I was all pleased with myself about having had “successfully” added a tag cloud
until I checked the freakin thing in IE.It wasn’t showing.Er.
I was doing simple color changes to my template and I guess I fucked something up because I’m pretty sure it showed before.
So I decided to do it over again and bam:it’s now just a list, not a cloud.
I’m disgusted and sickened.This seems to be a matter of not being tired.So maybe I’ll try to fix it tomorrow.Geez,16 yr olds can do this.
Category: Technical Blog
H&M’s web site
After posting my last blog I went looking for more dresses or shirts and stopped by
H&M’s website.I knew that Madonna had a line out and I wanted to see it.But this blog won’t be about her *clothes because I couldn’t see them!
I have all the latest flash plugins but I couldn’t (at first)see into the Madonna collection part of the site.
I tried again.
Ok,now we’ve gotten in…
It looks really cool once the page loads: an image of a girl stands next to a mannequin with an outfit on in a room that looks like a walk-in closet. You’re supposed to be able to click next and the girl will turn to the mannequin and hit it and spin it in a bitchy way. The mannequin spins and then has a new outfit on.I’ve never seen this kind of super advanced flash before and would’ve been impressed.If it works.Which it doesn’t.
It got stuck on outfit number 3 out of 27.
The back of the closet shows the accessories part of the collection on shelves and clicking on one of the purses makes a next link pop up.When you click next the girl reappears and spins…nothing! The mannequin fails to appear.
This turned out to be some delay in the flash program and wasn’t actually supposed to be the purse I was clicking on to make the link show-it was supposed to be the mannequin but it hadn’t loaded.Whatever.
It’s awesome.
I say awesome because it was neat to see the girl hit air. As an online shopping user experience it wasn’t so awesome because I think the whole purpose of online shopping is to at least let the visitor see what you’re selling not impress the shit out of you with flash. Am I right?
This page also doesn’t seem to offer a non-flash option.Which is a huge no-no.
Hell, I’m going back to see.
Nope, no non-flash option offered.
But I did find out that moving the cursor over the outfit will make a next link appear.However this happened after I became a little angry and just started clicking over random areas of the page!
Clicking it doesn’t do anything,though.
You’ve got to then click/hover over the girl and after a while she will do her spin thing again.
Another flaw:once the mannequin spins and has a new outfit,there’s supposed to be text that describes the clothes and the price.Only it stops working.So you’re left wondering what the clothes costs.
I really don’t know how to classify this site.
It fails user interaction almost 100% but it is really a cool site.When it works.I’m sorry I keep harping on that factor.
Ok, so you have to find out how things work on the site?
That isn’t cool. I guess H&M is counting on the fact that you’ll just keep clicking around until you get the info you want from their site.
This isn’t really that fair.One ought to be able to get to all the information easily from a website,especially an ecommerce site or else go play a computer game if a challange is what one is seeking.
And all this frustrating of the visitor doesn’t end with the Madonna collection.It’s reserved for the entire site.
The pages take a very long time to load,well over the 7 second rule,more like 20 0r 30.
Then when trying to navigate to a different section you are again forced to wait all over again.I’m guessing that repeat returns to the site may speed things up but that, as we all know, doesn’t count for much in the UI area.
*The clothes:The Madonna collection includes a freakin turban. I know she’s approaching dowager age but she still looks amazing.What up with the turban? Save the turbans for when you need them:when you’re 80 and have no hair left on your old head.
The clothes are,um,prissy, uptight and look really uncomfortable.Lots of tight looking arm holes and severe lines.
Wider or thinner? Big or tiny?
I’m talking about the size of your web page.What do you like? A page that fills the whole screen or a page the size of a post card?
On Myspace the trend was tiny, tiny, tiny.Little ani-inspired teenyboppers wanted tiny little profiles with little butterfiles and tiny little emo band references.
I thought they were cute.They were cute.Except the over use of the small font font.Which is ugly.
Right now I can’t really tell what the trend is because I see a lot of both styles.It seems about 50/50.
Designing for small screens ,one kind of has to take this into account.
But the few times I’ve brought it up I have gotten huh? in response.
You know that the future is coming.The future is here.This is it:
Design with the small screen in mind or don’t.But maybe we’ll all be looking at screens the size of a postage stamp really soon.I guess we should be prepared.
Adobe PDF files
How many times has this happened to me? I should know by now that clicking links on the internetty can sometimes lead to the evil PDF. I downloaded and unzipped,unpacked and set up my own Adobe from some open source freebie I got from Limewire of all places.Needless to say the set up is wonky.Sometimes the program works, sometimes it crashes my Firefox and I have to open Firefox all over again. In the scheme of things it isn’t such a bad deal as I can still read PDF files if I want to. The keywords being if I want to- not if I am forced into it, unprepared for the long loading time my Adobe takes.Yes,I usually don’t want to wait for Adobe to haul its ass out of the regions of hell to show me some totally useless bit of information that I didn’t want to see,anyway.I clicked your link because I thought I was going to see some innocent .jpeg file,hear? The bigger your pdf the longer it takes to load,duh.
If you must use the laborious creature to present your crap,do me a favor and warn me! It’s the least you can do.And: maybe some folks don’t have Adobe set up at all! No! But it’s true…So you just put a little (pdf) hint next to the link and we’ll all be happy. Or at least I will be.