Fixing things with cut and paste alone.

OK we are not perfect. Today I was mostly fixing something that had not gone wrong... Indeed I ended the day at the clients site showing them how to use our content management system (CMS) - and discovered its imperfections - I think the client was pleased that I had taken the time although a bit bemused that it 'did not work' and there were a few problems - not all ours! but at the heart of it the cms had not integrated well with the sites cascading stle sheets (CSS).

On the surface the CMS was completely failing in its objectives, we established that the javascript was not operating well within IE. This is a technical issue beyond us and the client - fixed by installing firefox hoorah! Ruined by the fact that Firefox would not accept a paste from Word - although Firefox did explain what needed to be done I am not a PC king and I definately was not going to resolve that over the phone. After a while of struggling to explain key concepts I suggested I pop by. I am glad I did as I discovered a new way of cutting and pasting (I said key concepts!) that proved to be a way around the problems presented by Firefox (isnt Firefox supposed to be the best?) I used the nifty trick of right clicking and selecting paste - it really was that simple to overcome - (all on a PC - and I dont use PCs) - quite pleased with myself here.

Then when we had mastered cutting and pasting, although the content looked perfect when pasted from word to our 'what you see is what you get' (wysiwyg) CMS interface it just did not show properly on site - a sneaky peak at the site code revealed outrageously bloated code... Back to the CMS - if found an html code button '<>', pressing revealed the bloat - quick work around - cut and correction to

and that was that. Simple really.

but hey computers are confusing and some of the basic things can prove to be a nightmare - even today. Not sure what the lesson here is, apart from dont sell a wysiwig CMS to anyone that is based beyond atube stop! Next week I will be fixing the wysiwyg and the CSS and maybe it all work properly as expected...

I am truly sorry. Will try harder next time, please believe me. You do remember the days of wysiwyg, don't you, or am I just showing my age again...