Bob Smash here. I received an email from a reader named John regarding AJ’s brilliant interview of the godfather of ranting Maddox; my reply follows.
Hello,
I found reading your Maddox interview on the site difficult so much so I had to paste it into MS Word to read it. You may want to make the columns wider as Maddox himself says:“If the thousands of mid-sentence links don’t annoy you, the long slender columns of text will. Most of the screen on a blog is blank for an imaginary populace of readers still using 640×480 resolution. I didn’t buy a 19″ monitor to have 50% of its screen realestate pissed away on firing white pixels, you assholes. They don’t print books on receipt paper for a reason. Every time I see this layout, I want to choke the creator with my dry, crackled, and bleeding hands for making my fingers so calloused from having to keep scrolling the mouse wheel to read your dumb ‘blog’.”
Best
John
Wow, that was really witty – now that you’re done trying to imitate Maddox’s humor I will explain something to you:
When one designs a site that is intended to display more than one type of content, one has to take into consideration the fact that a majority of web users are ‘behind the times’, i.e. they are still using Cancer Ray Tube monitors and viewing in 1024 x 768 resolution. While the article you quoted was valid in 1998, the front page of our site is only hard to read by people who ARE using 640 x 480 resolution, are legally blind and have to have their Star Trek computer voice gadget read it to them, or are simply TOO FUCKING LAZY TO SCROLL DOWN A FEW CLICKS. We understand you have probably been cumming all over yourself since you finally found a way to quote Maddox in a way you thought would matter; however you neglected to realize the type of site you were commenting on. This is no typical blog; if you want the columns wider start a campaign to get all Americans to buy wide screen monitors and use at least 1280 x 720 resolution.
In all seriousness I was just having a little fun with you, and I would love nothing more than to stop having to limit my designs to such a ridiculous width just to make sure people who are still using NetZero on their Windows 95 system can view it. Perhaps it’s time for the Rantlister team to decide who we want to piss off more – people who are keeping up or jackasses living off the government or their parents who refuse to spend a few bucks to look at their porn in high resolution. Thanks for your input John, and for reading!
