Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Ghost in the Machine

Evil! Evil! Evil!

It has recently come to my attention that I have been blinding some of you poor readers with a mysterious font that appears in my posts. Yes, blinding! It is tiny, squished, hideous and completely unreadable. I have made people suspect they have early-onset presbyopia! What am I talking about, some of you say? Ah, you are the lucky ones who don't use Internet Explorer. Or who use google reader or some other aggregator.

I am so, so grateful to the couple of readers who pointed this out to me. I use both Safari and Firefox and my blog posts look quite normal to me on either. So initially I had no idea what these readers were referring to. After some investigating (thank you, Karin!), we discovered the shocking truth - it is Safari! Evil! Evil! Can there be anything more evil than IE? Yes - Safari (right now, we are not friends).

OK, so here's what's been happening: unbeknownst to me, Safari has been inserting random tags and codes in my posts, some of which are silly and harmless, and some of which are visibly disturbing. One of these is changing random chunks of text into a bizarre font called "webkit fantasy" which shows up as the frighteningly indecipherable thing some of you poor folks have been trying to read. And to think I was concerned that my handwriting in the printables was illegible. Haw haw.

The kind and supportive husband spent a good hour trying to figure it out and in the end said, "go research some web editors." I think I will. Because the alternative is manually finding and replacing every single "-webkit fantasy" in the html of all one million of my interminable posts. Like as if I don't have enough laundry to do already.

Anyway, readers, I just wanted to say several things (um, in addition to the stuff I ranted about already, I mean).

One, I am really sorry that some of you had to read that vile font. No, you are not going blind, nor are you "seeing things". It is real, it is evil and it is among us! I am even sorrier that some of you were so determined to read the vile font that you tried to change it to make it readable. How does one even do that? I am duly impressed.


Two, I am working on un-vile-ing the font. It may take a while, and I ask for your patience, but someday you will be able to read all my instructions in the posts. Hopefully before you (and I) actually need bifocals.


Three, thank you to everyone who helped expose this horror - to the readers who wrote in, the friends who helped, and the husband (good with computers) who was forced to stand behind me (bad with computers) and give instructions like, "click this", "press that button", "scroll down" - you know, stuff that my 4-year old knew last year.


Four, if you are using Firefox, Safari (grr) or some other browser on which this is not a problem (you'll be the ones who have no clue as to what all this is about), carry on!


Five, if you are using Internet Explorer, you might want to switch to something different or use an aggregator to read my posts in the meantime until I fix the bug.


I screened the html code for the most recent Summer Dresses Summary post and this one and I think there aren't any rogue font bits. Even if there are, I can't see them on Firefox or Safari and I've exceeded my quota for the day on browsershots. So if any of you are using IE, please would you leave a comment to tell me if they are OK? Thanks so much.

9 comments:

  1. No weird fonts in that post! I was wondering why you were posting some things so tiny it could hardly be read, but I'm never one to ask questions like that.. Besides, I was so enthralled by all your wonderful tutorials, it didn't phase me too much! : )

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  2. I use IE and eveything looks great today! Thanks for fixing it!

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  3. I use IE and everything looks good today. Thanks for fixing it!

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  4. i just change the size of the letters on my screen with the magnifier button and I could read them just fine. I just thought you were trying to save space so your post weren't so long. everything looks fine.

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  5. I've just been squinting and sticking my face an inch from the screen trying to read things. Thanks for trying to fix things.

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  6. Thanks for fixing it and letting me know I 'm not getting that old, yet!

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  7. I use IE 7 and have never had a problem reading your posts. I've never noticed odd symbols or too small print. Glad the problem is getting fixed for others, though!

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  8. I thought it was an intentional part of your directions. I'm glad we'll be able to read your whole posts now!

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  9. I use google chrome and have to say I am loving your fun blog! So much great stuff! I do find the black writing on dark grey hard to read but thanks so much for sharing so many great posts!!

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