Rants of A Coyote

Change is all around us! A New Year, New Zodiac signs for most of us (Even me! ), and even New Facebook Profile page.  For almost two months now, Early entry into the new layout has been voluntary. Apparently today however, the remainder of the FB population was switched over to the new profile.

Of course, the angry hate posts start today.  Let me just make it as simple as possible:  Get Over It. The Zodiac was here before us, and FB will make changes it feels are necessary or that better the experience in the long run.  So I am no longer a Scorpio... It really doesn't bother me.

In regards to Facebook: As a PRIVATE company worth $50,000,000,000.00, they have done well so far. They have kept ads to a minimum, generally you will not even see your "New Profile" unless you have a vanity complex and check your own profile on a regular basis.

I understand that Humans not only "Dislike" change, but I would say they Hate it, and yet they still have free use of things like Facebook.

Another example: I am writing a program right now for a company.  This program handles the inventory, sales and even does sample orders. Last week one of the people here tried to run a sample order through Chrome.  I love Chrome, but unfortunately Chrome does not allow printing with page headers/footers disabled (Yet, apparently).  Because of this the people here have been instructed to use either Internet Explorer or FireFox.

Of course, typical response: Eye Roll. Really? I am not here to get into another useless browser war debate.  We have to write the programs to meet certain criteria. If this was a major corporation where everyone was using Chrome, then I might have to try to figure out another solution, but when you are one of two regular people here that uses Chrome, I have to write for what the majority use... In this case: Internet Explorer.

Well, that was last week.  Today... Same person came to me asking why the page was not printing correctly.  First thing I asked her is if she was printing from IE. Cue Response: "No, I used Chrome".  Sigh...

Okay, lets try a different approach:  I showed her the header and footer and explained that since we wanted to make sure that things stayed secure, the things like the URL of the sample program should not be showing for an off chance that someone finds a glitch in my system. I even explained that I myself love using Chrome, but because of this one glitch (For my program it is a glitch), we have to use FireFox or Internet Explorer.  I even have the room that handles all the samples ready to go with everything set up correctly.

When I have the time, I will eventually be able to write a small program that instead of sending to the printer by default, will give users the option of printing to printer, or making a PDF version... right now though, I have not worked with the PHP to PDF so I would need to learn that... while I am still writing the rest of the program.

So again: Users... Quit bitching about the software.  Send in your suggestions, fill out error reports, but don't complain about how it has changed on an aesthetic value, especially on a dynamically changing site like Facebook. Chances are the change is left to the stars anyway and things will probably change again within the next 2000 years..