Re: [Easter ramblings]

On 15 May 2006, - anon entered spamcop and left 
news:[email protected]:

> Like reading too many mystery stories where the characters are giving 
> directions but the reader is not 'involved' in the story.
> 

I love that analogy, boy, could I really ramble on, but it sounds like 
everyone that replied already knows that story.
Just think of all the money and work that's gone into making the eMail 
system work as it does today, it's basically quite simple but with an 
enormous effort to keep it that way. All these bits of thought passing 
through miles of wire and silicon, and so many think that it just magically 
pops onto someone's screen, it's no wonder how they can get lost when 
something goes wrong, what to do? who to blame?

Well, the contact form I mentioned was part of a template which used an 
"insecure" script that I don't use, so it just never worked. Now I could 
have disabled the submit button, maybe wrote a bit of Javascript for a 
message pop-up, wrote a more clear message, but even then I would expect 
somebody to say "hey, the button don't work" or "I got this message..". 
Maybe I should have removed the form and stuck an eMail address there, but 
for all that work it would be about as easy to just use a script that 
worked. I think it's better to do what people expect, rather than to force 
them down a dead-end path.
This is actually something I put a lot of thought into, and if I ever get 
something significant done, I'll post a link. Realizing how people interact 
with computers is a significant part of the rewrite I'm spending the next 
few months on. (Intentional vagueness).

-- 
| Ric
|