Unsolicited Life Advice: drooling goats
Jul. 8th, 2010 11:40 amIf you design a website to randomly log people out at sporadic intervals, you need some way to inform them.
GOOD: "Please enter your password [brief explanation of why this is necessary] [if you are not YOU, click here]"
GOOD: Do this for sites which let you spend real money.
BAD: Show a picture of a drooling goat and a "this page doesn't exist, dumbass" message.
BAD: Do this for sites where the user always logs in from the same computer, doesn't care, has the password memorised by their browser, but don't give them a username/password box to log in from without navigating to another page and losing the address of whatever page they were trying to go to.
BAD: Use the same page for me to read my friends entries, and for random schlubs to read my friends entries, and when I'm logged out, silently redirect me to the wrong one without any visual indication.
Livejournal just started doing the "drooling goat" thing. I mean, if 90% of the time I have a special rainbow filter for my special rainbow friends, and people most often try to read it without permission because they're naughty snooping/incompetent non-rainbow friends, then the drooling goat thing sort of makes sense. But to me, 90% of the time I try to view a filter that I don't have permission for, it's because I was randomly and silently logged out.
GOOD: "Please enter your password [brief explanation of why this is necessary] [if you are not YOU, click here]"
GOOD: Do this for sites which let you spend real money.
BAD: Show a picture of a drooling goat and a "this page doesn't exist, dumbass" message.
BAD: Do this for sites where the user always logs in from the same computer, doesn't care, has the password memorised by their browser, but don't give them a username/password box to log in from without navigating to another page and losing the address of whatever page they were trying to go to.
BAD: Use the same page for me to read my friends entries, and for random schlubs to read my friends entries, and when I'm logged out, silently redirect me to the wrong one without any visual indication.
Livejournal just started doing the "drooling goat" thing. I mean, if 90% of the time I have a special rainbow filter for my special rainbow friends, and people most often try to read it without permission because they're naughty snooping/incompetent non-rainbow friends, then the drooling goat thing sort of makes sense. But to me, 90% of the time I try to view a filter that I don't have permission for, it's because I was randomly and silently logged out.