A site devoted to discussing techniques that promote quality and ethical practices in software development.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Does anyone know how to get rid of the annoying obstruction in ZDNet in Android?

It seems ZDNet is more interested in annoying its visitors using Android to their web site. Perhaps their web designer does not know how to calculate the right place to put their 'toolbar' showing their comments, votes, Facebook likes etc.

An example using screen capture is probably the best way to illustrate this annoying problem that only seems to exist in ZDNet. I hope the disease does not spread to others.

It does not matter if I am using Firefox or Chrome in my Samsung Tab 10.1, the same annoyance appears when you zoom in on the page.

Here is what the page looks like without zooming in, the normal view:

The 'toolbar' is courteously tugged out of the way on the left hand side. But when you zoom in to the page, the toolbar begins to intrude on the main view - the article - as can be seen by this capture:

The toolbar circled in red begin to become the main focus of the page rather than any article. The bar moves to the right the more you zoom in to the page and becomes bigger, obstructing the more of the article. This is completely inconsiderate.

Can someone tell me what I can do or if there is any add-on to get rid of this kind of visual scum?

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Does LibreOffice Team actually test their software for DOCX support?

I don't want to sound like ungrateful as I use and prefer to use LibreOffice even in Windows at those odd moments. I normally reside in Ubuntu and run LO 4.0.1.

As a developer when I see basic operations like this:
1) Create a LO Text file (ODT)
2) Write something and include some embedded graphics (Bitmap) into the document.
3) Then do a "Save as..." to a DOCX file.

failing to produce the correct result when one opens the docx in MS Office 2007, it is clearly a fault in the product or someone did not test their product.

Perhaps the LO team's definition of DOCX is text only file.

I am not sure if the graphic is missing or malformed. Since DOCX file is just a ZIP file, I can unzip the contents and the image file (.png) is awfully small. When one tried to open it, the viewer complaints about the corruption. This seems to indicate to me that their file converter has stuffed up the image in the process.

Surely the above steps must be described in their test procedure and user requirements. Yet the result, as echoed by voluminous chants for help in the Internet, seems to indicate that the LO Team do not include this most basic requirement in their test procedure. Otherwise, how could they not spot that missing graphic. I even doubt if they do test their product.

If LO cannot handle basic DOCX, they should branded that support as experimental or in beta mode and stop trying to make a case that it can handle DOCX file format. Doing so is highly irresponsible.

I am wondering how long will LO come around fixing this sought after bug-fix that has been around for as long as Open-Office/LibreOffice claiming to support DOCX.

Please do not include other fancy stuff and fix this most basic problem first as your product continues to wear a big cross for DOCX support.

Blog Archive