Rants

Expression show-stopper… bummer

Jeromey Balderrama

I’ve always been extremely interested in what goes on in the Web Design tools space.  I remember when Adobe came out with PageMill back in the mid-90’s, making great waves in that direction.  I then became a fan of FrontPage when they released their ’97 and ’98 versions.  However, FrontPage fell out of favor rather quickly when it became a crutch for people who had no business designing web sites, as well as generating it’s Extension-needed, non-standard, we’ll-wipe-out-your-code behavior.  I quickly switched over to Dreamweaver and didn’t look back… until a few months ago.

I became intrigued with the work Microsoft has been doing in the Expression Web space, and was delighted when they made it part of their MSDN Subscription tools.  It’s not that I’ve grown tired of Dreamweaver, but more of that “grass is greener” interest.  However, my interest abruptly halted when I realized that Expression – for all of it’s touting of standards and non-mucking of code (being the anti-Frontpage) –  still doesn’t support one of the most basic features: specifying a virtual path to root in links & references (like a stylesheet or menu).  Basically this removes any of the WYSIWYG and interactive functionality, which leads to the question: why would I want to be using this program again?

I can appreciate not trying to duplicate every competitor function, but when other market leaders like DreamWeaver & GoLive both support this function, how have you been ignoring this for so long?  This is the second-highest rated bug in their “Connect” feedback site, used to log bugs.  What’s disappointing is that MS came out with the beta of Expression 2, but that feature is still nowhere to be found.  Moreover, there’s an acknowledgement that it’s not really on their roadmap just being “considered” for a “future version”.

It’s unfortunate to see an application with so much potential be plagued by their inability to incorporate the most essential features to be competitive.  It’s too bad, designers may have liked this tool.

Vista Business SP1 = No pretty Alt+Tab?

Jeromey Balderrama

I just upgraded my desktop here at work (which runs Vista Business) over to SP1, only to find that I no longer have the pretty Alt+Tab interface.  I loved that interface, where I pressed Alt+Tab to switch between programs, then while holding it down, was able to click on the program that I really wanted (I am notorious for having tons of windows open).

What the heck?  Was my Vista Business not supposed to have that in the first place?  Did it think my graphics card was good enough Pre-Sp1 and now it’s not?  I still have Aero Glass, so I don’t know what is going on with this.

Argh, that’s what I get for adopting things early – and in this case when it’s released to the public.

Update: A reboot seems to have refreshed my graphics driver.  It reset my resolution to very low, but after adjusting it I once again have my pretty Alt+Tabs.  Note that this reboot took place after it said the Installation as complete (and already rebooted my system).

Update2: This seems to be rooted within how windows switches back and forth between Remote Desktop and how Windows switches between Windows Basic and Areo.  It seems when I just do a disconnect from Remote Desktop, Vista stays in the Basic form until the next reboot (I haven’t tried the logout yet).  This is better than RD on my home computer, which simply goes to a blank screen that I need to lock my computer and then unlock to fix.  The Remote Desktop experience has been quirky to say the least.

Facebook Apps have crossed the line

Jeromey Balderrama

When Facebook opened up their platform last year for developers to integrate applications into their system, I thought they were taking a big risk.  One of the reasons why I (and I believe many) don’t frequent MySpace as much is because it became cluttered with crappy widgets, blaring sounds, – and worst of all – infested with spam.  I was wondering if Facebook was going to follow the same path.  After all, one of the reasons Facebook is attractive is because they have a clean standard interface.

These first few months have proven that Facebook was doing things right.  The apps weren’t too intrusive, were entertaining and allowed people to interact with others in a fun way.  However with thousands of apps now on Facebook and sponsoring companies trying to figure out how they can monetize their efforts, some apps have grown from a minor annoyance to becoming an invasion of privacy.

I always get these invites for the various apps, and usually if I do decide to try one out I’ll consciously hit the "Skip" button when it comes time to ask me friends.  Today however, I encountered my first app that wouldn’t let me proceed without inviting 10 friends to join the app.  Whatver.  This was an anomaly. I didn’t want to avatar’d self anyway.  This evening I got a request from a friend to the "Could you pass the US Citizenship Test?" application.  I was curious, added the application and went through all 20 questions of the test.  Before I could see my results I got encountered with the standard "Invite your friends" page.  Although this time I could not find the "Skip this Step" button. This app required me to sign up 20 friends in order to proceed to see my scores.

Screw you "Could you pass…"  Thanks for wasting my time!  I couldn’t care less about whether you get more Facebook installs, but I don’t think I’m the only one that’s not going to tolerate the shady tactics used by your app (and similar apps using this method).  Right now I can see the thin ice that Facebook is skating on, and they better be pretty careful about controlling the Bacn, or else they’re going to get the MySpace-like backlash.

United finds another way to screw travelers [WTF]

Jeromey Balderrama

Bethany fired this story off to me this morning:

9News from AP:

United Airlines will begin charging domestic travelers $25 for a second piece of checked luggage unless they belong to some frequent flier programs. United’s parent — U-A-L Corporation — says it hopes to earn more than $100 million in revenue and cost savings a year from the new plan. It will take effect May 5. A United spokesman said Monday the new policy will help keep United’s fares competitive.  The $25 fee won’t apply to customers who have premier status or higher in the Mileage Plus program or silver status or higher with Star Alliance.

Is the airline industry (which could very well follow United’s lead) really out to make flying as miserable as possible?  I realize they’re hemorrhaging money, but they need to find a better way than nickel-and-dime passengers for every option.  Have you seen that low-cost airline commercial where everything on the plane from the reclining chairs to the overhead compartments have a coin-slot in them.  I bet some of these airlines like United looked at that commercial and said "Theses guys are onto something?"

There’s nothing I hate worse when you’re flying and they won’t give you the whole Coke can, as if some bean counter somewhere figured that if they only served 60% of Coke to you then they would save Y amounts of money per year.  This is just the next evolutionary step of this.  I’ll admit to being a notorious over-packer, but when they’re weighing your bag to the ounce to their limits, you now have the gall to charge for that second bag that we’re really using just to defer this policy.

When will the airline industry realize that charging for those stale peanuts is not going to save their industry. They need to fix their business model, utilize better technology (get off of radar and onto satellites) and get away from the notion that every empty seat on a plane is equal to a company-wide loss.

Textbooks are expensive [Captain Obvious]

Jeromey Balderrama

With the spring semester starting up, a timely report on textbook pricing appeared on Digg last week.

From the Business Shrink:

The DOE study states that full-time students at four-year public colleges spend an average of $893 a year on textbooks and about $10 less a year for two-year students. The most interesting figure from this study is that since 1986, the textbook prices have risen almost 186 percent, or 6 percent a year. When you look at other product prices in the market they all generally rose by about 3 percent. Some public and private universities publish their own figures of college textbook costs for a student per year and they range from $400 – $1,300.

It’s pretty easy to breeze past these figures when you’re amidst paying for these books, but these staggering numbers reveal just how much the book publishing industry, working with the Universities, are ripping off students hand-over-fist on these costs.

I try to bypass the campus bookstore if at all possible.  I’m too much of a bum to get in there early to get any quality used books, leaving you having to pay the inflated retail price for the new book.  Taking my search on-line, I’ve had a lot of success with BigWords.com, which functions as a textbook search engine.  However, now you’re in the race against the clock, hoping to receive the textbook before you actually need it. I’ve been burned by this before.

Being a small-government conservative, I like to avoid using legislation to fix problems, but this may be a case where this may be necessary.  I would love a "Student’s Textbook Bill of Rights" be drafted either on the federal or state level.  This bill, among other things would include the following provisions:

  • Universities would be required to publish required course materials on-line and make them available to students at the time of registration.  Students deserve the right to have the time look for a reasonable price without having to go to the school’s bookstore.
  • Universities would be required to purchase and stock 10% of the course’s enrollment that would be available in the school’s library.
  • Textbooks have to be selected on a department-wide level (most are, but there are a few professors who want to force you to buy that extra book). By default Universities are limited to changing out text books once every two years.  This would ensure that a majority of students would have a reasonable experience re-selling or buying used books.  There could be some exception process in the cases of certain subjects/courses.

What kind of provisions do you feel need to be in the Textbook BoR?