Thursday 30 march 2007 - 1:28 am

Today, I learned that most of hitrecord.org's viewers have not been seeing what I wanted them to see. It came to my attention when Jared told me that he had been to the site, but couldn't figure out how to email me.

"That's strange," I said, "my email address is on pretty much every page."
"Well I couldn't find it,"
"I believe you. But how'd you miss it?"
"Perhaps I was suffering from momentary blindness or stupidity."
"No, Jared, you're both smart and sighted."
"And savvy at that, but I couldn't find it."
"Well we'll have to access the internet immediately..."

We went to the nearest internet place and turned on his laptop. I watched him open Internet Explorer and type my favorite URL into the address bar. The entrance page was normal. Then we arrived at the home page. I blinked. I rubbed my eyes. How could it be? Ô disaster! None of the graphics looked how they were supposed to. Their beautiful blue backgrounds were clumsy white and/or grey eye-sores.

Instead of these pleasant pretties...

His screen showed these...
unfortunate... uglies...

And the little JPEG of my email address (can't just type it in text because the spambots'll get it) with which the site is liberally littered didn't look like this...

But was thusly unreadable...

...which, we figured, was mostly why smart, sighted, and savvy Jared couldn't find a way to send me an email. The transparent parts of the graphics weren't being transparent at all. But they always did and do when I look at the site online. Why? Was it because I use a Mac and he uses a PC? But my mom uses a PC, and the site looks fine on her machine. We tried a different computer at the internet place, a PC. Same ugliness. We tried using the AOL browser instead of Internet Explorer. Even uglier. Then we tried Mozilla Firefox, and the problem went away.

"What the shit?" I said, "...the hell'm I supposed to do now? It works in some browsers and not in others?"
"Quick fix is just don't use transparencies, make the backgrounds blue."
"But, damn it, this is what people have been looking at for the past month?"
"Some people."
"Most people."
"Probably, yeah."
"Damn it."
"Fix it."
"Yeah. I suppose I'll have to look at it with a variety of browsers from now on."

Which is a good moral to the story, kids. Like that one big league music producer (who was it again?) who keeps a Fisher Price tape player in his studio so he can check now and then how the song'll sound when not being played on professional speakers. You gotta keep in mind your individual spectators' setups. Every set of speakers makes the audio sound different. And every screen makes the video look different. And apparently every web browser makes the webpage look different, damn it.

Jared mentioned another moral to the story: "I guess it's a lesson," he said, "I should be more honest with people..."
"What, you thought I made it that way on purpose?"
"Yeah."
"And you didn't want to tell me it looked bad?"
"Well I did tell you it looked home made. And you said you liked it that way."
"It does look home made, and I do like it that way."
"Yeah, but it looked really home made."
"No, it looked like I had shit for eyes."
"True. I'd been wondering why you'd have a Japanese flag on your site..."

So now I'm curious. I wonder how many of you visitors saw it the bad way and how many the good way? Perhaps I can conduct a little survey.

If you saw the mistakes, click here.

If you saw it in all of its blue backgrounded correctness, click here.

And if you see anything else that looks as terrible as those opaque ogres did, do let me know. It's probably not on purpose. My intentions are, of course, all impeccable. Even if my execution might leave something to be desired.