Group therapy for websperts: wanna be in my gang?

The web is misunderstood because each person makes of it what they will, on their own. And we all know how well people understand each other.

I’d be up for a meeting to discuss webby things.

But only if it involves beer and/or cheese.

preferably both.

Posted about 1 year ago by purpaboo

I’m with Purpaboo. Beer makes all conversations better.

I’m starting in a web tech role so I’d be happy to learn from others about the various approaches. Even on simple things like the debate over whether links should open in new windows and such.

beer cheese chilli cheese chilli beer

Posted about 1 year ago by yossarian

I’ve done web work in old-media environments (TV and magazine) and there are always people who feel threatened by the web, particularly now the trend for online ad spending is getting stronger.

Then there’s the other type:

I’d def be up for some kind of gathering…

Posted about 1 year ago by agox

I’d be up for the beer and chatting about nerdy techie webby stuff (hang on, that makes me sound like a “non-webbie” – I should point out I was a web developer) but not the cheese.

flash dynamic content anyone who even thinks about using frontpage should be shot cheese makes me sick

Posted about 1 year ago by Morals

Very good, Agox. I love a PHB!

Here’s one of my all time favourite nerdy cartoons:

mmmmm unix

Posted about 1 year ago by purpaboo

Were things better before Internet came along, not sure, there were still computers, networks and chat between computers via the network, dumb terminals served from main frames based hundreds of miles from the users, mail/messaging between users on the same box/cluster was okay.

The internet just brought all these boxes together making interoperability much easier for all but a nightmare for network folk who tried their hardest to get pipes big and fat enough to take the ever growing data flows.

Just as shipping and air planes had done in making the world just a little bit smaller, provided methods of smuggling, transport of non social matter, ships/planes brought slaves, Internet made us slaves, Piracy and a whole host of other subjects that are just as unpalatable to most.

What does the future hold for Internet, well a good clean up would do it the world of good, passing of ID tags (IPv6) but most changes will come not to Internet but to the network that supports it. fibre to the home offering 100Meg Internet is just round the corner, Terabite (that’s a million million bits per second) fibre links between servers/networks is common place and about to be upgraded to cope with the data flows being experienced.

Where will it end? well speed wise there may be no physical ceiling but there has to be something there that will be able to cope and the speed of any link is always dependant of the slowest element in it. All too often this is the server at the end that hasn’t been configured correctly.

One thing that all this speed/power will bring is sloppy programming. In the olde days of computing, when memory was expensive therefore computers had drives in the lower Meg and memory in K’s programming had to be good and tight. Now that memory and drive space is cheap, home computers with drives in the Terabyte size and memory in the gigabyte region, there is oodles of space for programming, therefore leaving it open for long, slack programs with the attitude of who cares it’ll fit. Even the big software houses are to blame for this, windows 2000 had a 40% slack, that’s 40% of the total size of the application was dead code that hadn’t been removed, it didn’t need to be, it fitted and if it didn’t go bet a bigger drive.

Enough from me, anyone else what a ramble for Chez??

Posted about 1 year ago by cobo04

In the original dot.bomb, I was involved with a wide range of ill-conceived, quixotic ventures by megalomaniacal entrepreneurs drunk on VC funding, so I could come along and veer between jaded cynicism and embittered resentment, if you like.

[edit] oh yes, and then there were the techies: “it’s not in the spec that it had to work in a leap year. That’s not a bug, it’s another change.” Happy days.

Posted about 1 year ago by Spammed

It’s as much to swap ideas about better ways of working as it is to discuss the finer points so anyone welcome. i’d like to improve my technical understanding because I suspect we get fobbed off with Ooh no that would take days when really it is actually possible to achieve what we want to do.

Any thoughts open for discussion: navigation solutions, to pop up or not to pop up…the whole shebang…writing properly for the web, making decisions about media files etc etc.

Cutta, come out my dear…

PS. Cobo, I have no idea what you are on about but it sounds, um, useful.

Posted about 1 year ago by Chez

Chez

Sorry, okay up for the gang, time to discuss and explain, have worked in all aspects of the web for my sins, had enough of it so got out but will use it so did I get out??

Colin

Posted about 1 year ago by cobo04

Browser development could have stopped with Lynx and we’d still be able to share all the information we need to. Anythiing else isn’t actually necessary.

And…. GO!

Posted about 1 year ago by Morals

Does anybody have a definitive (but not too long, Cobby) description of what Web 2.0 actually is? I hear so many different definitions, sometimes overlapping.

I’m not sure if I could face webby type discussion in my leisure time. I get enough of it during working hours! And then I could turn all consultanty and get all usability and testing and everything and put people off their cheese…

that consultancy session will be 300 thanks. visa accepted.

Posted about 1 year ago by pottytime

sounds good. As a web ed my techie expertise is patchy but I could yabber on about pop-ups, links strategy, media files, firefox v IE etc till kingdom come…

Posted about 1 year ago by agox

Web 2.0 is basically a catch-all term used to describe things like this site, wiki’s, all the interactive stuff. It’s a wanky term really as it’s really just all part of the evolution of the existing WWW.

Posted about 1 year ago by Morals

PS. Cobo, I have no idea what you are on about but it sounds, um, useful.

Oh Christ, I understood the whole thing…. I agreed too.

Looks wistfully at pub through office window as obviously needs to get out more

Posted about 1 year ago by Morals

As a bog standard non-techie user of a number of govt. websites, the best thing they have going for them is the complete absence of pop-ups. I don’t think any front-end user appreciates them much, they’re intrusive and rarely point you to a relevant diversion. Appreciate they must work for the companies using them, but perhaps in the same way that junk mail works, by only needing a bare minimum responses to be cost-effective.

Posted about 1 year ago by Mockernee

Don’t get me started on pop-ups, pop-unders, flash-banners…...

only used by cunts we dont want new smileys or porn actually scratch the last one

Posted about 1 year ago by Morals

Morals – it’s not the pop ups that are a pain it’s the push tech that is…

Posted about 1 year ago by cobo04

Hi Chez – I wasn’t hiding, it’s just today is one of those rare days where I have to focus on actually doing my job instead of pissing around on social networking sites. I’m still up for it, and as someone who’s not very particularly technical would find talking to more technical people useful for the same reason as you.

However, as this thread shows, web development in general is such a wide subject that it would be difficult to stay on track, and also we’d risk getting bogged down with specifics (you know what these techy nerds are like). Also, technical IT discussions are not everyone’s idea of a fun night out. So I suggest that we pick a subject and try to stick it, at least until the booze kicks in properly. Using social networking for children’s sports clubs (or similar) would be a good one to start with, as per your original email and our later discussion. I’m thinking something between a brainstorm and a talk-about-our-experiences session.

If it’s useful and we do it again, we can have technical or non-technical subjects as preferred.

Posted about 1 year ago by cutta

We have a set of ‘web developers’ at work that are point blank refusing to use anything but FrontPage. We’ve set up style sheets to make life easier and show how much time they could save but they refuse to even look at it let alone learn about it.

Posted about 1 year ago by yossarian

@Yossarian – they should all be sacked. Using FrontPage s NOT developing websites. I’m going to make a wild guess but are all these ‘developers’ under the age of 25?

Posted about 1 year ago by Morals