pissed off

windandwaves · Oct 13, 2005

Hi Folk

I was just wondering if any of you are pissed off with the enormous amount
of garbage out there on the net:

<body leftmargin="0" right.....>
 etc.....

while all that could have been
...

I am not actually angry about people making a mess, but what annoys me is
that their page can "look" just as tidy as html strict with superbly
formatted stylesheets, etc...

How do you convince your clients they need to clean up their mess "behind
the scenes"? and can we blame frontpage + dreamweaver for this mess?

Keen to hear your comments.

- Nicolaas

Travis Newbury · Oct 13, 2005

windandwaves said:
I am not actually angry about people making a mess, but what
annoys me is that their page can "look" just as tidy as html
strict with superbly formatted stylesheets, etc...

I think there are a heck of a lot of people out there that "prefer"
the looks you can get with that shity code.

How do you convince your clients they need to clean up their
mess "behind the scenes"? and can we blame frontpage +
dreamweaver for this mess?

Tell him about all the nerds and geeks that use something other than
FF or IE that his pages may not look exactly the same way in... I am
sure you will knock their sox off when you show them how great it
"looks" to a blind person...

Ok, I may be joking a litle, but that is argument you will have to
win ESPECIALLY if they perceive their current website as being
sucessfull.

Mark Parnell · Oct 14, 2005

How do you convince your clients they need to clean up their mess "behind
the scenes"?

Bandwidth - clean pages are smaller, therefore much less bandwidth used.
This can make a big difference, especially for big sites.

WRT CSS vs presentational HTML, code maintenance is much quicker and
easier - changes are made in one place, not throughout every file in the
site.

Not sure about NZ, but here in Australia, and in many other countries,
accessible sites are required by law. It's much easier to make a site
accessible if it's coded properly.

and can we blame frontpage + dreamweaver for this mess?

Frontpage to an extent, Dreamweaver (recent versions at least) less so.
Ultimately it's clueless web authors that are truly to blame - if they
didn't accept rubbish code, the editors would have to play nice.

windandwaves · Oct 14, 2005

Travis said:
I think there are a heck of a lot of people out there that "prefer"
the looks you can get with that shity code.

Tell him about all the nerds and geeks that use something other than
FF or IE that his pages may not look exactly the same way in... I am
sure you will knock their sox off when you show them how great it
"looks" to a blind person...

Ok, I may be joking a litle, but that is argument you will have to
win ESPECIALLY if they perceive their current website as being
sucessfull.

You will win the argument, but not the commercial argument, because for
small and medium-sized business with a couple of hundred clients each year,
the blind and the ultrageeks are a very smalll percentage of their customers
(if any).

windandwaves · Oct 14, 2005

Mark said:
Bandwidth - clean pages are smaller, therefore much less bandwidth
used. This can make a big difference, especially for big sites.

WRT CSS vs presentational HTML, code maintenance is much quicker and
easier - changes are made in one place, not throughout every file in
the site.

Not sure about NZ, but here in Australia, and in many other countries,
accessible sites are required by law. It's much easier to make a site
accessible if it's coded properly.

I have heard this argument before, but I do not think it is the case for
business. Government sites sure, but as a business you can put whatever you
want on your site and that, i think, is fair enough. I would not want
anyone telling me how to structure my pages - that stops progress.

Frontpage to an extent, Dreamweaver (recent versions at least) less
so. Ultimately it's clueless web authors that are truly to blame - if
they didn't accept rubbish code, the editors would have to play nice.

Yep, true. Ultimately, it always comes back to choice.

Mark Parnell · Oct 14, 2005

In our last episode, windandwaves <[email protected]> pronounced
to alt.html:

[accessibility]

I have heard this argument before, but I do not think it is the case for
business. Government sites sure, but as a business you can put whatever you
want on your site and that, i think, is fair enough. I would not want
anyone telling me how to structure my pages - that stops progress.

"The World Wide Web Consortium has developed web access guidelines, and
non-compliance with them by the operators of Australian websites is in
breach of the Act,"
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/media_releases/2002/72_02.html

No mention of it only applying to government.

Jonathan N. Little · Oct 14, 2005

windandwaves said:
Hi Folk

I was just wondering if any of you are pissed off with the enormous amount
of garbage out there on the net:

<body leftmargin="0" right.....>
 etc.....

while all that could have been
...

I am not actually angry about people making a mess, but what annoys me is
that their page can "look" just as tidy as html strict with superbly
formatted stylesheets, etc...

How do you convince your clients they need to clean up their mess "behind
the scenes"? and can we blame frontpage + dreamweaver for this mess?

Keen to hear your comments.

When they get the quote by someone hired to edit the mess when they want
to make changes!

dorayme · Oct 14, 2005

From: "windandwaves said:
How do you convince your clients they need to clean up their mess "behind
the scenes"? and can we blame frontpage + dreamweaver for this mess?

If they are your clients, and certainly if your position is not
new or precarious, it depends to some extent on your standing,
your record with them, the respect they hold for you (see note
1). You can work in the changes gradually (see note 2) as the
updates are done. And sort of announce them as fait complete as
part of the work. You need to be reasonable in how you charge
for this and take on a little without charge, it never kills you
and boosts your confidence as you become prouder and more in
control. And if you go really good css and minimal html, no one
else but you, Mark Parnell, Els, Jonathon and Toby Inkster (see
note 3) would know anything about it anyway and are unlikely to
be found to take it over, so the firm would be stuck with you
(destroy all the old mish mash code)...

dorayme

Note 1: In my case, I have a simple technique, I employ gunmen
to sort of hang around when a client might visit or have them
hang about in the car or lobby when I am visiting. Men like the
three at the very start at the railway station in Once Upon a
Time in the West (Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, Henry
Fonda and Luigi Donatello). Yeah, I know, they got shot up real
bad by their mouth organ playing quarry, (Charles Bronson in his
best role ever), when he arrived on the next train). Wanna know
why he was playing the mouth organ (hauntingly) at all by any
chance? It's worth knowing...

Note 2: I play some tracks from the parts of the cartoons where
Jerry is trying to sneak up on Tom when I do this...

Note 3: Look here, I know I have left some other good folk out
but the point is still good. You might have to watch out for
Korpela though... unlike me, he probably does not need gunmen to
accompany him...

Jake · Oct 14, 2005

windandwaves said:
Hi Folk

I was just wondering if any of you are pissed off with the enormous amount
of garbage out there on the net:

Not really; life's too short ...........

<body leftmargin="0" right.....>
 etc.....

while all that could have been
...

Or even better:

I am not actually angry about people making a mess, but what annoys me is
that their page can "look" just as tidy as html strict with superbly
formatted stylesheets, etc...

How do you convince your clients they need to clean up their mess "behind
the scenes"?

Does the site 'work' at the moment? Will it cost money to change it?

If the answer is 'yes' to both of these questions, then it's going to be
hard/impossible to make a case.

Try when the site is being redesigned/rebuilt.

windandwaves · Oct 14, 2005

windandwaves wrote:
Thank you all for your great answers. I am sure that other people have
encountered it before. I am just a purist and even though my life is a
mess, I dont want the www to turn into a chaos. Just imagine, for example,
how much faster the web would be if we did not have all the dreamweaver
tables ;-)

Thanks again

- Nicolaas

Neredbojias · Oct 14, 2005

With neither quill nor qualm, windandwaves quothed:

windandwaves wrote:
Thank you all for your great answers. I am sure that other people have
encountered it before. I am just a purist and even though my life is a
mess, I dont want the www to turn into a chaos. Just imagine, for example,
how much faster the web would be if we did not have all the dreamweaver
tables ;-)

The more chaos there is, the more order there is.

Ed · Oct 15, 2005

windandwaves said:
windandwaves wrote:
Thank you all for your great answers. I am sure that other people have
encountered it before. I am just a purist and even though my life is a
mess, I dont want the www to turn into a chaos. Just imagine, for example,
how much faster the web would be if we did not have all the dreamweaver
tables ;-)

The WWW already is 'chaos', but that makes it all the more interesting -
of course, the entire planet is in disarray, which is interesting too.
Therefore, don't get too wound up when you come across a website built
on a scaffold of tables, it isn't too long ago that most readers of this
newsgroup authored websites in the same manner. In my opinion, CSS-P
evangelists are just as bad as those who try to force Christianity (or
any other religion) down your throat - and that comes from someone who
has not used tables for layout for several years.

It will take some time before you see large corporate websites switch to
CSS positioning, as it will only be considered prior to a major redesign
($$$). And remember, it is still extremely hard work to make your CSS
layout work flawlessly on Windows, Mac, Linux and a whole range of
browsers and browser versions. We often rely on CSS hacks, depending on
the complexity of the layout, and that is worrisome, considering future
browsers - IE7 comes to mind.

Ed

Steve Pugh · Oct 15, 2005

windandwaves said:
I was just wondering if any of you are pissed off with the enormous amount
of garbage out there on the net:

Only when it either screwd up my browsing by being slow and buggy in my
browser; or when it's provided by some third party affiliate (yes BT
I'm looking at you) and I need to combine with the accessible, easily
stylable, fast, valid cde on the site I maintain.

How do you convince your clients they need to clean up their mess "behind
the scenes"?

If they're my clients then the clean up happens as a matter of course
whilst I'm doing other work. Many clients want a total design revamp
every couple of years at least and at that point the old code gets
chucked out the new put in. No point even mentioning this sort of
'under the hood' stuff to the average client.

Steve

rockradio2000 · Oct 15, 2005

windandwaves said:
Hi Folk

I was just wondering if any of you are pissed off with the enormous amount
of garbage out there on the net:

Hmm. Not really.

<body leftmargin="0" right.....>
 etc.....

Well I can tell you that my site at http://freewebdesign.cjb.cc loads
quickly and validates without a problem... According to the W3C.
I agree with the previous posters, that at the end of the day clients,
well a lot of them would not really care what the code looks like they
just want the site to work...
Oh and those type of sites that you have mentioned above work perfictly
fine as far as accessability goes. For most users (I am speeking from a
blind persons perspective here).
I use Jaws For Windows version 5.0 and the only problem I have with
sites made with DW is the ones that use flash to the point of no
reterne.
Oh and there are those sites which have a lot of images with no alt
text. They really anoy me. But that's another story.
Regards Chad. http://freewebdesign.cjb.cc

dorayme · Oct 15, 2005

From: "Steve Pugh said:
If they're my clients then the clean up happens as a matter of course
whilst I'm doing other work. Many clients want a total design revamp
every couple of years at least and at that point the old code gets
chucked out the new put in. No point even mentioning this sort of
'under the hood' stuff to the average client.

This is correct, I add that one can introduce changes as one
generally maintains a site, especially with moderate to
substantial new material, even if there is no explicit request
for "a total revamp". If you do start talking about this 'under
the hood' stuff, you can easily be met with silence and/or
suspicion that you are out to do what is quite understandable,
encourage work for yourself and get more money... There are no
fast rules and much does depend on trust and respect. If that is
there, you can with some confidence make decisions, you put on
your best professional consultant coat and think "this is my
responsibility". At least the better clients pick up on this
without knowing the details, maybe they say "ouch" a bit, but
gee, their site is nice and gives no trouble...

dorayme

Jeanne D · Oct 15, 2005

Just think how much easier it would be if they could set a standard and
stick with it. First I had to learn HTML, now I'm hearing that's no
good - learn CSS, toss away your tables, nested is a dirty word.

As a graphic designer, I want to concentrate on design not code. But a
lot is expected of us these days, and now CSS.

Blech. I like CSS and understand it's beauty - but please, what will
replace CSS after I spend time away from my design tools learning it?
Here we go again.

windandwaves · Oct 16, 2005

Jeanne said:
Just think how much easier it would be if they could set a standard
and stick with it. First I had to learn HTML, now I'm hearing that's
no good - learn CSS, toss away your tables, nested is a dirty word.

As a graphic designer, I want to concentrate on design not code. But a
lot is expected of us these days, and now CSS.

Blech. I like CSS and understand it's beauty - but please, what will
replace CSS after I spend time away from my design tools learning it?
Here we go again.

That is what life is all about: change and transformation. Otherwise, there
would be no point living ;-)

You will actually be amazed how similar html and css is when compared to 10
years ago. Lots of the standards we use today were conceived before 2000.

- Nicolaas

JDS · Oct 16, 2005

You will actually be amazed how similar html and css is when compared to 10
years ago. Lots of the standards we use today were conceived before 2000.

Good point. CSS is not new at all. It's just that browsers capable of
adequately implementing CSS are (relatively) new.

For that matter, HTML is, at its core, quite old, really. You can trace
the roots of HTML back over 35 years.

dorayme · Oct 16, 2005

From: "Jeanne D said:
Just think how much easier it would be if they could set a standard and
stick with it. First I had to learn HTML, now I'm hearing that's no
good - learn CSS, toss away your tables, nested is a dirty word.

HTML is insufficient rather than no good. You don't /have to/ toss away your
tables. And you don't have to follow every trend until you see for yourself
a limitation that is actually bothersome in some way that you can see or
know about for sure yourself...

As a graphic designer, I want to concentrate on design not code. But a
lot is expected of us these days, and now CSS.

Well, what does this really mean? Designing for the web means learning to
use the web tools. Were you turning out nice work in tables? Did it look
nice for all your intended audience? Fine then...

Blech. I like CSS and understand it's beauty - but please, what will
replace CSS after I spend time away from my design tools learning it?
Here we go again.

You see, I think there is some confusion here. The design tools
are what? Your Illustrator ones? Gorgeous as these are
(seriously, they are nice!), they are for preparing graphics and
(for the print medium, text too) but that is only one part of
website work. You will have a good eye for a result on
individual screens. But what does designing for the web mean? It
means being able to deliver to all manner of screens and devices
various stuff. Designing in this context means knowing and
allowing for different receiving machines to get your material,
it not likely always "looking" like on your screen. The art then
is to design not for an artboard but for an impossibly general
object, all the devices capable of getting web content
(including as an ideal, no visual renderers (Christ, that will
put a spanner in the Graphic Design works!)...

To make it manageable, best perhaps to think of a statistically
common denominator: a person with a 17" screen who might not
want to use it all, better not count on more than 800px wide.
This does not mean you design only for that, some people have
huge screens and it would be nice that they can fill them to
some extent, that folk can enlarge the fonts a great deal and
still get what you have to offer... Making your way through all
the competing pressures is really nothing whatever to do with
your Graphic Design background. It is a conceptual field, higher
and more beautiful than brain surgery, deeper than the deepest
thoughts of even European Existential philosophers (not!)... er
maybe I better stop and get my pills...

dorayme

Luigi Donatello Asero · Oct 16, 2005

To make it manageable, best perhaps to think of a statistically
common denominator: a person with a 17" screen who might not
want to use it all, better not count on more than 800px wide.

800px sounds ok but less than 600 px....

--
Luigi Donatello Asero
(sono italiano ma vivo in Svezia)
(Ñ Ð¸Ñ‚Ð°Ð»ÑŒÑÐ½ÐµÑ† Ð½Ð¾ Ñ Ð¶Ð¸Ð²Ñƒ Ð² Ð¨Ð²ÐµÑ†Ð¸Ð¸ )
(æˆ‘æ˜¯ æ„å¤§åˆ©äºº , ä½†æ˜¯ æˆ‘ ä½ åœ¨ ç‘žå…¸)
(minÃ¤ olen Italian kansalainen, mutta minÃ¤ asun Ruotsissa)
(yo soy italiano mas vivo en Suecia)
(je suis italien mais j'habite en SuÃ¨de)
(ich bin Italiener aber ich lebe in Schweden)
https://www.scaiecat-spa-gigi.com/sv/faktaomitalien.php

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pissed off

windandwaves

Travis Newbury

Mark Parnell

windandwaves

windandwaves

Mark Parnell

Jonathan N. Little

dorayme

Jake

windandwaves

Neredbojias

Ed

Steve Pugh

rockradio2000

dorayme

Jeanne D

windandwaves

JDS

dorayme

Luigi Donatello Asero

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