I like to read DrunkenBlog. Notice I didn’t link it. That’s because in a particularly childish stunt, DrunkenBatman embedded an image into the page that will crash any WebKit browser, or any of a class of applications that use ImageIO (the Finder and Preview are included). Please note that my warning before linking his blog is more warning than he is giving his readers in his latest post.
This is similar to the earlier crashing image he discovered, that he deemed the Safari Image of Doom™. In that case, he had the good sense to simply link to the crashing image file rather than embed it. It became a bugaboo for him, threatening to embed the image, but realizing, again, that it wasn’t the best idea.
If it’s not in 10.4.3 or something else soon, then I’ll start tagging it onto posts, but will be sure to give a warning first and links to alternative browsers while apologizing to those viewing the full feed via a webkit-based RSS reader — it’s just a little early for that.
Well, apparently that logic no longer holds and he hastily put it into a post. To make matters worse, the target audience (Safari users) is unlikely to ever get to read about the problem itself. That’s irony at its finest.
This whole episode is childish and the entirely wrong way to go about this. There are plenty of things that can crash any web browser (I crash Firefox on a daily basis), but finding one reduced case doesn’t give you free license to unleash that ill will on your audience. Poor form.
