The Gratuitous Developer

So Drake and I had a great debate ("great" in the sense of "large" rather than in the sense of being important or having any fine qualities) yesterday about the redesign of Dr. Lunch (very preliminary cut of the log in page at right).

I think it's pretty impressive when you consider that I'm a software developer with all the graphic design sense of a llama, but apparently Drake didn't agree, because I had to listen to a huge rant about "usability".

What you can't see looking at a static picture is that thanks to the magic of the magical folks at script.aculo.us, each form magically disappears when you click on the header and then reappears when you click it again. Obviously though, when you first hit the page, you don't see a form until you click on its header, because anything else would be ridiculous, right?

Well, apparently Drake believes that what's ridiculous is forcing someone to click on something -- particularly something that doesn't look "link-y" in the traditional HTML sense -- just to log in, and, ok, he's complete right. But the fun of Dr. Lunch is that the whole thing can be ridiculous, and I can make absurd arguments like that making our site less usable actually makes it more "Web 2.0", just to watch Drake's blood boil, because who's going to stop me?

Anyway, part of the fun of Dr. Lunch, insofar as it is fun, is that the whole thing is totally gratuitous. I mean, who really needs an over-engineered, self-important website to tell them where to go to lunch? Then again, who wants to go through life with only what they need? I mean, isn't the gratuitous what makes life worth living?

Anyway, my desire to ensure I'd completely overthought the issue got me out to drag out the virtual dictionary for its thoughts on gratuitous-ness, and, well, here you go:

1. a : given unearned or without recompense b : not involving a return benefit, compensation, or consideration c : costing nothing : FREE


2. not called for by the circumstances : UNWARRANTED

And, really, isn't that what we're up to here? Something totally unwarranted offered completely free? So there you go.