WELCOME AGAIN TO JoAT v2.1!!!
Today is Q & A day at JoAT
Why, you might ask, a Q & A day? Well, that’s an excellent first entry:
Q. Why a Q & A day at JoAT?
A. Why not? Besides, I’ve a ton of time on my hands, and I need to remind myself to fix a few things. Additionally, it gives the (albeit, incredulous) illusion that I actually get visitors to the site, who then ask questions about it. It’s a big lie, I know (and you do, too), but it somehow feels more respectable to me to have these conversations with myself on a webpage rather than, say, aloud in the coffee shop with a really cute girl sitting at the next computer over.
Q. Your site sucks. Big time.
A. That’s not a question. NEXT.
Q. Your site sucks. Big time. Did you know that?
A. You clever boy. Yes, I did know that. But I’m working on it. Give me some time. And some charity. I’m an economist, not a graphic artist or programming guru.
Q. No really—it sucks. I appreciate the effort, but you totally half-assed the redesign. I mean, most of the pages still have that crappy old design, so even though the main page looks marginally better, in addition to still having sucky pages you now lack internal consistency of design.
A. Again, NOT A QUESTION. NEXT.
Q. Right. Re: that stuff above: Why is that?
A. All I can say is: I’m working on it. Actually converting display formats shouldn’t take too long (I’m doing everything with templates, surprise!) but at the same time I’m trying to arrange the content in a meaningful fashion. I’m quickly realizing that I don’t have enough to say to justify one page, much less all the crap I put up last year, so the overall organization is causing me a bit of mental anguish. But I’m working on it.
Q. You know your new page looks horrible in [browser version x.y], right?
A. Sort of. It looks okay in MSIE 5.5+ and Netscape 6.x, which are the only browsers I have at home to check my designs. Even these new browsers fall far short of supporting HTML/CSS standards, but the old browsers were/are absolutely dismal. This means that (1) their display behavior is unpredictable without a lot of research into their specific display bugs, (2) to make things look pretty in old browsers, I would have to use a lot of bad HTML/CSS workarounds the prevalence of which inhibit growth and development of good code and practices among other designers and browser developers, and (3) would suck up a lot more of my resources than I am presently prepared to devote to this project. Netscape 4.x sux. MSIE 4.x sux. They don’t support standards that any self-respecting browser should. I’m working on designing different layouts for different browsers, but in the meantime: put your old browsers out of their misery. If you have any choice in which browser you use, upgrade to something with better standards support.
Q. Whatever. You know, you could make yourself useful and upload some .mp3s or Blümchen videos or something. Oh, this needs to be a question—please?
A. No. I’m an up-right, law abiding citizen, and that would be Wrong. Besides, I’m on a dial-up connection and I don’t have any spare webspace. Feel free to send donations to rectify either of those problems…
