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Previous: Hard-to-open packaging | Main | Next: Sign to cenote
February 11, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: Sproutz architect's special note
Reader Dom writes in:
The other day, I came across Sproutz furniture, which has a cute idea for making formaldehyde-free children's furniture for classrooms and homes. However, when I clicked on their "technical info" link, I was greeted with a "Note to architects," which is completely unreadable.
The kicker is that it's an image!
How could they not have seen how impossible this is to read? Maybe they think that architects have a special power to read white text on noisy backgrounds :)
Something I'm noticing is that when it was scaled down for the thumbnail, it looked like a standard green marble background. Still broken? Yeah, but I think I can see what they were trying to do now.
I think what's really broken, though, is that we're putting furniture with formaldehyde in it in reach of children anyway. I had no idea...
I wonder if people who are color blind have an advantage to reading this or don't even notice the text at all. I had a classmate in HS who was color blind. A girl would write silly stuff about him on the blackboard with green chalk and he wouldn't even notice that there was anything there.
yeah, that's architext, a special architect code that only they can read. If you were to read that label, you might get the idea that you could install a chair w/o the help of a qualified prof. Then you'd sit in the chair, and die.
I'll tell you what's really wack: They sell something called a "phonograph stand." If they're still using these so-called "phonographs" in schools, our districts must be in worse financial shape than we can imagine.
"Sally, would you help teacher stack these wax cylinders before we break for Castor-oil and Necco wafers?"
Compare the image in IE and Firefox. It looks great in IE, crap in Firefox. Some weird VML, or something.
_@_v - idiots used a .jpg image with transparancy. if you open it in a graphics programme and unmask the tranparancy you can read it o.k.
_@_v - it's blather about how their stuff conforms to the "green code"...
In Internet Explorer it is displayed as a well-readable text (with a background image), not as an image. If you look at the HTML-source of that page, you notice the !--[if gte vml 1] markup (it is known as conditional comment and it means "in case if your browser's VML support version is 1 or greater"), after which there are instructions to create a background rectangle (from green JPEG-image "image001.jpg") with round corners (using VML) and then to display normal text over it. It is followed by the ![if !vml] markup, which means that VML non-capable browsers should use the GIF-image "image002.jpg" instead (and yes, that GIF-image is really messed up). By the way, in the end there is a comment "This HTML was automatically created with Macromedia Fireworks 4.0" (so they probably did not write it by hand).
Perhaps Firefox doesn't do VML (Vector Markup Language) or doesn't understand conditional comments.
Also, it seems Macromedia Fireworks 4.0 doesn't produce proper HTML (nor proper XHTML either), because the page doesn't validate (using the W3C Markup Validation Service), even if you pre-select character encoding manually to iso-8859-1 and try different Doctypes.
I can read it, albiet not very well. It says "Sproutz(TM) line qualifies for U.S. Green Building Council's LEED rating system. Sproutz(TM) Furniture satisfies point requirements in both the Material and Resources and Indoor Air Environmental Quality Categories..."
/too long.
so, it's indecipherable, perhaps, perhaps hard to read also, but not impossible. Still broken, though, in my opinion..
Bob, I was referring to the original page, http://www.sproutz.biz/ProuductInformation/IntroducingTheSproutzLine.htm (not to this screen-shot on This Is Broken). If you visit the original page using Internet Explorer then you can perfectly read, select, copy and paste the text from there (so no need to strain your eyes).
The picture showed on This Is Broken seems to be the result of a browser compatibility issue. In this article there is no mention of what browser did the author use to visit Sproutz products' page before taking this picture.
The Sproutz website has a plain-text version of the text, but it is displayed only if a browser supports both VML and conditional comments. Otherwise, a nearly unreadable image is shown.
Also note that it doesn't matter what browser you use to read this (i.e. current) article because it is only the resulting screen-shot given here. Visit the aforementioned original page instead to see the text.
Yeah shame to only test a page in a non-standards based browser like IE...usually pages that are broken in Firefox and not IE is due to that..
It really wouldn't have been hard at all to make a version of that that works with most browsers. They could have just used a table with that green background and typed the text in the table cell, not hard at all.
I'm not quite sure how Macromedia Fireworks would produce ugly code like that... especially seeing as VML is a Microsoft-proprietary XML extension, as far as I know. I think they took a page from Fireworks and then edited it in FrontPage, which has been known to produce ugly, standards-incompliant code like that featured on the site.
Oh, yes, and the only browser that supports VML, as far as I know, is Internet Explorer for Windows. Not even the now-defunct Mac version of IE could process it... much less any other Mac browser.
My theory is further supported by the fact that several other pages on the site have a tag specifying that they were created in FrontPage.
Oh, yes, and the home page (which features the FrontPage reference in its HTML) has the wonderful title tag of "Introducing Spoutz." Great proofreading, guys.
It's just the site that doesn't work in Firefox.
@abcdario: Phonograph technically means any device that can record sound. However, in the English language the word means a record player.
I bet the reason that schools still have record players or phonographs is probably because some company out there still has several thousand units in inventory. They are probably giving them away as a tax deduction. I remember when I was in school (finished HS 6 years ago) every classroom in every school in my district had the same record player. Coincidence? A great bargain for buying in bulk? I think not. And Sproutz is taking advantage of this situation. And whoever is still using Internet Explorer is broken.
It is plain text in IE!!! (the link)
Architects Special Note
Sproutz™ line qualifies for US Green Building Council’s LEED rating system. Sproutz™ furniture satisfies point requirements in both the Material and Resources and Indoor Air Environmental Quality categories. By using an agrifiber material made from a rapidly renewable resource, sunflower seed hulls, and a Urethane based bonding agent containing limited VOC’s and formaldehyde, we offer an earth friendly and valuable solution that can be easily incorporated into “green” building projects.
Yeah In IE it is using the graphic as a background and printing the text..in anything else it uses the image with the text.. you can see this by viewing the source on the page... Broken
Indeed it is messed up in Firefox. Saw it on both, major difference. Looks OK on IE. It's just one of those programming clashes.
David Pogue writes a weekly column called Circuits. His latest included a review of the OpenX and Pyranna. You may have to subscribe to the Times online to read his article:
OpenX and Pyranna
Oddly enough, anything created with a Microsoft product and exported to HTML, such as result from Microsoft Publisher, seems to always render as an image in Mozilla Firefox, and how it's supposed to look in Windows Internet Explorer. Try it.
I think it's just a way for Microsoft to get people to use their products. If they want a website to be attractive, it has to be W3C compliant and hard coded.
But, since that won't be happening in the near future, someone already made the IETab extension for Firefox.
Having different renderings for different browsers for what is essentially plain text is a very poor design decision.
What makes matters worse is that the fallback GIF image is illegible. It's not much of a fallback.
The webpage is broken and not W3 compliant. Fireworks sucks big time. I can not read the image with Opera, Netscape, or Firefox browsers.
Jonathan
Architects Special Note
Sproutz™ line qualifies for US Green Building Council’s LEED rating system. Sproutz™ furniture satisfies point requirements in both the Material and Resources and Indoor Air Environmental Quality categories. By using an agrifiber material made from a rapidly renewable resource, sunflower seed hulls, and a Urethane based bonding agent containing limited VOC’s and formaldehyde, we offer an earth friendly and valuable solution that can be easily incorporated into “green” building projects.
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Previous: Hard-to-open packaging | Main | Next: Sign to cenote
they just hate architects.
Posted by: gmangw at February 11, 2006 01:03 AM