Lost in Space[r]

30 September 2002

I was looking up flights to Miami on Orbitz.com today for an AIGA design conference I’ll be attending in November. I came across this awkward rendering [.gif, 48 KB] of their much-touted “matrix display”. All missing images pointed to http://www.orbitz.com/d.gif, presumably a transparent spacer gif. I think it ironic that something supposed to be transparent can cause an interface to change so drastically if it happens to go missing.

For me, a reminder of all the clunky table-hack code combinations that have permeated the Web just for design effect. Don’t get me wrong, this matrix is definitely tabular data and belongs in a table. But the fact that Orbitz chose to use spacers inside extra table cells just for the colored border effect makes me welcome the proliferation of CSS. We’ll all be able to avoid those hacks in the future.

Note: In case you happen to stumble across this entry, ignore the comments below. This is the entry I use repeatedly for testing different MT comment functionality.

Posted in Web

44 comments (Comments closed)

1. At 9:17am on 24 jun 2003, doug wrote:

Test comment. Testing new MT system.

2. At 5:01pm on 25 jun 2003, doug wrote:

test 3

3. At 6:43pm on 25 jun 2003, doug wrote:

this is a paragraph with <p> tags

This is strong, emphasized, cite, link.

And a blockquote lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in

4. At 6:45pm on 25 jun 2003, doug wrote:

~~Comment deleted~~

5. At 8:11pm on 25 jun 2003, doug wrote:

this is one line
and the next right after it

then another para

6. At 9:31pm on 25 jun 2003, doug wrote:

This is a link with a title attribute.

7. At 9:53pm on 25 jun 2003, doug wrote:

another test

another paragraph link

8. At 5:25am on 26 jun 2003, doug wrote:

another to test comment error/preview templates.

9. At 5:38am on 26 jun 2003, doug wrote:

test of code sample:

<p>this is sample code</p>

10. At 11:51am on 15 jul 2003, Doug wrote:

testing

11. At 12:08pm on 15 jul 2003, Doug wrote:

testing2

12. At 6:48pm on 25 aug 2003, Doug wrote:

Testing error/preview templates

13. At 3:08pm on 29 sep 2003, Doug wrote:

testing the addition of a link to these comments?

14. At 9:52am on 6 oct 2003, Doug wrote:

test new nav

15. At 4:21pm on 13 oct 2003, Doug wrote:

testing new “edit” link in email

16. At 7:40pm on 31 oct 2003, Douglas Bowman wrote:

testing again

17. At 1:00pm on 17 nov 2003, Douglas Bowman wrote:

and another from Safari

18. At 3:27pm on 17 jan 2004, Doug wrote:

testing email option

19. At 2:14pm on 31 mar 2004, Doug wrote:

ok, one more

20. At 9:39pm on 31 mar 2004, Dave S. wrote:

Yet another

21. At 7:50pm on 29 may 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

more testing, this time for comment notification

22. At 2:13am on 30 may 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

testing get

23. At 5:17pm on 6 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

testing dynamic class

24. At 5:23pm on 6 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

testing dynamic class

25. At 5:44pm on 6 jun 2004, Douglas Bôwman wrote:

testing characters åiífoøå´ö

26. At 5:56pm on 6 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

back to normal

27. At 3:11pm on 13 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

testing

28. At 4:43pm on 13 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

testing

29. At 6:15pm on 13 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

testing rewrite

30. At 1:07pm on 27 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

just making sure preview and error templates still work

31. At 11:31pm on 29 jun 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

trying “quotes” and ‘postrophes

32. At 6:15pm on 9 jul 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote:

This is normal comment text which Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit

And this is the really offensive text Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit, sed diam nonummy nibh euismod tincidunt ut laoreet dolore magna aliquam erat volutpat. Ut wisi enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exerci tation ullamcorper suscipit lobortis nisl ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis autem vel eum iriure dolor in hendrerit in

33. At 10:28am on 27 aug 2004, Douglas Bowman wrote: