My School's Web Editor SUCKS.
<rant>
Recently, I took over the extra duty contract for my school's webmaster position. Let the rant begin.
We have a WYSIWYG editor. It is absolutely the worst piece of shit I have ever worked with. It's based on metadot. Truly, truly awful.
--The standard text formatting works fine. However, trying to upload a file? It has to be uploaded to "web" folder I have access to on the intranet, and then placed in a subfolder. Without the subfolder, it doesn't work, even if you link to the file in the main folder. The link must then be typed manually. Most user friendly WYSIWYG editors have a section for just uploading files. Not this one!
--Adding a picture on the intranet servers requires opening the image library, which loads high resolution photos...ALL of them. It locked up my school computer last time I opened it. I think that since I have to manually insert photos anyway (you have to type the URL as listed in the image library), I'll stick to imageshack. Pain in the ass!
--Nothing is user friendly. You literally have to guess what things do. It's like a WYSIWYG editor that's retarded.
--I tried to copy and paste a link, and was told by Firefox that I wasn't allowed to do that, because of the content of what I was copying. This was for "security reasons." There was no way to override it that I could tell, either. Granted, that's a Firefox for XP complaint, but this is a rant, so....
--Off the metadot thing for sec: I hate Microsoft. We recently installed Office 2007, and I hate it. HATE. It's big, slow and not at all like any pervious version. But it gets better! I needed to convert some Excel and Word files (class lists) to PDFs. Hmm...well guess what? Word needed a plugin to save in PDF format. It also took me about 10 minutes to even find the option for saving in PDF. So, I went to M$ and tried to download the plugin. First though, M$ needed me to download a program to verify copy of Office was legit.. Of course, I downloaded it and it didn't work. It said, I shit you not, "...this may be due to a technical error..." No shit. So, I downloaded the stuff on my Mac and exported it to PDF through iWork. This one experience has caused me to decide not to buy Office 2008 to replace my V.x copy. I'm getting iWork, flaws be damned.
--For some reason, the district's website just stopped working after I finally got the lists up. I don't have access at that level, so it couldn't have been me, but of course it happened just as I started making the edits I actually wanted to make. Bastards.
[/rant]
If anyone has any suggestions to prevent my head exploding when editing my web page, I'd sure appreciate it. Maybe I should design the whole page externally and copy it over?
Recently, I took over the extra duty contract for my school's webmaster position. Let the rant begin.
We have a WYSIWYG editor. It is absolutely the worst piece of shit I have ever worked with. It's based on metadot. Truly, truly awful.
--The standard text formatting works fine. However, trying to upload a file? It has to be uploaded to "web" folder I have access to on the intranet, and then placed in a subfolder. Without the subfolder, it doesn't work, even if you link to the file in the main folder. The link must then be typed manually. Most user friendly WYSIWYG editors have a section for just uploading files. Not this one!
--Adding a picture on the intranet servers requires opening the image library, which loads high resolution photos...ALL of them. It locked up my school computer last time I opened it. I think that since I have to manually insert photos anyway (you have to type the URL as listed in the image library), I'll stick to imageshack. Pain in the ass!
--Nothing is user friendly. You literally have to guess what things do. It's like a WYSIWYG editor that's retarded.
--I tried to copy and paste a link, and was told by Firefox that I wasn't allowed to do that, because of the content of what I was copying. This was for "security reasons." There was no way to override it that I could tell, either. Granted, that's a Firefox for XP complaint, but this is a rant, so....
--Off the metadot thing for sec: I hate Microsoft. We recently installed Office 2007, and I hate it. HATE. It's big, slow and not at all like any pervious version. But it gets better! I needed to convert some Excel and Word files (class lists) to PDFs. Hmm...well guess what? Word needed a plugin to save in PDF format. It also took me about 10 minutes to even find the option for saving in PDF. So, I went to M$ and tried to download the plugin. First though, M$ needed me to download a program to verify copy of Office was legit.. Of course, I downloaded it and it didn't work. It said, I shit you not, "...this may be due to a technical error..." No shit. So, I downloaded the stuff on my Mac and exported it to PDF through iWork. This one experience has caused me to decide not to buy Office 2008 to replace my V.x copy. I'm getting iWork, flaws be damned.
--For some reason, the district's website just stopped working after I finally got the lists up. I don't have access at that level, so it couldn't have been me, but of course it happened just as I started making the edits I actually wanted to make. Bastards.
[/rant]
If anyone has any suggestions to prevent my head exploding when editing my web page, I'd sure appreciate it. Maybe I should design the whole page externally and copy it over?
Comments
Yep. I think that's your best bet.
Obviously there's a reason why this job was open for you to take up.
Thanks. As for point 2, it's just something teachers apply for as an extra duty. the last guy really didn't do much with it. I was interested so I applied.
Update: I finally got the lists posted, but attached to each one was all the special needs info (IEP/504/ESL) etc. I didn't see this as it was buried at the end of each PDF file. Apparently when the one secretary e-mailed me the info, she fucked up and attached that stuff at the end too. So I was on the phone for the last hour getting it straightened out.
Ridiculous.