Bob-Ross-Programming

I <3 My Users — But I Still Can’t Love IE

To be forthright, in the late hours of the night, when IE won’t do as I’ve commanded, I’ve cursed IE  users.  But I always feel bad about it afterward.  They might not have a choice.  So, I do penance by making sure they have a proper experience.  Meanwhile, some web developers express a disturbing amount of disdain for the user, and it goes beyond the user’s choice browser.  From articles’ comment sections to Facebook to forums, and worst of all, in real life, I come across feelings like these:

Like little kids, users want it all.  They don’t care who pays for it, as long as it’s not them.  They don’t care how it gets to them, as long as it’s there when they want it.  And they always want it now, right now!  They’re leeches!

Actually, that’s a toned down version of some of the minor jabs and outrageous rants from some people calling themselves web developers.  While there’s usually another developer around—or a few hundred—to politely or otherwise scold that commenter, I nevertheless question why these anti-users develop.  Don’t we develop for the user?  We’re designing user interfaces and building applications in hopes the users will return.

James Somers asks “Are Coders Worth It?” and further complicates this matter by portraying a world of “mediocre programmer[s].”  He reminds me there’s a community of developers coding just for the money or the label, learning the languages without understanding the web cannot be gamed into a pretty product that didn’t consider them.  Before reading this article, I thought these apathetic coders were a minority.  But I’m starting to wonder if the art in programming is dying out as we watch basic coding become the cool thing to learn.  The “anyone can code” song we trumpet will distort into a dirge if we, as a web community, don’t emphasize the difference between coding and programming.  Anyone can code the way anyone can paint.  Most of us are not the next Picasso of programming, but if we’re worthy of our computers and our titles as web developers, we’re working toward a perfect iteration.

WordPress 2012 Theme

CSS Organization in WordPress 2012

As I’m redesigning my site, I can’t help but wonder why WordPress organized their CSS files in the 2012 theme the way they did.  I tend to start with WordPress’s latest theme as my template when I’m “playing” with building my own themes, as opposed to getting serious with a client’s needs.

 

I’ve been developing my own way of organizing CSS files, and I’ve been reading up on others’ methods using Smashing Magazine, forums, and other sources, but I haven’t found an approach that screams, “Yes, that’s how I want my CSS files!”

 

I’ve looked into LESS and SASS, too.  While I’ve used them in a few projects, I’m not convinced a WordPress theme really needs all that.  I’m thinking of the potential performance burdens I’m passing down to the user for cleaner CSS.  Here, there’s the caveat that it’s a simple site.  Larger projects make the decision to use something like LESS an obvious one.  Just think about the form and table styling rules some projects require.

 

Yes, cleaner code runs faster, but that’s also a lot more code to potentially maintain and debug, no?

Linking Google’s AdSense and Analytics

No one—not Google’s own help pages for connecting AdSense and Analytics, not even a faithful YouTuber—could tell me how to connect Google AdSense to my Google Analytics account.  I knew how to do it in the old interface, but this latest update is organized very differently.

 

Everything I tried sent me on an endless loop of links, and every forum answer predated the latest interface updates.  So, I did what any desperate kid of the 90s does when we can’t figure it out and there’s no help—we click around methodically and seemingly endlessly.  Yes, anyone watching my screen would have assumed I was doing the same thing again and again expecting different results, but the fact is, we introduce nuances into our workflow each time we cycle through our routine, so every page load is not the same.

 

Anyway, my labor proved fruitful.  This is how it goes, for all you fellow wanderers in the dark:

Start from your Analytics account.  Go to the Admin button on the right-hand side of the main navigation bar (the orange one).  There, click on Accounts List, and click into the relevant property group.  Be forewarned, do NOT click into the property itself, or you won’t find the necessary next tab, the Data Sources tab.  In that Data Sources tab, there are now two sub-tabs: AdWords and AdSense.  You want the AdSense tab.  Under that tab, you’ll be able to connect an Analytics property to an AdSense setup.

 

So, there is no “Getting Started” page that Google’s directions promise, there is no link to edit your account links, and, for me, flipping back to the old interace wasn’t an option.