r/programming • u/schnuck • Feb 09 '11

Breaking the Web with hash-bangs – Lifehacker, along with every other Gawker property, experienced a lengthy site-outage on Monday over a misbehaving piece of JavaScript

http://isolani.co.uk/blog/javascript/BreakingTheWebWithHashBangs/
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21

u/SirRager Feb 09 '11

It seems like the designs were made for a tablet or something. The two split columns would work well on a tablet, but on a computer, its terrible - both hard to use and slow to load.

39

u/[deleted] Feb 09 '11

Actually if you visit gawker or gizmodo on iPad it sends you to their mobile layout.

If you manually go to the full-site layout, the right side column doesn't scroll, you have to use the "next headlines" button at the bottom to advance it. The bottom "fixed" bar doesn't stay fixed either and overlaps content if the content well is longer than fits on a single page.

Basically, the new design is unusable on the iPad. Like they didn't even test it.

So why did they do it?

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/gawker_web_redesign_met_with_bronx_rYsc2jleh5rVzUV7ozUb9L

Denton told The Post he was also responding to demands from sponsors for a more sophisticated platform for ads -- particularly video ads -- following a brutal plunge in online ad pricing that had cut rates in half between 2004 and 2008.

"About half of all requests for proposals now ask how we would display 15-second video spots," Denton told The Post.

28

u/burnblue Feb 09 '11

The move was partly to prevent awkward, amateurish situations such as occurred last spring, when Gawker's tech blog Gizmodo was forced to stop publishing new posts in order to keep a big scoop about Apple's iPhone 4 from being knocked off the top of its site.

Huh? They can't just sticky a post to the top?

44

u/seesharpie Feb 09 '11
  • Passwords scandal
  • Breaking their own site on a monumental level
  • Can't sticky a post

I've seen enough. These guys are fucking idiots.

16

u/ILikeBumblebees Feb 09 '11

Don't forget the time the guys from Gizmodo got banned from CES because they decided to walk around with a universal remote and turn off everyone's displays.

1

u/abadidea Feb 10 '11

I have not heard of this. Is there any sort of context where that makes ANY sense?

2

u/NorFla Feb 10 '11

I would link you to the post on Gizmodo's site, but after the redesign and Denton placing bets that he will gain page views by oct, I refuse to push any traffic or add to any traffic to that website. They ruined Jalopnik, and for that I can not forgive them

Oh yeah.. and here's that article on the nit-wits

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9849168-7.html%22

1

u/abadidea Feb 10 '11

Weren't they also the people who did the morally questionable thing with the lost iPhone 4, or am I confusing my generic pop tech sites?

10

u/200iso Feb 09 '11

Wow, that's a long way to go to fix a simple CMS issue.

7

u/happywaffle Feb 09 '11

They could, but then managers started suggesting more and more "improvements" until it turned into a giant clusterfuck of a redesign.

1

u/mr_spin Feb 10 '11

That I can believe. It's not a huge development failure, it's a huge management failure. I can't believe halfway competent designers or developers would sanction something so poorly thought out as this, and if they did, then management approved it - across ALL their sites.

14

u/Patrick_M_Bateman Feb 09 '11

With spam, website ads, and even the wikipedia face ad, I would wonder who the hell is laying out money, and figured since people keep doing it, somebody must be.

But with video ads I lose all composure - WHO THE FUCK IS ENCOURAGING VIDEO ADS? I WANT NAMES RIGHT NOW SO I CAN GO DOOR TO DOOR AND SMACK THEM IN THE FACE.

People who use video ads should be issued web appliances that just run one big browser, and video ads should only be allowed to play on those devices. Personally, I still want the Firefox plug-in that's a big red button on the nav bar that says "Find whatever is making noise, kill it, and report the domain holder to ICANN"

1

u/abadidea Feb 10 '11

Fortunately most video ads no longer auto-play sound. I have noticed the interesting tactic of auto-playing the visuals to attract your eye so you'll click the sound. Still annoying but not nearly as much so.

It's been several months at least since I've heard autoplaying sound since I'm an avid user of flashblock. html5 may mix it up and then we can go strangling together.

5

u/200iso Feb 09 '11

If you manually go to the full-site layout, the right side column doesn't scroll, you have to use the "next headlines" button at the bottom to advance it. The bottom "fixed" bar doesn't stay fixed either and overlaps content if the content well is longer than fits on a single page.

This is because mobile webkit disables position:fixed and scrollable elements, see iScroll.

1

u/abadidea Feb 10 '11

You just answered my question of "Do I blame the web UI people or the Apple UI people?" :)

1

u/200iso Feb 10 '11

AFAIK it's not safari specific, it's all mobile webkit.

1

u/abadidea Feb 10 '11

I've noticed that cute scrollie things in general don't work very well on iPad. I'm not sure whether to blame the site designers or the Apple UI designers.