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Everyone's been lovey dovey over the new WYSIWYG editor (JfZ, future, forum guide, hacks) While I, despite my initial "enthusiasm", still think that it has lots of problem room for improvement.
The WYSIWYG editor is at the very core, the most important feature on Blogdrive. Without it... you would be wondering how a blog host can ever be a blog host. And we really don't expect writers to be able to write properly, right?
1)  Insert Link opens a new window? This has to be the most annoying small problem. Everytime I need to insert a link, I'll need to wait till the new window loads before I can do anything else. This is a pain especially on MSIE because it takes a long time for MSIE to open a new window. Blogdrive should really just reduce to using a "prompt" javascript function to do the magic. It's less complicated and faster. Not to mention no new HTTPrequest to the Blogdrive server while editing.
Another problem is that it'll not work if the text you highlighted contains an apostrophy ' or ' . For example if you write: "Seige's dog", and wanting to add a link to these words, it'll not copy the "Seige's dog" to the window. This is a Javascript bug.
2) Different browser syntax rendering - on Firefox it's "XHTML Transitional" while on MSIE it's "plain old HTML" with CAPITALS. You can notice the differences if you use the "HTML View" feature located at the right bottom of the editor. It's odd although
3) Up Down Left Right button doesn't work sometimes - can't move the focus of the text cursor basically but the weird thing about this is... it only happen sometimes. And as for me, I can't identify what is the source of this problem.
4) In HTML View, the text cursor isn't always where it should be - more often than not it appears to be one or two characters away. How and why this happens is a mystery. It usually happens when I have a long entry that I needed to edit. It has something to do with miscalculating the string lengths or something along those lines.
5)   Undo/Redo doesn't work sometimes - Again, this is odd and I can't tell why it doesn't work. It happens to both Firefox and MSIE.
6)   Outdent/Indent uses different elements sometimes - I would really prefer the editor to implement the <BLOCKQUOTE> elements, it works great on MSIE but on Firefox, it uses <div> with margins set to indent it... how cruel.
7) Save post to clip board works on MSIE only - it doesn't work on Firefox mainly because Firefox is stupid for not supporting the copy-to-clipboard function. Sadly.
8) Firefox browser crash when reloading editor sometimes - Again, this is another one of the "sometimes" problem. It's just weird and I just can't make it out why. Don't take me wrong that it could be other webpages I'm viewing because the window crashed a few times and it's always during reloading of the editor in Firefox.
9) Can't insert Scripts or Objects - That's due to security reasons but for someone like me who do need to use some Javascripts, it's  . Though... I shouldn't fret because I still have the beloved PTE.
10) Help Guide is coming soon ever since the big bang - See that "?" up there on the top right hand corner? Ever clicked on it, No? Don't bother.
I somehow realise that all these problems have almost everything to do with browser inconsistencies. Still I don't see why an editor should be flawed just because of certain browser not working perfectly well.
Wondering if Blogdrive will ever be bothered to fix these minor things? Nah, never. Not in a century or two.
Ever since Blogdrive fixed the PTE, it has so far been a million times better than WYSIWYG editor. Although it doesn't mean it's all great (because it doesn't work all well in Firefox/Opera), it's still better than WYSIWYG editor.
Tags: Blogdrive, WYSIWYG, Plain Text Editor, PTE, Editor,
A little more than a year ago I made an entry about Studio Traffic, about how such business have no solid base and can't make no money. Today, I just found out that the website itself dissappeared and turned into something called myFileHut.com that offers free image and file hosting. How oddly obvious?
Curiosity and procrastination has brought me into Googling the latest news. Secretly laughing out loud inside repeating "Told you so". So anyway, I digged up some rather interesting news (and somewhat odd).
For those of you who doesn't know what StudioTraffic is, here are some quick links.
http://www.studiotraffic.co.uk/ - A Uk website with some pretty good coverage of the aftermaths.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studiotraffic - A pretty messy explanation, loads of grammars mistake as if it was done by some pretty unstable members of Studiotraffic who had their money stolen.
http://www.answers.com/topic/studiotraffic - A very good overview of the whole StudioTraffic. You should read this if you have no idea what I'm talking about until now.
Doing a trend-region study on Google return this interesting details. It appears South East Asian countries are the worst hit.
I don't know how to say this, but really. How can anybody be so stupid? I know I've probably asked this more than a million times, but I can only think of these:
1) Making money online is so COOL. - It's easy and you don't even have to leave your house. You can even make money in your underwear.
2) The so-called "John Horan" was very CONVINCING. - Okay, I got to admit to this one because I actually took the effort to study it's business model after reading his writings. He has a way of selling himself that even my mom would buy without second thoughts.
3) They don't know how to do MATHS. - The only reason I didn't believe this "scam" has everything to do with my mathematical ability and has totally nothing to do with my common sense and/or instincts (which I'm terrible at). As mentioned in my blog entry a year ago, I calculated using complex calculations (brag) and advanced numbering series (brag) along with Euler's partial differential equation (brag) the amounts of money involved in this business structure (brag) and it's flow patterns (brag). And then I compared them to what "John Horan" has said, it didn't made any sense at all. See, Maths is for love and not hate.
4) Strong StudioTraffic SUPPORTERS all over the Internet. - this has to be one of the most fascinating thing that I've ever come across (I'm still very impressed). A big supporter / fan / cheerleader club for a SCAM website. Anybody who initially regard it as a scam would believe it's real if so many people are defending it. It goes with the saying: "If everybody believes it, it's bound to be true!" It's like religion.
That's it, its' a religion.
5) The power of WORD of MOUTH. - "John Horan" obviously played the game very well, I'm not entirely sure how but I've received many recommendations from friends and relatives. They came to me only to be dissappointed when I told them it's a scam (having to explain with graphs and diagrams (brag)). I think this says a lot about building a network-based business. See, POWER of Networking!
6) They are Young, Naive and Ambitious. - As opposed to old, lonely and seeking attention. I might be wrong here but I'm pretty sure nobody will easily believe this form of scam again.
Well, I guess the supporter (part 4) can be reasoned by people who have actually "invested" some money and really can't bare to realise that they have been cheated. It becomes a sensitive issue and they form a cult-like army.
I know whatever I say here may potentially offend many especially those who have been faithful to the programme. I can't help but feel sorry for them (and writing this entry). A little community service brought to you by me.
Tags: studiotraffic, studio traffic, scams, ponzi scheme, make money online,
 |  | | Before | After | Year 2003, it was the best thing that happened to our tiny little existance.
It was user-friendly, great features, wonderful customer services, almost no down time.
It was ranked one of the top five blogging services around.
| Today, we are back to tiny little, almost non-existing creature.
Bugs are flying everywhere, spammers constant attack, poor customer service, downtime all the time (hey, it rhymes).
Not even considered for ranking.
| So people, tell me what exactly is wrong here?
The Cool Blogdrive Guy (one of the two Blogdrive admin) speaks in responce to a member's complain in the forum. Read the complain first.
Blogdrive has tortured me enough. I've been a customer for one year and I'm actively looking for other options. This is the third unannounced outage and unresponded to help tickets in less than 2 weeks. Even when it's "working" it takes over an hour to make one post due to crashes. I've had the patience of a saint, hoping and praying. Yet, Blogdrive appears to be flatlining. I've simply had enough. I'm not going to waste my time even commenting much more. It's time to get serious and find a host that is ready for prime time and living in the real world. I feel foolish for even giving my business to this company. Maybe, instead of Yahoo buying Blogdrive, we should see if Toys R Us would be willing to take over. Or maybe the Salvation Army. Message to Helpee: I get the sense that you're trying to help, that you want to help, but that you just can't help. People need a blog host to have things that work and it's simply not working. It's very sad, but it is just not working. It's not. If I saw a light at the end of the tunnel, that would be lovely. But, all I see are the pleas of my fellow members virtually begging for improvements to the pathetic levels of outages. Is everyone familiar with the oft-quoted definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. That's really what staying on as a Blogdrive customer equals: insanity.
And here is his reply:
Hi Rich, I feel your pain. Any unexpected outages have been just that, unexpected. Earlier today there was a flood attack on the servers. The unusually high utilization caused a database error which propagated to the other servers. It took some time to correct it across all the servers, but all is well now with no data loss. We are now looking at implementing new measures to help protect against this type of scenario.
Most of the other "outages" you experienced before are do to spammers or spiders causing DOS attacks. We have been in the process of both a data center move and network overhaul to better supply us with the network capability and bandwidth necessary to handle these situations better. unfortunately do to the scale of both projects it is taking some time to complete.
I can't say it says a lot, but it certainly keeps the member's mouth shut for the moment. Let's see for how long.
Reference: Forum,
Tags: blogdrive, customer service
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