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captainsblogOne of the most essential websites for my law practice was run by a local government. It wasn't fancy, but it got the job done. It relied mostly on HTML to input my search requests, and organized the results by name and date in a useful, if not altogether pretty, way. It was reliable, fast and worked with whatever browser I happened to have open.
Note the repeated use of the past tense in that description.
As of today, that governmental function has been contracted out to a private vendor. Which meant, first, starting completely over as far as registration and passwording went. Once past that and into the database, I saw something far prettier, but at the expense of processor speed and familiarity. The new beast relies heavily on Javascript for most of its functions, gives me far more options for retrieval than I'm ever likely to use, and tosses layer on top of layer of windows, none of them with X-boxes to close them out or with browser menu bars to get round.
Ultimately, though, I started getting comfy with the search function, and produced my first Useful Document List. I asked to view the first. I got an instant error:
But still. One more fucking thing I have to use Microsoft for. I hate it already.
Note the repeated use of the past tense in that description.
As of today, that governmental function has been contracted out to a private vendor. Which meant, first, starting completely over as far as registration and passwording went. Once past that and into the database, I saw something far prettier, but at the expense of processor speed and familiarity. The new beast relies heavily on Javascript for most of its functions, gives me far more options for retrieval than I'm ever likely to use, and tosses layer on top of layer of windows, none of them with X-boxes to close them out or with browser menu bars to get round.
Ultimately, though, I started getting comfy with the search function, and produced my first Useful Document List. I asked to view the first. I got an instant error:
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC Drivers error '80040e14'
I'm naturally suspicious anytime I get an error message with the M-word in it during a browser application, so I closed out of Firefox, opened Idiot Enabler 6, went through the gorram login all over again, got to the same place in the same search, clicked the "view" link, and voila! The image I wanted, even ready to be saved to .pdf without having to convert it out of the irritating TIFF format they used to use.But still. One more fucking thing I have to use Microsoft for. I hate it already.