WEEKLY WHINE

The horizontal rule: An apology

As you know, we here at GoobNet are behind the times. Can you believe that there is still no mobile edition of GoobNet Football? Seriously, what are we doing all day here at GoobNet headquarters? Writing fortunes that will never, ever show up inside a fortune?

Another thing that we have not been doing is keeping up with the latest in HTML. We use very few, if any, innovations that were introduced in HTML 5. The dynatree is still contained within an ordinary old <div> element rather than a <nav> element, for instance. And we rarely, if ever, have a need to use the <section> element. Even the Focal Plane, once our most popular and reliable section-based type of Weekly Whine, has fallen into disuse.

But one thing we will probably never stop using is the horizontal rule. We love our horizontal rules. Horizontal rules appear regularly in the GoobNet Mailbox, in our many interactive Weekly Whines, and in our reviews of continuing stories on the GoobNet Satellite Programming Live Using Television network.

It also figured into one of our staff meetings earlier this week, when Amber Lynn said, “Horizontal rule? Isn’t that why Debbie and Edvard broke up?”

“What?” Deb asked her. “One of them doesn’t like the way we use them, or something?”

Amber Lynn responded, “What? No. What do you...? No, I mean, I thought, like, he violated the horizontal rule. Or she did. One of them.”

So then we had to explain to Amber Lynn what the phrase horizontal rule means. And immediately after that, Amber Lynn had to explain to us what the phrase horizontal rule means.

Anyway, even though we have been using horizontal rules for well over a decade, we have not been rendering them using the <hr> element. Instead, we have been using an image. This was completely idiotic of us. An image does not size with the surrounding content, which meant that those of you with smaller browser windows, or using a mobile browser, would often see our content rendered incorrectly. You probably had to keep scrolling back and forth in order to see all of our content.

We would now like to issue a formal apology for all of this:

On behalf of all of us here at GoobNet, I apologise wholly, completely, and unreservedly for our repeated misuse of an image as a horizontal rule over the years. It was sloppy of us. More importantly, it was not cool. Not in the slightest. I want to reassure all of you, especially those of you whose GoobNet experiences were severely impacted by this fuckup, that you can expect better from us in the future. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked wish it to be known that they have been sacked.

— Reginald J Goober
Founder and CEO, GoobNet Enterprises, Inc [which doesn’t actually exist however]

Thanks Reg. So, for the final time, here is our old horizontal rule:

And here is our new one:

See? Check that shit out. That’s more like it, isn’t it? Look forward to seeing that new horizontal rule many millions of times here on GoobNet. And please remember to adhere to the horizontal rule in all your interpersonal relationships. You don’t want to end up like Edvard. Or Debbie. Whichever one of them it was.

Actually, you probably don’t want to end up like either of them regardless.