) but it’s never taken off because it still requires more processing power than just rendering raw text.

The point is, you’re not going to get an easy-to-use method of creating complex designs. They’re complex, and so the method for creating them is complex. While CSS rendering isn’t predictable across all browsers (NOT the fault of CSS), it does indeed make many things possible that would otherwise never work.

September 29, 2006

Dean Hall said…
Clearly CSS is not perfect. Greg touched on some good points like cross-browser compatibility. I certainly agree that CSS does not offer me and my clients a complete solution. Frankly, I don’t give a damn if it helps anyone else or not – I’m about getting my projects completed.I still use CSS, but I note the fact that it doesn’t work the way I need it too. Ie. When I design a site using CSS, I have no assurance it will look and perform the same across browsers and technologies. I t goes some way to this though, and I still use it. But I still use tables for some projects too.

My rule of thumb is “Consistency, Consistency, Consistency” when it comes to a GUI. Neither CSS or anything else gives me an assurance of that. So I do what all developers do and I do whatever works. If CSS works for a project, then I use it. If it doesn’t look like it will, I use tables.

I thought this was a good article, with some valid points.

October 04, 2006

Anonymous said…
CSS’s strongest argument is only its swarm of fanboys. At least with tables, when I resized my browser window, it didn’t break a site’s design or make it completely unreadable. It kept the content locked in an accessible place. It says a lot about CSS when Photoshop’s table slice-generater, though it creates nightmarish html – it can autogenerate readable code and looks the same on every browser. If CSS can’t even claim what the joke “Adobe Photoshop’s HTML” could accomplish, it’s simply pathetic.
October 17, 2006

Anonymous said…
Totally agree with what Montoya is saying, nothing to add.Greg I just want to ask you what if I told you that Quark will no longer be supporting style sheets? Would you be ok with that? Even if you were working on a 120 page document? I’d be pissed, just like I would be pissed if they took away CSS.

October 20, 2006

Anonymous said…
All these people repeating that Greg’s a “print designer who doesn’t understand CSS” just don’t get it.They have adopted themselves to the css mentality, instead of adapting the technology to design needs.

Most miss the point altogether, like:

Greg I just want to ask you what if I told you that Quark will no longer be supporting style sheets? Would you be ok with that? Even if you were working on a 120 page document? I’d be pissed, just like I would be pissed if they took away CSS.

This is irrelevant. Greg has not talked against the general idea of stylesheets, he talked against the CSS concept and implementation in particular. His points are specific and razor sharp, and could be used in designing a BETTER stylesheet language for the web. Like this point:

CSS captures styles not semantics or design intention. A design intention would be something like: “I want to balance these two columns” or perhaps “This text should line up with the logo image in the first column.” When designers do things like this:
#content{position:relative;top:32px;left:20%;width:40%;}They are capturing the style specifics not the design intention. Why 32 pixels? Why 40%? Perhaps the logo is 32px tall? Perhaps the other column is 60% wide? When the logo changes size or placement how will you know what styles to touch? There is a basic concept called parametric design that can be used to specify the parameters of the design.

Right on!

And since a lot of web pages nowadays are “web apps”, are you “css people” familiar with actual programming for GUIs? If you know GTK, QT, Java or what have you, they all have MULTIPLE layout models. CSS only has one, and a cripled one at that, the box model. A single model cannot solve all needs. (btw, almost all languages offer a table or grid layout manager, without sacrificing “fluidity”).

Some points:

a) The concept of styles is correct. It’s CSS that has it all wrong.

b) Design should be intention based and parametric. Hell, CSS does not even have parameters! If I want 20 design elements in my stylesheet to be 200px (or 20% or anything), I have to repeat myself 20 times over. When I want to change it to 200px it’s 20x times the work actually needed).

c) A lot of stuff should have been built in, in CSS and HTML and easier. Rounded corners? Blow me, just have something like:

#box {curve-top-right: 20px }

or have a way to define such effects in code blocks and share them.

etc…

October 21, 2006

Anonymous said…
I partially agree. But at the same time, a number of the problems I have personally faced with CSS is browser compatibility. But I really can’t blame CSS for this; it is the browser’s fault. If an alternative to CSS came out, the browsers are still capable of fudging it up and making it difficult for the designer.I would say CSS could be better, but I would not say it sucks entirely. For every language, there are flaws and limitations and drawbacks. I can’t really appreciate the suckiness of CSS, or the lack thereof, until there are more alternatives to choose from.

October 21, 2006

Nick Presta said…
c) A lot of stuff should have been built in, in CSS and HTML and easier. Rounded corners? Blow me, just have something like:#box {curve-top-right: 20px }

Oh, you mean like CSS3′s border radius property?

http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-css3-border-20021107/#the-border-radius

October 30, 2006

Anders said…
“b) Design should be intention based and parametric. Hell, CSS does not even have parameters! If I want 20 design elements in my stylesheet to be 200px (or 20% or anything), I have to repeat myself 20 times over. When I want to change it to 200px it’s 20x times the work actually needed).”Or you can learn what cascading in CCS means and how to implement it.

October 30, 2006

Rich C said…
It says a lot about CSS when Photoshop’s table slice-generater, though it creates nightmarish html – it can autogenerate readable code and looks the same on every browser. If CSS can’t even claim what the joke “Adobe Photoshop’s HTML” could accomplish, it’s simply pathetic.Photoshop’s supported CSS slice-generation for a while now.

Web sites I build using CSS positioning for images are a lot more readable and maintainable than those I used to make using table-based layouts.

October 30, 2006

Greg Raiz said…
To the previous comment. even if you know CSS this still doesn’t address the lack of parameters. You can work around some of this with cascading classes but it’s not a great solution.a declarative approach would have:
$logoh:120px;
$smallMargin:3px;
$largeMargin;10px;
.logo {height:logoh;}
.titletext {top:logoh+smallmargin;}

I’m using the $ show how you could declare a parameter/variable. This is still declarative so it’s not an ideal solution but at least it demonstrates how parameters could allow you to do things that are difficult or impossible to do via traditional cascading.

October 30, 2006

Anonymous said…
@Anders said…“b) Design should be intention based and parametric. Hell, CSS does not even have parameters! If I want 20 design elements in my stylesheet to be 200px (or 20% or anything), I have to repeat myself 20 times over. When I want to change it to 200px it’s 20x times the work actually needed).”

Or you can learn what cascading in CCS means and how to implement it.

Erm, cascading != parametric.

In the case I describe, for example, who told you that the 200px always refers to the same attribute (like width?). It could 200px of width for this element, 200px padding for the other, et al, used for implementing a consistent grid.

Or I could want a yellow background-color in one item, and a yellow foreground in some text or a yellow border in another. Cascading does not offer a way to define all these cases depending on a single color definition.

—
foljs

October 30, 2006

Daron said…
Well, Greg, in truth, it’s the entire technology of the web that sucks.Your comparison to Postscript and the evolution of Page layout programs is spot on.

HTML, CSS, Javascript and all their evil offshoots are a result of:

* an inadequate and limited initial definition of the “web page” problem domain

* a crude, fatally flawed but simple to use initial technology (HTML)

* which lead to designers and programmers crufting up a mind boggling array of workarounds to fill the gaps (Tables and Spacer gifs)

* which spurred a belated attempt to redefine the underlying technologies by rigid academic edict mainly by non-designers (Cascading Style Sheets, XHTML, Widespread Deprecation)

* which was anyway largely undermined by the piecemeal and incompetent implementation of the new technologies in browsers and development tools (all of them)

* which is now all welded into place by the network effect, endless inert committees and monopolistic self interest. (Welcome to the Great Leap Backwards)

We are stuck with a kludge built on a kludge until we have a disruptive technology.

And Flash wasn’t it.

October 30, 2006

bjk2007 said…
HAHA!!! Disable CSS and take a look at this page! If this site doesn’t show how great CSS is, then what does? All you see is a perfectly fallen apart page, just like you should see with a CSS site. Just take a look at the source.
December 06, 2006

Greg Raiz said…
bjk2007 – Just because you ‘can’ make a site work with CSS doesn’t make it a good tool. The CSS for this blog came straight from Google’s blogger tool (2006). It’s full of all sorts of silly things that show just how hacked it is,Yuck! Yes there are certain things that CSS can do well, and it’s certainly better then plain old HTML of 1996. But as a generalization, it still sucks.

December 06, 2006

bjk2007 said…
First off, I’m sorry if my last comment was a little offensive. Tables vs. CSS is a controversial web design topic. I came across this blog entry following the post of a member of a web design forum. Let’s just say he can act really stupid sometimes and I came here pretty upset after being personally insulted by him.
I did take the time to read it again after I had calmed down. I would have to say that while I disagree with you on several points, I do agree that CSS hasn’t done as well as it should have. Why? Simply browser support (IE). If we can’t get them to support CSS, how can we ever assume that they’ll support the newer and better theoretical CSS replacement language?
I guess the rest of my disagreements with you lie in a coder/designer mentality. You seem to be more of a designer while I’m actually a person whose strengths lie in coding, so we’re bound to disagree on how things should work.
December 07, 2006

Anonymous said…
You all must be joking. CSS is without a doubt the future of web design. WHY because css is exactly what xhtml needs to work and xhtml is going to be the future. WHY because it is (finally) a consistent DOM markup that will be able to be used by many varying systems.
IN PLAIN ENGLISH:
Not Microsoft, Netscape, Mac whatever can stop a standard being created, fact is those “browser companies” don’t make websites or web application (well they do make some) and developers NEED a standard so they aren’t writting 12 different lines to support 12 different venues. With these 2 standards (CSS2 and XHTML) we will have easier to maitain websites, portable applications, accessibility features for the blind/hearing impaired and about a million other applications.
SO TO ANY NEWBIE DO NOT LISTEN AND MAKE SURE TO USE CSS2 AND XHTML IN ALL FUTURE PROJECTS
December 12, 2006

Anonymous said…
The CSS Design When it comes to a fulfledged dynamic site it has more cross browser conflicts which are not easy to fix.

December 18, 2006

josh said…
AMEN BROTHER.
CSS is terrible. I’ve spent countless hours learning it and no matter what, the results are different from browser-to-browser.I can’t stand learning it, but at the same time I love the way some of these Css-driven sites are put together. I think to myself “I want that!” But it never happens. CSS is driving me insane. It always will drive me insane. Has potential, but it sucks.

December 22, 2006

John Nagle said…
You’re absolutely right.With Dreamweaver 3 and tables, it wasn’t necessary to look at HTML to lay out a page. With Dreamweaver 8 and CSS, the page designer must understand CSS, HTML, and probably Javascript. That’s was a big step backwards.The CSS system is just too programmer-oriented. And I’m a programmer. (Programmer as in MSCS from Stanford, the Nagle algorithm in TCP, inventor of ragdoll technology, real-time robot vehicle control, not programmer as in “writes some Perl”. And my first web site went up in 1995.) It’s not that CSS is hard; it’s that CSS is bad.

CSS is, simply, a badly designed layout system. Even the rather simple system in Tk which lays out dialog boxes and windows is better. Tk is a nested-box system, but both “pack” (like CSS “float”) and “grid” (like tables) layouts are available in the same system. This is enough to handle most cases. Which “float” and “clear” are not. Page layout is forced to fall back on absolute positioning far too often.

The clever way to do layout would have been with a constraint system. Each box has four edges and four corners, and it would be possible to bind corners and edges to create any desired relationship between boxes. This is something one could express easily in a click and drag graphical tool. Want three columns the same height? Tie their adjacent bottom corners together.
Want to fill the page? Tie the outside corners to a page edge. Ten minutes to explain to an artist. Advanced use would involve priorities on constraints, so if something had to give in “fluid design” as the page size or type size changed, you could pick what gave first. (This could be extended to allow curved boundaries, even splines, but that might be overdoing it.)

The browser would have to have a constraint engine to resolve all the constraints, but there are known solutions to that problem.

Too many people drank the Kool-Aid on CSS. It’s just not that good a technology.

January 07, 2007

frostbyte said…
You missed the biggest problem of all. CSS dogma. We’re now at the point where questioning CSS is no longer politically correct. Just look at the anger in the replies. (Especially Scott’s. Check out his blog, you’d think you just insulted his mother. Warning: Horizontal scrolling)If you question CSS at all, you’re immediately laughed off as just another unskilled newbie who doesn’t understand, or some old timer who can’t get past tables. Even half the people who agree with you felt the need to clarify that they only agree with some points, “please don’t think I’m in the same camp as the anti-CSS crazies”.We’ll never get past CSS because it somehow became dogma and you can’t question the dogma.

January 09, 2007

John Nagle said…
The worst problem with DIV-based layout is that the layout system is too weak. There’s no form of “grid” layout. There’s no way to relate a DIV to anything but its predecessor, its parent, or an absolute position. The system is just too dumb. That’s why people have to stand on their head just to get three columns to work.Tables actually are a better designed layout system. Table layouts allow table cells which span multiple rows and columns. If all tables could do were simple grids of cells, the CSS approach might make sense, but tables are more general than that. And they’re well supported in Dreamweaver.The fundamental limitations of DIV-based layour are obscured by an excessive number of attributes and the occasional use of Javascript when the attributes aren’t enough. But underneath, the fundamental approach is just too weak.

If CSS had a grid capability, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it doesn’t.

January 10, 2007

Anonymous said…
Greg – thanks for this spot-on article. After working the Web for 10 years, and still struggling to get decent CSS layouts that work with php includes, I was beginning to feel that I was getting stupid in my ‘old’ age. In fact, CSS is far less intuitive than our previous nemesis (Tables) and especially difficult when you introduce any “includes’ into CSS design layout. And on this note, Dreamweavers Layer layouts only work when using plain vanilla .html files. Try making absolute layers stick in place if you use includes with Dreamweaver layer layout – a hair pulling exercise that forces one back to Tables very quickly!
January 27, 2007

Anonymous said…
Whether you like it or not BROWSERS and specially IE mandate what we use in the market. Check the logs of your web servers and then disagree with that.Read this http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/font.htmlI was part of the workgroup for CSS and what we tried to do back then has nothing to do with what people fight about today.

It was about separating format from markup to create data semantics.

Greg you are right on the nail. I wonder how many of these so called “CSS Designers” have the BIG profitable accounts.

Can you make the money with CSS on these sites using CSS, I dare you?
Look at these:

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/

http://www.elle.com/

http://www.nike.com

http://www.adidas.com

http://www.faithhill.com/

http://www.motley.com

http://www.imandd.com/index.html

Go on, make one of these (CNN for example) using CSS no hacks, js, pure w3c css. Publish the markup as a test and let us see that you know your css stuff.

Montoya you are the teacher, or is css only for the graphics blind? Prove Greg wrong, go ahead and make my day.

CSS can not do what the tables and flash can here. Forget semantics, forget standards, come and visit me for a little while in reality land. Bottom line people, hard cold cash it’s what matters.

Montoya get off you high horse and do something about it. Rewrite the standards so is more workable.

Use what works, and if you can separate format from markup with css and if tables have to be used so be it and format them in your css.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Browsers, HTML/CSS, Venting | 121 Comments »

Dell Hell

Oct 05
23

I ordered a PC from Dell.com the experience was fast and friendly. I found a computer I liked, ordered it and it was delivered in just a week. This process was painless. The pain was felt after I received the PC.

Day 1 – I open and install the PC and after booting up the PC for the very first time and going through some of the first-install wizards the computer blue-screens and crashes. I reboot the PC and I’m able to get the first time setup to complete however after 5-10 minutes of using the computer it crashes again. It’s late in the day so I leave the office and go home.

Day 2 – I contact technical support and explain the problem. We spend 45 minutes messing with the bios of the system. This seems to fix things but I tell the tech that I’m not certain the problem is fixed since it happens every 5-10 minutes and it’s nothing in particular that seems to cause it.

Day 3 – I come in the morning and try to boot the computer and it refuses to boot. I have to restart it 5-6 times before the computer will boot. Once it does boot it continues to blue screen after several minutes of use. I’m busy with other things so I’m unable to call tech support back for a few days.

Day 4 – I call tech support again and explain the issue. Again we spend 1/2 hour changing bios settings. Then we spend another 1/2 hour changing windows settings, safe mode, and other settings. Again the problem seems to have gone away but I tell the tech that the problem is intermittent and seems to come back. The tech has me restart the computer 4 times, I thank him hoping my computer won’t crash the following day.

Day 5 – The computer crashes again. I call tech support, wait for 1/2 hour and then finally speak with a tech. The tech says that I need to re-install windows. I begin the install (this takes 1.5 hours) The techs name is Al, his ID is 464730. He promises to call me back after the install is complete. He never calls me back.

Day 6 – I call again and this time instead of reinstalling windows the tech suggests that we run a diagnostics program. The diagnostics program is supposed to take 1-2 hours. The tech promises to call me back. He never does. The diagnostics complete without finding any problems.

Day 7 – I call up and I ask to return my computer. I’m not happy with it, it’s not working and Tech-support can’t fix it. Well according to customer support I can’t return my computer because it’s past the 14 day return policy. I point out that I had problems with my PC from day 1 and that I would have gladly returned it but wasn’t given the option until I spoke with technical support. Ok, well that’s ridiculous but I’d be happy with an exchange as long as the computer works. No problem, they tell me but because the customer support systems aren’t linked with Technical Support they need to transfer me back to tech support to issue a dispatch so that my computer can be exchanged by customer support.

So I get transferred to technical support and I’m told that it will take 15-31 days for my system to be exchanged. 15-31 days!!!!!! So I tell the guy to issue the dispatch and transfer me to customer service because I’m pissed. In transferring my call I get disconnected. I’m not sure if they hung up on me or not.

I call back and I’m about to blow my lid. The person on the phone is named Dan badge #459296 and he assures me that my new computer is on it’s way and I will have a new computer in 3-5 days. I asked him 4 times to be sure I understood him and he assured me that by May 25th I would have a new computer. I would then return my old computer. He promised that I will absolutely get the computer no later then May 25th. My dispatch number for this was 058205544.

SIX DAYS LATER.

I called and was put on hold, then disconnected.

I called again to speak with customer support and was told that only technical support could access my service records and that customer support could not. I asked the Customer Service agent to stay on the phone with me as he transferred me to technical support. I was sick of people passing the buck. As he was transferring me I was disconnected again.

I called back and was told that the order was canceled because they tried to call me and the phone number was wrong on my account. So they canceled everything. Not only was the phone number wrong, it wasn’t even close. Not a single digit matched nor was the area code correct. I was given a case number and connected to technical support because customer care can’t access the technical side of the system and for some reason this is a ‘technical’ I was given a case #.

I call back again and am told that it will take 2-3 days to issue the dispatch and get me a UPS tracking number. On the phone…

Me: “I’ll be patient and wait the three days”
Dell: “Thank you sir, is there anything else I can do?”
Me: “No, I don’t want to end the conversation I want to wait. I have free long distance and unlimited minutes and if you expect me to wait for three days I’d like you to wait with me.”

The poor dell support person let out a nervous chuckle. I imagine he realized to some extend that although my request was absurd it was only slightly more absurd then his request to have me wait for three days for an electronic ‘dispatch’ transaction, or 21 days or 31 days or whatever they thought it was going to be. We talked for another 1/2 hour until I was transferred to his manager. The manager promised to keep me updated daily as to the status of the system and my tracking number. I was skeptical but he has called me back for the next two days.

THREE DAYS LATER
While on hold for probably the 10th time I was told that for faster service I should try Dell.com/chat. So I did. I loaded it up on another computer and re-entered a lot of my information. You would think that the nice thing about chat is that I don’t have to repeat yourself but I was asked for my telephone number 4 times! My guess is that on the other end there are dozens of people chatting to the same person and they keep asking for phone numbers, to buy more time. The online chat person’s name is sovee_varughese. I’m asked to re-enter my phone and information into the chat even though this was all entered to initiate the chat. I get a dispatch #058453864 and I’m told it will take 15 days for the dispatch to process. I tell the chat that I’m not happy with the 15 day wait and he tries to disconnect me. I ask to speak with a supervisor.

The supervisor tells me it would take 3 days to create a tracking number to replace my computer. I told the supervisor I would wait with him in the chat for 3 days. I was serious too. It’s not a big deal for me to minimize the window and keep it running for three days. At least this way there is some accountability. The supervisor squirmed for about an hour while the chat window was open. Then he disconnected me. It’s easy enough to reconnect so I did.

Now I’m on with Yusuf. He assures me that my new computer will arrive in 3-5 days. “Yes I’m sure” it will arrive he assures me but he can’t get me a tracking number.

While on the phone with technical support I was disconnected again. Arrrrrrrgh.

Next day, on chat again with “Varun”. “Can I have the tracking number” – No it hasn’t been generated. I was told I would have it today. It will be generated in a day or two. I was told I would have it today… Ohhh wait it has just been generated, it’s “058453864″ is this a UPS tracking number? No. It’s actually a dispatch number. But the dispatch number doesn’t help me in any way. I ask the chat person to wait with me in the chat room for 2-3 days until we have a tracking number. Yes, I’m starting to be a bit of an asshole and I admit this but we’re already into week three of this fiasco and I’ve restrained myself much longer then most. The dell chat person got pissed and disconnected. I usually get escalated to the floor manager. Time to try again.

Joseph (445546) called me again, Monday afternoon to update me on the status of my computer. I was told it would be 2-3 days for the dispatch to go through. Joseph tells me that it will take another 2-3 days to go through. He’s calling me on memorial day but says that although technical support is there on holidays 24×7. The actually assembly of computers doesn’t happen. It’ll be another 2-3 days.

May 30th. Assembly????? My first computer that I ordered was delivered in a prompt 5 days, now that I’ve already paid I have to wait and wait.

June 1st, 05 – A manager from Dell Technical support (KulVinder – 373329) calls me to check if I’m still experiencing a problem with my Blue Screen! The manager didn’t bother to check the records to see what had happened. I inform him that I have requested an exchange. He checks his computer and says… “ohh yes, I see that… you should have your system in 5-7 business days from the dispatch date.” The dispatch date is the 26th of May and it’s the 1st of June so it’s been 6 days already. I inform him of this as well. He replies well then you should be receiving the system very shortly. I ask him for a UPS tracking number. He says he’ll call me back in 1/2 hour. (Time:11:10am)

Called back at 2:15pm – So sorry it took me so long I was looking into it. And it’s going to be 8-10 business days. Why? Well we have to re-configure a system that’s the same as the one you have so we have to wait for any parts that are missing.

Me: “Well let me know what parts are missing and I’ll tell you if it’s ok to substitute or provide a different part!”

Them: “We can’t do that.”

I call again. Albert – 378065 – A manager tells me it will take 8-10 from the day of the original dispatch. He sees that the dispatch was on May 26th – should by this Friday. He decided to puts in a request to expedite the process. Case #101828519

Thursday June 02 –

Amit_Kumar – in chat - not helpful at all. Told me the computer would arrive 7 days after the dispatch. I told him that would mean it would arrive today. He then changed his mind and said 2 more days. Then he gave me a dispatch number 058453864 again.

Wed June 08

GAURAV_SACHDEVA 001-25891 in chat. Not helpful at all. Told me the computer would arrive in 3-5 days. I told him I didn’t believe him because no order number was generated. He assured me that he had escalated the issue.

“Please don’t worry I’ll call you up with the updates, I apologize for all your previous experience.”

{Gregory Raiz 2:26:08 PM} You promised me on the phone that I would have my computer in 3-5 days and you also promised that you would have an order number for me by tomorrow. YES?????

{GAURAV_SACHDEVA 2:27:03 PM} Yes, I’ll provide you each and every details ,please don’t worry. We are here to help you.

Yeah Right.

Well I didn’t get a call in the morning, or the afternoon but amazingly around 3:00 I did get a call with an

Order Number and a FedEx tracking number! Was I actually going to get my computer?

Two days later… Finally!!!!!

The dell arrives and seems to work well. In the box comes a packing slip and a request to return the original broken computer.

Several weeks pass and I get a phone call. Hello this is Dell, we haven’t yet received the broken computer, has it been sent out?
Me: “It’ll be 5-7 days, please be patient.” ;)

(The last part is a joke the rest did happen)

 

Lessons I Learned

  • Customer support should only ever ask for information once. On the phone, in chat or otherwise. If your not going to record the information don’t bother asking.
  • Each customer should only have one customer support person. The customer should be able to contact this person directly to handle problems or issues.
  • Keeping customers satisfied after the purchase should be as important as making the original sale
  • Customer support should have access to technical cases and vice-versa. Departments should never pass the buck.
  • It’s better to honestly say “I don’t know” then it is to make up a bogus answer
  • I won’t be buying another Dell anytime soon.

Posted in Experience, Review, Venting | 4 Comments »

RCN HD-DVR Sad

Oct 05
22

This is a quick list of issues I found with the RCN HD-DVR (October 2004). From my understanding the Comcast HD-DVR uses similar if not the exact same software.

  1. Ports on the back of the DVR are not labeled at all
  2. Remote has a large number of buttons (62) many of these are modal and only work in certain modes, many other buttons have no action at all.
  3. When viewing the channel list I’m able to see every channel, even the ones I don’t subscribe too. This ruins the TV browsing experience since most people won’t memorize the list of channels that they do subscribe too. So if I see something in the TV guide I can’t easily tell if I’ll be able to watch the show.
  4. There are two menu modes, icon mode and full menu mode. You need to use two clicks to bring you to the main menu.
  5. Menus are not linear they are two dimensional so you have to use full up/down/left/right navigation to find the right menu item. (Tivo navigation is by contrast linear)
  6. There is no easy way to return to the previous menu, this often means you need to start over.
  7. When searching for a show there is no clear way to move between entering letters and selecting a show, this makes the process of finding a show slow and cumbersome..
  8. When searching for a show there is no way to ‘type’ you need to scroll through each letter.
  9. There are two ways to view show listings by time or by channel. You are forced to make this choice every time you want to see a list of channels. Once you make a choice the only way to change that choice seems to be to return to the top menu.
  10. Remote control has to be pointed directly at the cable box. There is little fogiveness on this.
  11. Remote control has a “HELP” button that doesn’t do anything at all.
  12. I can schedule a show to record and when I turn the unit off it asks me if I want to cancel my recordings. Of course I don’t want to cancel my recordings, that’s why I scheduled them.
  13. When I change my aspect ratio to ‘zoom’ or ‘full’ then the HD-DVR user interface is shown off the screen so only part is visible.
  14. When I hit the pause button the screen stutters as it figures out what I wanted to do
  15. Three large buttons right in the center of the remote labeled A B C, the A button on the remote is also labeled ‘Tv-guide.’ All three buttons don’t do anything
  16. There are two menus a ‘quick menu’ and a ‘main menu’ if you click the menu button once you see the quick list, if you click it again you see the main list. The quick menu uses icons to hint at the functional pages. These same icons aren’t used in the main menu to reinforce their meaning.
  17. If you browse into a sub-menu of the main menu and you press the menu button again instead of bringing you back to the main menu it shows the ‘quick menu’ as an overlay on the ‘main menu.’ This seemed really awkward.
  18. If you’re watching a show it’s not obvious how to record the entire series of the current show. Pressing the record button will start recording the current show but to record a recurrence you need to press the the ‘info’ button twice. This is hard to find.
  19. Video on demand – sigh. Great idea, poor execution. Again the categories and shows that are listed are not necessarily available for me to watch so it’s impossible to tell what is actually available.
  20. The controls to play, pause, skip and fast forward video on demand are not the same as for watching TV.
  21. Using the menus I select “Search” then “HDTV”. I’m thinking I will be able to search HD shows by title. Nope. I get taken to a list of shows by time or channel. This is not searching this is called browsing.
  22. I started playing a recorded movie and hit pause. I later return to the movie and instead of resuming where it left off it resumes from the very beginning so I have to fast forward to the time I left off at.
  23. The fast forward button has five speeds. When fast forwarding at high speed and I press play I end up playing 10-15 seconds later then when I wanted.
  24. I was unable to get any on demand music to play. This seemed completely broken. The music would start to load and occasionally I would hear a second or two of music before it would cut out.
  25. When searching for a show to record by DVR there was no way to find the equivalent show in HD. The channel numbers and listings are treated separately.
  26. Different channels may send different HD signals. This requires you to adjust the zoom/aspect ratio manually to compensate and make the signal match the screen.
  27. Shows don’t seem to expire automatically. If I tried to record a new show and the space on the DVR was filled I would get a message asking me to delete something first.
  28. Many other misc, problems.

I will probably cancel my HD-RCN service. The problems with the unit don’t compensate for the benefits. DirectTV does have a Tivo enabled unit but it costs $700 for new customers and I hear that DirectTV is moving away from Tivo. Tivo on the other hand has yet to announce a date for their cablecard enabled box or standalone HD unit. The other option to consider is a HD Media Center PC. The entry cost for media center pc is much higher ($1500-$2000) and from what I understand HD support is only over the air. Hmmm. That deadline to convert to HD is a little over 3 years away.

To date I have never seen an HD solution that would be usable by a child or a senior citizen. These devices are not usable and even for people who understand technology they are not friendly or easy to use.

My wife, (I recently got married) tells me that the little Tivo is sad when I switch and use the RCN box. I would imagine the little RCN box is sad as well.

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