E-Scribe News : a programmer’s blog

About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

Pile o'Tags

ajax apple blogs browsers business design django ebay fp fun google hardware haskell intellectual property iphone javascript linux media mobile open source os x oscon oscon2007 palm php programming python rails rants reading risks ruby site spam textmate the well tips vcs web development web frameworks webservers wmassdevs

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

A Django site.
(Finally!)

Copyright 2008
by Paul Bissex
and E-Scribe New Media

The support experience

I recently encountered an amazingly stupid outsourced Adobe.com "how was your support experience" survey. I got to the end of the survey and there was a single button with text above it saying something like, "Click the button below to submit your survey and close this window."

I looked at the page source -- the button does not submit the survey, which is already complete; it's just a Javascript action to close the window. And the script is broken! So in Safari at least, it does nothing at all. Some poor schmuck is going to be sitting there futilely pounding on the button trying to "submit" the fifteen-page survey he just completed.

They need a meta-survey on the survey.

Sunday, July 3rd, 2005
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Some related posts: The iPhone keyboard doesn't suck • iPod touch: one week down, one week to go • Why the python.org redesign is good • Digg vs. Reddit vs. Me • Blog Usability Showdown: Me vs. Jakob Nielsen

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