DRM - Daniel’s Random Mutterings

I’ve spent the last couple of days reading through Web sites, documentation, and programming examples, looking for a decent Web Content Management framework which I can use for my pet project. In so doing, I’ve become more and more annoyed, hence this rant.

Why is it that Web site designers, Web publishers, what-have-you, spend so much time making their site look cool, but pay no attention at all to the way it looks when it’s printed? I refuse to read more than one continuous browser page on screen. Any more than that — especially if it’s something I need to concentrate on, such as the documentation of a complex programming framework — and I print it and read the printed version. Even more so, when it’s a programming documentation or framework example which I need to have next to my keyboard in order to follow the example.

This approach is sometimes (often) almost totally prevented by the Web design, CSS magic, etc., that people use to spiff up their site. Something (say, an article in a Blog) looks pretty neat on the screen. But when you print it, you end up with a very thin strip of almost intelligible print, about a quarter of the width of the page, which runs over twenty pages. Or the programming examples are in neat “overflow” DIVs, which end up cutting off the content when printed. Or the font size of the singlespaced font is set such that the examples run off the page to the right. Then you think you’ve found the link to a printable version (after all, it’s a little printer icon), which in fact is simple linked via JavaScript to “print this page”, which ends up printing the exact crap you have on screen, without any formatting, etc.

I’ve been using a couple of days off from my current project to concentrate on working out a new idea I recently had. I’m writing a concept document, thinking about the right development platform and am generally enjoying myself.

It feels so good to be doing something creative, taking your own idea and running with it. I realize that ultimately maybe nothing much will come of this — but it’s a good experience for me, knowing I haven’t “lost it”.

Maybe I’ll write some more about the idea here as soon as it has matured a bit more or I have something new to announce.