paulplatt

Writing the posts on visiting Johnson Space Center was frustrating to say the least. You can add the word humbling to that too. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I maintained a website. Initially I wrote the HTML code using Microsoft Notepad. Later I shifted to Frontpage. So… when I had trouble formatting the pictures and text in my blog I switched from the visual editor to the HTML editor. All I wanted to do was add some hard carriage returns. Every time I posted, WordPress decided to “clean up” my code by removing what I had entered. ARGH!!!! A Google search showed that I’m not the only one experiencing this. I finally found a code snippet that did the job but why wouldn’t standard HTML work? Worse, why was I in HTML mode anyway? Isn’t the point of sites like WordPress to make this easy? I have written a lot about user interface design. One comment I made was that the more natural a user interface gets the bigger small defects appear. I am sure I’ll learn to format around pictures and make the site look the way I want. At one time my standard answer would have been RTFM. But now, as I move from playing with technology to wanting it to be a working tool, I sympathize with those who ask why a manual should be necessary.