Re: Web Design: Would you design a PDF by writing Postscript in Notepad?
TaliesinSoft
(in article <1171555825.5...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>):
> 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.
There is indeed software, available now for the Macintosh, that allows one to
construct a website using WYSIWYG methods and with no requirement that the
user should have any knowledge of such as HTML. That software is Freeway
Express and Freeway Pro. Freeway works much like InDesign in that the website
author concentrates on appearance and action and not upon the underlying code
that makes things happen. As an aside, the resulting HTML of a Freeway
generated website is quite good, usually passing the strictest of code
verification.
--
James Leo Ryan ..... Austin, Texas ..... talies...@mac.com
Benjamin Niemann
> 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.
There's a fundamental difference between PS/PDF and HTML+CSS. PS/PDF are
exact (as far as possible) representations of a printed - and thus fixed -
document. In this context WYSIWYG makes sense - pretty much indeed.
But the HTML+CSS combo has to deal with different user-agents,
screen-/fontsizes, user stylesheets and a gazillion of other factors that
influence how a document is seen/heard/felt by a user. And this is an
advancement over printed media.
Applying WYSIWYG to web-documents just creates the *illusion* of simplicity,
moves the focus to presentational details while hiding semantics. This
reduces HTML+CSS to a bad PDF replacement.
--
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://pink.odahoda.de/
Ed Seedhouse
>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's because the web is not paper. PDFs are a medium designed to be
printed on paper. The Web isn't. There is no useable "wysiwyg" editor
for the web because there is no one "wyg".
>That is how far web design has come.
>Postscript is a page description language like HTML
HTML is *not* a page description language. It is a *document*
description language and that's entirely different. More generalized.
> It's beyond the joke.
The joke is on you because you don't understand the media. TV is not
Radio and the Web is not paper, and never will be. You are like a Radio
producer moaning that your TV programs won't work properly when you use
your well understood radio methods.
Andy Dingley
> That software is Freeway Express and Freeway Pro.
Nicely standards-compliant, it has to be said. However "layout" relies
on a massive over-dependence on CSS absolute positioning, and with
pixel units at that. To quote Computer Arts mag, "creating
proportional rather than fixed-width layouts is almost impossible".
Freeway Pro is a competently implemented page-layout tool using valid
HTML and CSS. For fixed-pixel layouts it's great, but as a web design
tool it misses the point entirely and cannot be recommended at all.
There's still a shortage of WYSIWYG web site design tools with any
concept of semantically-based CSS that's an overall site feature, not
just a sequence of one-off page layout tasks.
Toby A Inkster
> 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.
You are comparing apples with oranges here. PostScript is[1] a language for
describing what pages look like. HTML is a language for describing what
pages *mean*.
People can auto-generate postscript documents from visual tools and the
generating process will accurately create a document conveying the user's
intentions.
When people auto-generate HTML documents from visual tools, the tool needs
to guess what the user really meant. Is does this text begin a new
paragraph (<p>), or is it really just two line breaks (<br><br>)? This
series of several short lines, should it be marked up as a bullet-less
list? Do these italics signify a citation (<cite>), some emphasis (<em>),
or a Latin phrase (<i lang="la">)? Is that a single-line paragraph of bold
text (<p><b>) or should it really be a third-level heading (<h3>)?
There are, as I see it, three solutions to this conundrum:
1. To hell with semantics! Forget <em>, <cite> and so on, just
use <i> all the time!
2. Write a tool that's really, really good at guessing
semantics.
3. Write a tool that doesn't have buttons and short-cut keys
for things like bold, italic, different colours and fonts
and so forth, but has buttons to insert citations, quotes,
diagrammes and so forth, has options to mark certain chunks
of text as either more or less important than the rest.
Most recent visual HTML editors use the first approach, creating
semantic-free documents. In my opinion authors using this sort of
tool have no business writing HTML at all. If all they care about is
the visual appearance of the document, they should probably switch
to publishing in Flash, which is far more suited to their ideas.
The second solution has been attempted once or twice, but tends to get
things wrong as often as it gets them right.
The third solution is a good idea, but using the current attempts at
this sort of tool tends to be no easier to use than typing the HTML
by hand anyway, rendering them rather useless.
As an aside, some people *do* write postscript by hand. And whatsmore,
this usually results in much smaller files, which load much more quickly.
____
1. PostScript is actually a fully-fledged scripting language, but it's
commonly used as a page description language and as a transmission format
for print jobs.
--
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!
Harlan Messinger
> 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
> Postscript is a page description language like HTML or CSS.
Postscript is a page *format* description language. HTML is a page
*structure* description language.
> 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.
>
Harlan Messinger
Also, CSS *can* be applied like PostScript, including a STYLE attribute
with every tag to define that element's appearance alone, and in that
case a CSS editor can apply the styles that will make an element look
exactly has you defined its appearance using WYSIWYG tools. But CSS is
best used to define entire style sets based on element tags, classes,
and IDs. It's hard to use CSS in that manner when applying formatting to
individual page elements one at a time with a WYSIWYG editor.
dorayme
<1171555825.5...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>,
"fgdg" <ilove...@lycos.com> wrote:
> 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 have some things wrong. You surely must have heard of
Microsoft Frontpage and Microsoft Publisher and seen the web
export or 'save as' features in just about every modern word
processor and image software package. And then, of course, there
is Dreamweaver. In other words, there _is_ more than notepad.
And there is an implication in what you are saying that the false
(see above) situation you paint is for lack of trying. Not so.
You might be very surprised to learn of the considerable efforts
teams of clever people have made to improve the situation but
without the success you would be wanting. This should suggest
that what is being attempted here is orders of magnitude harder
than you imagine.
To put it simply, it is very hard indeed to design machinary to
deliver content in a reasonably effective and where possible
elegant way to all the devices that are made to receive such
content from the internet. It still requires educated earthlings
to do it well. Some of these WSIWIG programs can save website
makers who have mastered the software some time but in the end
this is because they know how to get by without it, they know the
limitations of such software and can compensate for it.
--
dorayme
dorayme
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> As an aside, the resulting HTML of a Freeway
> generated website is quite good, usually passing the strictest of code
> verification.
If you mean validation, then this is not much evidence of
goodness...
--
dorayme
TaliesinSoft
(in article <1171562087....@a75g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>):
> Freeway Pro is a competently implemented page-layout tool using valid HTML
> and CSS. For fixed-pixel layouts it's great, but as a web design tool it
> misses the point entirely and cannot be recommended at all.
If Freeway Express or Freeway Pro are capable of the WYSIWYG production of
webpages to the complete satisfaction of the author then how is it that "it
misses the poiint entirely?" There are undoubtedly nuances in website
creation that are not addressed by Freeway, but unless these nuances are
needed/wanted by the website author than there absence is irrelevant. It is
almost like saying that a piano is a musical instrument that can't be
recommended at all because it can't produce a continuous slide through the
scale as can a violin.
dorayme
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> If Freeway Express or Freeway Pro are capable of the WYSIWYG production of
> webpages to the complete satisfaction of the author then how is it that "it
> misses the poiint entirely?
The author is not the one to be satisfied here. It is not his or
her needs that are paramount. It really is a fundamental mistake
to be thinking this.
--
dorayme
Jonathan N. Little
built their site! That said, neither impressed with the output of their
site nor their gallery of sites. Agree with Andy here....
--
Take care,
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com
Bergamot
> In article <0001HW.C1FA3401...@news.supernews.com>,
> TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> WYSIWYG production of
>> webpages to the complete satisfaction of the author
>
Indeed. Too bad those who should be satisfied, i.e. the web site users,
often get the short end of the stick. :(
--
Berg
the red dot
"fgdg" <ilove...@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:1171555825.5...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com...
> 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.
>
which reminds me of the story of the americans who spent millions of dollars
making a pen that worked in zero gravity, the russians just used a pencil.
TaliesinSoft
(in article <16e7a$45d4dd14$40cba7b7$14...@NAXS.COM>):
[commenting on the Freeway website]
> Give them credit that unlike MS they actually use their software to built
> their site! That said, neither impressed with the output of their site nor
> their gallery of sites. Agree with Andy here....
I find it interesting, er, uh, amusing, that Adobe, the marketers of not one,
but two high priced website development tools, GoLive and Dreamweaver,
apparently don't use either to develop their own website. So, what is it
about the Adobe website that would set it apart from the Freeway (Softpress)
website?
Incidentally, the W3C Markup Validation Service found 0 errors with the
Freeway site but 19 with the Adobe site. Oops, I forgot, validation is
apparently useless. But isn't it adherence to standards that should bring
about uniformity in presentation of a website amongst all browsers?
William Mitchell
My understanding is that story is apocryphal. The space pen, which
both use, was developed by a private company.
And I use a space pen, together with a waterproof pad, for taking
notes while working in the woods. It costs somewhat more, but its
well worth it.
--
Bill Mitchell
Dept of Mathematics, The University of Florida
PO Box 118105, Gainesville, FL 32611--8105
mitc...@math.ufl.edu (352) 392-0281 x284
dorayme
William Mitchell <mitc...@math.ufl.edu> wrote:
> And I use a space pen, together with a waterproof pad, for taking
> notes while working in the woods. It costs somewhat more, but its
> well worth it.
I use it to write love letters to alt.html members when going
back home for my holidays...
--
dorayme
dorayme
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> Oops, I forgot, validation is
> apparently useless.
To point out the limitations of validators, what they can and
cannot do, what their real purpose is and what you can profitably
use them for, should not invite this reaction. It is a rather
complicated thing but basically a validator will tell you if a
document conforms in certain respects to the declared or assumed
standard for that doc in a narrow formal sense. It says nothing
about semantics, the meaningfulness, neatness, easy readability
or accessibility of your efforts, much less the quality of being
easy to upgrade. All these latter mentioned qualities are
notoriously difficult for earthling created machines to
understand. Not impossible but difficult.
Earthlings, on the other hand, are meaning machines par
excellence. That is what they are good for apart from killing.
And even then, note, earthlings have meaningful reasons to do so
(I said meaningful, not good reasons.)
--
dorayme
TaliesinSoft
<doraymeRidThis-D59...@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>):
> In article <0001HW.C1FA5A30...@news.supernews.com>,
> TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Oops, I forgot, validation is apparently useless.
That was my not so good momentary attempt at being a bit cynical!
> To point out the limitations of validators, what they can and cannot do,
> what their real purpose is and what you can profitably use them for,
> should not invite this reaction. It is a rather complicated thing but
> basically a validator will tell you if a document conforms in certain
> respects to the declared or assumed standard for that doc in a narrow
> formal sense. It says nothing about semantics, the meaningfulness,
> neatness, easy readability or accessibility of your efforts, much less the
> quality of being easy to upgrade. All these latter mentioned qualities are
> notoriously difficult for earthling created machines to understand. Not
> impossible but difficult.
I'll certainly agree that validators are essentially limited to to verifying
that a site's code adheres to established rules and not on the quality and/or
neatness and such of the code. But they do provide a hint at how well the
code will process on standards conforming browsers.
> Earthlings, on the other hand, are meaning machines par excellence. That
> is what they are good for apart from killing. And even then, note,
> earthlings have meaningful reasons to do so (I said meaningful, not good
> reasons.
dorayme
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 19:17:55 -0600, dorayme wrote (in article
> <doraymeRidThis-D59...@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>):
>
> > In article <0001HW.C1FA5A30...@news.supernews.com>,
> > TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Oops, I forgot, validation is apparently useless.
>
> That was my not so good momentary attempt at being a bit cynical!
>
Not to worry... <g>
> > To point out the limitations of validators, what they can and cannot do,
> > what their real purpose is and what you can profitably use them for,
> > should not invite this reaction. It is a rather complicated thing but
> > basically a validator will tell you if a document conforms in certain
> > respects to the declared or assumed standard for that doc in a narrow
> > formal sense. It says nothing about semantics, the meaningfulness,
> > neatness, easy readability or accessibility of your efforts, much less the
> > quality of being easy to upgrade. All these latter mentioned qualities are
> > notoriously difficult for earthling created machines to understand. Not
> > impossible but difficult.
>
> I'll certainly agree that validators are essentially limited to to verifying
> that a site's code adheres to established rules and not on the quality and/or
> neatness and such of the code. But they do provide a hint at how well the
> code will process on standards conforming browsers.
Perhaps a hint taken along with other background information and
knowledge. On its own, it will basically just pick up formal
mistakes and tell you very little. Before you were being very
pessimistic. Now I am saying your are too optimistic. I feel I am
picking on you T... <g>
Validator found mistakes can trigger earthlings to realise that
there are other confusions in their presentation.
--
dorayme
Steve Hix
> 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
HTML is *not* a page description language.
TaliesinSoft
(in article <sehix-E08511....@news.speakeasy.net>):
Are we perhaps getting into "micro-semantics" as from Wikipedia we find.....
HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language
for the creation of web pages.
Dave Balderstone
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
Markup language != page description language by a long shot.
--
You can't PLAN sincerity. You have to make it up on the spot! -- Denny Crane
TaliesinSoft
(in article <150220072305233044%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>):
[responding to quoting from Wikipedia]
> Markup language != page description language by a long shot.
Could you perhaps give a short definition of each.
Dave Balderstone
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 23:05:23 -0600, Dave Balderstone wrote
> (in article <150220072305233044%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>):
>
> [responding to quoting from Wikipedia]
>
> > Markup language != page description language by a long shot.
>
> Could you perhaps give a short definition of each.
HTML as a markup language describes parameters for a multitude of
possible interpreters rendering a page, based on what can be fairly
vague instructions, so that an instruction like 'font size="-2"' will
display different absolute results depending on the client doing the
interpretation (IE/Safari/Firefox/Omniweb/etc).
Postscript, OTOH, is a specific description language based on a known
and consistent interpreter, where an instruction such as '90 rotate 0
-612 translate' will do *exactly* the same thing no matter where it is
interpreted (HP/Agfa/Harlequin/etc), and display *exactly* the same
result.
I've coded both. Coding PS, I can be pretty damned confident that
whoever executes the code I write will see exactly what I see.
Coding HTML, I do not have that luxury.
Jonathan N. Little
> Incidentally, the W3C Markup Validation Service found 0 errors with the
> Freeway site but 19 with the Adobe site. Oops, I forgot, validation is
> apparently useless. But isn't it adherence to standards that should bring
> about uniformity in presentation of a website amongst all browsers?
>
It may validation does not necessarily mean *good* design.
Ed Seedhouse
wrote:
>Are we perhaps getting into "micro-semantics" as from Wikipedia we find.....
>
>HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant markup language
>for the creation of web pages.
A "web page" is not the same thing as a "page". A "web page" is more
precisely a document, and probably shouldn't even be called a "page" at
all, though it is undoubtrly far too late to change it. But when did
you ever see, for example, a book whose every page was a different size?
Helpful Harry
Balderstone <dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca> wrote:
That's not quite 100% true ... only about 99.9%. :o)
HTML code is often "broken" by incompatibilities in (usually) Internet
Explorer.
Postscript code is often "broken" by incompatibilities in non-Adobe
versions of Postscript - the so-called "postscript compatible" found in
some printers for example. For example, some printers thrown tantrums
about printing a shaped with a fill colour of "white". Thankfully you
don't often hit these problems.
Helpful Harry
Hopefully helping harassed humans happily handle handiwork hardships ;o)
Steve Hix
"markup language" is not the same as "page description language".
HTML markup doesn't specify *how* information is to be displayed, but
the relationships between information components.
Helpful Harry
<se...@NOSPAMspeakeasy.netINVALID> wrote:
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.
HTML code simply tells a browser how to render a page on-screen.
Postscript tells a printer (usually) how to render a page to print to
paper.
Adrienne Boswell
writing in news:1171555825.5...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com:
> 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.
>
There is a significant point to be made here - a browser is not a piece
of paper. Authors know for the most part, what sizes paper comes in,
and they know that paper cannot be resized. A browser is an entirely
different creature - the user has control, can resize the browser,
disable graphics, disable client side scripting, change the size of the
font, even use his or her own styles.
The problem is that an author looking at his screen, is never going to
know what his audience is going to see (or hear for that matter). Yes,
he can make an educated guess, but unlike paper, it's a real crap shoot.
--
Adrienne Boswell at Home
Arbpen Web Site Design Services
http://www.cavalcade-of-coding.info
Please respond to the group so others can share
Toby A Inkster
> My understanding is that story is apocryphal. The space pen, which
> both use, was developed by a private company.
Indeed, though there is an element of truth in it. The private company was
based in the USA, and presumably invested a lot of time and effort into
the development of the "space pen". After it was developed, NASA did use
it, despite the fact that normal ballpoint pens work well in space. The
Russians used ballpoint pens[1]; pencils were always deemed a fire risk.
(Graphite dust and wood shavings are both flammable.)
____
1. http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM9YN7O0MD_index_0.html
--
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!
Dylan Parry
> which reminds me of the story of the americans who spent millions of dollars
> making a pen that worked in zero gravity, the russians just used a pencil.
Nope. The Russians didn't use pencils. Have you ever got a bit of pencil
in your eye? I can tell you that it isn't very nice. Now try writing in
zero-gravity with bits of graphite breaking off and floating around. A
nightmare to say the least.
The Russians used good-old-fashioned ballpoint pens, which work fine in
zero-gravity as they only rely on the flow of ink, which will occur
regardless of which way you hold a pen in space. Which is the opposite
of what happens on Earth, ie. hold the pen upside-down and gravity will
cause the ink to stop flowing. No gravity == no problem.
--
Dylan Parry
http://electricfreedom.org | http://webpageworkshop.co.uk
Programming, n: A pastime similar to banging one's head
against a wall, but with fewer opportunities for reward.
Dylan Parry
> 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.
Andy Dingley
> If Freeway Express or Freeway Pro are capable of the WYSIWYG production of
> webpages to the complete satisfaction of the author then how is it that "it
> misses the poiint entirely?"
Because of clueless or clue-deprived authors. As a clueful author will
likely be working directly on HTML through a text editor, then the
beginner market is important for a WYSIWYG tool.
Most web authors do _not_ understand the web and that's why it's
incumbent upon a "good" authoring tool to assist them in getting
things right despite this ignorance. A tool that easily and quickly
builds web sites that still break some fundamental principles of good
web authoring is not a tool to recommend.
Freeway does page layout in absolute pixels, not document-centric
authoring. That's what's wrong with it.
Andy Dingley
> I find it interesting, er, uh, amusing, that Adobe, the marketers of not one,
> but two high priced website development tools, GoLive and Dreamweaver,
> apparently don't use either to develop their own website.
I find it irrelevant.
Whether Dreamweevil is good or bad has _no_ influence on whether
Freeway is good or bad.
Nor does whether Adobe have a good or a bad site.
> Incidentally, the W3C Markup Validation Service found 0 errors with the
> Freeway site
Like I said, it's competent at doing the wrong thing. It makes valid
HTML, but its use of CSS is still inflexible and page-layout style,
not good web practice.
> Oops, I forgot, validation is apparently useless.
That's a straw man argument that you've created yourself. No-one else
claims this, or claims that Freeway's validity isn't a positive
feature.
> But isn't it adherence to standards that should bring
> about uniformity in presentation of a website amongst all browsers?
It's useful, but still far from a sufficient condition for this!
Secondly, why _should_ websites look the same amongst all browsers? If
you don't understand that yet, you have a vast amount of web design
fundamentals to learn about.
With Freeway I can design a trivial site with "a short word in a small
coloured box." On my desktop this sits as a tiny box up near the top
of the page, just as I intended. On my phone (200px screen) it fills
the whole display and is far bigger than the contained word. This is
_not_ what I intended to happen. Freeway takes this bogus concept of
"pixel identical rendering in all contexts" and forces it across the
web, even to devices where it's inappropriate to do so (the font size
in pixels varies widely between my desktop and my phone). Just try re-
sizing the font or changing browser window size in a Freeway-designed
site!
Toby A Inkster
> But isn't it adherence to standards that should bring about uniformity
> in presentation of a website amongst all browsers?
Not really -- as I stated earlier, HTML is not a document presentation
format; it's a language for marking up the *meaning* of the document.
Once the browser has interpreted the meaning of the document, it should
convey that meaning to the user. Different browsers will use different
methods of conveying meaning to the user: that's kind of the whole point
of even having different browsers. If different browsers displayed things
the same, why would we need more than one browser per operating system?
How are Firefox, the Nokia browser, Lynx and Jaws *ever* going to achieve
"uniformity in presentation"? It's ridiculous to even suggest that they
should try.
Toby A Inkster
> 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 -- STRONG specifies that the enclosed text is more important than the
surrounding text. That is a relationship between information components.
To quote from the HTML 4.01 Recommendation:
| EM: Indicates emphasis.
| STRONG: Indicates stronger emphasis.
STRONG is not necessarily rendered in bold, it may be rendered instead in
italics, underline, red text or some combination of those. Text-only
environments may present STRONG text by prepending and appending asterisks
*like* *this* or by transformation to UPPERCASE.
It is valid to use STRONG to emphasise text in headings, even though
headings are ususally already in bold:
<h1>I Asked You <strong>Not</strong> to do That!</h1>
As STRONG indicates that something is emphasised more than the surrounding
text, it is often desirable to use STRONG within STRONG to emphasise a
particular word or phrase more strongly than some surrounding, already
strongly emphasised text:
<p><strong>Beware! To touch these wires is
<strong>instant death</strong>. Anyone found
doing so will be prosecuted.</strong></p>
> HTML code simply tells a browser how to render a page on-screen.
This is totally wrong in so many ways. Some browsers don't even *have*
screens.
Eric Lindsay
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:10:25 -0600, fgdg wrote
> (in article <1171555825.5...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>):
>
> > Why do we put up with web design software?
> There is indeed software, available now for the Macintosh, that allows one to
> construct a website using WYSIWYG methods and with no requirement that the
> user should have any knowledge of such as HTML. That software is Freeway
> Express and Freeway Pro. Freeway works much like InDesign in that the website
> author concentrates on appearance and action and not upon the underlying code
> that makes things happen. As an aside, the resulting HTML of a Freeway
> generated website is quite good, usually passing the strictest of code
> verification.
Unacceptable product. Web site uses transitional HTML instead of Strict.
Uses tables for layout of a non-table text. Getting the code to validate
is one thing. Getting it to be acceptable is another. Can you point me
to any page done with Freeway that doesn't have these problems?
Eric Lindsay
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 16:22:38 -0600, Jonathan N. Little wrote
> (in article <16e7a$45d4dd14$40cba7b7$14...@NAXS.COM>):
>
> [commenting on the Freeway website]
>
> > Give them credit that unlike MS they actually use their software to built
> > their site! That said, neither impressed with the output of their site nor
> > their gallery of sites. Agree with Andy here....
>
> Incidentally, the W3C Markup Validation Service found 0 errors with the
> Freeway site but 19 with the Adobe site. Oops, I forgot, validation is
> apparently useless. But isn't it adherence to standards that should bring
> about uniformity in presentation of a website amongst all browsers?
Why should I see the site the same on my 20 inch iMac as on my small
display, colour restricted PDA or cell phone? That is what all the web
site tools I've seen so far fail to handle. Maybe because it turns out
to be a really hard problem.
Eric Lindsay
> There is indeed software, available now for the Macintosh, that allows one to
> construct a website using WYSIWYG methods and with no requirement that the
> user should have any knowledge of such as HTML. That software is Freeway
> Express and Freeway Pro. Freeway works much like InDesign in that the website
> author concentrates on appearance and action and not upon the underlying code
> that makes things happen. As an aside, the resulting HTML of a Freeway
> generated website is quite good, usually passing the strictest of code
> verification.
Actually, if you want an interesting challenge, try to write a
traditional restaurant menu using Freeway (or any other wysiwyg tool on
a Mac).
The challenging bit is to have a dotted leader from the meal to the
price, and for that dotted leader to cope with any browser window size
or font size the reader uses, so the meal is on the left, and the price
is on the right regardless of browser changes.
Steak and eggs ....................................... 10.95
over easy, sunny side up, scrambled
Bacon and eggs .......................................10.95
over easy, sunny side up, scrambled
I have two or three ways of doing that manually (all of them with
unacceptable problems). It seemed so simple when I first tried it.
Eric Lindsay
> 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.
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).
Tom Stiller
Toby A Inkster <usenet...@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
> <p><strong>Beware! To touch these wires is
> <strong>instant death</strong>. Anyone found
> doing so will be prosecuted.</strong></p>
>
Either the second sentence is unnecessary, or the first is false. :)
I wonder how Mr. Inkster would mark *that* in HTML?
--
Tom Stiller
PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF
Tom Stiller
Toby A Inkster <usenet...@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
> TaliesinSoft wrote:
>
> > But isn't it adherence to standards that should bring about uniformity
> > in presentation of a website amongst all browsers?
>
> Not really -- as I stated earlier, HTML is not a document presentation
> format; it's a language for marking up the *meaning* of the document.
HTML defines the structure of the document, not its meaning; that's the
job of the human who reads the document.
Well designed web pages separate the _presentation_ of the of the
document from its structure by moving the former to formal CSS
directives.
>
> Once the browser has interpreted the meaning of the document, it should
> convey that meaning to the user. Different browsers will use different
> methods of conveying meaning to the user: that's kind of the whole point
> of even having different browsers. If different browsers displayed things
> the same, why would we need more than one browser per operating system?
In a word: performance. Modern browsers do more than just display HTML
markup. They add value with things like ad-blockers, tabbed pages, RSS
feeds, bookmark styles, etc.
>
> How are Firefox, the Nokia browser, Lynx and Jaws *ever* going to achieve
> "uniformity in presentation"? It's ridiculous to even suggest that they
> should try.
I'm glad the good folks who write browsers don't share that view.
Benjamin Niemann
If "good" browser developers think that they could achieve "uniformity in
presentation" in FF, ... Jaws - what do average browser developers think?
That certainly explains a lot...
--
Benjamin Niemann
Email: pink at odahoda dot de
WWW: http://pink.odahoda.de/
Spartanicus
>Steak and eggs ....................................... 10.95
> over easy, sunny side up, scrambled
>Bacon and eggs .......................................10.95
> over easy, sunny side up, scrambled
>
>I have two or three ways of doing that manually (all of them with
>unacceptable problems). It seemed so simple when I first tried it.
http://homepage.ntlworld.ie/spartanicus/eric2.htm
--
Spartanicus
TaliesinSoft
<NOwebmasterSPAM-2D...@freenews.iinet.net.au>):
Here is the result of validation of a Freeway Pro produced website.....
This Page Is Valid HTML 4.01 Strict!
In Freeway Pro one can choose whether the generated code will conform to
transitional or strict.
The website can be found at
<http://homepage.mac.com/taliesinsoft/Adams/>
The validator can be found at
David Segall
No! It leaves most of the width of my 1680 by 1050 screen blank. On
the other hand, if you had succeeded in putting the prices on the
right of my screen, the ... would have been ridiculously long.
I think Eric has managed to pose the quintessential web design
problem. I don't think there is a solution, let alone a WYSIWYG editor
that can do it, but I am really curious to see some. A menu that looks
right from 800x600px to 1680x1050px is a winner. Considerable extra
credit goes to no Java script and server-side processing is cheating.
Eric, please post your "three ways".
TaliesinSoft
<1171622908.8...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
> On 16 Feb, 00:42, TaliesinSoft <taliesins...@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> I find it interesting, er, uh, amusing, that Adobe, the marketers of not
>> one, but two high priced website development tools, GoLive and
>> Dreamweaver, apparently don't use either to develop their own website.
>
> I find it irrelevant.
>
> Whether Dreamweevil is good or bad has _no_ influence on whether Freeway
> is good or bad. Nor does whether Adobe have a good or a bad site.
But I made no comparison of "good / bad" between Freeway and Dreamweaver. But
I do find it interesting that Adobe opted to not use their own product to
develop their own website while Softpress did. As far as the two websites go,
nothing has stood out to me that makes one inherently superior to the other.
As to why Adobe chose to not use Dreamweaver, that would be interesting to
know.
TaliesinSoft
(in article <1171622908.8...@q2g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
> With Freeway I can design a trivial site with "a short word in a small
> coloured box." On my desktop this sits as a tiny box up near the top
> of the page, just as I intended. On my phone (200px screen) it fills
> the whole display and is far bigger than the contained word. This is
> _not_ what I intended to happen. Freeway takes this bogus concept of
> "pixel identical rendering in all contexts" and forces it across the
> web, even to devices where it's inappropriate to do so (the font size
> in pixels varies widely between my desktop and my phone). Just try re-
> sizing the font or changing browser window size in a Freeway-designed
> site!
Actually, I think the long term answer lies in the presentation device,
computer, cellphone, television, etc., having the capability of arbitrarily
magnifying, reducing, and navigating the image. This has already happened
somewhat with Mac OS X (at least as it currently runs on my MacBook Pro) in
that I can arbitrarily magnify an image and yet navigate to those parts of
the image that might, as a result of the magnification, be off screen. My
expectation is that this separation of display from hardware specifics will
be better in Leopard. We'll see.
Andy Dingley
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:04:48 -0600, Eric Lindsay wrote (in article
> > Unacceptable product. Web site uses transitional HTML instead of Strict.
> > Uses tables for layout of a non-table text.
> The website can be found at
> <http://homepage.mac.com/taliesinsoft/Adams/>
Nurse! New keyboards and the monitor wipes please! 8-)
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.
TaliesinSoft
<150220072338430009%dave@N_O_T_T_H_I_Sbalderstone.ca>):
[responding to my request for definitions for "markup" and "page description"
languages]
> HTML as a markup language describes parameters for a multitude of possible
> interpreters rendering a page, based on what can be fairly vague
> instructions, so that an instruction like 'font size="-2"' will display
> different absolute results depending on the client doing the
> interpretation (IE/Safari/Firefox/Omniweb/etc).
>
> Postscript, OTOH, is a specific description language based on a known and
> consistent interpreter, where an instruction such as '90 rotate 0 -612
> translate' will do *exactly* the same thing no matter where it is
> interpreted (HP/Agfa/Harlequin/etc), and display *exactly* the same result.
Thanks! Maybe you ought to start writing for Wikipedia! :-)
TaliesinSoft
<1171641646.8...@t69g2000cwt.googlegroups.com>):
[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! 8-)
>
> 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
Andy Dingley
> Actually, I think the long term answer lies in the presentation device,
> computer, cellphone, television, etc., having the capability of arbitrarily
> magnifying, reducing, and navigating the image.
Not at all. For one thing, a simple form of this is just scrolling,
moving an small viewport around a larger virtual canvas. This needs
manual intervention and it's annoying.
My trivial web design problem is "Show an icon of a coloured rectangle
slightly bigger than a word of text". By sizing the rectangle in ems I
can do this. Even better I might not size the rectangle at all, simply
set some internal padding on it (in ems). This works on my destop and
my phone and it looks proportionately similar on both.
My phone differs from my desktop in having characters with fewer
pixels to them. This goes with the territory and isn't changing any
time soon. By using a relative size unit, I easily produce a page that
looks proportionately similar on both devices.
By pixel-sizing and absolutely controlling the box, the wrong-headed
attempt to control _everything_ to the last pixel has produced a
visual result that's grossly different and inappropriate.
Andy Dingley
> But I made no comparison of "good / bad" between Freeway and Dreamweaver.
Of course you did, as a straw man and a diversion.
Freeway has valid HTML but poor use of CSS positioning. Rather than
discussing the pixel-based absolute positioning of Freeway, you then
diverted into Adobe's non-valid products. No-one else mentioned
Adobe.
TaliesinSoft
<1171644407.7...@l53g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>):
Earlier in this thread Jonathan A. Little stated in regards to Freeway....
Give them credit that unlike MS they actually use their software to built
their site!
That piqued my curiosity enough for me to see what Adobe did with their site.
There was no attempt at diversion.
As for Freeway using a pixel-based scheme for positioning, the intent, a good
one in my opinion, is to provide some assurance as to how the resulting site
will appear. I'm afraid I'm not much of a fan of so-called "liquid" layouts.
All one has to do is to go to such as the Softpress (the implementors of
Freeway) or Adobe sites and start enlarging the text and soon the layout
degenerates into a hodgepodge of misplaced parts. To me, and apparently there
is much disagreement here, the better solution is uniform magnification
and/or reduction of the entire page.
Toby A Inkster
> I think Eric has managed to pose the quintessential web design
> problem. I don't think there is a solution
Jeez Louise! It's hardly rocket science.
http://examples.tobyinkster.co.uk/food-menu
Tested:
Firefox 1.0.6 (Linux)
Opera 9.10 (Linux)
Konqueror 3.4.2 (Linux)
IE 6 (Win XP)
IE 7 (Win XP)
TaliesinSoft
(in article <1171641646.8...@t69g2000cwt.googlegroups.com>):
[commenting in regards to the Ansel Adams website, the site to which I posted
a link]
> 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.
In the Ansel Adams site the 63 images included take a total of 596 KB, and
the code in the index.html page takes 40 KB. So why should I be concerned as
to just what construct the code uses given that the download time for the
code is a minimal component of the total download time for the page,
especially given that the generated code works as intended on every browser
on which it was checked?
As an aside, an advantage of Freeway is that if a new release makes an
improvement in the generated code it is a trivial matter to re-upload the
site to benefit from that improvement.
Toby A Inkster
> But the fact remains that the website, whether one likes it or not, displays
> in every browser tested, six of them, *exactly* as intended.
Here's how it looks in my web browser:
http://examples.tobyinkster.co.uk/jamesleoryan
It that "exactly as intended"?
Ed Seedhouse
<helpfu...@nom.de.plume.com> wrote:
>> "markup language" is not the same as "page description language".
>>
>> HTML markup doesn't specify *how* information is to be displayed, but
>> the relationships between information components.
>
>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 is not. A <strong></strong> element tells the browser that the
text within it is to be given a "strong emphasis". How this is done is
up to the browser and modifiable with CSS without affecting the semantic
meaingn of the element.
A <b></b> element is presentational, telling the browser to render in
bold face, and that is why it is depreciated in new versions of html in
favour of the semantic <strong></strong>. The fact that most browsers
display strong text in boldface is entirely beside the point. "Bold"
has little meaning to a speaking browser, while "strong" still has it's
original meaning.
>HTML code simply tells a browser how to render a page on-screen.
No it doesn't, not in it's modern form. It tells the browser the
meaning or structure of the content, and says nothing at all about how
this is to be presented. That's what CSS is for.
Toby A Inkster
> Give them credit that unlike MS they actually use their software to built
> their site!
Whose software do Microsoft use to build their site?
Andy Dingley
<http://homepage.mac.com/taliesinsoft/Adams/>
> But the fact remains that the website, whether one likes it or not, displays
> in every browser tested, six of them, *exactly* as intended.
That's not even a web page, it's just a picture of a web page.
It fails in one of the most important user-agents of all, Googlebot.
It's totally inaccessible for anything or anyone who isn't happy with
a pure-image fixed-size rendition. You don't even show the title or
credits banner in text, just as an image!
> If the results
> are as wanted, why should I be concerned about the underlying code structure
You haven't even seen the results (or ever will). You've seen one
possible result, for one possible user. If you try hard, you might see
a handful more. You've still not seen how I see it, or how the guy in
another thread with VT100-only access sees it. That's why it's
important to understand the underlying principles and technology, and
to work at that level (or with a tool that works at that level).
Pretty soon you'll probably switch to the logical fallacy of proof by
example.
"It doesn't matter if images are sized in pixels"
"This website is about images"
"This website works fine in pixel sizes"
which leads to the erroneous generalisation
"All websites can be sized in pixels"
> [responding to my giving a reference to a site produced with Freeway Pro that
> passed "strict" validation]
You should fix up the mis-use of <a> name and id attributes though.
TaliesinSoft
<ko6ha4-...@ophelia.g5n.co.uk>):
> TaliesinSoft wrote:
>
>> Give them credit that unlike MS they actually use their software to built
>> their site!
>
> Whose software do Microsoft use to build their site?
Although I commented on the Microsoft site I was not the person who posted
the original assertion. I haven't the foggiest what Microsoft may have used
to develop their site.
Bergamot
>
> To me, and apparently there
> is much disagreement here, the better solution is uniform magnification
> and/or reduction of the entire page.
Spoken like a true dee-ziner. ;)
Real people don't need or care about page zoom, text zoom is plenty
sufficient. If your layout falls apart as a result, then it's a flawed
design.
--
Berg
TaliesinSoft
(in article <qj6ha4-...@ophelia.g5n.co.uk>):
> TaliesinSoft wrote:
>
>> But the fact remains that the website, whether one likes it or not,
>> displays
>> in every browser tested, six of them, *exactly* as intended.
>
> Here's how it looks in my web browser:
>
> http://examples.tobyinkster.co.uk/jamesleoryan
>
> It that "exactly as intended"?
Obviously not! And just what browser are you using?
TaliesinSoft
(in article <1171647705....@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>):
[commenting in regards to my Ansel Adams website]
> You haven't even seen the results (or ever will). You've seen one possible
> result, for one possible user. If you try hard, you might see a handful more.
> You've still not seen how I see it, or how the guy in another thread with
> VT100-only access sees it. That's why it's important to understand the
> underlying principles and technology, and to work at that level (or with a
> tool that works at that level).
I've watched as quite a few different persons, some using Macs, some using
PCs, viewed the site via a broad variety of browsers and in every case the
display was exactly as intended. The site is a pictorial site and therefore
totally inappropriate for viewing via a text only browser. I suppose I could
put in a disclaimer to that effect.
Bergamot
> On 16 Feb, 15:56, TaliesinSoft <taliesins...@mac.com> wrote:
>
>> Actually, I think the long term answer lies in the presentation device,
>> computer, cellphone, television, etc., having the capability of arbitrarily
>> magnifying, reducing, and navigating the image.
>
> Not at all. For one thing, a simple form of this is just scrolling,
> moving an small viewport around a larger virtual canvas. This needs
> manual intervention and it's annoying.
This is pretty much how Flash zoom works (when it works at all), and
it's one of the most user-unfriendly things I've ever had to suffer.
--
Berg
TaliesinSoft
(in article <1171647705....@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>):
[commenting in regards to the Ansel Adams website, a link to which I posted
earlier]
> You should fix up the mis-use of <a> name and id attributes though.
Could you elaborate here? I'd appreciate it.
Andy Dingley
> The site is a pictorial site and therefore
> totally inappropriate for viewing via a text only browser.
Told you!
Bergamot
>
> This is beautiful in the Adams-like clarity of its demonstration of
> cluelessness.
Take a look with stylesheets disabled. :)
--
Berg
William Mitchell
> >
> > Here's how it looks in my web browser:
> >
> > http://examples.tobyinkster.co.uk/jamesleoryan
> >
> > It that "exactly as intended"?
>
> Obviously not! And just what browser are you using?
>
In fairness, it's not entirely reasonable to expect something which is
nothing but a collection of pictures to look like anything useful in a text
browser.
--
Bill Mitchell
Dept of Mathematics, The University of Florida
PO Box 118105, Gainesville, FL 32611--8105
mitc...@math.ufl.edu (352) 392-0281 x284
the red dot
"Dylan Parry" <use...@dylanparry.com> wrote in message
news:45d576f5$0$757$bed6...@news.gradwell.net...
> the red dot wrote:
>
> > which reminds me of the story of the americans who spent millions of
dollars
> > making a pen that worked in zero gravity, the russians just used a
pencil.
>
> Nope. The Russians didn't use pencils. Have you ever got a bit of pencil
> in your eye? I can tell you that it isn't very nice. Now try writing in
> zero-gravity with bits of graphite breaking off and floating around. A
> nightmare to say the least.
>
> The Russians used good-old-fashioned ballpoint pens, which work fine in
> zero-gravity as they only rely on the flow of ink, which will occur
> regardless of which way you hold a pen in space. Which is the opposite
> of what happens on Earth, ie. hold the pen upside-down and gravity will
> cause the ink to stop flowing. No gravity == no problem.
>
jeez i feel like a right idiot now. thanks for putting me in my place.
TaliesinSoft
<53mai6F...@mid.individual.net>):
Now being dumb, how do I view the site with stylesheets disabled?
Tom Stiller
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:04:48 -0600, Eric Lindsay wrote (in article
> <NOwebmasterSPAM-2D...@freenews.iinet.net.au>):
>
> > In article <0001HW.C1F9E440...@news.supernews.com>,
> > TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> >
> >> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 10:10:25 -0600, fgdg wrote (in article
> >> <1171555825.5...@j27g2000cwj.googlegroups.com>):
> >>
> >>> Why do we put up with web design software?
> >> There is indeed software, available now for the Macintosh, that allows
> >> one to construct a website using WYSIWYG methods and with no requirement
> >> that the user should have any knowledge of such as HTML. That software is
> >> Freeway Express and Freeway Pro. Freeway works much like InDesign in that
> >> the website author concentrates on appearance and action and not upon the
> >> underlying code that makes things happen. As an aside, the resulting HTML
> >> of a Freeway generated website is quite good, usually passing the
> >> strictest of code verification.
> >
> > Unacceptable product. Web site uses transitional HTML instead of Strict.
> > Uses tables for layout of a non-table text. Getting the code to validate
> > is one thing. Getting it to be acceptable is another. Can you point me to
> > any page done with Freeway that doesn't have these problems?
>
> Here is the result of validation of a Freeway Pro produced website.....
>
> This Page Is Valid HTML 4.01 Strict!
>
> In Freeway Pro one can choose whether the generated code will conform to
> transitional or strict.
>
> The website can be found at
>
> <http://homepage.mac.com/taliesinsoft/Adams/>
>
> The validator can be found at
>
> <http://validator.w3.org/>
Curious, when displayed with FireFox i see the string "FreeCounter" in
the upper left-hand corner, but nothing when displayed with Safari.
I use WebPics to produce this type of photo site. I think it produces
faster loading code.
--
Tom Stiller
PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF
TaliesinSoft
(in article <tomstiller-809E3...@comcast.dca.giganews.com>):
> Curious, when displayed with FireFox i see the string "FreeCounter" in the
> upper left-hand corner, but nothing when displayed with Safari.
I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.1 on my MacBook Pro running OS X 10.4.8 and I don't
see the "FreeCounter" in the upper left-hand corner. The FreeCounter is a
facility provided with Freeway Pro that documents visits to the site.
> I use WebPics to produce this type of photo site. I think it produces faster
> loading code.
I have no experience with WebPics. Freeway Pro, when the site is
published/uploaded, will take actions to minimize the size of an included
picture. That aside, all of the pictures on the Ansel Adams site have been
pre-sized in Photoshop prior to their inclusion in the site.
Andy Dingley
> In fairness, it's not entirely reasonable to expect something which is
> nothing but a collection of pictures to look like anything useful in a text
> browser.
Why ever not! It should look like a list of pictures.
Tom Stiller
William Mitchell <mitc...@math.ufl.edu> wrote:
> TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> writes:
>
> > >
> > > Here's how it looks in my web browser:
> > >
> > > http://examples.tobyinkster.co.uk/jamesleoryan
> > >
> > > It that "exactly as intended"?
> >
> > Obviously not! And just what browser are you using?
> >
>
> In fairness, it's not entirely reasonable to expect something which is
> nothing but a collection of pictures to look like anything useful in a text
> browser.
This might be the place for the "media" attribute of CSS. That way
there could be an appropriate description of the image content.
Andy Dingley
> > You should fix up the mis-use of <a> name and id attributes though.
>
> Could you elaborate here? I'd appreciate it.
You don't need the <a> elements at all. The id on the div is entirely
sufficient for the same purpose.
You've duplicated the values between <a name > and <div id > This is
permitted by the spec, but causes a problem with IE that treats them
both as the same namespace (details discussed a while ago).
You also have <a name="..." ></a> with empty element content. This was
a problem with older Operas. The spec says that there ought to be
content here.
Tom Stiller
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:33:47 -0600, Tom Stiller wrote
> (in article <tomstiller-809E3...@comcast.dca.giganews.com>):
>
> > Curious, when displayed with FireFox i see the string "FreeCounter" in the
> > upper left-hand corner, but nothing when displayed with Safari.
>
> I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.1 on my MacBook Pro running OS X 10.4.8 and I don't
> see the "FreeCounter" in the upper left-hand corner. The FreeCounter is a
> facility provided with Freeway Pro that documents visits to the site.
I'm using Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US;
rv:1.8.1.1) Gecko/20061204 Firefox/2.0.0.1 on a 7-- MHz G3 iMac and I
see the string "FreeCounter" in the upper left-hand corner.
>
> > I use WebPics to produce this type of photo site. I think it
> > produces faster loading code.
>
> I have no experience with WebPics. Freeway Pro, when the site is
> published/uploaded, will take actions to minimize the size of an included
> picture. That aside, all of the pictures on the Ansel Adams site have been
> pre-sized in Photoshop prior to their inclusion in the site.
WebPics will resize images according to specifications supplied at
creation time. An example can be seen at
<http://johnandjennswedding.com/jennsfamilypage.html>.
Ed Mullen
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:11:44 -0600, Bergamot wrote (in article
> <53mai6F...@mid.individual.net>):
>
>> Andy Dingley wrote:
>>> On 16 Feb, 15:40, TaliesinSoft <taliesins...@mac.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> <http://homepage.mac.com/taliesinsoft/Adams/>
>>> This is beautiful in the Adams-like clarity of its demonstration of
>>> cluelessness.
>> Take a look with stylesheets disabled. :)
>
> Now being dumb, how do I view the site with stylesheets disabled?
>
>
In SeaMonkey, View - Use Style - none. In Firefox, View - Page Style -
No Style. In Opera, View - Style - User mode.
--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net
http://mozilla.edmullen.net
http://abington.edmullen.net
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual trip around
the sun.
Andy Dingley
> This might be the place for the "media" attribute of CSS. That way
> there could be an appropriate description of the image content.
No need for the "media" feature, just let the page and its CSS degrade
naturally. This is what CSS is really good at, you have to work quite
hard to stop it working.
Andy Dingley
> In the Ansel Adams site the 63 images included take a total of 596 KB, and
> the code in the index.html page takes 40 KB. So why should I be concerned as
> to just what construct the code uses given that the download time for the
> code is a minimal component of the total download time for the page,
Again you're popping up these sophisticated but totally fallacies
arguments.
This isn't about the volume of the finished markup, it's about the
semantics of that markup and its robustness to varying display
contexts.
> especially given that the generated code works as intended on every browser
> on which it was checked?
That's because you think that "checking on browsers" is a sufficient
condition for good authoring.
> As an aside, an advantage of Freeway is that if a new release makes an
> improvement in the generated code it is a trivial matter to re-upload the
> site to benefit from that improvement.
Why is this useful? It's only an editor! It ought to be getting it
right first time. If you told me it was a compression algorithm, then
you might have a point.
dorayme
Dylan Parry <use...@dylanparry.com> wrote:
> the red dot wrote:
>
> > which reminds me of the story of the americans who spent millions of dollars
> > making a pen that worked in zero gravity, the russians just used a pencil.
>
> Nope. The Russians didn't use pencils. Have you ever got a bit of pencil
> in your eye? I can tell you that it isn't very nice. Now try writing in
> zero-gravity with bits of graphite breaking off and floating around. A
> nightmare to say the least.
>
> The Russians used good-old-fashioned ballpoint pens, which work fine in
> zero-gravity as they only rely on the flow of ink, which will occur
> regardless of which way you hold a pen in space. Which is the opposite
> of what happens on Earth, ie. hold the pen upside-down and gravity will
> cause the ink to stop flowing. No gravity == no problem.
The equation is not good. If the ink is in the middle of the
plastic sleeve then there is no easy way to get it to to flow to
the ball.
--
dorayme
TaliesinSoft
<1171654311.4...@s48g2000cws.googlegroups.com>):
>> As an aside, an advantage of Freeway is that if a new release makes an
>> improvement in the generated code it is a trivial matter to re-upload the
>> site to benefit from that improvement.
>
> Why is this useful? It's only an editor! It ought to be getting it right
> first time. If you told me it was a compression algorithm, then you might
> have a point.
Freeway maintains its own internal description of the site and the objects
contained therein. It is only at the moment of publish/upload that the actual
code for the site is generated. If a new version of Freeway is released, one
that perhaps produces better code, all one has to do is to repeat the
publish/upload action to take advantage of the change. There is absolutely no
need to revise the Freeway description of the site itself.
TaliesinSoft
<tomstiller-DB63F...@comcast.dca.giganews.com>):
>> I have no experience with WebPics. Freeway Pro, when the site is
>> published/uploaded, will take actions to minimize the size of an included
>> picture. That aside, all of the pictures on the Ansel Adams site have
>> been pre-sized in Photoshop prior to their inclusion in the site.
>
> WebPics will resize images according to specifications supplied at
> creation time. An example can be seen at
> <http://johnandjennswedding.com/jennsfamilypage.html>
I have no idea what the difference in download time would be for identical
versions of a site, one implemented in Freeway and one in WebPics.
As an aside, I noted that the banner at the top of the site referenced
automatically centers while the pictures themselves are keyed to the left
margin. Is that something that is easily corrected in WebPics?
dorayme
Toby A Inkster <usenet...@tobyinkster.co.uk> wrote:
> David Segall wrote:
>
> > I think Eric has managed to pose the quintessential web design
> > problem. I don't think there is a solution
>
> Jeez Louise! It's hardly rocket science.
>
> http://examples.tobyinkster.co.uk/food-menu
>
> Tested:
> Firefox 1.0.6 (Linux)
> Opera 9.10 (Linux)
> Konqueror 3.4.2 (Linux)
> IE 6 (Win XP)
> IE 7 (Win XP)
Might not be rocket science but it is nice. And shows a level of
skill you seem helplessly unable to grade (except to play safe by
saying it is not at rocket science level). There would be people
wanting to kill you for this effortless command. You can hardly
expect the average home website builder to come up with that.
--
dorayme
Calum
> As to why Adobe chose to not use Dreamweaver, that would be interesting to
> know.
Probably because their website has been around for a lot longer than
they've owned Macromedia, and there wouldn't be much point in changing
over just for the hell of it.
dorayme
<1171649324.8...@m58g2000cwm.googlegroups.com>,
"Andy Dingley" <din...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
The heck he did. The conclusion in your prediction was "All
websites can be sized in pixels", whereas TaliesinSoft has not
gone so far. You don't actually need to put the boot in so hard,
you have made enough good and telling points.
--
dorayme
Paul Sture
Bergamot <berg...@visi.com> wrote:
How does one disable style sheets in Safari? Not important, but I'm
curious.
--
Paul Sture
Bergamot
> TaliesinSoft wrote:
>>
>> how do I view the site with stylesheets disabled?
>
> In SeaMonkey, View - Use Style - none.
If you have the Web Developer extension installed, try CTRL+SHIFT+S
I use this on a lot more sites than should be necessary. :(
--
Berg
Bergamot
> In article <0001HW.C1FB2C9D...@news.supernews.com>,
> TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
>>
>
> Curious, when displayed with FireFox i see the string "FreeCounter" in
> the upper left-hand corner, but nothing when displayed with Safari.
That's a 1x1 image that's located on a 3rd party server. "FreeCounter"
is the alt text.
--
Berg
TaliesinSoft
<er538b$m6v$2...@reader01.news.esat.net>):
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.
Jonathan N. Little
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 10:00:49 -0600, Andy Dingley wrote (in article
> <1171641646.8...@t69g2000cwt.googlegroups.com>):
>
> [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! 8-)
>> This is beautiful in the Adams-like clarity of its demonstration of
>> cluelessness.
>>
>> <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
>
Ant this is 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
--
Take care,
Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com
Tom Stiller
<doraymeRidThis-045...@news-vip.optusnet.com.au>,
dorayme <dorayme...@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
Shake it -- the way one does automatically when a ball-point won't write.
Tom Stiller
TaliesinSoft <talies...@mac.com> wrote:
> As an aside, I noted that the banner at the top of the site referenced
> automatically centers while the pictures themselves are keyed to the left
> margin. Is that something that is easily corrected in WebPics?
Yep.
Tom Stiller
"Andy Dingley" <din...@codesmiths.com> wrote:
Hmm, makes me wonder why they bothered to add "media: tty;" to the spec.
TaliesinSoft
<e3183$45d61cc9$40cba792$16...@NAXS.COM>):
> Ant this is what your page looks like on a medium monitor, hmmm not that's
> attractive!
>
> http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/alt.html.20070216.jpg
> alt.html.20070216.jpg (JPEG Image, 700x609 pixels)
>
> No this is a much better way and it will resize with your screen! Since it
> is just a list of thumbs just took about 10 min to do. You can restyle it
> to look completely different.
>
> http://www.littleworksstudio.com/temp/usenet/alt.html.20070216.php Better
> Way
Many thanks!
I actually considered having the width be flexible, as in your "Better Way"
example, but rejected it. Why I can't exactly remember at the moment, but
when the brain cells bounce properly I'll post the reason.
TaliesinSoft
<1-udnemaO63smUvY...@comcast.com>):
> TaliesinSoft wrote:
>> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 12:11:44 -0600, Bergamot wrote (in article
>> <53mai6F...@mid.individual.net>):
>>
>>> Andy Dingley wrote:
>>>> On 16 Feb, 15:40, TaliesinSoft <taliesins...@mac.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> <http://homepage.mac.com/taliesinsoft/Adams/>
>>>> This is beautiful in the Adams-like clarity of its demonstration of
>>>> cluelessness.
>>> Take a look with stylesheets disabled. :)
>>
>> Now being dumb, how do I view the site with stylesheets disabled?
>>
>>
>
> In SeaMonkey, View - Use Style - none. In Firefox, View - Page Style - No
> Style. In Opera, View - Style - User mode.
I tried the disabling in Firefox. The result was that the positioning of all
of the objects was forgotten and that everything appeared left justified in a
vertical lineup. The question now is what should Freeway have done in terms
of the generated code to correct that, if indeed correction is possible?
Calum
> On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 14:13:02 -0600, Calum wrote (in article
> <er538b$m6v$2...@reader01.news.esat.net>):
>
>> TaliesinSoft wrote:
>>
>>> As to why Adobe chose to not use Dreamweaver, that would be interesting
>>> to know.
>> Probably because their website has been around for a lot longer than
>> they've owned Macromedia, and there wouldn't be much point in changing
>> over just for the hell of it.
>
> 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.
Same reason, probably. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.