Thought: Will we ever be able to use all the new web techs effectively

C

Cameron

Just a thought and wondering what other people think...

I have been noticing how all these new web techs are coming into
existence like XForms and XSL but the fact remains is there will always
be old browsers about, we can't stop people using them, so even if we do
use all these new techs we are going to have to keep thinking about
backwards compatibility, no serious web designer would write a site that
may not work in older browsers especially if it's for a big company,
such things can damage ones reputation and possibly loose clients. I'm
all in favor of new development don't get me wrong, but the more ways to
do things the more thought that needs to go in to backwards compatibility.

this was just to "provoke" comments and thoughts, and to suspend my
boredom for a short time ;)

~Cameron
 
K

kayodeok

Just a thought and wondering what other people think...

I have been noticing how all these new web techs are coming into
existence like XForms and XSL but the fact remains is there will
always be old browsers about, we can't stop people using them,
so even if we do use all these new techs we are going to have to
keep thinking about backwards compatibility, no serious web
designer would write a site that may not work in older browsers
especially if it's for a big company, such things can damage
ones reputation and possibly loose clients. I'm all in favor of
new development don't get me wrong, but the more ways to do
things the more thought that needs to go in to backwards
compatibility.

I think the overall thinking behind how clients access information
should change.

The focus should be on data and the ease with which clients can
access this data irrespective of the technology used.

No matter how advanced the web technology, the underlying data should
still be accessible to those on ancient user agents; it just will not
be in the form you intended.

I think this is the reason why there has been a lot of focus lately
on structured html and semantics.

(PS. I don't know much about xforms and xslt so I could be talking
rubbish here)
 
P

Paul Furman

What about programs that operate on the server to create plain html
pages dynamically? That way you've got the raw data & can present it in
any number of ways. I'm thinking of perl based photo galleries &
discussion boards I've seen lately.
 
C

Cameron

Paul said:
What about programs that operate on the server to create plain html
pages dynamically? That way you've got the raw data & can present it in
any number of ways. I'm thinking of perl based photo galleries &
discussion boards I've seen lately.

ayep, I use PHP, server side stuff is great :)

~Cameron
 
P

Paul Furman

Cameron said:
ayep, I use PHP, server side stuff is great :)

~Cameron


Yeah, php. Is there such a program for web site building where you can
store info in folders then just upload & it makes the pages and sets up
the navigation for you? I've been looking at the photo gallery things
which work sort of that way except it's hard to work on a new batch
off-line then upload with descriptions and it only works with
pictures... I'd like to be able to have nested folders with mostly text
content and a little tool kit of repeatable template features like
tables or lists of links with descriptions & such that can be inserted.
Like a wysigyg editor but I don't mind doing the coding for the
template, just not having to bother with a mess of code when I'm adding
content. So it might be like a magazine has a few templates for:

Cover
index page
Full page photo spread with article title
inset highlighted quotes
inset related facts
small photo with description
photo gallery
etc.

A lot of my text content is currently in an Access database so I thought
ASP was what I needed and I took a VB class. Now I know that's evil MS
stuff & php or whatever is faster anyways but also I got into this idea
of storing things in nested folders, like my pictures so I keep them all
on my computer & only upload portions of that. Somehow keying it into a
database just sounds like a nightmare when I could just put little text
files into each folder of pictures for the descriptions... or for
individual pics, the annotation is in the EXIF or IPTC fields.

Anyways I'm really rambling now... Anything do-able in all that dreaming?
 
C

Cameron

Paul Furman wrote:
Yeah, php. Is there such a program for web site building where you can
store info in folders then just upload & it makes the pages and sets up
the navigation for you? I've been looking at the photo gallery things
which work sort of that way except it's hard to work on a new batch
off-line then upload with descriptions and it only works with
pictures... I'd like to be able to have nested folders with mostly text
content and a little tool kit of repeatable template features like
tables or lists of links with descriptions & such that can be inserted.
Like a wysigyg editor but I don't mind doing the coding for the
template, just not having to bother with a mess of code when I'm adding
content. So it might be like a magazine has a few templates for:

Cover
index page
Full page photo spread with article title
inset highlighted quotes
inset related facts
small photo with description
photo gallery
etc.

A lot of my text content is currently in an Access database so I thought
ASP was what I needed and I took a VB class. Now I know that's evil MS
stuff & php or whatever is faster anyways but also I got into this idea
of storing things in nested folders, like my pictures so I keep them all
on my computer & only upload portions of that. Somehow keying it into a
database just sounds like a nightmare when I could just put little text
files into each folder of pictures for the descriptions... or for
individual pics, the annotation is in the EXIF or IPTC fields.

Anyways I'm really rambling now... Anything do-able in all that dreaming?

Hmm from what I understand it sounds like you want something like the
navbar supported by *Shudder* frontpage extensions, it worked something
like that when I used to have Frontpage 98 but not sure what the status
is now, it wouldn't be all that hard to write what you are talking
about in PHP though.

~Cameron
 
K

kayodeok

Yeah, php. Is there such a program for web site building where
you can store info in folders then just upload & it makes the
pages and sets up the navigation for you? I've been looking at
the photo gallery things which work sort of that way except it's
hard to work on a new batch off-line then upload with
descriptions and it only works with pictures... I'd like to be
able to have nested folders with mostly text content and a
little tool kit of repeatable template features like tables or
lists of links with descriptions & such that can be inserted.
Like a wysigyg editor but I don't mind doing the coding for the
template, just not having to bother with a mess of code when I'm
adding content. So it might be like a magazine has a few
templates for:

What you are describing above looks like a Content Management
System and is possible with PHP or you if know enough PHP, you
could write your own...however, if you decide to go with the
content management systems out there, look for one built on LAMP
(Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) and produces Valid HTML/XHTML +
Valid CSS.

Have a look at WordPress from http://wordpress.org/ or this blog
entry requesting stuff along the same lines as yours:

Wanted: CMS
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/01/09/wanted_cms/index.php

(There seems to be around 55 responses to his query)
 
P

Paul Furman

Cameron said:
Hmm from what I understand it sounds like you want something like the
navbar supported by *Shudder* frontpage extensions, it worked something
like that when I used to have Frontpage 98 but not sure what the status
is now,


Ack, no!
I don't mind doing the coding, I just want to be able to add content as
a separate task and keep the whole thing navigable without remembering
to go back & update the indexes.

it wouldn't be all that hard to write what you are talking
about in PHP though.


OK thanks for the confirmation that PHP is probably the best route for
an affordable solution along these lines and that it should be doable.
 
P

Paul Furman

kayodeok said:
What you are describing above looks like a Content Management System and
is possible with PHP or you if know enough PHP, you could write your
own...however, if you decide to go with the content management systems
out there, look for one built on LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) and
produces Valid HTML/XHTML + Valid CSS.

Have a look at WordPress from http://wordpress.org/ or this blog entry
requesting stuff along the same lines as yours:

Wanted: CMS
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2004/01/09/wanted_cms/index.php

(There seems to be around 55 responses to his query)


Excellent, thanks!
I've got some reading to do now.
 

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