@ Bruno Girin re: bug reports: I didn't send any...
...because they weren't really "bugs" as such -- that is, malfunctions that crashed the app or the OS -- but "improvements" which actually made for more PITA... like losing the ability to stop it from displaying recently-visited sites in the URL bar (yeah, it _is_ coyote-ugly, isn't it), nor has it yet given me the ability to get rid of the goddamn' thumbnail site icons in the bookmarks menu (which used to crash early builds of FF2 -- and _hard_). On top of that, they _still_ don't seem to have dealt with the cache bug that prevents updates/revs in things like wiki-ish updateable pages from showing until I quit/restart FF (even though I always set my cache to zero).
@ Ken Hagan re: graphic designers taking over:
I've been a graphic designer since the late '70s -- hell, pre-computer almost, let alone pre-MacOS -- and I can tell you that any designer in _any_ medium who doesn't consider the nature/limitations of the medium and the audience just isn't getting it. One of the first things I did when HTML started allowing things like background patterns and colors was to design all my sites on _white_ -- the color of ordinary paper, like in a magazine, book, or newspaper -- not colors, followed by promising to laugh any other designer out of the room who _dared_ to use background patterns or images, or to design image-heavy pages without considering the users/audience -- high-end home/corporate broadband users on high-horsepower gear? Home users on 56kbps with midrange gear? Public schools on 56kbps or overloaded 112k isdn's with old donated gear? ...Something else I ruled out very early was gratuitous rollover feedback -- i.e. shit that bounces or strobes or wiggles when you roll over it -- and, generally, any kind of moving, flashing, wiggling or bouncing shit at all, and not to mention embedded sound or video that auto-starts when the page loads (I sometimes want to find the home addresses of designers who design pages with big-assed auto-playing Flash intros that crank thudding dance grooves loud enough for the whole damn' studio to hear, so I can visit them personally and beat the shit out of them). And, of course, are the classic design do's and don'ts that apply across all media -- such as how to direct "gaze motion", and how to properly use type so that your page doesn't look like the cover of an old Sex Pistols 45.
Aaaa-aaanyway, long answer short: don't be so quick to diss the designers, man.
mf, proud member, the Colo(u)red Pencil Office (as I believe the BOFH calls them)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
