Annoying Tech

RANT

You know, it starts to annoy me terribly. All the delays that is caused by technology. I think the point of having all the newfangled gizmos is supposed to make our life easier. Unfortunately, a lot of people either don't think so, or so stupid that they don't know that what they're doing is actually harmful.

Take, for example, surfing the web. JavaScript annoys me terribly. There ARE ways to do it properly, unobtrusively. However, more and more, I see the message "JavaScript is not ready. Please wait until the whole page is loaded." What these so called "highly skilled, experienced professional" web designer fails to notice is that I cut short the loading process because the loading times takes too long!

In advertising MiFi, they say that I can download 35,000 web pages with only 250 MB bandwidth. Hogwash! The sites that I go to averages 400 kb per page! Excuse me, but last time I check, 250 MB divided by 500kb is 500 pages! Oh, and these web pages has up to 16 cookies per page. There's just not that many advertising in a page! Why all these cookies. All these ridiculous, extremely abusive cookie pumping will simply result in blocked cookies. Is that what you call desirable result?

Do you know that not only Nintendo DSi is selling quite well, but also that it has a FREE downloadable Opera Web browser? I use it a lot. It's kind of slow, but that's the point. These webmasters are basically turning away potentially hungry net browsing people. Load up the web page with mandatory JavaScript, Large Screen, Tiny font, Flash, and other "Next Gen Coolstuff", and I can tell you that NDSi Web browser will NOT load the page!

Obviously, I tried to get the next best thing. Text Only Web pages. Except, none of these "cool" web pages have them! Huh? Last time I check, not only putting graphics and animation takes extremely long time to do, while text is pretty much instantenous, but also that in designing a GOOD easily navigable web site is best done with text only implementation. The reason you want to design a text only website is so that the layout is clear, and the appeal would be concentrated upon content, instead of pretty pictures.

Admen may disagree with me. To them, a web site is nothing more than a vehicle to deliver advertising, but as you can see, Google does allow text ads, so you have no argument there about needing pictures to deliver ads. What is the true point, is that these sites are turning people away like me. People who is busy, and want to digest large amount of data on the Net, on the move, with available device, such as NDSi. There's quite a lot of us, and we're practically can't surf these sites because they don't have text only option. Then they say, "See? Not many of those people surf our sites. Our audience is different!" Self-fulfilling prophecy in action.

If I was their boss, I would insist on a graphic lite/text only button that takes the user to Javascript free HTML. Then we'll see whether or not those fancy graphics and flash would be worth the money spent on them. As it is, there's no accountability. You don't know whether the improvement is worth the money, simply because there's no baseline comparison. It's not rocket science, folks. Anybody who argue the text only site costs too much money is an idiot. Pipe the output through Lynx if you have to. You shouldn't have to, though. Design it right! No Delays!

And speaking of delays, I fail to see why my 1.46 GHz computer, one that is 20 times as FAST as my old Pentium 75 Mhz, took 10 times as LONG to boot up. I swear I can see the graphics updates line by line. I still remember DOOM updates 3D graphics screens in real time. How come displaying little flat 2D icons took 3 seconds? And unlike my old Amiga, I can't go in there and tune the start up scripts. Not with 75 different processes, and who knows how many other services? All my future computer will NOT be the powerful desktop. Give me NDSi any day. Boots up quick. Does the work, rather slowly, but still faster than my GHz computer.

If you want my money, then remove all the delays from the process. I'm no longer a teenager willing to spent hours surfing the web. I'm a busy professional who wants to get in, buy stuff, and get out. I have too much to do already. I'm not going to give these annoying website my business. If they're that ignorant, who knows what's going on behind the shop front?

All these struggling companies: It's not the economy, stupid. It's YOU!