A friend of mine ran into a serious problem where they could no longer progress in the missions of Grand Theft Auto 4. When they went to the yellow way point arrows nothing happened and the mission would not trigger. It seems to happen after “The Puerto Rican Connection” mission when you receive a call from an unknown person. I did a few searches on the web and found several other people having the same problem. Many had to start the game over, but the good news is there is a fix.
In order to trigger the missions again you need to call one of your contacts. It’s probably best to call Roman and book something with him. This should trigger the stories progress. I’ve also read that a manual save can work too, but I know for sure a call too Roman will work. I have not actually experienced the bug myself, but this work for my friend. The bug also seems to effect both PS3 and 360 versions of the game. GTA 4 is still a fantastic game, and hopefully not too many people experience this bug and if they do I hope this helps and hopefully Rockstar will have a fix for it soon.
Anyone creating email newsletters on a daily basis will tell you how hard it is to get them to render properly in all email clients, but getting them to work in Outlook 2007 can be maddening as any quick Google search will show.
Today I came across a bug that left me fuming. I could not figure out why every single cell in my table heavy layout had a 1px padding around it and in some cases I was even missing my table borders. For those of you working in the sane world of web design, tables are a thing of the past, but in the world of email, tables are back with a vengeance.
As I became more and more disillusioned I started trying anything and stumbled across the fix. I knew I had to share this, so if you are experiencing any of the above, here is the fix and it’s a simple one.
Here’s an example of what a two cell table with an image and text would look like before the fix. Notice the 1px white border/padding around the table.
And here is how it’s supposed to look after the fix. No white border / padding.
And the fix?
table td {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
I don’t think I’ve ever even used this css before, but once I started grasping at straws I began to fiddle around with the CSS border attributes and tried it. I’ve never seen any browser or mail client except Outlook 2007 do this to table cells.
Here’s the full HTML from the example, and thank you Microsoft, for delivering the worst email rendering experience yet, we all thought Hotmail was bad, but you really stepped up to the plate!
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
<title>Outlook 2007 Test</title>
<style media="all" type="text/css">
table td {
border-collapse: collapse;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<table width="200" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="border:solid 1px #48463b;">
<tr>
<td width="80"><img src="http://yourserver/graphic.gif" width="80" height="40" alt="graphic"></td>
<td width="120" style="background-color:#c1beb1; color:#ffffff; font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align:center; font-size:11px;">Another column<br>
plain text.</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
You may also want to check out my other entries on this topic.
I create a lot of emails campaigns on a regular basis. Creating emails that work in all the mail clients can be a daunting task, if not sometimes impossible. Unlike web pages, you have many more combinations of email clients and browsers that may view your email. Add the fact that many email clients are blocking images, stripping CSS, or just outright ignoring all the great web standards we have worked towards for years, and you have a real mess.
There are some simple rules you can follow which should make life a lot easier. Testing of course is still required and many strange anomalies will pop up. Web based clients change without warning, so constant testing before every email deployment is a must. Below is a quick list of things to watch out for.
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Wow, only two days after my post “Xbox Live, what are we paying for? Could the tides change?” and the free arcade game I spoke of has been announced. Turns out it is a half decent title called Undertow, and it will be available next week. Here’s the official announcement.
While I don’t want to seem ungrateful, I think this is a pretty lame deal. This offer is obviously calculated to have the least impact on Microsoft. I am still amazed that people are defending Microsoft and saying that the people who complain are ungrateful. Since when does a customer have to be grateful for goods and services they have purchased? Since when do customers have to be grateful that their service works? If my new car breaks down for a week and the company that makes it takes a week to fix it and gives me a free tank of gas and a free tank of gas to everyone who has ever test driven the car, why would I be grateful? I still had a week without a car, and why are these other people getting free gas?
Which brings me to the second point, why are Silver members getting the same treatment? They pay nothing for the service that went down, and they don’t even play games online. Their gaming experience is still pretty much 100%. Gold players that usually go online can’t even play! Okay, maybe they should have some kind of compensation since some might have bought live games with extremely strict DRM rules and had a new Xbox 360, which would require them to be online to play the games they paid for. Don’t even get me started on the DRM.
Some people don’t even like Arcade games, most of them in my mind are boring compared to the full blown store games. Now why was this choice made? What people out there that are praising Microsoft probably don’t realize is that this was not done out of the good of Microsoft’s heart. Don’t be naive, Microsoft is a corporation and the last one they are looking out for is you. They want to look good with the least capital loss. The Xbox 360 is already a financial failure so far. I actually do understand this though, as an investor myself I expect a company to balance that fine line between the public relations and the bottom line.
My hunch is that this game was picked for a number of reasons, namely cost. Forums are littered with people saying they already bought this game. Microsoft has said these users can call support and they will sort things out. So basically my time is not important, I have all the time in the world to sit on a support line. How many will know this or even bother? I’m sure this was calculated, since this is a pretty big title and a lot of people probably already own it. The best offer would have been a refund for the horrid month of live service, or free gamer points. This would have upset a lot less people, but it would have cost them a hell of a lot more. With this title, arrangements were probably already made. It never would have sold to everyone using live, whereas points would have been equivalent to every gamer getting a free game.
Anyway, I think the thing that bothers me the most about this whole thing is the Microsoft fanboys. No doubt this game is better than a punch in the face, and even better than nothing, but stop acting like Microsoft cares so much about you. The corporation cares about their bottom line and salvaging their image, that’s it, and that’s all I would expect from any corporation.
I personally think Microsoft is walking a dangerous line with the constant outages, crazy DRM schemes, and constantly breaking hardware. As I post this, a friend of mine is getting ready to pack his 360 in a coffin and send it back to Microsoft due to the infamous red ring of death. As I have mentioned in the past, with a growing number of upcoming block buster titles, I think the PS3 is starting to look more and more like a serious contender, and I’m also no fan of Sony. The red ring of death is becoming a symbol of what the 360 is. It’s too bad, because there are a lot of fantastic games for this system.
Free is not free pretty much always. Case in point: I usually stop by Blockbuster video every now and then to look at games, not because I would actually ever buy their over-priced new and used games, but because I’m a geek, and I pretty much stop at any store that sells games or gadgets just to get a quick fix of what’s new.
I saw the “free game when you trade in 4″ all over the place like you usually do at Blockbuster. Then it said something like ask an associate for details. So I walk up and say how does the trade in work and can I use Wii games too; the guy says yes, you can trade them in. I don’t usually trade in my games, and I probably should do it sooner and more often since I’m usually left with a huge pile of worthless games I’ve finished. I’m a bit of a pack rat though. Anyway, I figured hey, why not.
So I scrounge up 4 games that I am pretty sure I’ll never play again and walk into the store and trade them in. The lady gives me a “trading agreement” to fill out and sign, and I do so. She then starts doing something on the computer and makes a call. Once I’m done filling out the agreement she tells me that none of my 360 games are accepted for this deal, they are not worth the minimum which was 14 dollars or something like that. I’m thinking wow, 14, add that up and it’s 56 dollars. Now if I were to bring in newer games the chances of me finding 4 that are worth 14 it’s highly unlikely, some might be 20 or more. Pretty much makes the deal useless since I could get more if I Just sold them separately.
Anyway, I’m not naive, I know that companies are out to make money, and I’m fine with that, I even wondered how Blockbuster could have such a great deal like this. Turns out they can’t, and that’s where I get annoyed. I’m so sick of misleading advertising. Huge posters saying 50% off all jeans and then in seven point font, new arrivals not included. Look people, it’s either a free game when I trade or it’s not, and the “ALL JEANS” means all jeans. If it’s not, stop trying to fool your customers, it only angers them. Let’s just ignore the fact that trading 4 games kind of negates the term free! Last time I checked free didn’t mean you had to give something in return, but I digress.
I know the small print, the misleading “ask a representative” or the all mighty tiny asterisk is suppose to clue us all in that something is amiss and make all well, but this just annoys me more, and when I get annoyed enough I usually complain about it to a lot of people and then avoid the company for awhile. I like honest companies, if a deal is too good to be true, it probably is, and the company isn’t worth wasting your time on. This is one of the reasons I’ve started shopping at smaller independent stores lately, in general I find them more human, but the jeans example was actually a small store, so there are always exceptions.
A similar issue with Indigo books made me switch to independent book retailers. I had one of those 25 dollar irewards cards that allow you to save 10%. Then Indigo had this super sale and I went to use my card and they said I couldn’t. Why? I paid for it. So basically if I shop the big sales I can’t use my card and they pocket 25 dollars. It even says on the card that it includes sales, but if you read the fine print terms & conditions it says “except during selected promotional periods”. No thanks, stop trying to rip us off, and don’t even get me started on expiring gift cards.
What is with website articles and blogs not putting the date on their work! I find this so frustrating. The article will say something like “Company ABC just released XYZ 3 days ago” Okay, 3 days ago when? Many posts become useless without a date and it affects the usability of your site. It’s great to have archives of everything ever published, but with time some of it will become dated… pun intended. This information may still be of use to some people, but for many it will not. Don’t annoy your users — date your work.
Today Microsoft released the latest Xbox 360 Dashboard update. The big buzz seems to be around its DivX/XviD support, a feature lacking for a long time. Gizmodo has tested it out and the verdict looks good as far as support goes. Right now I play all my audio files off on an old computer hooked up to my HDTV, but it’s a bit of an eye sore sitting in my living room and my first thought was that I would ditch the computer and hook up the external hard drive via USB to the Xbox 360, but alas it was not meant to be.
After much frustration I did a bit of research online. It seems that the Xbox 360 does not support the NTFS file system. What is up with this? NTFS is Microsoft de facto file system now and it’s superior to FAT32. I feel like it’s always something with Microsoft, maybe the next Dashboard update will support NTFS.
Another much talked about feature is the ability to buy Xbox Classic titles online. I just hope you will be able to play these downloaded games on future Xbox consoles, but I’m not holding my breath. The dash interface also seems greatly improved with many ways to filter your results when looking at games and media. You can set up personal bio’s and share your friends list and view others friends lists too. Over all it’s a pretty cool update. You can view Microsoft’s full feature list on Xbox.com.
Why is it that we, designers and developers alike have to constantly face blanket rules mandated by people with little to no technical knowledge? What I mean by blanket rules are rules that someone, probably near the top of an organization, has made with little knowledge or understanding of the stance they have taken. It’s usually on a technical issue, and it’s probably something someone has told them or something they heard on the news somewhere. It may even be something you told them!
Case in point, I create a lot of solicited e-newsletters where I work. Some of our designs get pretty crazy considering we are trying to make these things work in every mail client from Hotmail to Outlook. Designing for email is far harder than a standalone web page in my opinion.
Anyway, one of the companies we work for has now stipulated no background images in emails. Where did this come from and why? Well, probably because background images are stripped out of some new clients, but so are hundreds of other elements we use in email every day. The key with email is to layer everything you know, with the hopes that some of these layers will come through, and the rest will gracefully degrade.
Decisions like these should be made by the people creating these newsletters, people with the expertise to know what should and should not be used. We stress a lot of live type, so background images can be very useful since you can put live type on top of them. As a standby you can use a background colour if the image does not come through. With this method, we have created many possibilities of achieving the design and usability goals. Everyone should get the text message. Some people will get the image, and some people will get the background colour. By making a blanket statement like “No Background images ever!” you have just effectively eliminated a tool in the developer’s arsenal. We developers are constantly testing and watching email and web compatibility issues day by day, year by year. We make technical decisions based on the goals and targeted demographic. In a lot of cases a background image is a bad idea, but in a lot of cases it’s a great idea.
The point is, let Designers design, and let Developers develop. If you are hiring a good team they will probably know what’s best. There’s no need for non-technical minds to get involved in compatibility and delivery issues.
So how can YOU help change people’s minds? Just remember, it was probably something someone like you said that created the situation in the first place. Be careful what you say to people, a comment like XYZ won’t work in this situation could mean that further down the road you may see a mandate to never use XYZ, when really it was just in that situation that it should not have been used. Sometimes the situation will be out of your control, and you will just have to grit your teeth and design and code your way around silly rules.
Happy designing / coding.
A large portion of my day is spent designing and marking up solicited email newsletters. I am also a very strong advocate of W3C Web Standards. For anyone who has ever worked on email newsletter, they will know all too well that the above sentences do not mix well.
All web designer’s have faced the many hurtles of browser compatibility. Getting things to work on multiple browser versions and browser types can be a real pain, but this is child’s play compared to the ever changing world of html based email. I’m not going to talk about whether email should have ever been used as a medium to deliver rich content, there is plenty debate about that elsewhere. The fact of the matter is that html email is here, and it’s very popular.
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I love technology and I love gadgets and games. It’s what this blog is all about, but what I can’t stand is useless technology. Just because we can do it, should we? This may seem like a frivolous rant, but it brings me to electronic faucets, toilets and showers. What’s the deal with these? Okay, I understand we need to save water, but these things just don’t work half the time.
At my work we have electric faucets in the washroom that have very little pressure and when they are working, they continually clunk on and off every few seconds. Sometimes you find yourself waving frantically in front of the little black insidious eye detector, begging it to give you just a few extra drops of water. Let’s not even talk about how these things fare in a power outage, something that is slowly becoming more common where I live.
When electric faucets do not work it’s not that bad, you can usually go to the next one and hope it automatically turns on for you, but what about toilets and urinals? Urinals are the absolute worst when they break down. There is usually no manual flush, which in itself is such a terrible idea. When one of these things break down no one notices for a few days until the awful smell of urine starts wafting throughout the washroom. Then the building management apologizes and tells you that it will be awhile before they are fixed because the little tiny part that is broken has to be imported from Germany! Toilets usually have a button to override the automatic flusher, a very wise idea, especially for those of us who need more than one flush per visit.
This brings us to the last of the automatic nonsense. Recently my buildings amenities were upgraded. The whole complex was closed down for a couple of months while they modernized everything. It turned out quite nice, and hopefully it will eventually raise the value of the condo. Anyway, I decided it was time to go for a swim. A mandatory shower is required before going into the pool.
I stepped into the shower and looked for the knobs to turn the water on. I see a cold and hot heat dial and turn it, but alas, nothing. Hmm. Why isn’t it working, I fiddle again and with a clunk, a single spray of cold water douses me. Ah, the little dreaded black eye is staring up at me… Damn you little black eyes, damn you all to hell I cry. Now the fun part is, how do I get the water to the temperature I like. Well with a little dance of waving my hand in front of the eye as I turn the cold and hot dial I slowly in spurts of spray get the temperature I like and then step under the shower head. Now I’m expecting the shower to stay one, but no, all I hear is the grinding clunk, clunk, clunk of the pipes shutting on and off as I move only slightly away from the ever present evil black eye. I start holding my hand behind myself and waving it back and forth in the hopes of getting a steady stream of water to no avail.
In theory, automatic faucets, toilets and showers sound like a good idea, but when they break there is often no alternative to getting them working again. The malfunctioning probably would be bearable from time to time if they actually worked flawlessly when you needed to use them, but often they don’t. Often they just squirt on and off in a pathetic attempt to do what they were designed to do. The one exception I have seen to this rule is hospitals; maybe they use better detectors in these places. If you are not willing to install top notch detectors, then why bother, it will just frustrate everyone.
