Recently I emailed some feedback to Jimmy Kukral (the developer of Scratchback) after testing out his widget on my site. When it comes to using widgets I like to use IFrames whenever I can in order to prevent them from bogging my site down, just in case the servers running the widgets crap out for whatever reason. Anyone who’s ever used a Twitter widget knows exactly what I’m talking about too.

Only problem was, clicking on a link in the Scratchback widget opened it up within the IFrame instead of loading a new page altogether. So I made the suggestion of including a target that directed the link outside the frame in order to resolve this minor issue.

And what happens? I get this snippy response from Jimmy:

That violates our terms of service. Can you stop doing that? If not, please stop using the widget. We have to maintain a consistent user experience.

Never mind the fact that there’s no direct link to the terms of service on his site, (I had to pretend to register again in order to locate it), but there’s no visual difference between me adding the widget directly into the source code or enclosing it within an IFrame instead. So I’d be changing the user experience… how again?

I emailed Jimmy back again asking for clarification, since there was certainly nothing on the Scratchback site itself that addressed the use of IFrames. I got this response:

It’s in there in so many words. You’re modifying the pre determined user experience by putting our code in an iframe.

Ah, it’s there in so many WORDS. Well that certainly clears it up.

I don’t think any thought may have been given to the possibility that some users may opt to use IFrames in order to offload potentially slow loading widgets from the main source code, that way it doesn’t interfere with the page’s load time. That this would be considered a nefarious act on my part and a violation of Jimmy’s sacred TOS kinda cheesed me off.

Look, it’s not a huge deal, and I don’t really want to even worry about it. I’m just asking you don’t do it.

Oh don’t you worry your pretty big head about it honey pie, I’ve permanently taken the widget off. You can sleep easy now knowing us evil bloggers will not be changing the “user experience” of your precious widgets.

You know, it was just an innocent suggestion too. If I thought the way I used IFrames would significantly change how the Scratchback widget operated on my site, would I have emailed the DEVELOPER about it so he’d know exactly what I was doing??? Idiot.

Ah well, it’s one less widget I need to worry about. Next time I’ll be more careful before getting into those types of arrangements where I’m expected the shave the backs of those who scratches mine.