Twl



  • This thing is even worse than QR codes.


    -Honey, I just saw one of those enticing Twl codes while I was reading Forbes on the shitter

    -Quick, let's fire up the Google and use the on-screen keyboard on TwlBox.com to enter the code. I can't wait to see where this will lead!



    This guy nailed it.



  • Websites that finish loading long after the onload event bug me. Especially when they put up huge PAGE LOADING LOL signs and try to play a video when I click in a text field.

    Speaking of onscreen keyboards, a place I volunteer for has a sign-in system with an on-screen keyboard. If you double click a number, it types the number three times. Naturally, the double click gets registered even if you wait two seconds between clicks. And my ID has two repeated digits.



  • @Ronald said:

    worse than QR codes.

    That's not difficult. How many other ways of unambiguously putting a long URL on a physical object and still looking semi-professional can you think of?

    Plus, you can do cool shit like this:


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Ben L. said:

    Websites that finish loading long after the onload event bug me. Especially when they put up huge PAGE LOADING LOL signs
     

    Not really a WTF. It's not really technically possible to send all the content of the webpage. If you can think of a way to respond to the user's request with a complete webpage, I sure would like to hear about it.

    @Ben L. said:

    Speaking of onscreen keyboards, a place I volunteer for has a sign-in system with an on-screen keyboard. If you double click a number, it types the number three times. Naturally, the double click gets registered even if you wait two seconds between clicks. And my ID has two repeated digits

    ...your shelter's numeric keypad runs Community Server?



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Ben L. said:
    Websites that finish loading long after the onload event bug me. Especially when they put up huge PAGE LOADING LOL signs

    Not really a WTF. It's not really technically possible to send all the content of the webpage. If you can think of a way to respond to the user's request with a complete webpage, I sure would like to hear about it.

    Why bother with server-side processing when you can just send your entire database as an XML file and process it client-side? Save valuable CPU time on your server!



  • @Ben L. said:

    Why bother with server-side processing when you can just send your entire database as an XML file and process it client-side? Save valuable CPU time on your server!

    I know you're exaggerating, but rendering client-side is pretty much standard practice now. A better question is why you'd prefer rendering in two places: client and server, using two different languages and frameworks?



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Ben L. said:
    Why bother with server-side processing when you can just send your entire database as an XML file and process it client-side? Save valuable CPU time on your server!

    I know you're exaggerating, but rendering client-side is pretty much standard practice now. A better question is why you'd prefer rendering in two places: client and server, using two different languages and frameworks?

    Why do you need to render* an entire page on the client, anyway? I've never seen a non-WTF answer for that question.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    @Ben L. said:
    Why bother with server-side processing when you can just send your entire database as an XML file and process it client-side? Save valuable CPU time on your server!

    I know you're exaggerating, but rendering client-side is pretty much standard practice now. A better question is why you'd prefer rendering in two places: client and server, using two different languages and frameworks?

    Why do you need to render* an entire page on the client, anyway? I've never seen a non-WTF answer for that question.

    Client-side GUI editors.



  • @Ben L. said:

    Why do you need to render* an entire page on the client, anyway? I've never seen a non-WTF answer for that question.

    Because you're already rendering on the client. This isn't 1999--modern web apps do a substantial amount of rendering on the client. It's a lot less error-prone and resource-intensive to shift all of the rendering to the client, so you're not trying to render things both server-side and client-side.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @morbiuswilters said:
    @Ben L. said:
    Why bother with server-side processing when you can just send your entire database as an XML file and process it client-side? Save valuable CPU time on your server!

    I know you're exaggerating, but rendering client-side is pretty much standard practice now. A better question is why you'd prefer rendering in two places: client and server, using two different languages and frameworks?

    Why do you need to render* an entire page on the client, anyway? I've never seen a non-WTF answer for that question.


    Another traditional use case is that of dynamic content; anything loaded via XHR will need to be rendered client-side. In many cases, this can amount to a whole window, especially when a substantial amount of information is involved.



  • First, I have no idea of WTF this shit is, but when you click on a wrong key, the page says "Oops, you've started to write a TWL that doesn't exists". That's kind of stupid.



  • Not as stupid as requiring the use of an on-screen keyboard.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Lorne Kates said:

    It's not really technically possible to send all the content of the webpage. If you can think of a way to respond to the user's request with a complete webpage, I sure would like to hear about it.
    We've been doing it for years. You know, by sending pages without lots of embedded media, JS and stylesheets. More to the point, you can deliver the majority of content, especially for non-user-specific pages, in a minimal number of HTTP fetches that can be pipelined and assembled into a page client-side extremely rapidly. It's not hard.

    Well, not unless you start wanting to also include tracking and ads and all the millions of nasty things that have turned the web into something bloated and inefficient.


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Salamander said:

    Not as stupid as requiring the use of an on-screen keyboard.

    This makes it easier to get the keystrokes to the NSA instantaneously.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Ronald said:
    worse than QR codes.

    That's not difficult. How many other ways of unambiguously putting a long URL on a physical object and still looking semi-professional can you think of?

    Plus, you can do cool shit like this:

    holy shit! you were born in 1994!

    I feel soooooooooooooo old.... :-(



  • @skotl said:

    holy shit! you were born in 1994!
     

    Sometimes it's hard to imagine that li'l babes from 1994 are fully self-aware beings now.



  • @Ronald said:

    This thing is even worse than QR codes.

    QR codes have exactly one awesome use - Sleep as Android. If you're not a morning person, you just tape one to your bathroom mirror, and when the alarm rings, it won't shut up until you physically get out of bed, go to the bathroom and scan the code. Helps me every time.

    Other than that... well, it's fine for some mobile ticketing systems, or for promotional coupons, maybe. But encoding URLs? If I'm driving down the highway, at 100mph, I might or might not remember your site address that you put on a billboard - but I definitely won't slam on brakes and stop to take a photo. Goddammit, just invest in a nice, short domain name.

    And this thing? It's basically bitly with the requirement of first visiting their site and typing the code using their retarded keyboard. Oh, and the best part? It's a paid service. That is, $10/year for URL shortening. That's seriously stupid.



  •  "Twl's are designed to be typed on touchscreen devices. You may still type Twl's on non-touchscreen devices, but you must use the keyboard that TwlBox provides until we accomodate your device"

     

    Maybe they should "accomodate" some more common devices. Like computers.Oh, and to top it all off, that paragraph was a picture of text. It just gets better and better...



  • @cheapie said:

    Maybe they should "accomodate" some more common devices. Like computers.

    Oh come on. Who uses keyboards for typing these days? It's 2013, custom touch-screen keyboards for every website are the future!



  • @dhromed said:

    @skotl said:

    holy shit! you were born in 1994!
     

    Sometimes it's hard to imagine that li'l babes from 1994 are fully self-aware beings now.

    That's because they're not.



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Ronald said:
    worse than QR codes.

    That's not difficult. How many other ways of unambiguously putting a long URL on a physical object and still looking semi-professional can you think of?

    Plus, you can do cool shit like this:

      I hate people that do that with QR codes.  I work in prepress and have an idiot VP that tells me our $3000 bar code verifier must be broken because QR codes like that fail QC.  He can't get it into his head that QR codes weren't meant to do that and abusing the error correction to get it to still work does not mean it should pass any quality tests.  

     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    It's a lot less error-prone and resource-intensive to shift all of the rendering to the client
    Eh?

    (TRWTF is that I first used the Hightlight icon provided in the editor, but it didn't work on the preview, so I resorted to bold)



  • @Salamander said:

    Not as stupid as requiring the use of an on-screen keyboard.

    I managed to get it into this interesting state:

    It looks like it's trying to maybe play a video? But the video is one frame of black rectangle? I have no idea what is going on there. (All I did was click in the "text field" to enter text, and it came up with the movie player controls. Clicking "play" on the controls brought up the black rectangle. From there it's locked-up I think.)



  • You're not missing a lot - it's an instruction video that shows you how you're supposed to enter text. On an iPhone. Using a mouse cursor.

    If you're interested.



  • Soo… Essentually, they've brought back AOL Keywords.



  •  @Maciejasjmj said:

    You're not missing a lot - it's an instruction video that shows you how you're supposed to enter text. On an iPhone. Using a mouse cursor.

    If you're interested.

    I like how they demonstate with a site that is clearly not mobile-optimized. Because if it's hard to click that map with a mouse in the emulator, its totally going to work better with a finger on a much smaller screen..

     

     

     

    Of course, I could be wrong, maybe they only intend to target the old AOL crowd — desktop users with (ball) mice.
    Oh, wait..
    @Salamander said:


     


     

     



  • Okay, I've been having fun with this site and here's a list of WTFs:

    1. The pricing. $10 a year for what's essentially a bitly link, $50 a year if you want a custom identifier, $1 to change the URL your TWL points to. It's not that it's expensive, it's that they actually think they can take money for this.

    2. The "About" page. Oh, the "About" page. From what I see, it's essentially a 2-people project (and those 2 people can't even afford proffesional looking photos), the phone image on the right seems clickable, but isn't, and out of the 5 links on the page three work, one (to angel.co) 404's, and the Google Play link is - ironically - a bit.ly link, that directs to bit.ly.com - which is a vacant domain site. Oh, and the slogan of the company, according to their twitter page? "Disrupting the way you consume.". Which fits pretty well, actually.

    3. The "contact" link is a mailto: link that fires up Outlook on my PC. Fair enough. So is the "Jobs" link. WTF?

    4. Terms of Service are hosted on Google Docs. I don't have the time or patience to read the whole legalese crap, but this gem stands out:

    Verbal, physical, written or other abuse (including threats of abuse or retribution) of any Joftware Inc. customer, employee, member, or officer will result in immediate account termination.

    Like if they knew what was coming.

    5. How do I close this stupid-ass video? Click to the left - nothing, click to the right - nothing, esc - nothing... ooh, I have to click exactly above it, where the logo is.

    6. "Delete" button doesn't delete one character, it takes you back to the main page. Not much, but still stupid.

    7. The "you're typing the code wrong" warning is pretty nice... until you realize that it requires querying the database with each and every letter. I hope they at least keep it sorted.



  • Guys, I think we're being trolled— this is clearly an entrant in OMGWTF2, abusing the Sidebar for an early review.

    Think about it— there are far to many WTFs for them not to be deliberate!

    Let's continue the game of List The WTFs:
    * Business model is a QR code that costs $10-$50/yr more and users have to type in manually
    * The homepage displays a screenshot of the real site that you first must click to get to it
    * Attempting to click in the white box to place the cursor inexplicably grays out the page until you click again (even though thats essentially what you had to do to get past that screenshot)
    * Attempting to type the code on the keyboard triggers an error
    * Each typo triggers a prompt that requires an extra click to dismiss
    * Hitting backspace goes back to that fake screenshot forcing you to start over
    * Finally, typing in a code does… nothing; there is no way to— oh, that green box, the one thats completely unlabeled and looks like most of the other roundish inactive header graphics? How could I have missed that?
    * Indeed, it's near impossible to tell whats a button and whats just a button-shaped heading
    * Likewise, only some of the phone pictures are clickable, and others aren't; some of the "Twl" box images do something when clicked, others do nothing
    * Rather then fix their site to be usable, they just document the rube-goldbergesque procedure of using it by making a tutorial video that evidently plays only on iPhones
    * Every single link on the entire page is to bit.ly or some other redirector, and they all go through several levels of redirection before eventually going back to the main site, which in some cases, then proceeds to redirect back out to bit.ly again to an external site
    * Anyone else catch the irony of them using bit.ly in the first place, which provides essentially the same service as them, for free?
    * Their terms and conditions are .DOCX files hosted on Google Docs
    * Said terms imply that you grant full ownership to them of anything you link through their service
    * They evidently can't decide on whether the company is called "Joftware Inc", or "MENDES-YESUFU"
    * They use Javascript-only email links that you cannot copy and can only use if you have configured your browser to support mailto: links
    * Their browse page asks you to confirm, if you click any link, whether or not you really want to open it
    * Their purchase page is a dark-gray screen with a colored bar at the top (doesn't load at all)
    * Likewise, you can't buy the advertising they offer either, as that page is totally blank as well



  • OH SHIT.

    I looked at the source code. I retract my previous statement - they don't query the database with each and every letter. Instead...

    Whenever you open the page, it downloads this auto-generated file. Do a ctrl+f for "goToURL".

    Yes. It downloads a js file with an address of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SITE. Most of them are of form "http://bit.ly/twl???" - the "???" is the 3-letter TWL in question. Some of them aren't - I guess those belongs to the moro^H^H^H^Hadvanced customers who were willing to pay $50 for what's not only a shitty bitly imitation, but is actually a wrapper around bitly.

    We can only hope they never get to more that 75 pages they have now (and most of them are dead links).


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    It downloads a js file with an address of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SITE.
     

    Wow, and we all thought [url="http://forums.thedailywtf.com/forums/p/28225/330844.aspx#330844"]Ben L. was joking[/url].

    Reading that comment now is just like going back and re-watching that Lone Gunmen episode where someone tries to fly a plane into the WTC.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    @Maciejasjmj said:

    It downloads a js file with an address of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SITE.
     

    Wow, and we all thought Ben L. was joking.

    Reading that comment now is just like going back and re-watching that Lone Gunmen episode where someone tries to fly a plane into the WTC.

    Why thank you, now I'm not only scarred for life, I'm also going to bash myself over the head knowing that it was entirely avoidable.



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Yes. It downloads a js file with an address of EVERY SINGLE FUCKING SITE.

    Finally, someone has found an workable alternative for that damn DNS that the NSA is monitoring all the time !

     



  • @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Ronald said:
    worse than QR codes.

    That's not difficult. How many other ways of unambiguously putting a long URL on a physical object and still looking semi-professional can you think of?

    Plus, you can do cool shit like this:

      I hate people that do that with QR codes.  I work in prepress and have an idiot VP that tells me our $3000 bar code verifier must be broken because QR codes like that fail QC.  He can't get it into his head that QR codes weren't meant to do that and abusing the error correction to get it to still work does not mean it should pass any quality tests.  

     

    So, tell me then, what exactly about my 100% valid QR code is an error?



  • @Ben L. said:

    So, tell me then, what exactly about my 100% valid QR code is an error?
     

    Fixed pattern damage 0.0 (F)
    Segment A1 0.0 (F)
    Segment A2 0.0 (F)
    Segment A3 0.0 (F)

     It decodes just fine,but because it shows these errors, it will always display a final grade of F. 

     



  • @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    So, tell me then, what exactly about my 100% valid QR code is an error?
     














    Fixed pattern damage 0.0 (F)
    Segment A1 0.0 (F)
    Segment A2 0.0 (F)
    Segment A3 0.0 (F)

     It decodes just fine,but because it shows these errors, it will always display a final grade of F. 

     

    So... 0.0damage is damage?



  • @Ben L. said:

    @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    So, tell me then, what exactly about my 100% valid QR code is an error?
     

    Fixed pattern damage 0.0 (F)
    Segment A1 0.0 (F)
    Segment A2 0.0 (F)
    Segment A3 0.0 (F)

     It decodes just fine,but because it shows these errors, it will always display a final grade of F. 

     

    So... 0.0damage is damage?

     

     It's a grade. 4.0 is A 0.0 is F. My apologies, I should have clarified that initially.

     



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    Most of them are of form "http://bit.ly/twl???" - the "???" is the 3-letter TWL in question.


    So…What exactly happens when someone simply registers every "interesting" combination of 3 letters prefixed with "twl" at bit.ly (or, frankly, all 17,576 of them outright)? Does their system fail to generate those links for those future paid sucke^H^H^H^H^H customers?

     



  • According to "About" they're one engineer and one "Biz Dev". Why am I not surprised they have no designer?

    The page is ugly, the interface is bad and it all reeks of amateur hour. But seriously, it wouldn't surprise me if they were able to sell some Twls in their local area. When you think about it, they're not that much worse than your average braindead "app company".

    Judging from the pictures, I think he wants to nail her. And apparently, you can join too!



  • @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    So, tell me then, what exactly about my 100% valid QR code is an error?
     














    Fixed pattern damage 0.0 (F)
    Segment A1 0.0 (F)
    Segment A2 0.0 (F)
    Segment A3 0.0 (F)

     It decodes just fine,but because it shows these errors, it will always display a final grade of F. 

     

    So... 0.0damage is damage?

     

     It's a grade. 4.0 is A 0.0 is F. My apologies, I should have clarified that initially.

     

    From what distance did you scan the code?



  • @SamC said:

    They evidently can't decide on whether the company is called "Joftware Inc", or "MENDES-YESUFU"

    Joftware is Da Shit. Did you see their other innovative product, DocDock?



    Don't click on that link if you are not ready to have your perception of cloud services blown away. (no gay porn)



  • @Maciejasjmj said:

    it's essentially a 2-people project (and those 2 people can't even afford proffesional looking photos)

    I tried to put a link to the girl's picture here so we could comment on her physical appearance (and disregard her personnality or skills) but it's another demented javascript file that does everything and I can't find a link other thank her linkedin.



    This javascript looks like it was quoted verbatim from the crazy robots driving cylon ships.



  • @Ronald said:

    @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    So, tell me then, what exactly about my 100% valid QR code is an error?
     

    Fixed pattern damage 0.0 (F)
    Segment A1 0.0 (F)
    Segment A2 0.0 (F)
    Segment A3 0.0 (F)

     It decodes just fine,but because it shows these errors, it will always display a final grade of F. 

     

    So... 0.0damage is damage?

     

     It's a grade. 4.0 is A 0.0 is F. My apologies, I should have clarified that initially.

     

    From what distance did you scan the code?

     

    This particular verifier works like a flatbed scanner.  I'm not sure what the optical distance is off the top of my head. If I had to guess, I'd say somewhere between 2-4 inches. 

     The greater majority of the code passes with A's, but with those sections reading 0, the whole thing fails from a standards viewpoint. 

     



  • @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ronald said:

    @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    @Suburban_Decay said:

    @Ben L. said:

    So, tell me then, what exactly about my 100% valid QR code is an error?
     














    Fixed pattern damage 0.0 (F)
    Segment A1 0.0 (F)
    Segment A2 0.0 (F)
    Segment A3 0.0 (F)

     It decodes just fine,but because it shows these errors, it will always display a final grade of F. 

     

    So... 0.0damage is damage?

     

     It's a grade. 4.0 is A 0.0 is F. My apologies, I should have clarified that initially.

     

    From what distance did you scan the code?

     

    This particular verifier works like a flatbed scanner.  I'm not sure what the optical distance is off the top of my head. If I had to guess, I'd say somewhere between 2-4 inches. 

     The greater majority of the code passes with A's, but with those sections reading 0, the whole thing fails from a standards viewpoint. 

     

    For that level you are scanning from too far. See the table here.



  • @dhromed said:

    @skotl said:

    holy shit! you were born in 1994!
     

    Sometimes it's hard to imagine that li'l babes from 1994 are fully self-aware beings now.

    [citation needed]



  • @Zecc said:

    @morbiuswilters said:

    It's a lot less error-prone and resource-intensive to shift all of the rendering to the client
    Eh?

    (TRWTF is that I first used the Hightlight icon provided in the editor, but it didn't work on the preview, so I resorted to bold)

    Rendering in a browser lets you use libraries like jQuery and modernizr to deal with browser differences. Now, if you're only ever outputting static HTML, you could render that server-side, but who does that anymore? Most web apps now days have substantial amounts of front-end rendering: "Hey, make it update this widget, and that will update that widget."

    So you have the choice of maintaining code to render the same exact widgets on both server-side (for when the page initially loads) and client-side (to do the updates and shit people expect of a modern web app), or just shipping JSON over and rendering it all client-side. And maintaining two sets of code to do the same thing is clearly going to create more bugs.



  • @Ronald said:

    Did you see their other innovative product, DocDock*?

    * Don't click on that link if you are not ready to have your perception of cloud services blown away. (no gay porn)
     

    Forbidden

    You don't have permission to access / on this server.


    Apache/2.2.22 Server at docdock.joftware.com Port 80

     




  • @Ronald said:

    tried to put a link to the girl's picture here so we could comment on her physical appearance (and disregard her personnality or skills)

    I think her skills have been adequately eviscerated here. Her physical appearance makes up for it, though. I wouldn't kick her out of bed for creating asinine startups.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @morbiuswilters said:

    @Ronald said:
    tried to put a link to the girl's picture here so we could comment on her physical appearance (and disregard her personnality or skills)

    I think her skills have been adequately eviscerated here. Her physical appearance makes up for it, though. I wouldn't kick her out of bed for creating asinine startups.

     

    I love how the about page is on it's own subdomain.  It's like they could figure out subdomains, but not how to create a page to be anything other than the default index.php document.

    Also:

     

    Close, but no. This is me:


     



  • @morbiuswilters said:

    @Ronald said:
    tried to put a link to the girl's picture here so we could comment on her physical appearance (and disregard her personnality or skills)

    I think her skills have been adequately eviscerated here. Her physical appearance makes up for it, though. I wouldn't kick her out of bed for creating asinine startups.

    My exhaustive analysis of that company is that she has nothing to do with it. She was a college career counsellor who motivated a bright young african-american to go out and pursue his dreams and because he has a hard-on for her he gave her an honorary (so to speak) title.



    Also look more carefully at her picture, looks like God put an "align=right" on her chin. That or she was raised by italians.



  • @arh said:

    According to "About" they're one engineer and one "Biz Dev". Why am I not surprised they have no designer?

    The page is ugly, the interface is bad and it all reeks of amateur hour. But seriously, it wouldn't surprise me if they were able to sell some Twls in their local area. When you think about it, they're not that much worse than your average braindead "app company".

    Judging from the pictures, I think he wants to nail her. And apparently, you can join too!

     

    I've run across this type of company before. The "Founder/CEO/President/Unemployed techie guy who doesn't want a 9-5 job anymore" looks at bit.ly and decides "hey, I could totally code something like that and make my own company. I don't need to get *ALL* of bit.ly's business, I just need a little slice of it. I should be a millionaire by the end of they year".

    Companies like that are lousy to work for. Can be fun for a while, but your paychecks will bounce eventually. They can be great to contract for, since they keep dreaming up new things the app should do (onscreen keyboard for better security!).  Just make sure you get progress payments and stage the development to bite size chunks. Don't start stage n+1 development until the check for stage n clears.


     


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