Archives

All of my archive pages

March 2023

  • Makro, Your Fancy Web Page and Poor Markup Makes Google Think That Shitty Laptop Costs $21,000

    My co-worker wanted me to find a spare battery for their latptop. Not my job, but whatever.

    I looked up the brand and noticed a result showing that one of their shit laptops cost ZAR399,999.00.

    A search result for a proline laptop going for ZAR399,999.00

    Curious, I clicked the result and noticed that the laptop was actually more reasonably priced at ZAR3,999.00—issue was that the cents portion was offset.

    A product page for the proline laptop going for ZAR3999.00 with the 00 superscripted in bold.

    Makes sense to me but looking at the markup the problem becomes clear:

    <p class="price ">
    <span class="mak-save-price">R 3,999</span>
    <span class="mak-product__cents">00</span>
</p>

    There’s no separator between the Rands and cents!

    A simple fix would be to put the separator and visually hide it.

    <p class="price ">
    <span class="mak-save-price">R 3,999</span>
    <span class="visually-hidden">.</span>
    <span class="mak-product__cents">00</span>
</p>

    Assuming your .visually-hidden class is defined, you don’t have to write any more CSS. We could make this more semantic by using the <data> element instead, though that might be overkill:

    <p>
    <data value="ZAR3999.00">
        <span class="mak-save-price">R 3,999</span>
        <span class="visually-hidden">.</span>
        <span class="mak-product__cents">00</span>        
    </data>
</p>

    I was curious as to how to do this semantically and Google has some suggestions. In short, use the price schema.org microdata. Here’s my attempt at doing that:

    <p itemprop="offers" itemscope itemtype="https://schema.org/Offer">
    <span>
        <span itemprop="priceCurrency" content="ZAR">ZAR</span>
        <data itemprop="price" value="3999.00">
            <span class="mak-save-price">3,999</span>
            <span class="visually-hidden">.</span>
            <span class="mak-product__cents">00</span>        
        </data>
    </span>
</p>

    Verbose, but more semantic.

    All this makes me wonder—can Google understand visual representation? I mean, it can do Web Vitals but does it understand what this page is supposed to look like? It’s fair to assume that the price would be interpreted in rands and cents, but some might get confused, especially if you use a screen reader. Then again, I tried with NVDA but it didn’t get confused.

    Still, you should improve your markup, Makro!

  • Turns out that Shona has mermaids (well water spirits) refered to as njuzu [Shona].

    Also, I forgot about the hreflang attribute. Indicates when a link is in another language. Tends to be used with rel="alternate" in the head to mark that a webpage is avalible in other languages.

  • Linkstats

    Updated:

  • I use a program called Power Toys which adds a lot of useful features to Windows, like keeping your computer awake.

    The feature I use most is PowerToys Run which is like Spotlight search for Windows where you click Alt+Space and get a search bar.

    At work, I occassionally access the server via Remote Desktop. Alt+Space is muscle memory at this point until I stopped and thought:

    Wait, why does Alt+Space work even though I haven’t installed PowerToys?

    Turns out that the server installed an application called Launchy, which probably inspired Microsoft to Sherlock the feature.

    Like I said, PowerToys has a lot of great features which I’ll write about at some point.

  • Edge, Can You Please Fuck Off and Let Me Browse The Web In Peace?

    Edge is such a naggy browser and it keeps getting worse. No, I don’t want a fucking coupon, or a payday lender, or to use Bing. Well, I did want to use Bing but they nerfed it so I don’t anymore. Also, I want to download an Excel file, not view it in the fucking web browser.

    Is it too much to ask to be able to browse the web in peace? When I updated to Windows 11, I didn’t even fight the various ways you make it hard to switch and it worked very well. Over time, it got more and more annoying to the point where I’m going to switch to something else.

    Unfortunatley, I doubt the other browsers are much better since they all have something to sell and even if it didin’t, software costs money to make. Exception is Safari but it’s not on Windows and web developers hate it. Maybe we need a people’s web browser? Surely some government can spare the $400 million to form a strong team that can make a kick ass browser.

    Guess it’s time to use Vivaldi.

  • I’ve locked myself out of my digital life – Terence Eden’s Blog

    See on shkspr.mobi

    The other day, I was contemplating getting a safe deposit box for some emergency documents. What stopped me what how it cost $200 a year, which I don’t have. I came across this article and it illustrates the difficulty of starting again.

    There are so many hoops you need to jump through in order to restore your digital life in case you have to start over. A lot to think about, especially if you’re a UX designer.

  • I was born in 1995 and I’m not sure if I’m Gen Z or a Millenial. I mean, I’m in between having used non-solid state storage like VHS and cassettes and understanding what memes are.

    #CusperGang I guess, but these generations are all marketing terms.

  • ‘Scanners are complicated’: why Gen Z faces workplace ‘tech shame’

    See on www.theguardian.com

    The PC Gamer heading says “Young workers don’t know how to use office printers, scanners, ancient desktop PCs” and I’m like who the fuck does? Working as help desk a lot of my issues have to do with figuring out how to use the printers and scanners. Windows supporting AirPrint would help a lot but it doesn’t look like generic AirScan will happen ever.

    Sure there’s an interesting discussion about how Gen Z don’t understand file systems (probably due to how it has all been abstracted away), but honestly computers can get complicated. Worse still, because of how shit it can get you develop tacit knowledge just to get your work done, which is hard to communicate to others. The biggest computer skill I wish I could teach is having a sense of curiosity. Like, try click on that button and see what happens, which is what the article says Gen Z is good at.

    …there’s at least one thing that sets tech-hopeless Gen Z workers apart from their older coworkers. Younger people seem more willing to learn, and can quickly adapt to new skills – even if it takes a few rounds at the printer to fully master the art of scanning.

    Gen Z is very comfortable navigating software they’ve never used before, because they’ve been doing it their whole lives, Bench said. They are used to trial and error. They may not be this godsend to the workforce who come in automatically knowing how to do Excel, but they’re fast learners.