Responses: Taking user control/chrome/etc using Javascript and other dirty things ;-)

[Danigan]

I've noticed a disturbing trend in this (or more accurately "every") tech forum to not answer people's tech questions when people are asking about something non-conformant. This is especially true in Javascript forums when people ask about things that intrude into a user's ability to control his or her experience (chrome removal, ActiveX that forces fullscreen, etc). I have a proposition: If someone asks for something, answer the question and THEN describe why the method is inferior to another. When someone asks a question and you say, "I think you need to rethink your concept of usability," you are being rude and unhelpful. You might have helped the user become a better designer or coder, but you certainly put zero effort into answering the question asked.

To further demonstrate reason to answer "bad" questions, consider (even if just to humor me/others) that there are times when every rule might need to be broken. I, for instance, work for a company with a corporate university touching 30,000 users. We have terrible dependency issues. Our courses only run on IE 6 or 7 with Windows 2000 or later. That's bad, but can I change it? I'd like to think so, but that'd be somewhat delusional. There are pet courses designed by vice presidents that use nasty IE muck not available in Firefox or other compliant browsers. Furthermore, we have company standards requiring things like chrome removal, resizing, etc. Sometimes I even skirt a standard to do something that only I will use (e.g. I have a Google docs hack that only can be done in IE sadly--I use Firefox for everything else). Most of the time I don't need to go to forums for help. It wasn't long ago, however, that I was new to web development. From the beginning I cared about the official recommendations and standards, but finding help when 6+ users simply respond that I'm doing the wrong thing is a lot worse than helping AND including an advisory disclaimer.

Treat posters first with dignity and put the culture of programming ideology second. And I know--it can be hard to do that. I grind my teeth when I'm forced to do dirty things in my own code. ;-)

[acoder]

Right, ok, so what's your question? :p

...I understand what you're saying, but some people are coding/designing for the web. For those that aren't, I don't think it's a problem doing 'dirty things' as long as there's no alternative. If there is, you should always try to keep a good habit (standards, conformance, etc.)

[mrhoo]

Our courses only run on IE 6 or 7 with Windows 2000

I have trouble stirring up a lot of simpathy here. There are plenty of microsoft forums for IE only solutions. This site does a good job of providing solutions that are not browser dependent.

I would like to see less IE dependence, not more, especially in new coders, who are the main users of all of the forums.

And I don't disrespect you- not much, that is, hardly at all, really....

[acoder]

I have a proposition: If someone asks for something, answer the question and THEN describe why the method is inferior to another. When someone asks a question and you say, "I think you need to rethink your concept of usability," you are being rude and unhelpful. You might have helped the user become a better designer or coder, but you certainly put zero effort into answering the question asked.

Re-reading this, I can see why they get that response. If the person asking the question had bothered to explain what the situation was, he probably wouldn't have received the "usablility" response.