Web Design: Would you design a PDF by writing Postscript in Notepad?

[Andy Dingley]

Take a look with stylesheets disabled.

Well it's not bad really. It renders as a linear list of images - what
more could you expect, and given the unlikeliness of a CSS-free
image-capable browser (and the capabilities it is likely to have
probably include a tiny screen), then it's probably quite a reasonable
behaviour.

A list of <div>s isn't a bad piece of markup for a set of images like
this, even compared to a table. You can float them inside a container to
give a good flexible multi-column table (not a <table>) on a wide
screen, and the linearised list is quite good without CSS. The problem
with this page is its abolute positioning, not the choice of <div> over
<table>.

 

[Andy Dingley]

Hmm, makes me wonder why they bothered to add "media: tty;" to the spec.

IMHE, the media-specific types are useful for _adding_ CSS, but less use
for stripping it when not supported. Admittedly I can't think why you'd
need to add much in the TTY context.

 

[Helpful Harry]

Why do we put up with web design software? Nobody makes a PDFs by
writing Postscript in Notepad, but that is what designer's working for
the web are expected to do. That is how far web design has come.
Postscript is a page description language like HTML or CSS. By now we
should have a Quark Xpress or Indesign for the web, but the only
morsel the software industry has thrown designers after a decade of
the web is CSS coding and a choice of Georgia or verdana. It's beyond
the joke.

You do realise that software like DreamWeaver, GoLive, Freeway *IS*
"Quark Xpress or InDesign for the web"?!?!?

People used to create websites solely by typing HTML into a text editor
(and many still do).

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[Helpful Harry]

Since when is [strong] a "relationship between information
components"?!?!? It's telling the browser that the following text
shoulld be rendered in bold until it finds a corresponding [/strong]
tag.

No it isn't. <strong> tells the browser that the following text should
be strongly emphasised until it finds the corresponding </strong> tag.
The specs might /suggest/ that browsers render this in bold, but
browsers are not *required* to do so.

Whoosh!!

The sound of the point going right over your head. )

The fact that some browsers choose to render some tags slightly
differently was beside the point. tTe point was that the HTML tags are
NOT a "relationship between information component", they are a way to
tell a browser how to render a page on-screen.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[Helpful Harry]

Actually until I got a Macintosh 3 years ago, that was pretty much how I
did all my PDFs. I got better results (then I got lazy).

Good point about web design software however. So far I haven't found one
acceptable product (and I would really like to).

The problem is not the web design software, it's the limitations of
HTML and other web standards. The software simply tries to make the
best of those limitations.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[Helpful Harry]

[responding to my giving a reference to a site produced with Freeway Pro that
passed "strict" validation]

Nurse! New keyboards and the monitor wipes please!

This is beautiful in the Adams-like clarity of its demonstration of
cluelessness.

The last comment could be paraphrased as "Freeway looks like it over- uses
<table> markup when inappropriate, please show an example of better coding
style". So what do you do, you take an example that's a perfect situation
for legitimately using a <table>, then you do it with absolutely
positioned <div>s. Total perversity in appropriate markup.

If Jukka or Jonathan had done this, it would be funny. It might even be
convincing that Freeway could use non-table markup in _any_ situation. As
it is though, I have to suspect that it just shows a complete failure to
even understand what the issue is, let alone how to solve it.

But the fact remains that the website, whether one likes it or not, displays
in every browser tested, six of them, *exactly* as intended. If the results
are as wanted, why should I be concerned about the underlying code structure

Bloated code takes longer to download and chews through data cap limits
quicker. The same goes for using over-sized / high resolution images,
but that of course is MUCH worse.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[Helpful Harry]

[responding to my giving a reference to a site produced with Freeway Pro
that
passed "strict" validation]

Nurse! New keyboards and the monitor wipes please!

This is beautiful in the Adams-like clarity of its demonstration of
cluelessness.

The last comment could be paraphrased as "Freeway looks like it over-
uses
<table> markup when inappropriate, please show an example of better
coding
style". So what do you do, you take an example that's a perfect situation
for legitimately using a <table>, then you do it with absolutely
positioned <div>s. Total perversity in appropriate markup.

If Jukka or Jonathan had done this, it would be funny. It might even be
convincing that Freeway could use non-table markup in _any_ situation. As
it is though, I have to suspect that it just shows a complete failure to
even understand what the issue is, let alone how to solve it.

But the fact remains that the website, whether one likes it or not,
displays
in every browser tested, six of them, *exactly* as intended. If the results
are as wanted, why should I be concerned about the underlying code structure

Bloated code takes longer to download and chews through data cap limits
quicker. The same goes for using over-sized / high resolution images,
but that of course is MUCH worse.

Damn! I meant to also say that over-bloated / convoluted code takes
longer to render since the browser has to try and figure out what it's
supposed to be doing.

Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)

 

[Toby A Inkster]

And just what browser are you using?

On that particular occasion: Lynx.

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!

 

[Toby A Inkster]

Hmm, makes me wonder why they bothered to add "media: tty;" to the spec.

Certain parts of CSS are still useful in a TTY context: foreground and
background colours, bold face (for some TTYs), display:block/inline/none,
visibility:hidden, margins, padding and borders in some cases, the
"content" property as applied to the ":before" and ":after" pseudo-classes.

Different font sizes and such are never going to work on a TTY display.

Has anyone else tried w3m? It's freaky:
http://examples.tobyinkster.co.uk/w3m-screenshot

--
Toby A Inkster BSc (Hons) ARCS
Contact Me ~ http://tobyinkster.co.uk/contact
Geek of ~ HTML/SQL/Perl/PHP/Python*/Apache/Linux

* = I'm getting there!

 

[dorayme]

what your page looks like on a medium monitor, hmmm not
that's attractive!

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/alt.html.20070216.jpg
alt.html.20070216.jpg (JPEG Image, 700x609 pixels)

No this is a much better way and it will resize with your screen! Since
it is just a list of thumbs just took about 10 min to do. You can
restyle it to look completely different.

http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/alt.html.20070216.php
Better Way

Yes, but a little special extra bit of css is needed for looking
on the very important Mac IE 5... even in my probably more
cumbersome efforts in this direction a while ago I recall making
provisions for Mac IE. At least I saluted it.

Could people please not post to dreamweaver as I have to keep
removing it from my missives.

 

[dorayme]

No gravity == no problem.

Shake it -- the way one does automatically when a ball-point won't write.

You shake it and it goes to the wrong end from the ball, what
then? You shake it some more? You shake it in a direction? Be
careful, you might go the other way.

You need to write some dying words, your strength is almost gone,
no note to leave your money to whoever, that awful relative gets
it... No gravity=no problem eh? Sure!

Look, the fact is that the equation is no good. That pencil with
the "risk" to the eye (I mean, really!) is looking good all
around...

 

[dorayme]

I actually considered having the width be flexible, as in your "Better Way"
example, but rejected it. Why I can't exactly remember at the moment, but
when the brain cells bounce properly I'll post the reason.

Let me jog your memory. It was because I told you to do it ages
ago and no one ever does a single thing I say. It is written in
between the atoms, it will be in the next version of Quantum
Theory.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Yes, but a little special extra bit of css is needed for looking
on the very important Mac IE 5... even in my probably more
cumbersome efforts in this direction a while ago I recall making
provisions for Mac IE. At least I saluted it.

Yep got to support the 0.001% market share! ;-) Don't have a Mac but it
does work in IE5.01 Win

Does fail in IE4 and NN4.6 but then most thing do!

Could people please not post to dreamweaver as I have to keep
removing it from my missives.

Yeah, the h*ll with dreamweaver!

 

[TaliesinSoft]

Let me jog your memory. It was because I told you to do it ages ago and no
one ever does a single thing I say. It is written in between the atoms, it
will be in the next version of Quantum Theory.

Methinks the brain cells have bounced a bit and I think that the reason I
rejected the fluid arrangement of miniatures on the opening page was the
inability to return from an excursion to the enlargements with the relevant
miniature being at the top of the page.

 

[Steven Saunderson]

You shake it and it goes to the wrong end from the ball, what
then? You shake it some more? You shake it in a direction? Be
careful, you might go the other way.

You could try shaking it in a circular arc and relying on centrifugal
force.

 

[Ed Mullen]

So then, why didn't Adobe use their own GoLive which has been part of the
Adobe arsenal for quite a few years now, Adobe purchasing it in 1999.

I don't know but I can guess: They outsourced the dev of their web
site, specifying only functional specs, not tools used to accomplish the
feat. What a company builds and sells isn't intrinsic in every facet of
the company's operations. Nor should it be.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
Error: Keyboard not attached. Press F1 to continue ...

 

[Ed Mullen]

I tried the disabling in Firefox. The result was that the positioning of all
of the objects was forgotten and that everything appeared left justified in a
vertical lineup. The question now is what should Freeway have done in terms
of the generated code to correct that, if indeed correction is possible?

Generate correct code from the beginning.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
A preposition must never be used to end a sentence with.

 

[William Mitchell]

You shake it and it goes to the wrong end from the ball, what
then? You shake it some more? You shake it in a direction? Be
careful, you might go the other way.

You need to write some dying words, your strength is almost gone,
no note to leave your money to whoever, that awful relative gets
it... No gravity=no problem eh? Sure!

Look, the fact is that the equation is no good. That pencil with
the "risk" to the eye (I mean, really!) is looking good all
around...

Except that the point is broken, and it'll get smudged in the course
of your dying throes.

Here is some actual information about the space pen
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/613/1

 

[Ed Mullen]

You shake it and it goes to the wrong end from the ball, what
then? You shake it some more? You shake it in a direction? Be
careful, you might go the other way.

You need to write some dying words, your strength is almost gone,
no note to leave your money to whoever, that awful relative gets
it... No gravity=no problem eh? Sure!

Look, the fact is that the equation is no good. That pencil with
the "risk" to the eye (I mean, really!) is looking good all
around...

You take the "thing" that has fluid in it and you shake it in one
direction: In this case, toward the opening from which you want the
fluid to flow. you do NOT shake it back and forth, that is pointless.

Kinda like ketchup. Ketchup (or Catsup) is so viscous as to defy
gravity (almost). So, in most instances, we humans take the bottle and
shake it in one direction (toward the bottle's opening). The makers of
Ketchup have figured this out (hell, it only took about 6 decades) and
have begun selling Ketchup bottles with big mouths, big enough to act as
bottoms. So, the normal course is for all the Ketchup to now sit at the
bottom (err, well, it always did that) of the bottle which is, um, err,
the "top" - or - bottom. Or, err, well, shit, I dunno except that my
wife no longer has to resort to the old "lemme shove a knife in there"
routine to put Ketchup on her fries (or "chips" as you Euro guys say).
No, we just open the flip lid and squeeze.

By the way, I am truly troubled by the fact that I could write this
extensively about this topic. I think I need to go have another drink.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
A preposition must never be used to end a sentence with.

 

[dorayme]

Methinks the brain cells have bounced a bit and I think that the reason I
rejected the fluid arrangement of miniatures on the opening page was the
inability to return from an excursion to the enlargements with the relevant
miniature being at the top of the page.

Well, how does it do it with your setup? In Safari, for example,
back buttoning goes back to the page as it was when you left it,
part scrolled. Same with fluid set up I think.

But to be sure, easy problem to overcome. You id the thumbs or
nearby stuff and you "#anchor" refer to it in a link in the
enlargement html page back button:

<a href="medium-04-4.html#medium-04-4">back</a>

and in the thumbnail page in the relevant div you can add a
corresponding id. If you were to use JL's code, would add an id
to his <div class="pixbox" id="medium-04-4"> or something like
that.

Or if you are more comfortable with the name="medium-04-4"
construction, do that...