picture windows # 16 ~ KMA, SquareSpace
Sunday, July 20, 2008 at 05:33AM 
rain on window screen • click to embiggenSquareSpace has given me a very unpleasant surprise this AM. They have launched a new version - radically improved - that doesn't work at all with Firefox and only partially with Safari (both on a Mac).
So bear with me for a bit while I wait for an answer from their support. I can post using Safari but it won't let me create a thumbnail (amongst many other problems) with pop-up so there is no large image of this picture to view.
I can't believe how fucked up this is but then I have to say that I expect nothing more in the wonderful world of software. The world where software developers, large and small, have adopted the working premise of "don't worry, be crappy" - just foist whatever crap they have on the end-users and let them deal with the problems and an endless flow of "updates" and "patches" that attempt to make things "better".
In any event, I'll add a pop-up image as soon as I am able. In the meantime, here's a quote to accompany today's entry -
Life isn't perfect, but then photography isn't either. Indeed photography's imperfections are becoming all too familiar. Often now we hear that there are too many photographs, that we are buried in them. Growing accustomed to the burden of this accumulation has made it difficult to imagine what photographs we might still need. - Peter Galassi
I really like the notion of "what photographs we might still need". Do we really need an additional accumulation of pretty landscape pictures? Does that never-ending accumulation of pretty pictures desensitize us to the pictures that we really need - pictures that attempt to connect us to the real, not the fanciful? Pictures that require us to think rather than those that lull us to sleep (so that we can dream The Dream)?
gravitas et nugalis
update: after waiting a couple hours for a response, I have been told to empty my browser cache to see if that eliminates the problem. It has and now I am able to try and figure out all the new stuff that is different from before. And, no, there is no legacy option.
One more reason why a paper Landscapist is looking better and better.
Reader Comments (7)
Software developer's idea of a "better" application is one with more features. Features, at the expense of compatibility and usability, because those things involve cooperation with lesser beings than themselves.
When Blogger "improved" a while back, they made it possible for current clients to keep using the "legacy" interface. Not Squarespace?
I need other one's views. Hope that someone else needs them too. But i am far from thinking that my need is so universal (it is not love at least). Pretty looking is a welcome option, pretty subjects are a lot less important features. But for one thing i am sure, there are a lot more chances to be heard in small social spaces instead of receiving a nice "decolte" as it seems to have happened to "San Giovanni Battista" (The lion roaring in the desert).
In the last year since reading this blog my wife and I "see" life around us in a very different way. We now see the off-beat, the color and the everyday life that we were passing by to take the pretty picture.
Hey -- regarding Squarespace. Sorry you're having any issues, and I'm following up via your ticket. I'd like to be clear on something though:
Firefox and Safari are Squarespace's PRIMARY browsers, and the issues you're having are caching and upgrade related -- I wouldn't want it implied that we're somehow avoiding those browser, especially since they're the ones I use :)
Thanks!
Wow! You're one important guy?!?! tomorrow you should post something about George W. Bush and see if he logs on to defend himself!
Mark,
This is a PIA, isn't it? If I was paying more attention, I might have known it was coming. But I've gotten most of the functionality of the original manmadewilderness site back by adopting one of the V5 templates, and then modifying it. It's going to necessitate a lot of tweaking, that's for sure. The pop up images from a thumbnail work when you impose one of the new templates on your site. In your case it may be more effort than for me. It was time for something different - for me - anyway.
Popup didn't work (Firefox 3.0.1) but image came up large in a new tab.