Jan 19
Wordpress 2.7 is such a breath of fresh air. The admin interface feels great and they fixed so many small things that used to drive me nuts.
One of these items was the file uploader. Here is Wordpress 2.6:
My use case is that I use the full size image 99.99% of the time. I never want to link to the image itself in the hyperlink. However, the admin interface tries to force me down that path EVERY darn time. I would find myself hacking up the Wordpress code to give me what I want, and then when I upgrade I had to do it all over again. Grr.
Then I upgraded to Wordpress 2.7 and got:
It remembers. Imagine that! Kudos to the Wordpress team.
Dec 08
Sorry, you must have a Windows PC and Internet Explorer 5.5 or greater to play this game
Excuse me? This is exactly why I joined Mozilla with Ben. I don’t want to access my bank in 2010 and see “You must be running Silverlight on Windows with IE 9″. It sounds crazy, but think back a few years and we were there. And, this message from a Dora the Explorer game reminded me that we still even have that problem today!
This brings me to online games. There are so many (mainly Flash) games for kids online. It is fantastic. I play PBS Kids games such as Curious George with Sam for hours.
The problem I run into is that because they are simple little games, they don’t have the notion of saving a game, or going to a level. I can see why the creators wouldn’t put this in. It is more work, and they probably think “these are quick little games, who needs that?”
The problem is that kids tend to get addicted to a game and want to play it again and again and again. Sam will want to go back to play, and it is so annoying to play the same first level once again! Let me skip!
And then there is losing the game. Kids get so attached, that I dread the following interaction (which has happened):
- Daddy, let’s play the Curious George game with the boats
- Ok, *opens it up on the computer*
- Um, it looks like that game isn’t there, let’s try the new one
- NOOOOO I WANT THE BOATS
Kids really care, so game sites, please add rather than deleting if you can. There is a kid out there that loves the game, and you break his heart when you nuke it. The good news is that 5 minutes later he is onto the next thing…. but still.
Any other parents run into this? Any favourite games?
