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My current-favorite problem with modern web development is mobile-specific redirection. e.g. you click a link in your email and it takes you to "www.foo.com/so

My current-favorite problem with modern web development is mobile-specific redirection. e.g. you click a link in your email and it takes you to "www.foo.com/somethingWithParametersAndImportantStuff", foo.com detects you're on a phone and redirects you to their mobile homepage at "m.foo.com", blowing away your URL or even better not supporting your particular URL's page in the mobile site... where... your mobile browser could've just rendered the original site, albeit pinched. It comes to mind because I'm currently dealing with this as an issue with UPS.com. We're halfway to 2017, people! How can we be having these problems.... :-)

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Digression: 'clicking on a link' may become an obscure reference soon, like dialing a phone. How many young people ever use a mouse?
- ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
  Any young person ( please define) who has ever used a desktop computer?
- sanderjd 10y ago
  I'm very curious about this: is there a hypothesis that non-mobile computers are going away in the business world and/or that "young people" will not be involved in that world? I don't know the stats - are tablets making big inroads in business computing?
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    Dunno. But my niece and nephew are tablet/phone experts, and have never used a mouse. And they are 4 and 6.
    - clarry 10y ago
      I think that just means new computing devices have expanded the market, not replaced old devices. Some functionality that was once used exclusively on PCs (what else did you have?) may now be more commonly accessed via mobile devices. You didn't have a PC in your pocket when you needed to look up directions on a map..
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      If it comforts you, I used an upside-down SNES gamepad for a few years before ever touching a mouse. And today I use my mouse far more than any game controllers.
      - mitchty 10y ago
        I'm more curious why it was upside down.
        MichaelBurge 10y ago
        I just grabbed one and starting using it upside-down. By the time anyone told me it was wrong, it already felt more natural to use it that way.
  - WorldMaker 10y ago
    Humans have several millennia of evolution "touching things" for tactile feedback. Mice on the other hand are a relative (and quite useful) hack compared to that. It requires training and a different mental dimensional model to use. To a child growing up with modern touch screens, a screen without touch is the aberration and "broken". Mice may not disappear entirely, but certainly more and more screens in our lives will support touch interactions, even on desktops and "non-mobile computers", simply because it requires less training and feels more natural ("touch the button" versus "move the mouse to the button and click" may not seem that different after decades of mouse usage, but are very different experiences to an untrained person). There's a sense already today that kids growing up with tablets find mice strange and annoying ("Why can't I just touch that?"), and it's easy to wonder watching today's kids if mice will last for more than a footnote in history and in increasingly small niches that require "headshot precision" like games and maybe CAD.
jdmichal 10y ago
http://xkcd.com/869/ http://xkcd.com/869/ Anyone know where I can find publication dates for individual comics? I don't see anything on the comic's page.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  For questions like that I tend to jump over to the Explain XKCD wiki. This comic was March 7, 2011. http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/869:_Server_Attention_Span http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/869:_Server_Attent...
- nandhp 10y ago
  The archive page -- http://xkcd.com/archive/ http://xkcd.com/archive/ -- has each comic listed by title, with the publication date in the hover text. Server Attention Span was published 2011-3-7.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    Ah, I found the archive page but didn't think to check the hover text there... Thanks.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  It's hard to search on that forum! http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69169&hilit=server+attention+span http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69169&hilit=serve... It's from some time around Mar 07, 2011.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago

Digression: 'clicking on a link' may become an obscure reference soon, like dialing a phone. How many young people ever use a mouse?

ZanyProgrammer 10y ago
Any young person ( please define) who has ever used a desktop computer?
sanderjd 10y ago
I'm very curious about this: is there a hypothesis that non-mobile computers are going away in the business world and/or that "young people" will not be involved in that world? I don't know the stats - are tablets making big inroads in business computing?
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Dunno. But my niece and nephew are tablet/phone experts, and have never used a mouse. And they are 4 and 6.
  - clarry 10y ago
    I think that just means new computing devices have expanded the market, not replaced old devices. Some functionality that was once used exclusively on PCs (what else did you have?) may now be more commonly accessed via mobile devices. You didn't have a PC in your pocket when you needed to look up directions on a map..
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    If it comforts you, I used an upside-down SNES gamepad for a few years before ever touching a mouse. And today I use my mouse far more than any game controllers.
    - mitchty 10y ago
      I'm more curious why it was upside down.
      - MichaelBurge 10y ago
        I just grabbed one and starting using it upside-down. By the time anyone told me it was wrong, it already felt more natural to use it that way.
- WorldMaker 10y ago
  Humans have several millennia of evolution "touching things" for tactile feedback. Mice on the other hand are a relative (and quite useful) hack compared to that. It requires training and a different mental dimensional model to use. To a child growing up with modern touch screens, a screen without touch is the aberration and "broken". Mice may not disappear entirely, but certainly more and more screens in our lives will support touch interactions, even on desktops and "non-mobile computers", simply because it requires less training and feels more natural ("touch the button" versus "move the mouse to the button and click" may not seem that different after decades of mouse usage, but are very different experiences to an untrained person). There's a sense already today that kids growing up with tablets find mice strange and annoying ("Why can't I just touch that?"), and it's easy to wonder watching today's kids if mice will last for more than a footnote in history and in increasingly small niches that require "headshot precision" like games and maybe CAD.

jdmichal 10y ago

http://xkcd.com/869/ http://xkcd.com/869/ Anyone know where I can find publication dates for individual comics? I don't see anything on the comic's page.

WorldMaker 10y ago
For questions like that I tend to jump over to the Explain XKCD wiki. This comic was March 7, 2011. http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/869:_Server_Attention_Span http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/869:_Server_Attent...
nandhp 10y ago
The archive page -- http://xkcd.com/archive/ http://xkcd.com/archive/ -- has each comic listed by title, with the publication date in the hover text. Server Attention Span was published 2011-3-7.
- jdmichal 10y ago
  Ah, I found the archive page but didn't think to check the hover text there... Thanks.
marcosdumay 10y ago
It's hard to search on that forum! http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69169&hilit=server+attention+span http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69169&hilit=serve... It's from some time around Mar 07, 2011.