"Best Viewed with ANY BROWSER"?
Mark H. Wood
The other day I came across a group promoting "This page best viewed with *any
browser*", and like an idiot I didn't jot down the URL. I'd appreciate it if
someone could pass me the reference. aTdHvAaNnKcSe
--
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer +1 317 274 0749 [@disclaimer@]
MW...@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU Finger for more information.
Please try to be a little more insensitive.
Alan J. Flavell
On 14 Feb 1997, Mark H. Wood wrote:
> The other day I came across a group promoting "This page best viewed with *any
> browser*", and like an idiot I didn't jot down the URL.
_The_ URL? Altavista finds 62 candidates, try them for sighs.
Maybe this is the one you had in mind:
http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html
This one stood out in the index too :
Bunvenit pe pagina WWW a serverului TCX. Puteti gasi aici: paginile
utilizatorilor TCX si alte pagini gazduite, cum ar fi de exemplu
paginile GURU
62 seems too few, but then there are alternative versions of the slogan.
"best viewed with your favorite browser" turned up some further
samples, for example.
Matthew Harvey
This is it (or something similar). What a great concept!
http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html
Mark H. Wood wrote:
>
> The other day I came across a group promoting "This page best viewed with *any
Henry Churchyard
Mark H. Wood <mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu> wrote:
> The other day I came across a group promoting "This page best viewed
> with *any browser*", and like an idiot I didn't jot down the URL.
I refer to this from my site
http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~churchh/htnimglt.html ; I like the logo
attached below best... ;-)
Mark Johnson
mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>The other day I came across a group promoting "This page best viewed with *any
>browser*", and like an idiot I didn't jot down
I think what is idiotic is this notion that one page fits all (and
when this becomes more true, you make not like the reason why - see
below). Common sense, today, given the state of things, would rule
against such if people weren't trapped by a purely academic fixation
on concept over reality.
The problem, at present, is that the standard set by NN and IE
conflicts with that of the purists. This forces them to the extreme of
demanding the web authors avoid all tags and attributes which do not
conform with their standard, and those few copies of various browsers
with which _they_ are comfortable. However, I've taken the trouble to
point out that in any industry, and where firms get together and form
standards groups, the standard is that which is implemented, not that
which is rejected or still sits on the shelf. [And the purist
argument, from some, has not even been so reasonable as this when it
demands that critics be labelled, or 'cast thee out', or the like as
if all their academic training had left them credulous and without any
will of their own that they demand a strongman, an authority figure,
to act by his own arbitrary rule for the 'good of all' - frightening.]
And the problem between NN and IE, at present, is that some tags and
attributes, if they don't conflict, are not shared. This can be
remedied, to some degree, by overloading the page with both elements.
But this is not so different from various proprietary or generic
browsers that might be 'embedded' in this pair of 'internet
sunglasses' (as someone here suggested) or that particular palmtop.
In fact, the purist argument often relies not on the present, actual
state of things, but upon their crystal gaze into the future. It might
be they don't so much object to having to constantly update and rework
web sites as they are simply unconcerned with what is actual and
current and think rather of what is possible and imaginary; and would
continue to do so, year after year. They talk of the 'ubiquitous'
world, in essence, of calculators in the kitchen drawer being replaced
by a sort of internet pager; palmtops in the bureau beside the bed,
voice activated assistants in the car (though the danger of cell
phones, alone, has recently been reported), WebTV, Euro-TV (or
whatever), new encoding schemes, wideband satellite delivery, and so
on. It isn't even so much the browser that has them worried, but the
screen.
The fact is, when the 'net' becomes just another sort of cable
television (and what with MMX, these new bandwidth enhancement
methods, &c &c it does seem the whole trend is to turn ISPs into
little more than cable operators), not only will the HTML thing be
pushed further to the background than it is, now (what with generated
pages, and even those from Office or other software), but the European
Mom with her vanity site for herself and her family, who doesn't know
resolution or equipment, or much of anything, and much of the rest,
now, the supposedly 'clean' and transcendent sites, will probably have
to learn pro video techniques or content themselves with a fraction of
the hits they even enjoy today. I assume, that is, they will be unable
to compete with the sitcoms, the network news, the on-line versions of
print magazines, and the like. Or, in other words, it may be 'the net'
won't be conquered by Netscape or Microsoft (or some internet in a
box) but will be transformed by the same clowns who give us precisely
the same 'content' for that mindsucking box that a few of us are on
'the net' still hoping to avoid. (and hoping I'm wrong)
Peace.
Carsten Whimster
In <3306253...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
>mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>
>>The other day I came across a group promoting "This page best viewed with *any
>>browser*", and like an idiot I didn't jot down
>
>I think what is idiotic is this notion that one page fits all (and
>when this becomes more true, you make not like the reason why - see
>below).
[etc.]
>Peace.
Not likely :)
Carsten Whimster
car...@edm2.com
EDM/2 Editor-in-chief
================================================
The Electronic Developer Magazine for OS/2
http://www.edm2.com/
================================================
Alan J. Flavell
On Sat, 15 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
> I think what is idiotic is this notion that one page fits all
tell that to Tim BL...
> The problem, at present, is that the standard set by NN and IE
> conflicts with that of the purists.
Where can we read these new standards documents, then?
The mass market browsers are reasonably capable of rendering standard
HTML, even if they've missed out many of the nice extensions supported
by better browsers. If you write HTML that's dumbed down to HTML3.2
(the current minimal standard set by the mass market browsers) you'll be
able to reach most readers.
> This forces them to the extreme of
> demanding the web authors avoid all tags and attributes which do not
> conform with their standard,
If I recall correctly, you were asked several days ago for citations
to prove this, and have so far failed to provide any. Nevertheless
in the face of all evidence to the contrary you continue to bleat the
same tune as before.
> point out that in any industry,
> and where firms get together and form
> standards groups, the standard is that which is implemented,
Don't we know it. All the things that authors were asking for,
and that would have solved many of the problems arising on this
group, were studiously avoided by the mass market browser makers.
But never mind... it's still possible to write HTML that's accessible
to those "industry standard" browsers, even without all the enhancements
that authors were asking for.
> In fact, the purist argument often relies not on the present, actual
> state of things, but upon their crystal gaze into the future.
HTML 3.0 expired in 1995, it was based on ideas from a year or two
earlier, which you can still read at W3C. But of course you're too
busy posting to usenet to worry about your sources. Nobody's claiming
that HTML3.0 was the last word - it was never actually finished - but
at least it extended the principles (of portable HTML markup) instead
of regressing to 1980's WYSIWYG "design" - the very thing that TimBL's
concept aimed to get free from.
--
"1996 was 2.6% up on weirdness compared with 1995, but still didn't
reach the weirdness level of 1993" - news brief on ITV teletext
Mark Johnson
"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>On Sat, 15 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
>
>If I recall correctly, you were asked several days ago for citations
>to prove this, and have so far failed to provide any.
I'm probably not getting all the messages on my server. They've been
having nothing but problems for almost a week. I don't recall such a
ridiculous demand, in other words.
>Nevertheless
>in the face of all evidence to the contrary you continue to bleat the
>same tune as before.
You are being intentionally insulting. Suit yourself. But you can do
better, sometimes, than what seems to suit you.
>> In fact, the purist argument often relies not on the present, actual
>> state of things, but upon their crystal gaze into the future.
>
>HTML 3.0 expired in 1995,
Where the argument is based on proposed COMDEX-like hardware, all bets
are off since _I_ don't believe in fortune telling. I prefer to face
reality as it is. And the reality is desktop PCs, running NN and IE.
>But of course you're too busy posting to usenet to worry
You're doing it, again. If you believe so much in the purist position,
alright and fine. I _fail_ to understand, however, your ad hominem
approach as if you were defending religion of a sort, and I had
somehow offended your god or gods. Is that not the sense one might
get?
Peace.
Mark H. Wood
In article <3306253...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
> mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>
>>The other day I came across a group promoting "This page best viewed with *any
>>browser*", and like an idiot I didn't jot down
>
> I think what is idiotic is this notion that one page fits all (and
> when this becomes more true, you make not like the reason why - see
> against such if people weren't trapped by a purely academic fixation
> on concept over reality.
Thank you so very much for carefully addressing the question. The actual
answer is much shorter: http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html .
Sincere thanks to those who pointed this out.
}flame on{
[industry-lapdog rant deleted]
> The fact is, when the 'net' becomes just another sort of cable
> television (and what with MMX, these new bandwidth enhancement
> methods, &c &c it does seem the whole trend is to turn ISPs into
> little more than cable operators)
Some of us are trying to prevent, or at least forestall, that kind of
degradation -- to see that data networks become useful rather than merely
trendy.
> not only will the HTML thing be
> pushed further to the background than it is, now (what with generated
> pages, and even those from Office or other software), but the European
> Mom with her vanity site for herself and her family, who doesn't know
> resolution or equipment, or much of anything, and much of the rest,
> now, the supposedly 'clean' and transcendent sites, will probably have
> to learn pro video techniques or content themselves with a fraction of
> the hits they even enjoy today.
God forbid we should be more interested in the utility of our content than in
hit-rates. How many people read Galileo or Dante today? but how many lives are
changed forever by _Roseanne_? Some sites don't live and die by the amount of
advertising money they can rake in.
> I assume, that is, they will be unable
> to compete with the sitcoms, the network news, the on-line versions of
> print magazines, and the like. Or, in other words, it may be 'the net'
> won't be conquered by Netscape or Microsoft (or some internet in a
> box) but will be transformed by the same clowns who give us precisely
> the same 'content' for that mindsucking box that a few of us are on
> 'the net' still hoping to avoid. (and hoping I'm wrong)
Sounds like we share some ideals, but I'm not setting up gigs of hard data for
passive amusement. Nobody's going to gather friends in the break room to talk
about the terrific analysis of early Midwest expansion that he discovered last
night. Few people take the trouble to equip themselves for the appreciation of
the kind of material that we benighted "purists" are making available.
--
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer +1 317 274 0749 [@disclaimer@]
MW...@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU Finger for more information.
I am endeavoring to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and
bearskins. -- Spock
MT Byers
"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>But of course you're too
>busy posting to usenet to worry about your sources.
This from a guy who seems always to have 20-30 posts in this group alone!
No offense meant--I read most of these posts for the gleanable nuggets they
contain--but I frequently find the tone rather too curt. I can't be the
only one, can I?
[Curtness] x 20 = [a lot of curtness] (Computations "ballpark.")
I genuinely hope and believe you have purposes more elevated than
self-aggrandizement. Maybe you could better achieve them by reducing the
vitriol?
Michael
Frazzled
I've heard of elitist, but this is truly incredible arrogance.
(benighted?)
--
Jon
reply to MrBo...@msn.com
> Few people take the trouble to equip themselves for the appreciation of
> the kind of material that we benighted "purists" are making available.
Tero Paananen
In <w4u3n96...@loiosh.kei.com> Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> writes:
>Documents, when written portably, don't need constant tweaking to be
>rendered reasonably on new technologies or new browsers.
Which is of course a horrendous thought for yer average kludge designer,
the poor sod won't be making any money out of it after the first check.
-TPP
Mark Johnson
Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>MHW> == mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood)
>MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
>
> MHW> http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html .
>[tables compatibility] was added to Lynx almost a
>year ago, in fact. This is *why* people suggest ALT attributes for client
>side image maps.
Well, fine then. Which simulator or snapshot page do you recommend for
www.sun.com (just for ex.)? Please tell me. If Lynx is up to it, fine.
If not, be honest.
>Okay, I'll tell you. It [Mosaic] won't use client side image maps at all,
Same for Lynx, I think. But . . .
>Well, the problem there is that you can't validate against a Netscape
>"standard" because they don't publish a DTD to validate against.
And, yet, there's CSE, and any other extensible validator that comes
along. Go figure.
>They're the industry, pretty much. Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Netscape...
I would have thought so, as well. And, yet, No Netscape stickers?
Funny, for all the purist's delight, I'm not sure I've ever seen a No
Explorer sticker? Might lead one with a suspicious disposition to
wonder.
>The most commonly hit page in my homepage directory
What's the URL, if I may ask?
>Documents, when written portably, don't need constant tweaking to be
>rendered reasonably on new technologies or new browsers.
You confuse reasonable maintenance with 'thrashing an account' (or
what have you). Things change. They may change for the worse. But it's
not cause for fear, even at that, but, and not to sound cliched,
perhaps an opportunity beating your on your thick head, if you could
only sense it. (and I refer to myself, since obv I don't know what
_your_ head looks like)
Peace.
Kai Chung
"Frazzled" <fraz...@sw.bell.net> wrote:
Quote from a copy of Merriam Webster:
"benighted
1. overtaken by darkness or night"
I don't see any arrogance (given his views) in his choice of words.
Kai.
Disclaimer: They're my opinions, but feel free to share.
Mark Johnson
>> "Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>In another piece of selective quoting that verged on the dishonest,
Seriously? Were there any examples, below, that you had in mind?
>in response to the following claim by M.J, which I'm now reinstating for
>context:
>
>|> The problem, at present, is that the standard set by NN and IE
>|> conflicts with that of the purists. This forces them to the extreme of
>|> demanding the web authors avoid all tags and attributes which do not
>|> conform with their standard,
>
>I assumed that the "them" referred to the "purists" rather than
>to Netscape and MS...
And the sky _is_ often blue on sunny days. You're right. I guess I
misunderstand your confusion, here.
>> >If I recall correctly, you were asked several days ago for citations
>> >to prove this, and have so far failed to provide any.
>
>In truth I find it was something slightly different that you had
>been challenged to produce evidence for - extract from earlier
>thread:
Though _I_ was the one verging . . . well.
>| > (which the purists seem to insist does not even
>| > exist)
>
>| Rubbish. I challenge you to provide a quote that, taken in context,
>| says any such thing.
>
>but of course you didn't respond to that either.
The context is their argument that NN and IE should not be supported
as NN and IE, but rather as limited platforms where it conforms with
the purist standard. I keep saying, and have been saying, it's the
wrong way 'round. It's the industry producers, the manufacturers, in
their products that make it to the channel, to the shelves and shop
floor, that set the standard, maybe with the help of committees and
panels formed for that purpose, but to that purpose.
>> I'm probably not getting all the messages on my server. They've been
>> having nothing but problems for almost a week. I don't recall such a
>> ridiculous demand, in other words.
>
>So, you haven't actually seen any "purists" saying things that support
>your assertion, and now you get all huffy
If not huffy, nor puffy, nor throwing a tantrum. I simply wrote, I
don't recall such a ridiculous demand (in other words).
>misrepresenting what other people have said and then refusing to cite
>any evidence to support your claims.
How and when and where have I misrepresented the purist folk? I think,
rather, you are the one misrepresenting _me_, because you don't follow
the argument - you don't understand what I'm saying (or don't wish to,
more to the point). This is called a 'flame', isn't it? You're flaming
me, right?
>> >Nevertheless
>> >in the face of all evidence to the contrary you continue to bleat the
>> >same tune as before.
>>
>> You are being intentionally insulting.
>
>I am describing your actions.
Falsely, ANNNDDD . . . in an insulting fashion. But, hey, you're
convincing _me_.
>You lost me.
I know. Anyway . . .
Peace.
Christopher Davis
MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
ckd> [tables compatibility] was added to Lynx almost a year ago, in fact.
ckd> This is *why* people suggest ALT attributes for client side image
ckd> maps.
I didn't say "tables compatbility". I was referring to client-side image
maps. Table compatibility is probably of about the same vintage, though.
MJ> Well, fine then. Which simulator or snapshot page do you recommend for
MJ> www.sun.com (just for ex.)? Please tell me. If Lynx is up to it, fine.
MJ> If not, be honest.
Lynx (2.6; I haven't compiled 2.7 on this machine yet) works fine with the
"Left nav bar" imagemap, though you have to read the URLs instead of the
ALT attributes that they forgot to put in.
That page is actually not too Lynx-hostile (they could stand to throw in
ALT attributes on a picture or two, and the client-side image map).
They do offer a "text-only version" which looks nicer on Lynx, primarily
because it's got real HTML instead of "tables for layout" HTML, but the
"normal" version is quite usable. Not perfect, but more than usable.
ckd> It [Mosaic] won't use client side image maps at all,
MJ> Same for Lynx, I think. But . . .
As I noted, Lynx supports client-side image maps, and has for almost a
year. What it doesn't support is server-side image maps (well, it can
send "0,0" or no coordinates depending on the version, and a well-written
server-side map can deal with that).
ckd> Well, the problem there is that you can't validate against a Netscape
ckd> "standard" because they don't publish a DTD to validate against.
MJ> And, yet, there's CSE, and any other extensible validator that comes
MJ> along. Go figure.
Is CSE a validator, or just a sort of "superlint"? Does it use DTDs?
ckd> They're the industry, pretty much. Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Netscape...
MJ> I would have thought so, as well. And, yet, No Netscape stickers?
MJ> Funny, for all the purist's delight, I'm not sure I've ever seen a No
MJ> Explorer sticker? Might lead one with a suspicious disposition to
MJ> wonder.
You haven't looked very hard. I've seen 'em. Not as many as "Notscape"
or the like, but a lot of those date back to the first wave of
"<BLINK>-degraded" pages, after all.
I also don't think any of the W3C pages have little widgets either touting
or denigrating any particular browser (including their own). They do note
limitations in MSIE's CSS1 support, though.
ckd> The most commonly hit page in my homepage directory
MJ> What's the URL, if I may ask?
<URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/internet-tour.html >. It was
written for Mosaic 1.x as a little proof-of-concept for a demo my boss
wanted to do. It eventually wound up linked to by other folks and has now
appeared on so many lists of "neat links" or "useful starting points" that
I may as well leave it up (but I'm *not* going to do any maintenance at
all on it; half the links are probably dead by now).
ckd> Documents, when written portably, don't need constant tweaking to be
ckd> rendered reasonably on new technologies or new browsers.
MJ> You confuse reasonable maintenance with 'thrashing an account' (or
MJ> what have you). Things change. They may change for the worse.
I try to do reasonable maintenance on most of my pages (that one's an
exception because if it weren't getting hit so much, I'd just pull it).
However, it seems like for some people "maintaining a page" means "toss in
the latest tag from the Browser Wars" instead of "read through the
content, check the links, update where necessary".
MJ> But it's not cause for fear, even at that, but, and not to sound
MJ> cliched, perhaps an opportunity beating your on your thick head, if
MJ> you could only sense it. (and I refer to myself, since obv I don't
MJ> know what _your_ head looks like)
Heh. There are pictures linked off my home page. My head looks rather
balding these days, actually.
As for adding new layout tools or the like, I recently went through and
added style sheet support to all my "supported" pages. It took, um, a
couple minutes (linked style sheets are wonderful that way). I do
occasionally dink with the style sheet, but that doesn't make the "last
modified" lines on the pages update (nor should it).
--
Christopher Davis <c...@kei.com> <URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ >
"I conclude that the CDA is unconstitutional and that the First Amendment
denies Congress the power to regulate protected speech on the Internet."
-- Judge Stewart Dalzell in _ACLU v. Reno_
Mark Johnson
mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html .
Which read: "Some pages may look better in some browsers than
others, but they should all be readable by any browser."
Which which I agree with, to a point. As I have said.
However, where it suggests, "client side image maps on your pages have
alt tags", I just wonder if something like Lynx is up to it, or if
image maps have to be scrapped, entirely. What about old Mosaic
(though, I doubt many people are still using it)? Tell me.
And there's "make sure to provide a noframes option for people without
frames capable browsers", which has caused me no end of grief for
suggesting a text only alternative, even a parallel site as this,
here, might suggest. That is, truly, I agree.
And "if you need to use them [images] to enhance the look of your
pages, or if they are an integral part of the content on your site, go
ahead, but put image sizes on the graphics tags so that they won't
slow down loading, and try to reduce the size of the graphics you
use as much as possible" reads almost as if I wrote it. Which means,
in other words, I agree.
And the "Try to use proper HTML as much as possible", is something
that begs the question of the proper standard - a WDG form, or an
actual NN or IE browser in use in the real world. But, yes, I agree.
But, when it gets to "Rather than designing your site for a specific
browser and layout, and then adding in support for other browsers, you
should design your site to emphasize the content first, and then worry
about the layout", I must wonder how it is that content might seem so
divorced from presentation. This stuff above, which the page author
doesn't seem apparently to realize, concerns the look of the page, not
necessarily the information one is trying then to present. This last
suggestion, that is, looks inauthentic; artificially attached as if to
satisfy some cause or dogma, rather than the common sense embodied in
his or her previous suggestions.
>[industry-lapdog rant deleted]
If this insult is meant for me, you need to understand that industry
leaders are those who set the standard by what they produce, whether
for retail or commercial/inside sales, or even the public sector,
where that control hasn't been given over to the public sector. And if
this, yours and the W3C &c purist faith, is just some odd government
standards confusion, realize that workable, more or less
non-politicized public standards, are those created by the industry,
not by the panel or committee operating in some unresponsive and
unaccountable fashion. Now, sure, where taxes or control of public
channels and the like is at issue, I suppose the bureaucrats,
politicians, and perhaps sneaky members of the industry (whatever),
might decide something is in their interest, even just ideologically,
regardless of the industry and their customers. But even for the FCC,
their deference to the industry should be apparent. And I'm not sure
even the latter really applies much to HTML (oh, maybe new HTTP, but
that underlies the mark-up convention, is all).
>> The fact is, when the 'net' becomes just another sort of cable
>> television (and what with MMX, these new bandwidth enhancement
>> methods, &c &c it does seem the whole trend is to turn ISPs into
>> little more than cable operators)
>
>Some of us are trying to prevent, or at least forestall,
How in the world do you think you will stop Intel, Microsoft, the
cable companies, the phone companies, the broadcast networks, the
newspapers and magazines - I mean . . . I guess I misunderstand what
you're trying to say.
>to see that data networks become useful rather than merely trendy.
You'll need a bit of luck. Still, while I suspect the future is
bleaker, in this regard, since we're all around to say something at
least at the margins - who knows. Who knows what shape the future of
the net really will take? Get out your money and start playing the
odds, I guess (it's what Comdex and the like are all about, right?).
>God forbid we should be more interested in the utility of our content than in
>hit-rates. How many people read Galileo or Dante today? but how many lives are
>changed forever by _Roseanne_? Some sites don't live and die by the amount of
>advertising money they can rake in.
As things are today, you're right to some degree. Most sites on 'the
net', if I could take my sense of a recent study advertized here, are
vanity sites by European woman who really don't even know how many
colors they have showing on their screen. And, conversely, with many
sites, a fair number of hits will solve a host of what might otherwise
be problems.
>Sounds like we share some ideals, but I'm not setting up gigs of hard data for
>passive amusement.
Unless you had the money for old style, trailing edge video
production, film development, yes - actours - and the like, you
probably are not going to be able to even compete with some old B & W
talkie from the early '30s, much less some slickly produced sports
video selling the latest in contests, gimics, music, swimwear and
skis. But, again, all speculation. I just worry that such sites, with
the 'new' net, new browsers (or whatever), new platforms (how
'u-biquitious') will a) steal a bit from one's vanity or public
service site because _your_ people are otherwise engrossed by the new
'internet tv'; and there are only so many waking hours in the days -
and b) that the capitalized sites will begin to see the popular and
low-entry sites, even at that, as potential competition to be,
somehow, eliminated. But . . . anyhow.
>Nobody's going to gather friends in the break room to talk
>about the terrific analysis of early Midwest expansion that he discovered last
>night. Few people take the trouble to equip themselves for the appreciation of
>the kind of material that we benighted "purists" are making available.
I think they call that a martyr complex. Don't impale yourself, just
yet. It may be that you, o benighted one, will be one of those to
press the case for the 'majors', should such a nightmare scenario come
to pass. Who can really know the future? But, at any rate, I think
it's just unrealistic, and unappreciative of the present day, to
presume that content, the data, is somehow exclusive of whatever one
might do to help present it. Right now, for today, in the here and
now, NN and IE, or Win95 or Win3.1, appear to command the bulk of the
market. Surely that will change. It hasn't yet. And the present
situation, the present reality, ought to be appreciated, not ignored
in favor of what appears to be a rather cold and dry abstraction that
is waiting for some future time that may not be as glorious as things
even are, at present. So . . . that's all.
Peace.
Warren Steel
Mark Johnson wrote:
> >http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html .
> Which which I agree with, to a point. As I have said.
> However, where it suggests, "client side image maps on your pages have
> alt tags", I just wonder if something like Lynx is up to it, or if
> image maps have to be scrapped, entirely. What about old Mosaic
> (though, I doubt many people are still using it)? Tell me.
Client side image maps are *required* to have ALT texts
in their AREA elements. And Lynx can deal with them just
fine, thank you very much. What about Mosaic? Like Netscape
1.x, it doesn't support client-side image maps. You can combine
client-side and server-side to handle the same image, you can
provide text alternatives, or you can scrap the image map
altogether.
> And there's "make sure to provide a noframes option for people without
> frames capable browsers", which has caused me no end of grief for
> suggesting a text only alternative, even a parallel site as this,
> here, might suggest. That is, truly, I agree.
I'm not sure what you're saying, or what you're agreeing
with. The purpose of NOFRAMES is to provide an alternative
for non-frame browsers. There's no reason in the world why
NOFRAMES element should be text-only, or shouldn't contain
media of any and all types.
> ... you need to understand that industry
> leaders are those who set the standard by what they produce, whether
> for retail or commercial/inside sales, or even the public sector,
> where that control hasn't been given over to the public sector. And if
> this, yours and the W3C &c purist faith, is just some odd government
> standards confusion, realize that workable, more or less
> non-politicized public standards, are those created by the industry,
> not by the panel or committee operating in some unresponsive and
> unaccountable fashion... [rest of rant deleted]
"industry leaders" vs. "yours and the W3C &c purist faith?"
See http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Consortium/Member/List.html
--
Warren Steel mu...@olemiss.edu
Department of Music University of Mississippi
http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/
Ben Turner
1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) wrote:
> I think what is idiotic is this notion that one page fits all (and
> when this becomes more true, you make not like the reason why - see
> below). Common sense, today, given the state of things, would rule
> against such if people weren't trapped by a purely academic fixation
> on concept over reality.
>
> The problem, at present, is that the standard set by NN and IE
> conflicts with that of the purists.
[snip]
What's most idiotic is taking a simple question and then inserting
your rants that you didn't get out in some other thread.
Goddamn, what is it with people twisting things so they fit their
agenda?
B.
"Nothing gets people more riled up than God, politics, and OS's."
Ben Turner . b...@benturner.com
http://www.benturner.com/
Christopher Davis
MHW> http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html .
MJ> Which read: "Some pages may look better in some browsers than others,
MJ> but they should all be readable by any browser."
MJ> Which which I agree with, to a point. As I have said.
MJ> However, where it suggests, "client side image maps on your pages
MJ> have alt tags", I just wonder if something like Lynx is up to it, or
MJ> if image maps have to be scrapped, entirely.
Yes, "something like Lynx is up to it". It was added to Lynx almost a
year ago, in fact. This is *why* people suggest ALT attributes for client
side image maps.
MJ> What about old Mosaic (though, I doubt many people are still using
MJ> it)? Tell me.
Okay, I'll tell you. It won't use client side image maps at all, so the
ALT attributes will also be ignored. Server side image maps will work.
MJ> And the "Try to use proper HTML as much as possible", is something
MJ> that begs the question of the proper standard - a WDG form, or an
MJ> actual NN or IE browser in use in the real world. But, yes, I agree.
Well, the problem there is that you can't validate against a Netscape
"standard" because they don't publish a DTD to validate against. This
leads people to use the browser as a "validation tool", assuming (because
there's no evidence to support any other assumption) that any browser
behavior is a feature, not a bug.
Remember when it seemed like every site was using "multiple TITLE"
animations? Or the "multiple BODY" color-change effect? Were those in
"the proper standard"? Well, they weren't in any DTD, and when Netscape
changed their browser they went away. Feature, or bug? (Not to mention
the rather loose treatment NN 1.x gave to people who left quotes out in
things like <A HREF="http://www.example.com>Example Corp</a>.)
MJ> And if this, yours and the W3C &c purist faith, is just some odd
MJ> government standards confusion, realize that workable, more or less
MJ> non-politicized public standards, are those created by the industry,
MJ> not by the panel or committee operating in some unresponsive and
MJ> unaccountable fashion.
Who do you think the members of the W3C are?
They're the industry, pretty much. Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Netscape...
MJ> I think it's just unrealistic, and unappreciative of the present day,
MJ> to presume that content, the data, is somehow exclusive of whatever
MJ> one might do to help present it. Right now, for today, in the here
MJ> and now, NN and IE, or Win95 or Win3.1, appear to command the bulk of
MJ> the market. Surely that will change. It hasn't yet.
The most commonly hit page in my homepage directory was written three
years ago and hasn't even been *touched* for about two years now (except
for a brief period where I changed it to use a black background for the
"black pages" protest). It's still valid HTML. It still renders on
Netscape, MSIE, or whatever. It will render on the latest HTML browser
(Lynx 2.7, btw) and Mosaic for X 1.2 (which it was originally written for)
and probably WebTV (though I haven't gone to the mall and tested it yet).
It's ready for change, because it doesn't depend on all those
browser-specific or version-specific tricks. It's already weathered
plenty of change.
Documents, when written portably, don't need constant tweaking to be
rendered reasonably on new technologies or new browsers.
--
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>
>However, where it suggests, "client side image maps on your pages have
>alt tags", I just wonder if something like Lynx is up to it, or if
>image maps have to be scrapped, entirely. What about old Mosaic
>(though, I doubt many people are still using it)? Tell me.
Lynx can take the ALT attributes of the AREA tags in the MAP element and
make a nice list of links to said AREAs' HREF attributes.
Does that cover "up to it"?
Old Mosaic would prefer a server-side image map, since that was the
standard when it came to be.
>
>And there's "make sure to provide a noframes option for people without
>frames capable browsers", which has caused me no end of grief for
>suggesting a text only alternative, even a parallel site as this,
>here, might suggest. That is, truly, I agree.
Why do people confuse "frames incapable" with "text only"? There is no
such relation. If I turn off frames support in Opera, it doesn't prevent
it in any way of displaying images. Why should it?
>
>And the "Try to use proper HTML as much as possible", is something
>that begs the question of the proper standard - a WDG form, or an
>actual NN or IE browser in use in the real world. But, yes, I agree.
What's "real world"? Would you be willing to make a separate version for
each manufacturer, or would you choose to write to a standard they
(hopefully) supported? Which would be less work?
>
>But, when it gets to "Rather than designing your site for a specific
>browser and layout, and then adding in support for other browsers, you
>should design your site to emphasize the content first, and then worry
>about the layout", I must wonder how it is that content might seem so
>divorced from presentation.
That, baby, is the A and Z of SGML/DSSL.
Content in SGML (HTML), presentation _hints_ in DSSL (CSS1). Not that CSS1
is comparable to DSSL.
>
>How in the world do you think you will stop Intel, Microsoft, the
>cable companies, the phone companies, the broadcast networks, the
>newspapers and magazines - I mean . . . I guess I misunderstand what
>you're trying to say.
The phone companies, et al, have agreed to common standards (through
UN standard bodies) which ensures that if Huge Megacorp Phone Company
delivers your telephone service, you don't need to buy a proprietary
phone from them in order to call someone, and (get this) you may even
phone people who use another phone company, without worrying that their
phone switches could ignore your company's switches.
In other words: Standards are good. Your argument isn't.
- Tor Iver
--
Substitute Assistant CEO of Opening Tins of Dog Food of the DNRC.
tor...@pvv.org * http://www.pvv.org/%7Etoriver * Rush: Cut to the Chase
"I'm old enough not to care too much about what you think of me
But I'm young enough to remember the future and the way things ought to be"
Abigail
On Mon, 17 Feb 1997 18:20:40 GMT, MT Byers wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
++ "Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
++
++ >But of course you're too
++ >busy posting to usenet to worry about your sources.
++
++ This from a guy who seems always to have 20-30 posts in this group alone!
++
++ No offense meant--I read most of these posts for the gleanable nuggets they
++ contain--but I frequently find the tone rather too curt. I can't be the
++ only one, can I?
I on the other hand can't understand where Alan gets his patience
from; after all these years, he still keeps pointing out the right way.
Abigail
--
Anyone who slaps a "this page is best viewed with Browser X" label
on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the
Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network.
[Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996]
Mark Johnson
Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
> MJ> Well, fine then. Which simulator or snapshot page do you recommend for
> MJ> www.sun.com (just for ex.)? Please tell me. If Lynx is up to it, fine.
> MJ> If not, be honest.
>
>Lynx (2.6; I haven't compiled 2.7 on this machine yet) works fine with the
>"Left nav bar" imagemap,
Guess I need to find an on-line Lynx snapshot that can do what yours
can do. Any URL suggestions?
>They do offer a "text-only version" which looks nicer on Lynx,
It's like talking to Medusa, I sometimes get the feeling, here, when
one allows for text-only pages and another 'flames' me for the very
suggestion. What to do?
> ckd> Well, the problem there is that you can't validate against a Netscape
> ckd> "standard" because they don't publish a DTD to validate against.
>
> MJ> And, yet, there's CSE, and any other extensible validator that comes
> MJ> along. Go figure.
>
>Is CSE a validator, or just a sort of "superlint"? Does it use DTDs?
It's a validator, that provides the ability to add things that the
'latest' configuration could never keep up with. Again, yes obv, you
evade the question a bit, here - what's the standard, who sets the
standard? You know _my_ opinion.
> ckd> They're the industry, pretty much. Adobe, Apple, Microsoft, Netscape...
>
> MJ> I would have thought so, as well. And, yet, No Netscape stickers?
> MJ> Funny, for all the purist's delight, I'm not sure I've ever seen a No
> MJ> Explorer sticker? Might lead one with a suspicious disposition to
> MJ> wonder.
>
>You haven't looked very hard. I've seen 'em.
I haven't. You know of any URL's to back up your assertion?
>I also don't think any of the W3C pages
I wasn't referring to that. In fact, just in this thread, I believe,
someone posted a purist's page - one I may even have commented on a
bit. Don't recall any mention of IE. I _do_ remember something about -
No Netscape Now, or the like.
> MJ> What's the URL, if I may ask?
>
><URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/internet-tour.html >.
Well, my reason, of course, for asking was that I wanted yet another
example of the advantages of purism over 'design'. It doesn't matter
that you have dead links, because you admit you haven't touched these
few paragraphs. Your point was that it would show up as well, today,
as in yesteryear. I think, unfortunately, it's true.
> ckd> Documents, when written portably, don't need constant tweaking to be
> ckd> rendered reasonably on new technologies or new browsers.
>
> MJ> You confuse reasonable maintenance with 'thrashing an account' (or
> MJ> what have you). Things change. They may change for the worse.
>
>I try to do reasonable maintenance on most of my pages
For example? Do you have the URLs?
>As for adding new layout tools or the like, I recently went through and
>added style sheet support to all my "supported" pages. It took, um, a
>couple minutes (linked style sheets are wonderful that way). I do
>occasionally dink with the style sheet, but that doesn't make the "last
>modified" lines on the pages update (nor should it).
You suggest there is some dogma involved in _not_ modifying one's
pages. But . . things change in technology. It is a very cheap and
instantly obsolescent sort of thing, considering what computers can
do; or rather what they can simulate. It's not like Shakespeare, nor
Dickens. HTML, itself, is not like a fine wine or some antique
collectable. It's not like great old sayings or things that last. It's
HTML. It's a technological convention, made to be revised, made to be
used.
>Christopher Davis <c...@kei.com> <URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ >
Your page? Grey background, black bulleted blue? I've referred to this
sort of thing, before. Not every page is institutional. Not every page
can be so 'presentation free', I think, unless you know people will
put up with anything to get your valuable information, or basically
know what they are looking for. Not every site can be an ftp
directory, in effect; though it wouldn't bother _some_ people.
You ask there, in other words, "why are you so quick to write off 20%
(or more) of your potential audience?" The answer is because it's not
20% as yet, but more like 5%, and even at 20%, if it means taking away
from the 80% to satisfy the limitations of the 20%, my way of doing
math says satisfy the 80%, and _try_ to do what you can for the 20%;
not to rule them out, but not to place them in the position of
dictating to everyone else.
Peace.
Alan J. Flavell
On Tue, 18 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
> Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>
> >[tables compatibility] was added to Lynx almost a
> >year ago, in fact. This is *why* people suggest ALT attributes for client
> >side image maps.
This makes no sense. The discussion is about imagemaps: who brought
tables into the discussion at this point? I don't think it was ckd.
> Well, fine then. Which simulator or snapshot page do you recommend for
> www.sun.com (just for ex.)? Please tell me. If Lynx is up to it, fine.
> If not, be honest.
What are you talking about? It would be useful if you would either
use Lynx yourself or stop pretending that you know what it can or
cannot do. (Hint, there are public TELNET accesses where you can try
it for yourself. But of course getting to know it would spoil your
fun, right?
> >Okay, I'll tell you. It [Mosaic] won't use client side image maps at all,
>
> Same for Lynx, I think.
You haven't been paying attention at all.
> >Well, the problem there is that you can't validate against a Netscape
> >"standard" because they don't publish a DTD to validate against.
>
> And, yet, there's CSE, and any other extensible validator that comes
> along. Go figure.
^^^^^^^^^
No need to. It has already been explained to you several times, but you
keep posting the same misleading assertions as before. We already know
that a rubber band fits a number of different sizes, but using it as a
measuring stick isn't very practical. Have you told us yet that
"Netscape sets the standard", it's surely due any moment now.
--
"Du bist der [IMAGE]. Besucher dieses WWW-Servers!"
na, ja...
Mark Johnson
tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>>
>Lynx can take the ALT attributes of the AREA tags
Do you have the URL, for example, of a Lynx simulator or snapshot that
can handle such, say at www.sun.com? It seems certain variation of
Lynx cannot. And then what of one size fits all (some are beginning to
seem a bit more equal than others, to me, even just in the Lynx
world?).
>Why do people confuse "frames incapable" with "text only"?
Who would? It's call the 'no frame' alternative, and yet further
evidence (as if _I_ needed any) that one size does _not_ fit all.
>What's "real world"?
It's a long story? (couldn't resist)
>Would you be willing to make a separate version for
>each manufacturer,
If I had to, sure. No need, as yet. You can overload stuff for NN and
IE, in the same page. Even the colors might look a little different,
for ex. Maybe you can allow for that. As for any product other than NN
or IE, the answer is no. But . . . things change. (WebTV dreams big
schemes, you know)
>>But, when it gets to "Rather than designing your site for a specific
>>browser and layout, and then adding in support for other browsers, you
>>should design your site to emphasize the content first, and then worry
>>about the layout", I must wonder how it is that content might seem so
>>divorced from presentation.
>
>That, baby, is the A and Z of SGML/DSSL.
Sorry to hear it. One can only take so many grey field, black bulleted
blue screens before needing a little R & R.
>>How in the world do you think you will stop Intel, Microsoft, the
>>cable companies, the phone companies, the broadcast networks, the
>>newspapers and magazines - I mean . . . I guess I misunderstand what
>>you're trying to say.
>
>The phone companies, et al, have agreed to common standards
That wasn't the subject. We were referring to what happens, later,
some time, after all the standards are changed and changed again for
the basic hardware. What does the 'new web' looks like? But, just
speculation. Just one guy's opinion.
>In other words: Standards are good. Your argument isn't.
A web page isn't a router, and NN and IE browsers are not simply the
protocols they use. A closed system is easy. A black box can be as
difficult to describe as the engineers can barely understand.
Something presented in popular fashion to the public, the guy at the
window as it were, is a different thing entirely. Again, how purists
got how they are, how they find no balance between content and
presentation, is something I have yet to understand. Not everything in
the world is some university think tank or public records office. Gray
fields of bright blue text are not something, I think, that can do the
job compared with what tools are _now_ available, and might be in the
future. Simple as that.
Peace.
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>
>Do you have the URL, for example, of a Lynx simulator or snapshot that
>can handle such, say at www.sun.com? It seems certain variation of
>Lynx cannot. And then what of one size fits all (some are beginning to
>seem a bit more equal than others, to me, even just in the Lynx
>world?).
It's a case of "new browsers will be able to handle new things - old
browsers will not". This is true for _any_ brand of browser. The sad thing
is that a new version of Navigator will usually handle _less_ new stuff
than a new version of Lynx.
But since it runs on curses-compliant systems, and thus doesn't do inlined
images, people dis it out of hand for that "weakness".
>>Why do people confuse "frames incapable" with "text only"?
>
>Who would? It's call the 'no frame' alternative, and yet further
>evidence (as if _I_ needed any) that one size does _not_ fit all.
Precisely: Netscape's FRAME concept is an ugly beast that should never
have been, hadn't it been for their idiotic and childish
"not-invented-here" mentality.
>>Would you be willing to make a separate version for
>>each manufacturer,
>
>If I had to, sure. No need, as yet. You can overload stuff for NN and
>IE, in the same page. Even the colors might look a little different,
>for ex. Maybe you can allow for that. As for any product other than NN
>or IE, the answer is no. But . . . things change. (WebTV dreams big
>schemes, you know)
Sorta. An example:
In the absence of standards, MS and NS both get asked
by their users to add margins (let's pretend CSS1 doesn't exist) to their
HTML dialects. Since there are watertight sheds between the two companies
(read: no standards body), NS decide to add a set of attributes to the
BODY tag, TOPMARGIN, LEFTMARGIN et al. MS on their end think that a
comma-separated list in a MARGINS attribute is the Cool Way.
So HTML writers get to write twice the code needed compared to if there
was a single standard way to do it (CSS1).
>>That, baby, is the A and Z of SGML/DSSL.
>
>Sorry to hear it. One can only take so many grey field, black bulleted
>blue screens before needing a little R & R.
Now _this_ is complete and utter FUD. Perhaps you can explain why your
beloved, standard-setting Netscape _still_ don't support <LI SRC="image">
to change those ugly black bullets of yours? Or why they are inconsistent
in their adaption of ALIGN attributes to document tags?
How a person likes the information presented is _their_ choice. If they
configure their browser to show lists as black bulleted lines, on a grey
background, it's their choice.
Writing netscapisms in order to hack around the limitations of that
inferior Navigator is futile and backwards. In fact, Netscapists using the
word "modern" is an oxymoron, with weight on the two last syllables. :-)
- Tor Iver, Opera user.
Warren Steel
1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>Do you have the URL, for example, of a Lynx simulator or snapshot that
>can handle such, say at www.sun.com? It seems certain variation of
>Lynx cannot. And then what of one size fits all (some are beginning to
>seem a bit more equal than others, to me, even just in the Lynx
>world?).
I find no problem navigating www.sun.com using Lynx 2.6.
True, there is a USEMAP without ALT attributes in the areas,
but there are only two areas, and both lead to the same URL.
More to the point, the first selection on the home page is
between Java and text-only version. Obviously the Lynx user
will choose the text-only version. Less obviously perhaps,
so will the 16-bit Netscape user, and many other users of
browsers and versions which do not support Java, or where
the user does not choose to enable it.
--
Warren Steel mu...@olemiss.edu
Department of Music University of Mississippi
Christopher Davis
MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
MJ> Guess I need to find an on-line Lynx snapshot that can do what yours
MJ> can do. Any URL suggestions?
Start from http://lynx.browser.org/ and compile 2.7 if need be. It's not
that difficult.
ckd> They do offer a "text-only version" which looks nicer on Lynx,
MJ> It's like talking to Medusa, I sometimes get the feeling, here, when
MJ> one allows for text-only pages and another 'flames' me for the very
MJ> suggestion. What to do?
My feeling is that maintaining two versions of a page is often extra and
unnecessary work, when a little more work on the "standard" version would
make it usable in any browser. As I noted, Lynx 2.6 deals well with
http://www.sun.com/, and only a little more work (mostly adding ALT
attributes) would make it almost perfectly usable. (It'll still look a
little less aesthetically pleasing, because of the unportability of their
table-layout "HTML", but it'll work fine.)
ckd> Is CSE a validator, or just a sort of "superlint"? Does it use DTDs?
MJ> It's a validator, that provides the ability to add things that the
MJ> 'latest' configuration could never keep up with. Again, yes obv, you
MJ> evade the question a bit, here - what's the standard, who sets the
MJ> standard? You know _my_ opinion.
No, I'm not evading the question. What is the SPEC? What SPECIFICATION
is it following? I don't care who *writes* the spec, but either there is
a written spec, or there isn't. If there isn't, then the behavior of some
large chunk of code is the "spec", and that's not a stable situation (as I
pointed out with the examples from Netscape 1.x).
Netscape has not written a spec for their version of HTML. They do not
have any program that will test a file for conformance to the spec, except
for "today's version of Navigator".
ckd> You haven't looked very hard. I've seen [no MSIE buttons].
MJ> I haven't. You know of any URL's to back up your assertion?
ckd> I also don't think any of the W3C pages
MJ> I wasn't referring to that. In fact, just in this thread, I believe,
MJ> someone posted a purist's page - one I may even have commented on a
MJ> bit. Don't recall any mention of IE. I _do_ remember something about
MJ> - No Netscape Now, or the like.
You might want to more carefully read your posts before they go out. You
were quoting and responding to a line from my post saying that the W3C
*was* the industry, and then started talking about "No Netscape
stickers". I think you needed more of a segue there.
As for the anti-IE logos:
<URL: http://demog.berkeley.edu/~bandy/anlogos.html > has a bunch of
anti-logos for both "major" browsers. Again, as I noted, more people are
likely to be anti-Netscape simply because they've been doing this longer
(starting from <BLINK> and going downhill from there).
MJ> Well, my reason, of course, for asking was that I wanted yet another
MJ> example of the advantages of purism over 'design'. It doesn't matter
MJ> that you have dead links, because you admit you haven't touched these
MJ> few paragraphs. Your point was that it would show up as well, today,
MJ> as in yesteryear. I think, unfortunately, it's true.
Yup. It's certainly unfortunate that the mass-market browsers haven't
upgraded their presentation for standard HTML in the past few years.
ckd> I try to do reasonable maintenance on most of my pages
MJ> For example? Do you have the URLs?
For example, basically everything linked off my homepage (URL in .sig).
At this point they've gone for a few weeks without a change, mostly
because I've been busy on other things, but I do intend to do some more
work, particularly on the RFC 1876 stuff (I need to build a Mac-Garmin
cable and an HP200-Garmin cable).
MJ> You suggest there is some dogma involved in _not_ modifying one's
MJ> pages. But . . things change in technology. It is a very cheap and
MJ> instantly obsolescent sort of thing, considering what computers can
MJ> do; or rather what they can simulate. It's not like Shakespeare, nor
MJ> Dickens.
Yes, but Shakespeare on a CD-ROM is still Shakespeare. Shakespeare
printed in sans-serif orange over a hot pink background is still
Shakespeare, though it's Shakespeare-as-presented-by-WIRED. :-)
MJ> HTML, itself, is not like a fine wine or some antique
MJ> collectable. It's not like great old sayings or things that
MJ> last. It's HTML. It's a technological convention, made to be revised,
MJ> made to be used.
HTML is a markup language. The content is not HTML, the content is
information (well, hopefully ;-).
ckd> Christopher Davis <c...@kei.com> <URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ >
MJ> Your page? Grey background, black bulleted blue?
No, papayawhip background, black text, blue/green links (Netscape 3.01).
You might try reconfiguring your browser if you don't like gray. (If you
get a CSS1 capable browser, you'll see my suggested white background,
black text, blue/maroon links, sans-serif headings, 4% margins...but
Netscape doesn't support those yet, because they're NIH.)
MJ> You ask there, in other words, "why are you so quick to write off 20%
MJ> (or more) of your potential audience?" The answer is because it's not
MJ> 20% as yet, but more like 5%, and even at 20%, if it means taking
MJ> away from the 80% to satisfy the limitations of the 20%, my way of
MJ> doing math says satisfy the 80%, and _try_ to do what you can for the
MJ> 20%; not to rule them out, but not to place them in the position of
MJ> dictating to everyone else.
If you *require* images to be loaded, it's probably more (maybe much more)
than 5%. If you *require* Java or JavaScript, who knows how high the
number is? At work, I use a browser capable of both, and turn them both
off. At home, I either use MSIE 3.0 Mac (no JavaScript, Java off, usually
frames off) or Netscape 2.02 (no Java, JavaScript off).
--
Christopher Davis <c...@kei.com> <URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ >
Tina Marie Holmboe
[Wed, 19 Feb 1997 20:53:19] [Mark Johnson]
> I don't believe they've ever figured out how to port it to Win95, as
A DOS version of Lynx 2.6 is available from http://lynx.browser.org/.
Hopefully it will be upgraded to 2.7 soon. So they have indeed figured out
how to 'port' it to Win95 - ie. they have ported it to the OS that the Win95
GUI is running on.
--
Tina Marie Holmboe
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the / ti...@htmlhelp.com /
opinions expressed are mine, and should / http://www.htmlhelp.com/%7Etina/ /
in no way be associated with the WDG. / The Web Design Group /
Hume Smith
In article <330ad2db...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
says...>>1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>>Lynx can take the ALT attributes of the AREA tags
>Do you have the URL, for example, of a Lynx simulator or snapshot that
>can handle such, say at www.sun.com? It seems certain variation of
>Lynx cannot.
True. "Variations" written before the client side map standard don't support
CSMs - what a surprise. It's also very interesting that lynx 2.6 (mine)
doesn't show ALT tags when none exist, such as say at
<URL:http://www.sun.com/>.
God, you're a twit.
Ben Turner
1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) wrote:
> Which simulator or snapshot page do you recommend for
> www.sun.com (just for ex.)? Please tell me.
Try http://www.crl.com/%7Esubir/lynx/public_lynx.html for a list of
public Lynx access sites. It helps to know what you're talking about,
you know. :)
Mark Johnson
"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>What are you talking about? It would be useful if you would either
>use Lynx yourself
I don't believe they've ever figured out how to port it to Win95, as
if I'd really _need_ a 'glass teletype' emulator when I've got NN 3
and IE 3. I have checked these pages with on-line simulators or
snapshots of what the pages would look like in the version of Lynx
they use. And it can't pick up the links from an image map (even
though, as we know, the data is right there in the HTML). And the
tables, Mosaic - pure Mosaic (and that's just not good enough, is
it?).
> or stop pretending
As they say, get wit the program, read what I've actually written here
before you go bananas. (you _do_ seem a come hell or flood water
flamer, I-must-say)
Peace.
Peter Scully
On Wed, 19 Feb 1997 20:53:41 GMT, Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com> wrote:
=>"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
=>
=>>What are you talking about? It would be useful if you would either
=>>use Lynx yourself
=>
=>I don't believe they've ever figured out how to port it to Win95, as
=>if I'd really _need_ a 'glass teletype' emulator when I've got NN 3
=>and IE 3. I have checked these pages with on-line simulators or
=>snapshots of what the pages would look like in the version of Lynx
=>they use. And it can't pick up the links from an image map (even
=>though, as we know, the data is right there in the HTML). And the
=>tables, Mosaic - pure Mosaic (and that's just not good enough, is
=>it?).
This is how Lynx 2.6 shows the links on an image map. This one from
http://www.sun.com/
Left Nav Bar
MAP: http://www.sun.com/#navbar
1. http://www.sun.com/java/
2. http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/
3. http://www.sun.com/sales-n-service/
4. http://www.sun.com/tech/
5. http://www.sun.com/developers/developers.html
6. http://www.sun.com/corporateoverview/corp.html
7. http://www.sun.com/sun-on-net/
8. http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline/sun.index.html
9. http://www.sun.com/backissues.html
10. http://www.sun.com/sunsite/
11. http://www.sun.com/smi/contacts.html
12. http://www.sun.com/sunplaza/
------------------------------------------------+------------------------------
Peter Scully, pet...@watson.navy.gov.au | Calvin: I've been thinking
HMAS WATSON, Watsons Bay, NSW 2030, AUSTRALIA. | Hobbes: On the weekend?
Phone: +61 2 9337 0387 Fax: +61 2 9337 2632 | Calvin: Not on purpose...
------------------------------------------------+------------------------------
Arjun Ray
In <330acc20...@news.pacbell.net>,
1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:|> ckd> Well, the problem there is that you can't validate against a
|> ckd> Netscape "standard" because they don't publish a DTD to
|> ckd> validate against.
|>
|> MJ> And, yet, there's CSE, and any other extensible validator that
|> MJ> comes along. Go figure.
Is there some reason why you refuse to pay attention?
|>Is CSE a validator, or just a sort of "superlint"? Does it use DTDs?
No, it doesn't use DTDs. However, its configuration dialog -- a strong
feature -- is somewhat like a poor man's "roll-your-own-DTD" utility.
The ability to read DTDs would be a good development, but it would
still be a linter, since it's based on an ad hoc parser. Albert Wirsch
simply guessed at the syntax based on the observation of some browsers
familiar to him. (Back in Sept '96, I cc'd a ciwah post of mine on CSE
to him, and he didn't dispute this characterisation in his emailed
reply.) So, some errors aren't detected, some bogus errors get thrown
although many would probably classify as "warnings" from a linter, and
some messages on syntactic requirements are just plain wrong *for a
validator*. (The last version I tried failed Mike Meyer's Bug Test,
see <URL:http://www.phone.net/~mwm/htmlcorners.html>.) In short, it's
not SGML-based.
| It's a validator,
CSE is not a validator. Simply parroting its self-designation, as is
your wont, doesn't make it one.
| that provides the ability to add things that the 'latest'
| configuration could never keep up with.
All it takes is a DTD. A true SGML parser can handle any DTD. Look up
SP/nsgmls some time (see <URL:http://www.jclark.com/sp/>.) The
technology involved -- ISO 8879 -- has been an international standard
since 1986.
| Again, yes obv, you evade the question a bit, here - what's the
| standard, who sets the standard?
Does RTFM mean anything to you? This is the Internet. Please read RFC
1602 (<URL:http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1602.txt>), and then, since
HTML is at issue, RFC 1866, and perhaps the Wilbur Recommendation. You
need to grasp the rudiments of what DTDs *can* constitute HTML.
| You know _my_ opinion.
Opinion? A sampling from Dejanews shows only clueless FUD and vague
maundering over "industry standards" or some such. Your essential
confusion is the notion that standards are "set". In fact, the only
thing that might be "set" is a status quo -- and a status quo could
easily be characterised by a *lack* of standards.
A standard, especially on the Internet, requires interoperability,
consensus and objective definition. Without either published
specifications or source code (to serve as reference implementation),
*independent* verification is impossible; no standard exists in that
case.
*Evading* this basic fact -- and its implication that you need to
produce either a spec or a code base even to begin to talk about
standards -- is about the sum total of your "opinion".
:ar
Hume Smith
In article <330b670c...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
says...
>
>"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>
>>What are you talking about? It would be useful if you would either
>
>I don't believe they've ever figured out how to port it to Win95,
Believe in the tooth fairy too, if you want, it won't make it so:
<URL:http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/wlynx/>
>if I'd really _need_ a 'glass teletype' emulator when I've got NN 3
>and IE 3. I have checked these pages with on-line simulators or
>snapshots of what the pages would look like in the version of Lynx
>they use. And it can't pick up the links from an image map (even
>though, as we know, the data is right there in the HTML).
wrong. but of course, why should you find out what the real thing does, when
the simulators and snapshooters must be good enough?
J. Kivi Shapiro
In article <330ad2db...@news.pacbell.net>,
Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>>1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>>>browser and layout, and then adding in support for other browsers, you
>>>should design your site to emphasize the content first, and then worry
>>>about the layout", I must wonder how it is that content might seem so
>>>divorced from presentation.
>Sorry to hear it. One can only take so many grey field, black bulleted
>blue screens before needing a little R & R.
The advice is "to emphasize the content first, and then worry about the
layout." That means that both things get done! I don't think it's
fair to assume that someone who cares about content doesn't care about
layout, or would skip that step.
I would think, in fact, that someone who went about page design in the
suggested manner would end up concentrating on both content and style
(at different times): this of itself strikes me a commendation for the
suggestion. There are so many pages out there where one or both of
those steps have been overlooked.
- Kivi, who does use that method
--
ksha...@julian.uwo.ca or ki...@pobox.com (Kivi Shapiro)
It's all right. I'm a librarian.
Alan J. Flavell
On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
> >use Lynx yourself
>
> I don't believe they've ever figured out how to port it to Win95,
You're so busy posting that you don't notice what's going on. Curious
that you keep inventing stories of what Lynx does and doesn't do, in
preference to finding out for yourself.
Delorie's port of Lynx 2.6 to DOS has been available - as reported on
usenet some weeks back - on a quick check I see it mentioned on 8th
Jan. And there is now a second version, 2.7 ported to Win 95, also
announced here on the WWW groups in the last couple of days. It would
complicate your life too much to know that there is a memorable URL,
http://lynx.browser.org/ , where links to Lynx related facts can be
discovered by anyone who is willing to discover.
> as
> if I'd really _need_ a 'glass teletype' emulator when I've got NN 3
> and IE 3.
Yeah right - as an author you only need one kind of browser, on one
platform, with one screen size and color depth and one set of
configuration options. Nice troll.
> > or stop pretending
>
> As they say, get wit the program, read what I've actually written here
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's precisely the problem. It would be nicer if you'd find out
what you're talking about, before writing it all here.
--
Public service announcement follows... "Lynx 2.7 Now!!!"
Get it at http://www.crl.com/%7Esubir/lynx/sources.html
Mark Jones
Does it know how to connect via Windows 95 dial-up networking?
--
Mark Jones
Tina Marie Holmboe <ti...@htmlhelp.com> wrote in article
<5efpuj$680$9...@euas20.eua.ericsson.se>...
> A DOS version of Lynx 2.6 is available from http://lynx.browser.org/.
> Hopefully it will be upgraded to 2.7 soon. So they have indeed figured
out
Mark Johnson
Warren Steel <mu...@olemiss.edu> wrote:
>Mark Johnson wrote:
>
>> >http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html .
>
>> And there's "make sure to provide a noframes option for people without
>> frames capable browsers", which has caused me no end of grief for
>> suggesting a text only alternative, even a parallel site as this,
>> here, might suggest. That is, truly, I agree.
>
> I'm not sure what you're saying, or what you're agreeing
>with. The purpose of NOFRAMES is to provide an alternative
>for non-frame browsers. There's no reason in the world why
>NOFRAMES element should be text-only,
Seriously? The point is that one-size does _not_ fit all, whether it
be text vs. graphics, or frames or no. Alternatives are a courtesy to
old or limited software and platforms, is all. I think they are
worthwhile. I think _that_ is the way not to exclude potential
customers.
> "industry leaders" vs. "yours and the W3C &c purist faith?"
>See http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/Consortium/Member/List.html
See committee vs. the industry, or rather those who would speak for
such a committee. I'm sorry, here. Standards are set by those in the
industry that produce wares to be standardized. They set up committees
to serve them, not in order that they serve the committee.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
bt-u...@benturner.com (Ben Turner) wrote:
>What's most idiotic is taking a simple question and then inserting
>your rants
Fine, and so then stop flaming folks. You must have something better
to do with your valuable time. I think you need to get out and get
some fresh air. The freest of advice, I'm sure.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
pet...@watson.navy.gov.au (Peter Scully) wrote:
> Left Nav Bar
>
>MAP: http://www.sun.com/#navbar
>
> 1. http://www.sun.com/java/
> 2. http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/
Thanks. That's what you get from a sub-screen, by clicking on the name
of the image. And the purist has yet to explain how, because the older
versions of Lynx cannot find this info, that one-size-fits-all, unless
he imagines everyone uses the latest version of Lynx. The purist,
position, is in other words, and in my opinion, so far out on a limb
that they are cursing and sawing, sawing and cursing, and wondering if
maybe some leaves won't break their fall. I mean . . .
Peace.
Mark Johnson
hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>Believe in the tooth fairy too, if you want, it won't make it so:
> <URL:http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/wlynx/>
Already got it. It doesn't show a map unless you 'click' on it.
>wrong. but of course, why should you find out what the real thing does, when
>the simulators and snapshooters must be good enough?
Think about it. That is, what's the point of such pages or telnet apps
then? Hey, Lynx is not exactly something in which I'm keenly
interested. I really don't, seriously care if anything I ever write
looks good in Lynx or not, particularly given the sort of tinpot
dictatorial tone of so many of its evangelists. As a courtesy, it
might be interesting to see if I could make a page sort of compatible
with a glass teletype. But . . . there's also a time to get real. And
maybe a reasonable person doesn't _have_ the time to play games with
the internet version of Edlin.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
>> I don't believe they've ever figured out how to port it to Win95,
>
>You're so busy posting
I'm not the one flooding the ng, here.
>that you keep inventing stories of what Lynx does and doesn't do,
I just report what I see. I got the Lynx in a box, and unless you
'click' on an image map, you won't see it. And you won't see it in the
emulator pages, like Lynx View, since I don't believe you can click on
a link, there.
>And there is now a second version, 2.7 ported to Win 95,
Joy, I'm sure. I take it's not in a Dos box, at least.
>It would complicate your life too much
No, that would be Lynx. If I had to rely on some glass teletype to
show me the 'net', I'd probably be a nutty as . . . well, you guess.
It's how some appear, at any rate. Maybe they really do have lives,
and really are better people than they come across, here. Who knows?
>> if I'd really _need_ a 'glass teletype' emulator when I've got NN 3
>> and IE 3.
>
>Yeah right
Yeah . . . right.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>God, you're a twit.
This is pretty much your 'thing', isn't it? Flame, and flame some
more? What do twits do, after all, if not lash out, impotently? You
tell _me_.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
>
> MJ> It's like talking to Medusa, I sometimes get the feeling, here, when
> MJ> one allows for text-only pages and another 'flames' me for the very
> MJ> suggestion. What to do?
>
>My feeling is that maintaining two versions of a page is often extra and
>unnecessary work,
And yet you thought Sun done good by their method? That's all _I'm_
saying, as well. Some of these sites might serve as models for many
other folks. If a page does not need to be fancy, then it needn't be.
But if it won't 'degrade', then as a courtesy, one might provide
alternatives that are less challenging to a browser, in order not to
exclude some potential customers. I think it's very reasonable. And
until things tighten up and become a bit more standardized, until
people stop using old browsers and glass teletypes, I think it's time
well spent.
>http://www.sun.com/, and only a little more work (mostly adding ALT
I think their site 'degrades' well into Lynx, in my opinion. Again, I
think it's a reasonably good example of site design. I just do. I keep
asking the purists for _their_ examples, and they have yet to show me
one that isn't some grey backgrounded list, seemingly all just thrown
onto a page without much concern for the time involved having to look
through it all to find what you might want.
> MJ> It's a validator, that provides the ability to add things that the
> MJ> 'latest' configuration could never keep up with. Again, yes obv, you
> MJ> evade the question a bit, here - what's the standard, who sets the
> MJ> standard? You know _my_ opinion.
>
>No, I'm not evading the question. What is the SPEC?
The 'spec' reflects the standard. And who sets the standard? the
industry leaders or some academic browser that few use?
>a written spec, or there isn't. If there isn't, then the behavior of some
>large chunk of code is the "spec", and that's not a stable situation
Nothing is. It's the internet.
> ckd> You haven't looked very hard. I've seen [no MSIE buttons].
>
> MJ> I haven't. You know of any URL's to back up your assertion?
><URL: http://demog.berkeley.edu/~bandy/anlogos.html > has a bunch of
>anti-logos for both "major" browsers.
Thanks. Seems it's not _just_ a bunch of Micro softies out there. At
least that's nice to know.
>Yup. It's certainly unfortunate that the mass-market browsers haven't
>upgraded their presentation for standard HTML in the past few years.
They don't dance a jig on the desktop, either. What they have done is
set the standard for internet browsers, and only by virtue of the fact
that together they command the market. Simple.
> MJ> pages. But . . things change in technology. It is a very cheap and
> MJ> instantly obsolescent sort of thing, considering what computers can
> MJ> do; or rather what they can simulate. It's not like Shakespeare, nor
> MJ> Dickens.
>
>Yes, but Shakespeare on a CD-ROM is still Shakespeare. Shakespeare
>printed in sans-serif orange over a hot pink background
Shakespeare in the park is, as well, as is Shakespeare in Nazi Germany
(Richard III, was it?). I'm trying to say that the manner in which
this is done changes, but particularly so when by technology. Things
change in technology. And web pages _will_ have to be reworked and
revised. That should be expected, no less.
> MJ> HTML, itself, is not like a fine wine or some antique
> MJ> collectable. It's not like great old sayings or things that
> MJ> last. It's HTML. It's a technological convention, made to be revised,
> MJ> made to be used.
>
>HTML is a markup language. The content is not HTML,
And some pages may be fine as black bulleted lists, from now until the
end of time. I keep saying that. Others may not be. And you couldn't
have done Shakespeare on PBS, as the ever-present master Brannagh did
with Much Ado About Nothing, were it not for the technology which made
it possible. The old theatre of Olivier's Henry V is not the same as
the sound stage on which it sat. And so on. Things change.
> ckd> Christopher Davis <c...@kei.com> <URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ >
>
> MJ> Your page? Grey background, black bulleted blue?
>
>No, papayawhip background, black text,
And you're going just _love_ how it looks on Explorer. (Sure hope
you're not a NN basher)
>If you *require* images to be loaded, it's probably more (maybe much more)
>than 5%. If you *require* Java or JavaScript, who knows how high the
>number is?
Wouldn't matter to me. Because like you, I prefer to keep Java and
Javascript, off, particularly in NN.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>>
>>Do you have the URL, for example, of a Lynx simulator or snapshot that
>>can handle such, say at www.sun.com? It seems certain variation of
>>Lynx cannot. And then what of one size fits all (some are beginning to
>>seem a bit more equal than others, to me, even just in the Lynx
>>world?).
>
>It's a case of "new browsers will be able to handle new things - old
>browsers will not".
Like I said. One-size-fits all, unless it become inconvenient. I like
to think I'm a little more realistic than that, from the start.
>is that a new version of Navigator will usually handle _less_ new stuff
>than a new version of Lynx.
Oookay.
>But since it runs on curses-compliant systems, and thus doesn't do inlined
>images, people dis it out of hand for that "weakness".
It looks like a glass teletype. I thought that was neat in the 80s,
with the 3270 terminals. My first monitor was a green screen, for an
Apple //, cause I wanted sort of the same look as at work. But, heck
and by gosh, this is 1997.
>Precisely: Netscape's FRAME concept is an ugly beast
Maybe. It's handy for navigation. But it might have been nicer if
they'd allowed for a horizonal user menu bar, instead. That would have
not 'crushed' a page so into a frame. But, then again, it would have
been deemed 'non-standard' by the purist, at that.
> In the absence of standards, MS and NS both get asked
>by their users to add margins (let's pretend CSS1 doesn't exist) to their
>HTML dialects. Since there are watertight sheds between the two companies
>(read: no standards body),
They _are_ the standards body. We'll agree to disagree. But,
understand the situation, too. The committees they set up can provide
a guide. That's what they are supposed to be there for. The new
protocol was just implemented, for example. But some of the
evangelists on this ng seem to take a wild view of the role of a
standards body and the role of companies actually making it possible
for people to get on 'the net' (unless, perhaps, _that's_ what bother
them - you think?).
>So HTML writers get to write twice the code needed compared to if there
>was a single standard way to do it (CSS1).
As you point out here, exactly the situation today. It _would_ be
surpassingly wonderful if they could get together and stop competing
at least over proprietary extensions. But, again, this is
winter/spring 1997. That hasn't happened. And there are web pages to
be written. What to do?
>>Sorry to hear it. One can only take so many grey field, black bulleted
>>blue screens before needing a little R & R.
>
>Now _this_ is complete and utter FUD.
No, more like rest and resuscitation.
Btw, FUD meaning? - falling upside down? finely unhinged doors?
fantastically underwhelming data? fear, uncertainty, doubt, loathing
and terror &c? or just what?
>Perhaps you can explain why your
>beloved, standard-setting Netscape _still_ don't support
Cause they don't. Who knows why - whatever it is? Same for NN 4, aka
'communicator' (well, least part of it).
>How a person likes the information presented is _their_ choice.
No fonts, no colors, no graphics, no text? no whatever? Let the guy or
gal looking at the 'experience' decide? Maybe they would get tired of
it after awhile. Maybe they'd want the web author to at least put
_some_ effort into the thing. Then, if they don't like this or that,
fine - they can take it from there.
>inferior Navigator is futile and backwards. In fact, Netscapists using the
>word "modern" is an oxymoron, with weight on the two last syllables. :-)
I know - No Netscape Now. Talk about cutting out your potential
customers. That's 70%+ of the web - NN. Hope the purists get their
stories straight, some day.
Peace.
Eli the Bearded
Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>>1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>>It's a case of "new browsers will be able to handle new things - old
>>browsers will not".
>Like I said. One-size-fits all, unless it become inconvenient. I like
>to think I'm a little more realistic than that, from the start.
I think the point Tor was making was the page mentioned as being
a probloem for Lynx (www.sun.com) was only a problem for OLD versions
of Lynx. 2.6 and 2.7 handle it fine.
>>is that a new version of Navigator will usually handle _less_ new stuff
>>than a new version of Lynx.
>Oookay.
You seem doubtful. Handle does not require drawing pictures you
know. Lynx does quite fine with all sorts of ugly hacks and neat
features your don't get in many browsers. It likes both the
?subject (ugly hack) and the TITLE= (neat feature) of the mailto:
scheme.
>>But since it runs on curses-compliant systems, and thus doesn't do inlined
>>images, people dis it out of hand for that "weakness".
>It looks like a glass teletype. I thought that was neat in the 80s,
>with the 3270 terminals. My first monitor was a green screen, for an
>Apple //, cause I wanted sort of the same look as at work. But, heck
>and by gosh, this is 1997.
Yup, by gosh, it is. That's why Lynx supports color xterms; that's
why lynx can use xli or xv to view images; that's lynx can use
your mailcap (stupidly named MIME type->program list) to handle
arbitrary things. Lynx does not have a problem with mpegs or
Quicktime, provided you have the helper apps to support it. And
in a Unix (esp. Linux or FreeBSD) environment finding those tools
is quite easy.
Recently Alan Cox said he was considering adding support for
BGSOUND to Lynx. He called this the "user we hate you" build
option because he doesn't think highly of the tag, but it is
trivial to support with helper apps.
>>Precisely: Netscape's FRAME concept is an ugly beast
>
>Maybe. It's handy for navigation. But it might have been nicer if
>they'd allowed for a horizonal user menu bar, instead. That would have
>not 'crushed' a page so into a frame. But, then again, it would have
>been deemed 'non-standard' by the purist, at that.
Nope. HTML 2.0 (and maybe even earlier) had tags for such a menu
bar. Lynx supports them, but just about no other browser does.
Look up the LINK tag somethime in your local HTML reference.
Incidentally, Lynx's support of frames is done in a similar
manner.
>> In the absence of standards, MS and NS both get asked
>>by their users to add margins (let's pretend CSS1 doesn't exist) to their
>>HTML dialects. Since there are watertight sheds between the two companies
>>(read: no standards body),
>
>They _are_ the standards body. We'll agree to disagree. But,
If they published a staandards sheet that said what is legal and
what does what, they could be a standards body. Just giving out
a program that has major functionality differences between releases
and minor differences between platforms does not in any way
constitute a standard.
>understand the situation, too. The committees they set up can provide
>a guide. That's what they are supposed to be there for. The new
>protocol was just implemented, for example. But some of the
>evangelists on this ng seem to take a wild view of the role of a
>standards body and the role of companies actually making it possible
>for people to get on 'the net' (unless, perhaps, _that's_ what bother
>them - you think?).
Any browser that requires 8 meg of RAM is not making it easier for
people to get onto the net.
Somehow I think I see this devolving into the decade old (at
least) vi versus emacs war:
vi/lynx emacs/NN/MS
------- -----------
fast startup time slow startup time
small system requirements large system requirements
heavy use of regular keys meta/control/bucky keys/mouse
uses lots of external utilities everything should be built in
can run in really low-end requires a higher minimum from the
environments environment
[cooperation between Netscape and Microsoft]
>That hasn't happened. And there are web pages to
>be written. What to do?
Avoid the propriatary parts of both. Or add *but do not rely upon*
them. Nobody here is saying you cannot do things unless in so doing
you say people must use them. Have frames, but include a noframes
section. Have pictures of text but use ALT. Have image maps but
make them client side and use ALT in AREA.
>>>Sorry to hear it. One can only take so many grey field, black bulleted
>>>blue screens before needing a little R & R.
>>Now _this_ is complete and utter FUD.
>No, more like rest and resuscitation.
>
>Btw, FUD meaning? - falling upside down? finely unhinged doors?
>fantastically underwhelming data? fear, uncertainty, doubt, loathing
>and terror &c? or just what?
My guess was "Fucked Up (Demand|Design)". Maybe I just know SNAFU
and FUBAR too well.
>>How a person likes the information presented is _their_ choice.
>
>No fonts, no colors, no graphics, no text? no whatever? Let the guy or
>gal looking at the 'experience' decide? Maybe they would get tired of
>it after awhile. Maybe they'd want the web author to at least put
>_some_ effort into the thing. Then, if they don't like this or that,
>fine - they can take it from there.
I put _some_ effort into my web pages. And I get more hits than anyone
else on this machine (or the last one I had for hosting). I have a
mention in Yahoo and the usually robots have found me, but I don't
really advertise. People come for the content. Which is free and
without advertising and very close to HTML 2.0 compliant. All of my
tags are in 2.0 but some of the attributes are not. These things
degrade well. They work on all browsers. If I want to impress
someone with a document which is finely honed work of art, I will
not do it in a digital format. Not even the best DTP programs can
match the subtle power and elegance of a steel nibbed dip pen on
parchment with gold leaf and wax seal. I do that sort of stuff off
line. Online I provide content.
>>inferior Navigator is futile and backwards. In fact, Netscapists using the
>>word "modern" is an oxymoron, with weight on the two last syllables. :-)
>
>I know - No Netscape Now. Talk about cutting out your potential
>customers. That's 70%+ of the web - NN. Hope the purists get their
>stories straight, some day.
My pages are not dehanced for netscape. My pages are not dehanced for
any browser. That's what us purists are like. No Netscape compaigns
are more of reactionary movement. People who like open, free,
standards (see comment above) getting pissed off at Netscape's abuse
of a powerful position in the market.
Elijah
------
very low tech when offline
Liam Quinn
>Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>
>>MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
>
>>They do offer a "text-only version" which looks nicer on Lynx,
>
>It's like talking to Medusa, I sometimes get the feeling, here, when
>one allows for text-only pages and another 'flames' me for the very
>suggestion. What to do?
I don't think Christopher was advocating a text-only page. The reason
that some react strongly to the notion of text-only pages is because
it is very rarely needed (I can't think of a situation off-hand). Why
maintain two pages when one would do? (And, as we all know, the
text-only page is always the last to be updated, and is often
ignored.)
>>As for adding new layout tools or the like, I recently went through and
>>added style sheet support to all my "supported" pages. It took, um, a
>>couple minutes (linked style sheets are wonderful that way). I do
>>occasionally dink with the style sheet, but that doesn't make the "last
>>modified" lines on the pages update (nor should it).
>
>You suggest there is some dogma involved in _not_ modifying one's
>pages. But . . things change in technology. It is a very cheap and
>instantly obsolescent sort of thing, considering what computers can
>do; or rather what they can simulate. It's not like Shakespeare, nor
>Dickens. HTML, itself, is not like a fine wine or some antique
>collectable. It's not like great old sayings or things that last. It's
>HTML. It's a technological convention, made to be revised, made to be
>used.
I have pages years old that are still usable today. They wouldn't be
if I'd authored for the Browser of the Day, since that would have
meant, among other things, leaving off ending quotes (<A
HREF="link.html>Oops, forgot the quote, oh well</A>).
When I make pages professionally, I make pages that will last by
writing clean HTML. This means that I don't saddle my clients with a
page that will, in effect, time out with the next browser release. To
place such a time-lock on my clients' pages would be unethical.
>>Christopher Davis <c...@kei.com> <URL: http://www.kei.com/homepages/ckd/ >
>
>Your page? Grey background, black bulleted blue?
Is that what your browser does to it? If you don't like grey
backgrounds, black text, blue links, or your browser's presentation of
unordered lists, you *can* change that. Even the "popular" browsers
let you change all but the last option.
>You ask there, in other words, "why are you so quick to write off 20%
>(or more) of your potential audience?" The answer is because it's not
>20% as yet, but more like 5%, and even at 20%, if it means taking away
>from the 80% to satisfy the limitations of the 20%, my way of doing
>math says satisfy the 80%, and _try_ to do what you can for the 20%;
>not to rule them out, but not to place them in the position of
>dictating to everyone else.
Can you please give some concrete examples of where you have to take
away from the 80% to satisfy "the limitations of the 20%"?
Liam Quinn
=============== http://www.htmlhelp.com/%7Eliam/ ===============
Web Design Group Enhanced Designs, Web Site Development
http://www.htmlhelp.com/ http://enhanced-designs.com/
Alan J. Flavell
On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
(Lynx)
> It looks like a glass teletype. I thought that was neat in the 80s,
> with the 3270 terminals. My first monitor was a green screen, for an
> Apple //, cause I wanted sort of the same look as at work. But, heck
> and by gosh, this is 1997.
You may not have noticed it yet, but this is the HTML authoring group,
where we discuss techniques for making information available via
HTML markup. You have already made us well aware of your personal
views about Lynx, and demonstrated that you'll clutch at any possible
excuse to avoid trying it. That doesn't seem to me to have very much
to do with HTML authoring technique.
There are browsing situations out there where people are using Lynx, for
their own good reasons. Or emacs-w3 (GNUscape), another character-mode
browser. Sure, they are in a minority: every browser/version/platform
is in a minority, in a sense. It's not so very interesting to hear
whether you, personally, want to join that minority or not. The primary
issue here is authoring techniques; browser advocacy is a distraction
(though as long as you play that game, others are likely to do their bit
to put the record straight).
The fact is, there have been questions from authors who would like to
be able to assess their pages on Lynx. I think a conscientious author
would _want_ to do that, but that's just my opinion.
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>
>>It's a case of "new browsers will be able to handle new things - old
>>browsers will not".
>
>Like I said. One-size-fits all, unless it become inconvenient. I like
>to think I'm a little more realistic than that, from the start.
The crux of the matter is that Netscape lags behind ("trailing edge", as
someone claimed for Lynx).
>>is that a new version of Navigator will usually handle _less_ new stuff
>>than a new version of Lynx.
>
>Oookay.
It takes a _very_ short time to add a new feature to Lynx. And because of
the small size, getting the latest version is a snap.
Netscape have problems both with company size, and program size. And it
breaks conventions when it comes to UI on Windows platforms.
>>But since it runs on curses-compliant systems, and thus doesn't do inlined
>>images, people dis it out of hand for that "weakness".
>
>It looks like a glass teletype. I thought that was neat in the 80s,
>with the 3270 terminals. My first monitor was a green screen, for an
>Apple //, cause I wanted sort of the same look as at work. But, heck
>and by gosh, this is 1997.
I presume here you also only buy leopard-skin bound volumes of the books
you read. I mean, it seems you are made out of money. :-)
Apart from that, a teletype couldn't handle colours or character position
addressing (and more), so the analogy stinks.
>
>
>>Precisely: Netscape's FRAME concept is an ugly beast
>
>Maybe. It's handy for navigation.
It's not, at least not until they let you bookmark a "snapshot" frameset.
Plus, the model based on LINK is more descriptive, while the Netscape
FRAME model (esp. the "_whatever" hacks) leaves _everything_ to the
writer.
>But it might have been nicer if
>they'd allowed for a horizonal user menu bar, instead. That would have
>not 'crushed' a page so into a frame. But, then again, it would have
>been deemed 'non-standard' by the purist, at that.
LINK attributes have been in the standard at least since 2.0 (if not 1.0).
Where have _you_ been?
>standards body and the role of companies actually making it possible
>for people to get on 'the net' (unless, perhaps, _that's_ what bother
>them - you think?).
If "getting on the net" requires more and more expensive equipment, they
are working counter to your argument.
>
>
>>So HTML writers get to write twice the code needed compared to if there
>>was a single standard way to do it (CSS1).
>
>As you point out here, exactly the situation today. It _would_ be
>surpassingly wonderful if they could get together and stop competing
>at least over proprietary extensions. But, again, this is
>winter/spring 1997. That hasn't happened. And there are web pages to
>be written. What to do?
Write web pages, not "exclusive-Netscape" pages, not "you need the 56 Mb
plugin to see this junk" pages, not "your chosen browser stinks, get the
one I use" pages. Web pages.
>>Now _this_ is complete and utter FUD.
>
>No, more like rest and resuscitation.
>
>
>Btw, FUD meaning? - falling upside down? finely unhinged doors?
>fantastically underwhelming data? fear, uncertainty, doubt, loathing
>and terror &c? or just what?
Fear, Uncetainty, Doubt - a marketing strategy which attempts to undermine
the customers view of competing products without actually saying a word
about your own. The "glass teletype", "trailing edge" stuff about Lynx, you
know.
>
>
>>Perhaps you can explain why your
>>beloved, standard-setting Netscape _still_ don't support
>
>Cause they don't. Who knows why - whatever it is? Same for NN 4, aka
>'communicator' (well, least part of it).
>
>
>>How a person likes the information presented is _their_ choice.
>
>No fonts, no colors, no graphics, no text? no whatever? Let the guy or
_Chosen_ fonts, _chosen_ colours, _selected_ graphics and _all_ the text.
<FONT> tags are an atrocity - hint at fonts in stylesheets if you will,
but _please_ don't force your vision of what's readable onto me.
>gal looking at the 'experience' decide? Maybe they would get tired of
>it after awhile. Maybe they'd want the web author to at least put
>_some_ effort into the thing. Then, if they don't like this or that,
>fine - they can take it from there.
>
I have no problem with authors suggesting how a page can be viewed. I _do_
have a problem with authors who _force_ how a page is to be viewed. Why
don't they stick to paper-based media?
What if installation programs (under Windows) _forcefully_ restarted your
computer instead of asking whether you wanted to restart your computer?
Would you 1) adapt to the situation, and make sure you closed all other
programs before starting the installer, or 2) flame the pants off the
makers of the installation software?
>>inferior Navigator is futile and backwards. In fact, Netscapists using the
>>word "modern" is an oxymoron, with weight on the two last syllables. :-)
>
>I know - No Netscape Now. Talk about cutting out your potential
>customers. That's 70%+ of the web - NN. Hope the purists get their
>stories straight, some day.
The point is that most, if not all, netscapisms are _useless_. At least
proper browsers don't crash violently when they encounter unknown tags or
attributes, as "Netswipe" is want to do.
That is "useless" as in: They complement elements that already were in the
standard (HTML 3.0, some 2.0 at least) in a manner which make them more
complicated to use, and less "degrading".
- Tor Iver
Dave Carter
In article <330cd11b...@news.pacbell.net>,
>>Precisely: Netscape's FRAME concept is an ugly beast
>
>Maybe. It's handy for navigation. But it might have been nicer if
>they'd allowed for a horizonal user menu bar, instead. That would have
>not 'crushed' a page so into a frame. But, then again, it would have
>been deemed 'non-standard' by the purist, at that.
Sounds like you want is <BANNER>, which was in HTML 3.0 which W3C
dumped in favour of the vastly inferior 3.2. 3.0 was a draft standard
at one point, which is more than can be said for 3.2
>They _are_ the standards body. We'll agree to disagree. But,
>understand the situation, too. The committees they set up can provide
>a guide. That's what they are supposed to be there for. The new
>protocol was just implemented, for example. But some of the
>evangelists on this ng seem to take a wild view of the role of a
>standards body and the role of companies actually making it possible
>for people to get on 'the net' (unless, perhaps, _that's_ what bother
>them - you think?).
This is absolute cobblers. Like you I question W3C's description of itself
as a standards body, but for different reasons, it lacks international
accreditation. But to suggest that a few large companies in one particular
country can between them define international standards is unacceptable.
Dave Carter
Carsten Whimster
In <5ej69q$vt2$1...@news.netusa.net>, Eli the Bearded <usene...@qz.little-neck.ny.us> writes:
>Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>>>1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>>>It's a case of "new browsers will be able to handle new things - old
>>>browsers will not".
>>Like I said. One-size-fits all, unless it become inconvenient. I like
>>to think I'm a little more realistic than that, from the start.
>
>I think the point Tor was making was the page mentioned as being
>a probloem for Lynx (www.sun.com) was only a problem for OLD versions
>of Lynx. 2.6 and 2.7 handle it fine.
Yeah, but part of the purist viewpoint is that all versions of browsers should
be supported, not just the latest. Thus, the above page would, from a purist
viewpoint, be a good example of how to lose customers. If we could expect
all people to upgrade as soon as the new versions are out, there wouldn't be
much to argue about.
Carsten Whimster
car...@edm2.com
EDM/2 Editor-in-chief
================================================
The Electronic Developer Magazine for OS/2
http://www.edm2.com/
================================================
Christopher Davis
MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
ckd> No, I'm not evading the question. What is the SPEC?
MJ> The 'spec' reflects the standard. And who sets the standard? the
MJ> industry leaders or some academic browser that few use?
My point is that you don't have a usable standard without some reference
form of it, and that "the behavior of the current builds of Navigator" is
not a very good reference form for a standard.
A simple question: is the following line:
<A HREF="http://www.netscape.com>Frame Me Harder</a>
valid? Why or why not?
ckd> a written spec, or there isn't. If there isn't, then the behavior
ckd> of some large chunk of code is the "spec", and that's not a stable
ckd> situation
MJ> Nothing is. It's the internet.
TCP/IP is not based on the standard of "what the BSD 4.2 code does". It
is based on the standard of "here are the RFCs". The BSD 4.2 TCP/IP stack
has bugs in it (like, say, the calculation of initial sequence numbers).
If there were no spec, how would you know if the code was broken?
ckd> No, papayawhip background, black text,
MJ> And you're going just _love_ how it looks on Explorer. (Sure hope
MJ> you're not a NN basher)
My copy of MSIE 3 (Mac) reads my style sheet and properly parses it. The
Wintel version of MSIE 3 doesn't do a very good job with the CSS support,
which is presumably what you're referring to.
To use your approach, "Get a web-capable operating system." :-)
Mark H. Wood
In article <330a0c53...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
> mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>
>>http://server.berkeley.edu/~cdaveb/anybrowser.html .
>
[deletia]
> But, when it gets to "Rather than designing your site for a specific
> browser and layout, and then adding in support for other browsers, you
> should design your site to emphasize the content first, and then worry
> about the layout", I must wonder how it is that content might seem so
> doesn't seem apparently to realize, concerns the look of the page, not
> necessarily the information one is trying then to present. This last
> suggestion, that is, looks inauthentic; artificially attached as if to
> satisfy some cause or dogma, rather than the common sense embodied in
> his or her previous suggestions.
It sounds to me like the first principle of careful design in any discipline.
>>[industry-lapdog rant deleted]
>
> If this insult is meant for me, you need to understand that industry
> leaders are those who set the standard by what they produce, whether
> for retail or commercial/inside sales, or even the public sector,
> where that control hasn't been given over to the public sector. And if
> this, yours and the W3C &c purist faith, is just some odd government
How exactly did the government come into this? The WWW was started by
physicists and computer types at CERN as I recall.
> standards confusion, realize that workable, more or less
> non-politicized public standards, are those created by the industry,
> not by the panel or committee operating in some unresponsive and
> unaccountable fashion.
Without vendors, there would have been (were, in fact) Web tools anyway,
because the committee members have the technical savvy and needed them.
Without a committee, the vendors would have produced non-interoperable products
and there would be no Web, just strands blowing in the wind.
> Now, sure, where taxes or control of public
> channels and the like is at issue, I suppose the bureaucrats,
> politicians, and perhaps sneaky members of the industry (whatever),
> might decide something is in their interest, even just ideologically,
> regardless of the industry and their customers. But even for the FCC,
> their deference to the industry should be apparent. And I'm not sure
> even the latter really applies much to HTML (oh, maybe new HTTP, but
> that underlies the mark-up convention, is all).
>
>
>>> The fact is, when the 'net' becomes just another sort of cable
>>> television (and what with MMX, these new bandwidth enhancement
>>> methods, &c &c it does seem the whole trend is to turn ISPs into
>>> little more than cable operators)
>>
>>Some of us are trying to prevent, or at least forestall,
>
> How in the world do you think you will stop Intel, Microsoft, the
> cable companies, the phone companies, the broadcast networks, the
> newspapers and magazines - I mean . . . I guess I misunderstand what
> you're trying to say.
I can't stop them from making money and I don't want to. I may be able to stop
them making it by selling nothing. Form *follows* function -- when it is
allowed to lead, the product is always nonfunctional.
>>to see that data networks become useful rather than merely trendy.
>
> You'll need a bit of luck. Still, while I suspect the future is
> bleaker, in this regard, since we're all around to say something at
> least at the margins - who knows. Who knows what shape the future of
> the net really will take? Get out your money and start playing the
> odds, I guess (it's what Comdex and the like are all about, right?).
>
>
>>God forbid we should be more interested in the utility of our content than in
>>hit-rates. How many people read Galileo or Dante today? but how many lives are
>>changed forever by _Roseanne_? Some sites don't live and die by the amount of
>>advertising money they can rake in.
>
> As things are today, you're right to some degree. Most sites on 'the
> net', if I could take my sense of a recent study advertized here, are
> vanity sites by European woman who really don't even know how many
> colors they have showing on their screen. And, conversely, with many
> sites, a fair number of hits will solve a host of what might otherwise
> be problems.
>
>
>>Sounds like we share some ideals, but I'm not setting up gigs of hard data for
>>passive amusement.
>
> Unless you had the money for old style, trailing edge video
> production, film development, yes - actours - and the like, you
> probably are not going to be able to even compete with some old B & W
> talkie from the early '30s, much less some slickly produced sports
> video selling the latest in contests, gimics, music, swimwear and
> skis. But, again, all speculation. I just worry that such sites, with
> the 'new' net, new browsers (or whatever), new platforms (how
> 'u-biquitious') will a) steal a bit from one's vanity or public
> service site because _your_ people are otherwise engrossed by the new
> 'internet tv'; and there are only so many waking hours in the days -
> and b) that the capitalized sites will begin to see the popular and
> low-entry sites, even at that, as potential competition to be,
> somehow, eliminated. But . . . anyhow.
>
>
>>Nobody's going to gather friends in the break room to talk
>>about the terrific analysis of early Midwest expansion that he discovered last
>>night. Few people take the trouble to equip themselves for the appreciation of
>>the kind of material that we benighted "purists" are making available.
>
> I think they call that a martyr complex. Don't impale yourself, just
> yet. It may be that you, o benighted one, will be one of those to
> press the case for the 'majors', should such a nightmare scenario come
> to pass. Who can really know the future? But, at any rate, I think
> it's just unrealistic, and unappreciative of the present day, to
> presume that content, the data, is somehow exclusive of whatever one
> might do to help present it.
Whoah! What I'm opposed to is the notion, evident on thousands of sites, that
presentation is more important than content -- that a good presentation with no
information in it is superior to information plainly presented. You talk about
private "vanity sites", but what about all those corporate vanity sites: all
gloss and no info.
I have no intention of impaling myself. I think that the low-volume stuff is
more worthy of my attention and my skill than slick mass-market decorations. I
think you have, indeed, misunderstood me.
> Right now, for today, in the here and
> now, NN and IE, or Win95 or Win3.1, appear to command the bulk of the
> market. Surely that will change. It hasn't yet. And the present
> situation, the present reality, ought to be appreciated, not ignored
> in favor of what appears to be a rather cold and dry abstraction that
> is waiting for some future time that may not be as glorious as things
> even are, at present. So . . . that's all.
I can appreciate the present reality much better when it is readable and makes
a worthwhile point. Over-decorated sites are hard to read, take forever to
even get a look at, constantly distract the reader, are impenetrable to some
worthwhile browers, and just generally waste bandwidth both on the 'net and
within my brain. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words telling you why
words would have gotten the point across much more effectively than any picture
ever could.
A commercial example: I was car-shopping by 'net the other day. My kids were
using the main display to look at cartoon Dalmatians so I sat down at the text
terminal (you can do things like that with Linux) and, using Lynx, quickly
discovered that I probably wouldn't be buying from one company because I
couldn't find anything to read. Another did a much better job -- I could reach
everything I really needed to know. THERE is a demonstration of the value of
conservative document design: thousands of dollars lost to the competition
because they couldn't tell their products' story.
--
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer +1 317 274 0749 [@disclaimer@]
MW...@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU Finger for more information.
I am endeavoring to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and
bearskins. -- Spock
fire...@e$xit109.com
d...@ast.cam.ac.uk (Dave Carter) wrote:
>This is absolute cobblers. Like you I question W3C's description of itself
>as a standards body, but for different reasons, it lacks international
>accreditation. But to suggest that a few large companies in one particular
>country can between them define international standards is unacceptable.
What does being "absolute cobblers" have to do with being true?
The fact is that a few large companies in one particular country
_very often_ define international standards because standards are
almost always _de facto_, or set by the marketplace. Those who
successfully sell the products set the standards. At a much later
time, after the de facto standards have been set, a standards
committee comes along and gives it approval, and then the other
manuafacurers make _their_ products compliant with the standard.
Whether you find this unacceptable has nothing to do with the fact
that that's the way it happens.
Jim Winer
firebird
My return e-mail address is altered to prevent spamming.
Remove the "$" to reply.
Alan J. Flavell
On Fri, 21 Feb 1997, it was written:
> Yeah, but part of the purist viewpoint is that all versions of browsers should
> be supported, not just the latest.
"should"? Certainly if you _can_ make your document accessible to older
browser versions, then you stand to gain some readers who wouldn't
otherwise be able to access your page, and I'm willing to go to some
trouble to point out techniques that make that possible. Those
techniques do NOT, in general, involve leaving out all HTML enhancements
[contrary to the continually repeated accusations of some critics], but
they do usually involve avoiding invalid HTML syntax, and avoiding those
vendor enhancements that are incapable of degrading gracefully.
Experience has shown that to be good practice even for users who limit
their browser choice the the Big Two.
> If we could expect
> all people to upgrade as soon as the new versions are out, there wouldn't be
> much to argue about.
Unnecessary, for most properly designed enhancements. Anyway, it's the
authors' job to write for the real WWW, not for some imagined web where
the new versions are forcibly written to users' disks whether they want
it or not. And rudely haranguing your readers to download some bloated
new package that possiblly won't even fit on their disk, is no way to
win friends and influence people.
Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
In article <E5yHx...@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>,
@ (Carsten Whimster) wrote:
> Yeah, but part of the purist viewpoint is that all versions of browsers should
> be supported, not just the latest.
Should be supported as far as possible. There's a difference. If,
for example, a browser does not support standard HTML in a reasonable
way, there is little you can do to improve accessibility for the
users. It is then up to you to decide what to do about it. If it's
a small fix (like closing <TD> and <TH> in nested tables, or using
  instead of ) then you should; but a complete rewrite to
work around a browser bug goes too far, IMO.
Galactus
- --
E-mail: gala...@htmlhelp.com .................... PGP Key: 512/63B0E665
Maintainer of WDG's HTML reference: <http://www.htmlhelp.com/reference/>
-----END PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Mark Johnson
mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>In article <330a0c53...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
>> mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>>
>>>[industry-lapdog rant deleted]
According to the little angle brackets, it would have been yours. Are
you sure?
>Without vendors, there would have been (were, in fact) Web tools anyway,
So you blame Netscape and Microsoft for stealing that market
'thunder'? Might explain a few things. Jealousy is a motive for many
things in this life.
>Without a committee, the vendors would have produced non-interoperable products
>and there would be no Web, just strands blowing in the wind.
So I should prove that without the committee, the web would not be as
easily accessible for Lynx users, and so on? That's quite a statement
for you to make. Do you have some inside info on just what Netscape
and the Micro softies had in mind, otherwise, but for only the
committee to prevent their evil plans (or whatever)?
>I can't stop them from making money and I don't want to. I may be able to stop
>them making it by selling nothing. Form *follows* function -- when it is
>allowed to lead, the product is always nonfunctional.
I might tend to agree, somewhat, where form dictates a museum piece
that people are supposed to live in, and so on; and sometime makes
even ugly museums (and libraries, we'll say; and there is that pyramid
at the Louvre). But if auto manufacturers stuck to function, all
they'd have is Euroboxes to sell, and the first Japanese or American
firm to come out with some flashy, low maintainance truck or coupe
would clean up; just maybe not in Europe where I guess both 'petrol'
and the internet cost too much.
>Whoah! What I'm opposed to is the notion, evident on thousands of sites, that
>presentation is more important than content -- that a good presentation with no
>information in it is superior to information plainly presented. You talk about
>private "vanity sites", but what about all those corporate vanity sites: all
>gloss and no info.
I can think of a few, apparently tossed up on the web as an
afterthought, with no links save to a voice line or snail mail
address. I'm referring more to those up there for a purpose, for a
reason, to sell products, to try to raise 'funding', even to just sell
ideas, even at personal sites (there's a lot of [fill in here] poetry,
for ex., you'd never otherwise find, but on 'the net' - bad ex.?).
>I think that the low-volume stuff is
>more worthy of my attention and my skill than slick mass-market decorations. I
>think you have, indeed, misunderstood me.
It's an easy thing to do going from flame to flame, to some agreement,
back to flame, again. No apology, no excuse. Just . . . y'know. I
mean, the worst controversy is the one you get into that you never
realized was so controversial (or even should be?).
>I can appreciate the present reality much better when it is readable and makes
>a worthwhile point. Over-decorated sites are hard to read,
Done without a sense of skill or taste, sure, yes. Write it off to
personal or corporate enthusiasm, at first. But it gets old, I agree.
>take forever to even get a look at,
That'll change (unless hour-long videos become the mega-gifs of the
late 90's).
>constantly distract the reader, are impenetrable
I would think that's true more of some of the purist sites I've seen;
rows and rows of unblocked bulleted links, on all manner of topic, and
so on.
>and just generally waste bandwidth both on the 'net and
>within my brain.
. . .
>Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words
You'd be amazed, and when you see the carefully and skillfully done
gifs off of Photoshop, or some compatible, by someone who knew what he
or she was doing. It's pleasant to look at. Anything of quality is.
>words would have gotten the point across much more effectively than any picture
>ever could.
1000 of them, as you say.
>A commercial example: I was car-shopping
Pardon my ignorance, yet again, but do you mean 'cart' shopping? How
do you shop in your car on 'the net', at least and still see the road
ahead (I think covered this sort of thing with someone else, here, not
too long ago). Or was this an excusion to the local 'internet cafe'
(ugh), or the like?
>discovered that I probably wouldn't be buying from one company because I
>couldn't find anything to read. Another did a much better job -- I could reach
>everything I really needed to know.
Figured to throw a fast one down the plate right where I wouldn't see
it? I mean, that doesn't say much, or describe much. Can't you
describe the differences? at least give the URL of the offending
party. Why couldn't you use site A, but could use site B?
>conservative document design: thousands of dollars lost to the competition
>because they couldn't tell their products' story.
But, that's sort of my complaint with what I understood to be the
purist mentality - something of a caprious and unreasonable
straightjacket imposed so that people or people working for firms
could _not_ use what might best shed light on their product, service
or idea.
Peace.
Tina Marie Holmboe
[Thu, 20 Feb 1997 13:02:49] [Mark Jones]
> Does it know how to connect via Windows 95 dial-up networking?
That, sadly, I cannot tell you. Hopefully someone else in ciwah can.
--
Tina Marie Holmboe
Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the / ti...@htmlhelp.com /
opinions expressed are mine, and should / http://www.htmlhelp.com/%7Etina/ /
in no way be associated with the WDG. / The Web Design Group /
Mark Johnson
ksha...@julian.uwo.ca (J. Kivi Shapiro) wrote:
>The advice is "to emphasize the content first, and then worry about the
>layout." That means that both things get done!
Things don't just "get done", even if too many people, in all fields,
in all classes use the rhetoric as if they do (but that's something
else). People have to do things to get things done. (as Mom might have
said - the chores won't do themselves)
>I don't think it's fair to assume that someone who cares about content
>doesn't care about layout,
Unless beyond even saying 'content is king' some insisted presentation
should not even be a consideration.
>I would think, in fact, that someone who went about page design in the
>suggested manner would end up concentrating on both content and style
>(at different times):
Who really knows? But it's a fair question. Do you have any examples,
any URLs, in which we see just the sort of compromise you are
suggesting, and yet that somehow still meets the purist's standard
(whatever it may be, today)? if that's your point through this.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
>
>form of it, and that "the behavior of the current builds of Navigator" is
>not a very good reference form for a standard.
Fine, and great, and I say sure-it-changes, and this is the present
situation. This is the reality you face putting together a web site.
Who sees it with what? NN and IE. That's the answer. The industry
leaders set the standard. People have complained, here, about the
failures of IBM, when _they_ did, or maybe MicroSoft when they did
just with DOS, &c. But, still, that was what you had to know, and how
to use it, and the situation is no different, today, nor will it be in
the future as the industry leaders no doubt change chairs, again.
> <A HREF="http://www.netscape.com>Frame Me Harder</a>
>valid? Why or why not?
If _you_ make a typo, that's a good point, in a way, if the browsers
are lazier with such things. But then could table cells or rows always
be open ended, at one time? I don't know. That goes to the same thing.
The problem folks here have wondered about is that various
'validation' schemes seem to prefer rather to preach for
NoNetscapeNow, that is against NN, by carefully omitting tags and
attributes that everyone knows are there, might use and so, might well
like to see validated along with the rest. And, of course, many here,
in the NoNetscapeNow mode (and no IE mode, perhaps - so I'm told)
would rail against even the very suggestion that one _might_ wish to
use the tool as it was designed and for what it was intended.
> MJ> And you're going just _love_ how it looks on Explorer. (Sure hope
> MJ> you're not a NN basher)
>
>My copy of MSIE 3 (Mac) reads my style sheet and properly parses it. The
>Wintel version of MSIE 3 doesn't do a very good job with the CSS support,
>which is presumably what you're referring to.
You presume most accurately. As I said, you're going to just . . .
and, no doubt, you know what I mean. Btw, and only because you _do_
know whatcha know, for the purist to just cut out all those lowly PC
users, especially considering that Mac hits barely register on 'the
net', at least by comparison with Win95 and Win3.1 hits, seems to cut
in, once again, to the pure faith and the pure argument - which I've
tried to point out, here, never was, and is not what the purist claim,
or imagine, it to be (assuming one can keep up with their changing
sense of just what the pure faith is - and, heck, such change may
indeed be progress for the better).
>To use your approach, "Get a web-capable operating system." :-)
Like I said. Kudos to the pure HTML, which couldn't be, never was, and
hasn't yet had its browsers make much of a dent in the market (just
btw).
Peace.
Tony Mantler
In article <ZtfDz4uY...@htmlhelp.com>, gala...@htmlhelp.com (Arnoud
"Galactus" Engelfriet) wrote:
: In article <E5yHx...@watserv3.uwaterloo.ca>,
: @ (Carsten Whimster) wrote:
: > Yeah, but part of the purist viewpoint is that all versions of
browsers should
: > be supported, not just the latest.
:
: Should be supported as far as possible. There's a difference. If,
: for example, a browser does not support standard HTML in a reasonable
: way, there is little you can do to improve accessibility for the
: users. It is then up to you to decide what to do about it. If it's
: a small fix (like closing <TD> and <TH> in nested tables, or using
:   instead of ) then you should; but a complete rewrite to
: work around a browser bug goes too far, IMO.
Personally I feel any browser that does not support standard HTML to be,
for lack of a better word, proprietary and therefore to be avoided at all
costs.
For example, if someone were to come 'round to any of my pages and can't
view them because their browser doesn't support a decent standard of HTML
I consider it their own fault for using such a poor excuse for a web
browser. it's the same as someone using a car with no engine and
complaining that they can't go anywhere because all the streets don't
slope downhill and expecting people to change things to compensate for
them.
In this way I both avoid shutting out people who don't use the "correct"
browser and I avoid having to be bound by the outlandish idea of
conforming to the rules of a dysfuncitonal browser that don't decode HTML
according to the set standards. (and BTW there is a standards body that
controls HTML, it's just that everyone ignores them)
--
Tony Mantler Aka: Österizer, Willin' Enable, and Eek e...@escape.ca
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada http://www.escape.ca/~eek
Grzegorz Staniak
[snip]
> >Without a committee, the vendors would have produced non-interoperable products
> >and there would be no Web, just strands blowing in the wind.
>
> So I should prove that without the committee, the web would not be as
> easily accessible for Lynx users, and so on? That's quite a statement
> for you to make. Do you have some inside info on just what Netscape
> and the Micro softies had in mind, otherwise, but for only the
> committee to prevent their evil plans (or whatever)?
Excuse my butting in like that, but if you're talking about
W3C, both Microsoft and Netscape are part of the committee,
so it would seem the decent thing to do if they at least
respected their own resolutions. The way it is now, they
use their W3C membership as a fig leaf, lying to all the
world about their committment to open standards while at
the same time subverting the functionality of WWW with
their vendor-specific "extensions" to HTML.
As far as your question above is concerned, let me answer
with another question: do you have any idea of what
functionality of WWW, planned and designed years ago,
you're missing just because Netscape and Microsoft,
against the advice of better-informed people from W3C
and not only, focused on whizbang features at the same
time ignoring - or implementing only in a crippled
form - things that really would matter?
[...]
--
Grzegorz Staniak
<gsta...@golem.umcs.lublin.pl>
Hume Smith
In article <330ccc11...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
says...
>
>hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>
>>Believe in the tooth fairy too, if you want, it won't make it so:
>> <URL:http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/wlynx/>
>
>Already got it.
then why the * were you saying "i don't believe they've managed to port it"?
> It doesn't show a map unless you 'click' on it.
so? it is *accessible*; it supports CSMs in a useable manner. you were
basically claiming it didn't handle the map at all. you'd complain it was
doing it wrong if it jammed it all into one page, i'd bet.
>>wrong. but of course, why should you find out what the real thing does, when
>>the simulators and snapshooters must be good enough?
>
>Think about it. That is, what's the point of such pages or telnet apps
>then?
yes, what *is* the point of a page to simulate a browser? why in the world
would i ever trust something else to give me an accurate idea of what a browser
was going to do, when i could get it from the real thing so easily?
> Hey, Lynx is not exactly something in which I'm keenly
>interested.
then why do you complain and spread so much manure about it?
Hume Smith
In article <330ccbe5...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
says...
>
>pet...@watson.navy.gov.au (Peter Scully) wrote:
>
>> Left Nav Bar
>>
>>MAP: http://www.sun.com/#navbar
>>
>> 1. http://www.sun.com/java/
>> 2. http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/
>
>
>Thanks. That's what you get from a sub-screen, by clicking on the name
>of the image. And the purist has yet to explain how, because the older
>versions of Lynx cannot find this info, that one-size-fits-all,
you have yet to explain how a version of lynx written before the CSM standard,
is supposed to handle a CSM.
> unless he imagines everyone uses the latest version of Lynx.
your ilk expects everyone to have the latest version of Netscape. lynx is
kept current in precompiled versions for many for platforms, and in source for
the adventurous, all available by http in not-ungodly-huge pieces. it's far
more reasonable to expect someone to keep up with major lynx features, than
with Netscape.
Hume Smith
In article <330cd07c...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
>
>This is pretty much your 'thing', isn't it? Flame, and flame some
>more? What do twits do, after all, if not lash out, impotently? You
>tell _me_.
my "thing" is to call something what it is.
there's two versions of impotence: the effector is too weak, or the object too
stubborn. you've repeatedly refused to see to what is put in front of you.
you've claimed lynx doesn't support CSMs (current versions do; ones older than
the CSM standard can hardly be expected to); you've claimed it didn't show ALT
tags, giving as an example a page that has none to begin with; you've
"believed" there was no Win'95 version, then said you had it.
you tell _me_ what kind of mental capacity that indicates.
Alan J. Flavell
On Thu, 20 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
> hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>
> >Believe in the tooth fairy too, if you want, it won't make it so:
> > <URL:http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/wlynx/>
>
> Already got it.
Amazing. And all the time you were pretending to know nothing and
understand even less.
> It doesn't show a map unless you 'click' on it.
Oh, and there was wailing and gnashing of teeth. It makes a client
side imagemap accessible, within the restrictions of a character-mode
window. Seems logical enough to me.
> Think about it.
We already did, whereas you only now seem to be getting slowly
around to it.
> That is, what's the point of such pages or telnet apps
> then?
You don't need to know. Portable HTML works even for those
authors who can't - or don't want to - understand why.
> Hey, Lynx is not exactly something in which I'm keenly
> interested.
You give a remarkable impression of your lack of interest. Why
don't you just leave it alone, and concentrate on something that you
_are_ interested in? I _have_ seen one posting so far where you gave
an accurate answer to a factual question. It would be good to see more.
Andrew Charlton
1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) wrote:
>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>>Precisely: Netscape's FRAME concept is an ugly beast
>
>Maybe. It's handy for navigation. But it might have been nicer if
>they'd allowed for a horizonal user menu bar, instead. That would have
>not 'crushed' a page so into a frame. But, then again, it would have
>been deemed 'non-standard' by the purist, at that.
The real problem would be if Netscape did it, it would be some horrible
construct which would only work on Netscape by hiding content in a tag as
in:
<MENUBAR>
<MENUITEM HREF="http://....." TITLE="blah">
</MENUBAR>
When something like
<MENUBAR>
<MENUITEM><A HREF="....">blah</A></MENUITEM>
</MENUBAR>
would work as well.
It is to Netscape's advantage to use the former, because then pages using
it would only work on Netscape, and that creates a competetive advantage
(If they can talk authors into using it).
It is to the World Wide Web's advantage to use the latter, or something
like it, because even when a browser might not recognise the <MENUBAR>
element, it WOULD recognise the anchors, and display a bunch of links.
They wouldn't be on a menubar (A menubar might not even make sense on the
platform, some sort of logical abstraction would be better) but it WOULD
appear. (And if I can come up with that off the top of my head, imagine how
the concept could be improved with open discussion)
That's why Netscape et al should not be allowed to set the standard, and
the only way for web authors to prevent them from setting bad standards is
to not use their badly designed tags.
I would not for one minute suggest that browser manufacturers not be
allowed to add to HTML, but it is the responsibility of the HTML authors to
filter through what they produce, and only use the good stuff. THEN the
standard is set based on the interests of the Web as a whole, rather than
the narrow focus of commercial interest.
--
____/\___ |Andrew D. Charlton This message best viewed with Agent
___/__\__) |---------<->--------- -------------
(__/ \__ |mailto:char...@ihug.co.nz | Agent NOW |
/ \ |http://crash.ihug.co.nz/~charlton/andrew/ -------------
Mark Johnson
hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>In article <330cd07c...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
>says...
>>
>>hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>>
>>>God, you're a twit.
>>
>>This is pretty much your 'thing', isn't it? Flame, and flame some
>>more? What do twits do, after all, if not lash out, impotently? You
>>tell _me_.
>
>my "thing"
Is pretty much as I called it.
Peace.
Mark Johnson
hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>In article <330ccc11...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
>>
>>hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>>> <URL:http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/wlynx/>
>>Already got it.
>
>then why the * were you saying "i don't believe they've managed to port it"?
Dos in a box isn't half bad, I guess. But it's not really Win95. And
then again, it's only Lynx to begin with. If you've got Win95, you're
using NN and IE like everyone else, anyway - right?
>> Hey, Lynx is not exactly something in which I'm keenly
>>interested.
>
>then why do you complain
Because other people insist I say _something_. Heck, I'm just
following your thread, here. Can't win fer losing in this, I guess?
Peace.
Mark Johnson
tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>1023...@compuserve.com writes:
>>tor...@pvv.org (Tor Iver Wilhelmsen) wrote:
>>Like I said. One-size-fits all, unless it become inconvenient. I like
>>to think I'm a little more realistic than that, from the start.
>
>The crux of the matter is that Netscape lags behind
Which wasn't the point, and we were talkin Lynx. And to suggest, as
Lynx evangelists on this ng do, that this 'glass teletype'/telnet
thing is superior to a full-on 1997 graphical browser suggests how far
fanaticism can take one, I think. The 3270 was neat in its day. But
that was then. And this is decades later.
>It takes a _very_ short time to add a new feature to Lynx. And because of
>the small size, getting the latest version is a snap.
So why isn't this true for IE or NN? Same thing.
>Netscape have problems both with company size, and program size.
It's far more self-contained that IE, installs without that sort of MS
fuss (without practically retooling Win95), and might run fine even in
v. 4 (but we'll see).
>>It looks like a glass teletype. I thought that was neat in the 80s,
>>with the 3270 terminals. My first monitor was a green screen, for an
>>Apple //, cause I wanted sort of the same look as at work. But, heck
>>and by gosh, this is 1997.
>
>you read. I mean, it seems you are made out of money. :-)
The green screen was cheaper than the klunky color models, of that
era. And PCs, today, don't cost much used. It's the latest flyer that
costs, and is often nothing but one long headache, to boot.
>Apart from that, a teletype couldn't handle colours or character position
It's a term from about the same era. A 'glass teletype' was not a
teletype, nor a daisy wheel (remember those?), but a line oriented
display terminal.
>>>Precisely: Netscape's FRAME concept is an ugly beast
>>
>>Maybe. It's handy for navigation.
>
>It's not,
It is. And not because you can bookmark the current subframe, but
because the web author provided links to get you back to where you
started without so much as a drop-down menu, or running sequentially
through the back button.
>If "getting on the net" requires more and more expensive equipment, they
>are working counter to your argument.
I think your complaint, then, is with Mr. Gates.
>Write web pages, not "exclusive-Netscape" pages, not "you need the 56 Mb
>plugin to see this junk" pages, not "your chosen browser stinks, get the
>one I use" pages. Web pages.
I take it WebTV is not allowed to have _its_ hacks and its WebTV
specific sites, either. One size doesn't fit all. Maybe it will, more
so, some day. But the future isn't here, yet; maybe it's a good thing.
>Fear, Uncetainty, Doubt - a marketing strategy which attempts to undermine
>the customers view of competing products without actually saying a word
>about your own. The "glass teletype", "trailing edge" stuff about Lynx, you
>know.
So, alright, it's not a 'glass teletype', but a full screen browser
employing the latest in telnet CUA, or whatever. No problem. It's not
trailing edge but merely considerate of older equipment. (PC is too
easy, I think)
>_Chosen_ fonts, _chosen_ colours, _selected_ graphics and _all_ the text.
><FONT> tags are an atrocity - hint at fonts in stylesheets if you will,
>but _please_ don't force your vision of what's readable onto me.
You wouldn't have it any other way. From what is presented, however
skillfully, however effectively from your viewpoint, perhaps future
browsers, or whatever, will allow you to just cut and paste, slice and
dice, to your heart's content. But every now and then you might find
yourself unexpectedly thankful that someone put a little effort into
their site to make it interesting, easy to use, easy to navigate, and
helpful in ways perhaps you hadn't even thought of, yourself. Anyway.
>I have no problem with authors suggesting how a page can be viewed. I _do_
>have a problem with authors who _force_ how a page is to be viewed.
How can you force such a thing? It this some CGI override you're
referring to?
> Why don't they stick to paper-based media?
Why don't people stay the heck off Everest? I don't know.
>What if installation programs (under Windows) _forcefully_ restarted your
>computer instead of asking whether you wanted to restart your computer?
Now _that_ would be annoying; particularly in Win95 which likes to
surprize you, every now and then, with 'you'd better try safe mode if
you ever wanna see your files again' kind of thing.
>Would you 1) adapt to the situation,
Actually, come to think of it, I think Explorer does that on initial
install; or am I being fergetful. It occurs to me this would be truly
annoying if the capability were given to web authors to do this to
someone viewing their page (well . . . the mind wanders sometimes).
Peace.
Mark Johnson
li...@htmlhelp.com (Liam Quinn) wrote:
>On Wed, 19 Feb 1997 10:15:35 GMT, 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark
>Johnson) wrote:
>
>>Christopher Davis <c...@loiosh.kei.com> wrote:
>>
>>>MJ> == Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com>
>I don't think Christopher was advocating a text-only page.
I was. Still am, when appropriate.
>that some react strongly to the notion of text-only pages is because
>it is very rarely needed (I can't think of a situation off-hand).
Tables.
>Why maintain two pages when one would do?
Tables. And other things.
>(And, as we all know, the text-only page is always the last to be updated,
Fair enough. You're right, unless the page is generated, even
automatically, after the update to the 'master'. That's probably the
only good way to do it.
>I have pages years old that are still usable today. They wouldn't be
>if I'd authored for the Browser of the Day, since that would have
>meant, among other things, leaving off ending quotes (<A
>HREF="link.html>Oops, forgot the quote, oh well</A>).
Well, okay, guess I'll just have to ask. Are you suggesting NN
_requires_ you to omit the trailing double quote from text like that?
What did you mean to say, here?
>When I make pages professionally, I make pages that will last by
>writing clean HTML. This means that I don't saddle my clients with a
>page that will, in effect, time out with the next browser release. To
>place such a time-lock on my clients' pages would be unethical.
Sure, if you were only churning the account to promote a gimic. But
what if the latest and greatest might serve the client better than the
old and orphaned? This shouldn't be controversial stuff, I think.
Sometimes the simple short list is all you need - correct? And
sometimes, you really _can_ take advantage of whatever is new to the
market. It's sometimes _why_ that stuff is even newly there.
>Can you please give some concrete examples of where you have to take
>away from the 80% to satisfy "the limitations of the 20%"?
The 5% you mean, if that. And if we're talking tables, there's your
answer - or the accursed frames, or just whatever they old can't
handle of the new; assuming there really is a sensible benefit to
otherwise making some use of the new (maybe that's not always so, as
your 'school' would be quick to mention; and have).
Peace.
Tero Paananen
>And to suggest, as
>Lynx evangelists on this ng do, that this 'glass teletype'/telnet
>thing is superior to a full-on 1997 graphical browser suggests how far
>fanaticism can take one, I think.
Lots of people have said that it's more advanced in just about every aspect
of HTML than the more popular browsers.
I would personally go as far as considering lynx light years ahead of Netscape,
when the current Netscape versions bloat, bloat and bloat some more, crash
*regularly*, do not allow any kind of extensive user preferences (this may
change, hopefully) and when its approach to HTML is what it is.
> The 3270 was neat in its day. But that was then. And this is decades later.
And 3270/VTnnn *still* has their uses, just like GUIs.
>>It takes a _very_ short time to add a new feature to Lynx. And because of
>>the small size, getting the latest version is a snap.
>So why isn't this true for IE or NN? Same thing.
Why indeed? Facts don't support your "same thing" answer. Their latest
*beta-versions* have been repeatedly late.
Then again lynx doesn't really have deadlines to match, they just pop out a
new version when they get around to it.
-TPP
Andrew Charlton
hcls...@tallships.istar.ca (Hume Smith) wrote:
>In article <330ccbe5...@news.pacbell.net>, 1023...@compuserve.com
>says...
>>Thanks. That's what you get from a sub-screen, by clicking on the name
>>of the image. And the purist has yet to explain how, because the older
>>versions of Lynx cannot find this info, that one-size-fits-all,
>
>you have yet to explain how a version of lynx written before the CSM standard,
>is supposed to handle a CSM.
It would have been trivial to design some construct which would degrade to
a list of links on a non-supporting browser. Client side image maps
weren't designed in such a way to make that possible, however.
One size CAN fit all, if care is taken when extending HTML. Unfortunately,
it is not in the best interests of browser manufacterers to do so.
Alan J. Flavell
On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, Andrew Charlton wrote:
> It would have been trivial to design some construct which would degrade to
> a list of links on a non-supporting browser.
It was called FIG.
> it is not in the best interests of browser manufacterers to do so.
One might guess that's why they refused to implement FIG.
Do you think OBJECT will go the same way?
Alan J. Flavell
On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
> I was. Still am, when appropriate.
You don't seem to understand when it's "appropriate" yet. Others have,
in my view, offered advice that is better founded on experience.
> >that some react strongly to the notion of text-only pages is because
> >it is very rarely needed (I can't think of a situation off-hand).
>
> Tables.
That might be an argument in favour of a non-tables version, but has
little or nothing to do with being text-only. WinWeb1 and MacWeb1 are
two examples of graphical lightweight browsers used by some people with
low-end machines: they too can benefit from non-tables versions, or from
techniques that help tables to display on non-table browsers.
Both of the text-mode browsers that get discussed here can access other
media when they are in appropriate environments. Fortunately Lynx
can send a counterfeit agent id when confronted with the kind of
authoring ignorance that refuses to make other media available to it.
> Tables. And other things.
You already said tables. _What_ other things? [I suggest you
confine your answer to things included in HTML3.2, or else we'll
start wasting yet more time on FRAMEs, that've already been done to
death on other threads.]
Tor Iver Wilhelmsen
car...@edm2.com (Carsten Whimster) writes:
>
>Yeah, but part of the purist viewpoint is that all versions of browsers should
>all people to upgrade as soon as the new versions are out, there wouldn't be
>much to argue about.
Ah, but you're using a whole different definition of "purist" than me, or
else I am not a purist. (I'm free! :-) )
To state my view:
* Markup and presentation should be separate. HTML plus CSS1.
* When authoring HTML, do not _rely_ on proprietary extensions to get your
message across. If you do, your message becomes: "Use what I'm using,
or else!".
* Do _not_ try to indent using UL, BLOCKQUOTE, DL, or whatever. What you
see is not necessarily what another user will se on their browser. Use
CSS1 to hint at indentation.
* Keep in mind that standards and new stuff takes a while to spread. Do
not rely on such elements.
- Tor Iver
--
Substitute Assistant CEO of Opening Tins of Dog Food of the DNRC.
tor...@pvv.org * http://www.pvv.org/%7Etoriver * Rush: Cut to the Chase
"I'm old enough not to care too much about what you think of me
But I'm young enough to remember the future and the way things ought to be"
Tina Marie Holmboe
[Sun, 23 Feb 1997 10:22:39] [Mark Johnson]
> Which wasn't the point, and we were talkin Lynx. And to suggest, as
> Lynx evangelists on this ng do, that this 'glass teletype'/telnet
> thing is superior to a full-on 1997 graphical browser suggests how far
> fanaticism can take one, I think. The 3270 was neat in its day. But
> that was then. And this is decades later.
In other words, how advanced a browser is should be measured not as much by
what it is capable of, it's functionality, but of how 'graphical' it is ?
I do confess that I am, honestly, impressed.
Tina Marie Holmboe
[Sun, 23 Feb 1997 10:03:39] [Mark Johnson]
> Dos in a box isn't half bad, I guess. But it's not really Win95. And
> then again, it's only Lynx to begin with. If you've got Win95, you're
Excuse me ? '...not really Win95' ? Win95 is a *GUI*, running on top of
the operating system DOS. Lynx has been ported to DOS, and subsequently it
can run - and I presume even such a GUI as Win95 will allow native software
to run; after all, the GUI should in no way hamper the OS.
Mark Johnson
"Alan J. Flavell" <fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>On Sun, 23 Feb 1997, Mark Johnson wrote:
>
>> I was. Still am, when appropriate.
>
>You don't seem to understand
Well, I understand these threads are starting to get a little old. I
can't imagine how many more ways I can elaborate on what I've written,
at great length, over the past few weeks.
>in my view, offered advice that is better founded on experience.
oookay, fine, as they say.
Peace.
Mark H. Wood
In article <5ep78e$c...@cc.tut.fi>, p11...@cc.tut.fi (Tero Paananen) writes:
> In <3310165e...@news.pacbell.net> 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
>
>>Lynx evangelists on this ng do, that this 'glass teletype'/telnet
>>thing is superior to a full-on 1997 graphical browser suggests how far
>>fanaticism can take one, I think.
>
> of HTML than the more popular browsers.
>
> I would personally go as far as considering lynx light years ahead of Netscape,
> when the current Netscape versions bloat, bloat and bloat some more, crash
> *regularly*, do not allow any kind of extensive user preferences (this may
> change, hopefully) and when its approach to HTML is what it is.
Yup. Plus, try going to one of the *really* popular sites, like H-P or Compaq,
and see how much time you spend growing older waiting on all the goo. Lynx is
best for me when I want to visit www.hp.com since they (H-P) know what they're
doing and present eminently readable information even without the pretty
pictures. Compaq's site isn't as well-composed for character-cell
presentation, but boy is it fast when you ignore all the silly spinning globes,
pastel backgrounds, etc. I know I can turn off the images in {insert favorite
hog browser here} but why bother when I've always got a terminal session open
anyway?
>> The 3270 was neat in its day. But that was then. And this is decades later.
>
> And 3270/VTnnn *still* has their uses, just like GUIs.
Indeed, that's why I still own some.
[deletia]
--
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer +1 317 274 0749 [@disclaimer@]
MW...@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU Finger for more information.
I am endeavoring to construct a mnemonic circuit using stone knives and
bearskins. -- Spock
Kyler Laird
1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
>>>But, when it gets to "Rather than designing your site for a specific
>>>browser and layout, and then adding in support for other browsers, you
>>>should design your site to emphasize the content first, and then worry
>>>about the layout", I must wonder how it is that content might seem so
>>>divorced from presentation.
>>
>>That, baby, is the A and Z of SGML/DSSL.
>Sorry to hear it. One can only take so many grey field, black bulleted
>blue screens before needing a little R & R.
It seems that because of the frequency with which such
stupidity is displayed here, a study into the thought
process that arrives at such conclusions would be
helpful in preventing it.
It could be that a little bit of well-timed education
would alleviate much of this noise?
...or perhaps this thinking will just die out as style-
sheets get used *properly*. (Ha! Like that's going to
happen on a wide scale.)
--kyler
Carsten Whimster
In <1997Feb24.0...@indyvax.iupui.edu>, mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) writes:
>In article <5ep78e$c...@cc.tut.fi>, p11...@cc.tut.fi (Tero Paananen) writes:
>> In <3310165e...@news.pacbell.net> 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
>>
>>>And to suggest, as
>>>Lynx evangelists on this ng do, that this 'glass teletype'/telnet
>>>thing is superior to a full-on 1997 graphical browser suggests how far
>>>fanaticism can take one, I think.
>>
>> Lots of people have said that it's more advanced in just about every aspect
>> of HTML than the more popular browsers.
>>
>> I would personally go as far as considering lynx light years ahead of Netscape,
>> when the current Netscape versions bloat, bloat and bloat some more, crash
>> *regularly*, do not allow any kind of extensive user preferences (this may
>> change, hopefully) and when its approach to HTML is what it is.
>
>Yup. Plus, try going to one of the *really* popular sites, like H-P or Compaq,
>and see how much time you spend growing older waiting on all the goo. Lynx is
>best for me when I want to visit www.hp.com since they (H-P) know what they're
>doing and present eminently readable information even without the pretty
>pictures. Compaq's site isn't as well-composed for character-cell
>presentation, but boy is it fast when you ignore all the silly spinning globes,
>pastel backgrounds, etc. I know I can turn off the images in {insert favorite
>hog browser here} but why bother when I've always got a terminal session open
>anyway?
Interestingly, I believe that David Siegel did the H-P site. Can anyone confirm
that it is still his work, and did they redo it since?
Carsten Whimster
car...@edm2.com
EDM/2 Editor-in-chief
================================================
The Electronic Developer Magazine for OS/2
http://www.edm2.com/
================================================
Mark Johnson
la...@pier.ecn.purdue.edu (Kyler Laird) wrote:
>It seems that because of the frequency with which such
>stupidity is displayed here, a study into the thought
Might be just as stupid? Sooo. . . anyway, I assume you are another
of the rigorist purists who is just loathe to suggest a page, not even
his own, for review of the pure HTML. But I'll dare to ask. What pages
do _you_ recommend as models for us all, as examples of timeless pages
fitting every size and browser and just whatever? If your argument was
with me, consider it my attempt to get 'educated'? What URLs did you
have in mind?
Peace.
Mark Johnson
mw...@indyvax.iupui.edu (Mark H. Wood) wrote:
>In article <5ep78e$c...@cc.tut.fi>, p11...@cc.tut.fi (Tero Paananen) writes:
>> In <3310165e...@news.pacbell.net> 1023...@compuserve.com (Mark Johnson) writes:
>> I would personally go as far as considering lynx light years ahead of Netscape,
Uh-huh. I get the sense you feel some personal attachment to the
thing. Fine. But I think it also has clouded your perspective. I
didn't say fanaticism was always such a bad thing. Rabid fans may
still very well be good fans to have.
>> when the current Netscape versions bloat, bloat and bloat some more,
>> crash *regularly*,
The 'bloat' comes with IE, not NN. And while NN 2 used to crash on
those animated GIFs, sometimes, it happens rarely, now (it still does
crash, though).
>Yup. Plus, try going to one of the *really* popular sites, like H-P or Compaq,
>and see how much time you spend growing older waiting on all the goo.
I suppose you have forgotten, in your Lynx zealot zeal, that you can
turn image loading off in NN and IE? I've been reminded of this,
myself, on numerous occasions on this ng.
>hog browser here} but why bother when I've always got a terminal session open
>anyway?
Which is the thing that bugs me about Lynx, too. You can't seem to
browse off-line. That means I have to hit my own pages, on-line, just
to check them in Lynx - which I say, still, even the vers 2.7 (it
says) I have in a Dos-in-the-box, tends to break down a good page in
almost the same way a two year old version of Mosaic does (so, use
Mosaic to check the appearance in Lynx, right?).
>>> The 3270 was neat in its day. But that was then. And this is decades later.
>>
>> And 3270/VTnnn *still* has their uses, just like GUIs.
>
>Indeed, that's why I still own some.
Nostalgia, I'm sure. And there's something to be said for needing to
keep one's bearings, in the old stuff they've grown up with. I'm not
criticizing that or putting it down. I felt a small loss, myself,
handing my old green screen monitor over to Goodwill (was moving and
just didn't think I had the room). The 3270 was really a neat thing to
look at. It was well engineered. Everyone agrees. But it doesn't
compare to the latest NEC, Nanao, Viewsonic or whatever, 15-17 inch
true color monitor. And to use Lynx, when you would be better
employed, just in my opinion, looking at the sites with NN or IE (or
Amaya, or whatever you want), on a good monitor, with a fast
connection. . . but . . . . anyway.
Peace.
Tina Marie Holmboe
[Mon, 24 Feb 1997 23:04:19] [Carsten Whimster]
> Interestingly, I believe that David Siegel did the H-P site. Can anyone confirm
> that it is still his work, and did they redo it since?
I can believe that - that frontpage is... well, stuffed with niceties.
- No DOCTYPE
- Setting *only* a BGCOLOR, and with ="FFFFFF" at that.
- Missing *required* ALT-texts on AREA elements.
- H? elements used for FONT purposes ?
- TABLE widths specified in *pixels*
- Missing '/' on the end of URL that need it...
Oh, *very* advanced. Anyway: according to the document:
Graphics by UID Group
HTML coding by Sunnyvale PTP IT Group
Christopher Gray
In article <33122069...@news.pacbell.net> 1023...@compuserve.com
(Mark Johnson) writes:
Which is the thing that bugs me about Lynx, too. You can't seem to
browse off-line. That means I have to hit my own pages, on-line, just
to check them in Lynx
This sounds as if it might be a problem with the DOS implementation.
What happens if you cd to the directory where (say) index.htm resides
and type `lynx index.htm'? On the Un*x version that automatically
loads <file:///some/directory/index.htm>, with or without a connection
to the internet.
When you try to browse off-line, what goes wrong?
--
________________________________________________________________________
Chris Gray Chris...@bcs.org.uk Compuserve: 100065,2102
http://columbia.digiweb.com/kiffer/chris_gray/
________________________________________________________________________
Ardua molimur: sed nulla nisi ardua virtus
Tina Marie Holmboe
[Mon, 24 Feb 1997 23:23:09] [Mark Johnson]
> Uh-huh. I get the sense you feel some personal attachment to the
> thing. Fine. But I think it also has clouded your perspective. I
> didn't say fanaticism was always such a bad thing. Rabid fans may
> still very well be good fans to have.
Are you aware of the abusive nature of what you are writing ? Probably
not.
> I suppose you have forgotten, in your Lynx zealot zeal, that you can
> turn image loading off in NN and IE? I've been reminded of this,
> myself, on numerous occasions on this ng.
Netscape 3.01 : 4,923,032 bytes
Netscape 4.0b2 : 7,676,968 bytes
Lynx 2.7 : 578,300 bytes [disk/executable]
Netscape 3.01 : 8,776 ( 3,408 active) K
Netscape 4.0b2 : 12,520 ( 6,236 active) K
Lynx 2.7 : 1,896 ( 760 active) K [ram/executable]
> Which is the thing that bugs me about Lynx, too. You can't seem to
> browse off-line. That means I have to hit my own pages, on-line, just
This is, of course, possible. Just point lynx to the HTML-file of your
choice, eg.:
lynx index.html
and it will display this file. Disclaimer: there is a possibility that this
is not working under DOS, althought I don't see why that should be the case.
> to check them in Lynx - which I say, still, even the vers 2.7 (it
> says) I have in a Dos-in-the-box, tends to break down a good page in
> almost the same way a two year old version of Mosaic does (so, use
> Mosaic to check the appearance in Lynx, right?).
In other words: you do not like the apperance Lynx gives to a page. Fair
enough. It is still a *fact* that Lynx is more technically advanced than
Netscape and Explorer. And yes, I include stylesheet support. Neither IE nor
NS impress.
> look at. It was well engineered. Everyone agrees. But it doesn't
> compare to the latest NEC, Nanao, Viewsonic or whatever, 15-17 inch
> true color monitor. And to use Lynx, when you would be better
What exactly is a 'true color' monitor ?
Well, whatever. It would in a way be fun to show you one of my virtual
screens; the one I have my editors in. I don't use more than two Emacs-windows
at a time; each 80x35, green-on-black. At times I have one 80x56 up, for more
difficult tasks.
Another screen holds a 1024x768 Newsreader, and yet another a large Lynx
window. Of course; this is only the case when I have the laptop docket. If
not, I run one 640x480 Lynx window on one screen.
And 'lo, and behold ! Properly designed pages look *good* in *all* of those
circumstances. Surprised ?
Jon A. Cruz
Christopher Gray wrote:
>
> In article <33122069...@news.pacbell.net> 1023...@compuserve.com
> (Mark Johnson) writes:
>
> browse off-line. That means I have to hit my own pages, on-line, just
>
> What happens if you cd to the directory where (say) index.htm resides
> and type `lynx index.htm'? On the Un*x version that automatically
> loads <file:///some/directory/index.htm>, with or without a connection
> to the internet.
>
> When you try to browse off-line, what goes wrong?
>
> --
Well, I just got the version of 2.7 for win32, and it browses fine from
my local HD at home, and at work.
I just had to use the recommended format:
> File access looks like this:
>
> file:///c:/autoexec.bat
> file:///c:/dos
> file:///c:/dos/command.com
Grzegorz Staniak
Mark Johnson wrote:
[...]
[Tero Paananen:]
> >> I would personally go as far as considering lynx light years ahead of Netscape,
>
> Uh-huh. I get the sense you feel some personal attachment to the
> thing. Fine. But I think it also has clouded your perspective. I
> didn't say fanaticism was always such a bad thing. Rabid fans may
> still very well be good fans to have.
[...]
Fanaticism? Maybe, to some extent. But in terms of protocol
support, Lynx has numerous advantages over NN/MSIE. I'd say
it's the closest to full HTTP/1.1 support. Also, it does
things that belong to HTML 2.0 and are still ignored by
NN/MSIE, like the LINK role hierarchies, a good support
of which would render 90% of "navigation bars" obsolete.
Fanaticism? Yes, I'd say deprecating technologically
superior software just because its user interface is not
graphical might be considered a mild form of fanaticism.
--
Grzegorz Staniak - a freelance at large
<gsta...@golem.umcs.lublin.pl>
Mark Johnson
"Jon A. Cruz" <jo...@twinsun.com> wrote:
>Well, I just got the version of 2.7 for win32, and it browses fine from
>my local HD at home, and at work.
The version I got works in a Dosbox and says vers 2.7 . But it just
shuts down if it can't immediately connect. Where did you get this 2.7
_you're_ using?
Mark Johnson
la...@pier.ecn.purdue.edu (Kyler Laird) wrote:
>It seems that because of the frequency with which such
>stupidity is displayed here, a study into the thought
Hello. What pages do _you_ recommend as models for us all, as examples
Jon A. Cruz
I grabbed it from <URL:http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/wlynx/>.
One of the first things I did at home was edit the lynx.cfg file to
chang STARTFILE to point at a local file, instead of it's default.
Abigail
On Mon, 24 Feb 1997 23:04:41 GMT, Carsten Whimster wrote in comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
++
++ Interestingly, I believe that David Siegel did the H-P site. Can anyone
++ confirm
++ that it is still his work, and did they redo it since?
++
From http://www.hp.com:
<!--
Graphics by UID Group
HTML coding by Sunnyvale PTP IT Group
-->
Abigail
--
Anyone who slaps a "this page is best viewed with Browser X" label
on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the
Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on
another computer, another word processor, or another network.
[Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996]
J. Kivi Shapiro
In article <330e2598...@news.pacbell.net>,
Mark Johnson <1023...@compuserve.com> wrote:
>>I would think, in fact, that someone who went about page design in the
>>suggested manner would end up concentrating on both content and style
>>(at different times):
>
>Who really knows? But it's a fair question. Do you have any examples,
>any URLs, in which we see just the sort of compromise you are
>suggesting, and yet that somehow still meets the purist's standard
>(whatever it may be, today)? if that's your point through this.
Well, <URL:http://www.htmlhelp.com/> springs to mind. There are
others, but I'm not going to run around the WWW just to find them.
I don't mean to imply any compromise, by the way. You can have your
cake and eat it too, so long as you do it in the right order. Content
first, then style.
We have a road in my home town that was newly built a few years back.
Very nice, looked gorgeous. But then they realised it didn't have
enough storm sewer capacity and ended up digging the whole thing up
again and rebuilding from the bottom up. I think the metaphor is
nice.
- Kivi
--
ksha...@julian.uwo.ca or ki...@pobox.com (Kivi Shapiro)
It's all right. I'm a librarian.
Alan J. Flavell
On Tue, 25 Feb 1997, Jon A. Cruz wrote:
> > The version I got works in a Dosbox and says vers 2.7 . But it just
> > shuts down if it can't immediately connect.
I believe it needs to find a packet driver (software interface) in
your configuration.
Doesn't matter whether the packet driver has a real network behind
it - at least, not until you really try to access a URL on the
network.
> I grabbed it from <URL:http://www.fdisk.com/doslynx/wlynx/>.
As was noted earlier, a URL of file:///c:/somefile.htm e.g as
the start file, works fine. Somehow I had missed that earlier,
thanks for the tip. I had been trying things like
file:///c:/ or file:///c:/subdir/ and those don't seem to
work.
(followups set to the appropriate group, c.i.w.browsers.misc)
Reinier Post
1023...@compuserve.com wrote:
>>inferior Navigator is futile and backwards. In fact, Netscapists using the
>>word "modern" is an oxymoron, with weight on the two last syllables. :-)
>
>I know - No Netscape Now. Talk about cutting out your potential
>customers.
Nobody talks about cutting off Netscape users. Think again.
>That's 70%+ of the web - NN. Hope the purists get their
>stories straight, some day.
>
>Peace.
And, above all, fresh air :)
--
Reinier
Reinier Post
firebird@e$xit109.com wrote:
>The fact is that a few large companies in one particular country
>_very often_ define international standards because standards are
>almost always _de facto_, or set by the marketplace.
Well, Netscape doesn't define its own standards; it kindly allows others
to describe its own implementations and issue them as standards.
--
Reinier
Christopher Gray
In article <5f16nq$4...@cursus14.win.tue.nl> Reinier Post <rein...@win.tue.nl>
writes:
>
[Mark] >Peace.
And, above all, fresh air :)
Don't we have enough of that already? Oops, 'scuse me: I think that was
my roof I just saw go past the window.
Reinier Post
1023...@compuserve.com wrote:
[in reply to someone posting from a VAX 7000-620]
>And to use Lynx, when you would be better
>employed, just in my opinion, looking at the sites with NN or IE (or
>Amaya, or whatever you want), on a good monitor, with a fast
>connection. . . but . . . . anyway.
For your information, I use Lynx heavily on a Sun Ultra;
we have a 34M/s Internet connection. You are entitled to your opinion,
but it's narrow-minded to assume that different opinions can only exist
as the result of 'fanaticism'.
>Peace.
--
Reinier
Eindhoven University, the Netherlands