Warpzilla & CSS
Jan Danielsson
I'm not sure where to ask, this is a combined Warpzilla and HTML/CSS
question. I'll try here first:
Short version
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I can not get Warpzilla (0.9.9) to add my alternate styles to the "styles"
menu. I have working code (cut'n'pasted from a W3C page), which works while
I'm online, but stops working when I go offline.
Long version
~~~~~~~~~~~~
I have set up dink's web/2 (which is excellent, btw) on a server. I create an
index.html on the server, and compose some styles in it. So far, so good. If
I move the CSS stuff to an external file, and "<link>" to it, then it does
not use the styles. I have verified that the .css-files are being loaded from
the server, they are just not being used.
Now, the strange part of it: I have a working CSS example from the W3C site.
I have loaded their page, opened the styles manu, found that it contains an
extra entry ("Midnight"). If I copy their style information to my index.html
file, and reload my page, then I get a "midnight" entry. But if I disconnect
from my ISP, and reload the page, then the midnight entry does not appear.
What am I doing wrong? It seems I have to be connected to the internet to be
able to use external CSS files, and they do not appear to work if I use them
locally (on my local network).
/j
vir...@mapsaustin.rr.com
<jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> wrote:
> What am I doing wrong? It seems I have to be connected to the internet to be
> able to use external CSS files, and they do not appear to work if I use them
> locally (on my local network).
>
This doesn't sound like a CSS problem, but rather a problem with the
link. However, I just know enough about HTML and CSS to be a danger to
myself and those in my immediate vicinity. You might find an answer at:
www.cookwood.com/html4_4e/browser_tests/
kevin
--
vir...@MAPSaustin.rr.com
Please remove "MAPS." when replying
Ron Gibson
<jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> Noted:
> I'm not sure where to ask, this is a combined Warpzilla and HTML/CSS
> question. I'll try here first:
Have you run it all through the HTML and CSS validator's on W3.org?
Also, I've found at times for some reason, if you've done extensive
modification to a page CSS links get "confused". I've had to redo two
pages that no matter what I did the style sheet wouldn't apply itself to
some parts of the page.
That's not as hard as it sounds. I just started a new page, copied the
text to a simple editor like notepad (strips all the html) and then
pasted it onto the new page. Takes like about 15 minutes for a not too
complicated page.
Of course no matter what you do you'll find some variation from browser
to
browser. I suppose if you were really adamant about it you could use a
lot of Javascript to detect the browser version and load alternate
pages. But if mine works with versions > 4.0, Lynx, and validates
properly I'm happy.
Also, are you hand coding or using a code generator like Dreamweaver?
FP you know is notorious for taking matters into M$ "vision".
I'm not exactly sure what your question is but I'll post the top part of
a sheet that has the correct placement for the CSS links and proper
syntax...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>Stephens</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<script language="JavaScript" TYPE="TEXT/JAVASCRIPT">
<!--
<!--
function MM_reloadPage(init) { //reloads the window if Nav4 resized
if (init==true) with (navigator) {if
((appName=="Netscape")&&(parseInt(appVersion)==4)) {
document.MM_pgW=innerWidth; document.MM_pgH=innerHeight;
onresize=MM_reloadPage; }}
else if (innerWidth!=document.MM_pgW || innerHeight!=document.MM_pgH)
location.reload();
}
MM_reloadPage(true);
// -->
function MM_preloadImages() { //v3.0
var d=document; if(d.images){ if(!d.MM_p) d.MM_p=new Array();
var i,j=d.MM_p.length,a=MM_preloadImages.arguments; for(i=0;
i<a.length; i++)
if (a[i].indexOf("#")!=0){ d.MM_p[j]=new Image;
d.MM_p[j++].src=a[i];}}
}
//-->
</script>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="basic.css" type="text/css">
</head>
--------------------------------------------------------------------
You can ignore the Javascript stuff. I jus kept it in there because order
is
important. I'm no expert but I've been learning for about 2 years now
and have found a of of little nits.
Those validators are a great help. If you need links I can post them.
One is http://validator.w3.org
--
Email - rgi...@ix.netcom.com
Home Page - http://rsgibson.com
FTP - ftp://ftp.rsgibson.com
Bob McLellan
the details but the style just didn't work.
--
------------------------------------------------------
Bob McLellan
The Little Blue Kiwi
OS/2 Solutions for New Zealand
rj friedman
Gibson) wrote:
»Also, I've found at times for some reason, if you've done extensive
»modification to a page CSS links get "confused". I've had to redo two
»pages that no matter what I did the style sheet wouldn't apply itself to
»some parts of the page.
I don't think that getting "confused" is what's happening
(not that I know for sure what's happening).
What seems to me to be happening is that it refuses to
update the page that it has. Even if you wipe out the cache
(both memory and disk), it seems as if somewhere it has a
copy of the original page stashed (nowhere that I can find,
btw), and just stubbornly keeps using that stashed version -
a version that seems to persist between reboots, even.
The reason I suspect this, is that if I upload the new
version of the stylesheet and the page to my website, and
then access the website, the page displays according to the
new changes - but even if I immediatley go back to version I
have on my harddisk, it still displays the old, unchanged
version.
Very annoying...
________________________________________________________
[RJ] OS/2 - Live it, or live with it.
rj friedman Team ABW
Taipei, Taiwan r...@yyyindoserv.com
To send email - remove the `yyy'
________________________________________________________
Jan Danielsson
>> What am I doing wrong? It seems I have to be connected to the internet to be
>> able to use external CSS files, and they do not appear to work if I use them
>> locally (on my local network).
>>
>
>This doesn't sound like a CSS problem, but rather a problem with the
>link. However, I just know enough about HTML and CSS to be a danger to
>myself and those in my immediate vicinity. You might find an answer at:
>www.cookwood.com/html4_4e/browser_tests/
I have been doing some scientific research (read: trial and error).
This is what I know:
If I use this line:
<link rel="alternate stylesheet"
href="http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/Core/Midnight" type="text/css"
title="Midnight">
..then I get a "Midnight" entry added to the styles menu. If I change it to:
<link rel="alternate stylesheet" href="styles/MyStyle.css" type="text/css"
title="Test">
..then I do not get a "Test" style added to the menu (I have verified that
the MyStyle.css exists, *and* is fetched by the client (by reviewing the
server logs)).
"So", I thought, "I need to specify an absolute URL". I tried this:
<link rel="alternate stylesheet"
href="http://192.168.42.1/styles/MyStyle.css" type="text/css" title="Test">
..and I *still* don't get a "Test" entry (again, I have verified that the
MyStyle.css is being transferred to the client).
So my question is: Has anyone managed to use external styles (<link> tags?)
without going through a DNS using Warpzilla? I know virtually _nothing_ about
TCP/IP (or any other networking for that matter), but from what I can see,
the only external styles which have worked for me are the ones being fetched
from an absolute adress on the net (ergo: have been resolved through a DNS).
This really sounds to silly to be correct, so someone, please enlighten me:
What am I doing wrong?!
/j
Frodo Baggins
It may help you in designing your docs for multiple stylesheets...
Regards,
Jan Danielsson wrote:
> On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 05:10:38 GMT, vir...@MAPSaustin.rr.com wrote:
>
>
>>>What am I doing wrong? It seems I have to be connected to the internet to be
>>>able to use external CSS files, and they do not appear to work if I use them
>>>locally (on my local network).
[...]
Jan Danielsson
>View the source for the following URL:
>
>http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS
>
>It may help you in designing your docs for multiple stylesheets...
Thanks for the link, though it didn't help me solve the problem. I have
passed all relevant validations (XHTML and CSS), but external styles are
still not working.
As I stated eariler in the thread, I know virtually nothing about HTTP,
networking, HTML technologies, etc, so please have patience with my beginners
questions.
Is it possible that the web server (dink's web/2) could be causing the
problems? If I have understood the role of a webserver, it simply replies to
a "GET" command and sends the requested resource back to the client. I can
see that the web server is sending the .css files to my workstation. It's
getting them, but ignoring them (unless I get css-files from the real
internet (instead of my local network)).
/j
Ron Gibson
> ŻAlso, I've found at times for some reason, if you've done extensive
> Żmodification to a page CSS links get "confused". I've had to redo two
> Żpages that no matter what I did the style sheet wouldn't apply itself to
> Żsome parts of the page.
> I don't think that getting "confused" is what's happening
> (not that I know for sure what's happening).
> What seems to me to be happening is that it refuses to
> update the page that it has. Even if you wipe out the cache
> (both memory and disk), it seems as if somewhere it has a
> copy of the original page stashed (nowhere that I can find,
> btw), and just stubbornly keeps using that stashed version -
> a version that seems to persist between reboots, even.
> The reason I suspect this, is that if I upload the new
> version of the stylesheet and the page to my website, and
> then access the website, the page displays according to the
> new changes - but even if I immediatley go back to version I
> have on my harddisk, it still displays the old, unchanged
> version.
OK. I've had exactly the same the same problem with Dreamweaver.
I make a change in a stylesheet and it only updates part of the page.
This is the way it's happened to me.
Several times I've found a conflicting tags, like applying a style then
right after that have a font tag.
I'm not in the software I use now so it's a hassle to give you an exact
example and I don't code it by hand :)
I've been able to fix that most of the time by eliminating the redundant
tags.
But in some cases I had to redo the entire page. An example of a page
where I had to do this is at...
http://rsgibson.com/songlist.htm
Now I try to avoid using any font tags at all, or for that matter any
tag that can't be defined in the style sheet. I still set the same
defaults in page properties but as soon as I start a new page I apply
the default from the style sheet to the body tag.
This has eliminated a lot of that annoyance.
I wish I could tell you more but why I had to completely redo a page
from scratch remains a mystery after several hours of trying to track
down the problem. It became faster just to redesign the page from
start. It's easy cause the content doesn't change, just the style
definitions.
Remember if you do that to copy the stuff your redoing to a plain text
editor so to strip all the old HTML. Then when you insert it into the
new page, it comes in clean and then you can apply your styles as
needed.
BTW, this use of JS, CSS and one other element I forgotten now is DHTML
which is a bit new (compared top regular old HTML), so a few glitches
are to be expected.
But, I must say, now that I got it working good for me I'll never go
back. The style sheets can be used over and over again easily.
One other possibility is have you checked the link and make sure it's
not pointing to the style sheet on the HD? I know that sounds dumb but
it's happened to me. Also if you use Dreamweaver recreate the site cache
after every change just in case.
Ron Gibson
<jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> Noted:
> <link rel="alternate stylesheet"
> href="http://192.168.42.1/styles/MyStyle.css" type="text/css" title="Test">
> ...and I *still* don't get a "Test" entry (again, I have verified that the
> MyStyle.css is being transferred to the client).
> So my question is: Has anyone managed to use external styles (<link> tags?)
> without going through a DNS using Warpzilla? I know virtually _nothing_ about
> TCP/IP (or any other networking for that matter), but from what I can see,
> the only external styles which have worked for me are the ones being fetched
> from an absolute adress on the net (ergo: have been resolved through a DNS).
> This really sounds to silly to be correct, so someone, please enlighten me:
> What am I doing wrong?!
Oh boy. It's nice that Warpzilla has a composer, but you get what you
pay for in this and by far and away Dreamweaver is the best HTML
generator. FP, that's the spawn of Satan. Visit alt.html for a ton of
good tips and see them bash FP.
You can make a nice little basic page with Mozilla or Netscape
Composer, but when you start getting into CSS, well that's a bit more
industrial strength.
I have Front Page also, and I tell ya, I never would have learned CSS
with it. I haven't tried with Mozilla but I'd bet it's tough.
Also because of glitches with Netscape version 4 DW adds a JS resize
kludge whenever it's needed and frankly I can't tell you when it is.
But it gets added often over here.
You can do a very nice page just with tables and no style sheets. It's
a bit more work, but actually is more "backwards" compatible.
My pages never come out *exactly* the same and I test/tweak them on three
platforms and 9 different browser. They all validate fine as 4.01 HTML
and CSS validation passes (except one page which is a humor page and
uses FP stuff).
So you have to make a decision on how much work you want to do. You can
use JS to detect which browser is being used but considering I have 9
browsers (I don't even have Opera) you can see your work could
increase by a factor of 10.
For a hobbyist page (and I'm a hobbyist) if it validates, looks good
with Netscape 4, Netscape 6, IE 5 (6.0 is a dog) and Lynx, I'm happy.
But, I like I said in a prior post trying to keep the code as
clean as possible, especially with CSS will help with a lot of odd
things that might occur.
Ron Gibson
> View the source for the following URL:
>
> http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS
> It may help you in designing your docs for multiple stylesheets...
There are some great resources on that site. Also if you go to...
You can validate your code. It is very good at finding errors.
Here's the link to validate your CSS...
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/
Alan Beagley
would have expected to be models of accuracy. E.g., www.chrysler.com
-=-
Alan
Ron Gibson wrote:
> . . . Also if you go to...
rj friedman
Gibson) wrote:
»One other possibility is have you checked the link and make sure it's
»not pointing to the style sheet on the HD? I know that sounds dumb but
»it's happened to me. Also if you use Dreamweaver recreate the site cache
»after every change just in case.
I'm sure it's not doing that - I use relative links so that
the links work no matter where the pages eventually end up.
I don't use anything but a text editor (with an add-on for
tagging), so I am sure it is not a case of the composition
program inserting things that get misinterpreted.
rj friedman
<jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> wrote:
»If I use this line:
»<link rel="alternate stylesheet"
»href="http://www.w3.org/StyleSheets/Core/Midnight" type="text/css"
»title="Midnight">
»
»...then I get a "Midnight" entry added to the styles menu. If I change it to:
»<link rel="alternate stylesheet" href="styles/MyStyle.css" type="text/css"
»title="Test">
»
»...then I do not get a "Test" style added to the menu (I have verified that
»the MyStyle.css exists, *and* is fetched by the client (by reviewing the
»server logs)).
Maybe the location of "styles/MyStyle.css" is wrong with
reference to the document that is referencing it. My
experience is that you have to be really careful when
specifying the location of linked resources.
»So my question is: Has anyone managed to use external styles (<link> tags?)
»without going through a DNS using Warpzilla?
Sure - I do it all the time. For example, all of my linked
stylesheets take the form of:
<LINK REL=STYLESHEET HREF="../xyz.css"
type="text/css">
(in this case the stylesheet is in a folder one level above
the document referencing it).
Frodo Baggins
> Tue, 30 Apr 2002 14:19:26, "Jan Danielsson"
> <jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> Noted:
>
>
> pay for in this and by far and away Dreamweaver is the best HTML
> generator.
If you are into generators, that's OK. Unfortunately, generators tend to
insert too much unnecessary code that end up generating a terrible
experience for end-users. I still think the KISS approach is best when
designing web pages and still have to find a better approach for high
maintenance pages than Apache, PHP, Jakarta and an underlying database.
Just like application generators, HTML generators produce highly
unoptimised code that still would need hours of work to streamline.
[...]
> You can make a nice little basic page with Mozilla or Netscape
> Composer, but when you start getting into CSS, well that's a bit more
> industrial strength.
[...]
CSS is not difficult at all to master and it even makes manual editing
faster. Once you define your set of stylesheets for your specific needs,
they will allow you to optimize your HTML even further.
> I have Front Page also, and I tell ya, I never would have learned CSS
> with it. I haven't tried with Mozilla but I'd bet it's tough.
[...]
The Mozilla editor has an option to allow you to use CSS instead of
standard HTML attributes when editing your pages. That *could* be useful
when learning CSS. Personally I think nothing beats the CSS
documentation at w3c.org.
[...]
> Also because of glitches with Netscape version 4 DW adds a JS resize
> kludge whenever it's needed and frankly I can't tell you when it is.
> But it gets added often over here.
[...]
Just proves my point of how generators insert unnecessary code.
> You can do a very nice page just with tables and no style sheets. It's
> a bit more work, but actually is more "backwards" compatible.
[...]
Or you can go a step further with PHP instead of JavaScript and produce
a set of pages that will be rendered by *ANY* browser.
> My pages never come out *exactly* the same and I test/tweak them on three
> platforms and 9 different browser. They all validate fine as 4.01 HTML
> and CSS validation passes (except one page which is a humor page and
> uses FP stuff).
[...]
That is the basic assumption of HTML. As a publisher, you give up a
certain amount of control in formatting to prioritize content. HTML
publishing is NOT DTP. The most one can do is to provide the browsers
with guidelines as to how to layout the information. Don't forget that
we are in a digital media here, once it's published, the user can
interact with it in ways that paper never allowed.
I have found that pages that attempt to circumvent this rule are the
ones that take longer to render in any browser. Editors try to make so
many formatting decisions in their pages and stylesheets that they bog
down the browsers. Unless you are a Flash developer looking for examples
on how to waste bandwidth, the first thing that is done is clicking on
the "skip intro" option on those Flash-enabled pages.
Please don't get me wrong. I understand that formatting is an important
concern for most of us. But the restrictions of the media must be
correctly understood in order to provide the users with a pleasant, if
not painless, as possible experience when browsing the pages we produce.
Otherwise we will be just pouring a tangle of JavaScript code into every
page produced.
Regards,
Jack Troughton
>> You can do a very nice page just with tables and no style sheets. It's
>> a bit more work, but actually is more "backwards" compatible.
>[...]
>Or you can go a step further with PHP instead of JavaScript and produce
>a set of pages that will be rendered by *ANY* browser.
I do it server side with #exec'ed rexx scripts. Using web/2.
Works very well, and is easy to maintain.
Regards,
Jack
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca *
* http://consultron.ca irc.ecomstation.ca *
* Laval Québec Canada news://news.consultron.ca *
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Frodo Baggins
> On Wed, 1 May 2002 13:48:26 UTC, Frodo Baggins <fr...@middleearth.net> wrote:
>
>
>>>You can do a very nice page just with tables and no style sheets. It's
>>>a bit more work, but actually is more "backwards" compatible.
>>
>>[...]
>>Or you can go a step further with PHP instead of JavaScript and produce
>>a set of pages that will be rendered by *ANY* browser.
>
>
> I do it server side with #exec'ed rexx scripts. Using web/2.
My point exactly. The idea is to take the burden off the browser
resulting in much faster rendering times since the browser is not making
decisions down a JavaScript tree.
I have been looking at mod_rexx for Apache and it will probably replace
PHP on most of my work.
Regards,
Jan Danielsson
>> So my question is: Has anyone managed to use external styles (<link> tags?)
>> without going through a DNS using Warpzilla? I know virtually _nothing_ about
>> TCP/IP (or any other networking for that matter), but from what I can see,
>> the only external styles which have worked for me are the ones being fetched
>> from an absolute adress on the net (ergo: have been resolved through a DNS).
>> This really sounds to silly to be correct, so someone, please enlighten me:
>> What am I doing wrong?!
>
>Oh boy. It's nice that Warpzilla has a composer, but you get what you
>pay for in this and by far and away Dreamweaver is the best HTML
>generator. FP, that's the spawn of Satan. Visit alt.html for a ton of
>good tips and see them bash FP.
For the record: I think I started the composer in Netscape 4.61 once to
create an ordered list so I could see what tags it was using (I was too lazy
to open a PDF and search). Other that that, I have never even seen an HTML
editor (apart from MED for Windows, which highlights HTML tags). Every line
of (X)HTML I'm using was written using EPM. I _thought_ I was working this
way so I wouldn't run into strange problem with my HTML documents. (And now
we know how far I got with that attitude ;-)
[---]
>You can do a very nice page just with tables and no style sheets. It's
>a bit more work, but actually is more "backwards" compatible.
I'm aiming for full (read: strict) XHTML1 compilence, and the XHTML docs seem
to state that CSS is the way to go, even for simple things as placing a tiled
bitmap in the background of the document body.
Concerning backwards compatability: My original question is realted to
precicely that. What I want to do it to create a default style sheet which
essentially has nothing (maybe a background color for the body), and then I
let users with lots'a memory, CPU and bandwidth select a "flashy look" for
the page if they feel they want it.
[---]
>So you have to make a decision on how much work you want to do. You can
>use JS to detect which browser is being used but considering I have 9
>browsers (I don't even have Opera) you can see your work could
>increase by a factor of 10.
I don't like the idea of having to check how the result will be with several
browsers. I'm a hardheaded standards kind of guy: I'm writing my XHTML
documents with EPM and the HTML4.01, XHTML, XML, CSS(2) PDF files, plus the
W3C CSS and (X)(HT)ML validators (note: I didn't list a browser there). By
sticking to standards, I know it'll look ok as long as the browsers follow
the standards (which they should). In the final stage, I check with Warpzilla
& the validators to verify that I haven't done anything wrong in my document,
but if I see a problem rendering the page, I report a bug, rather that work
around the problem (which hasn't happened yet -- all functions, except table
captioning, have functioned within the expected parameters in Warpzilla)
I know, I know.. It's not realistic to follow standards today, especially not
on the Web. Let's just call it a philosophical thing. :-)
So far, only IE users have complained about two tags being rendering funny.
Though since it is IE that is broken, I'm not going to change my document.
(For the record, it is a 3D border on an <hr /> tag, and a background image
in a <tr></tr>-pair).
>For a hobbyist page (and I'm a hobbyist) if it validates, looks good
>with Netscape 4, Netscape 6, IE 5 (6.0 is a dog) and Lynx, I'm happy.
I hope you do work professionally with web pages some day. Quality testing
doesn't seem to exist among the self-proclaimed "professionals". If someone
would hire me as a web desiger, then I'd do exactly what you are doing. But
since I'm not, I'm playing my little "just follow the specs" game. :-)
/j
Jack Troughton
Hmmm... I was under the impression that mod_* was for changing the
http headers sent to the client... which would be very useful for
cookie manipulation and the like, but not too useful for
auto-generating html in the page itself.
Ron Gibson
<jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> Noted:
> >Oh boy. It's nice that Warpzilla has a composer, but you get what you
> >pay for in this and by far and away Dreamweaver is the best HTML
> >generator. FP, that's the spawn of Satan. Visit alt.html for a ton of
> >good tips and see them bash FP.
> For the record: I think I started the composer in Netscape 4.61 once to
> create an ordered list so I could see what tags it was using (I was too lazy
> to open a PDF and search). Other that that, I have never even seen an HTML
> editor (apart from MED for Windows, which highlights HTML tags). Every line
> of (X)HTML I'm using was written using EPM. I _thought_ I was working this
> way so I wouldn't run into strange problem with my HTML documents. (And now
> we know how far I got with that attitude ;-)
LOL! Well I do a mixed approach, switching to code view to correct
nits. I prolly know enough now to put together a basic page but the
nice thing about code generators is they can do all the grunt work
leaving you to fine tune details. OTOH, a bad one like FP produces
proprietary HTML and tries to outsmart you by changing what you just
fixed.
DW is very expensive, IMO ($400). Get the rest of the Macromedia stuff
and your pushing $750. But I hear "Homesite" a trimmed down version of
DW is very good and affordable ($99). See...
http://macromedia.com/software/homesite/productinfo/datasheet/hs5_datashe
et.pdf
> I'm aiming for full (read: strict) XHTML1 compilence, and the XHTML docs seem
> to state that CSS is the way to go, even for simple things as placing a tiled
> bitmap in the background of the document body.
And even setting margins. I'm making transitions as I learn more (about
done learning DW now). As I learn more I add more to my style sheet. I
dunno how that works in Mozilla but in DW you can create a sheet which
has a number of subclasses you can apply. So when I run into something
I see I'll be doing over and over I add a class or modify one of the
existing ones.
But IMO, CSS is the way to go because it is a great time saver (unless
you run into one of these strange problems).
> >So you have to make a decision on how much work you want to do. You can
> >use JS to detect which browser is being used but considering I have 9
> >browsers (I don't even have Opera) you can see your work could
> >increase by a factor of 10.
> I don't like the idea of having to check how the result will be with several
> browsers. I'm a hardheaded standards kind of guy: I'm writing my XHTML
> documents with EPM and the HTML4.01, XHTML, XML, CSS(2) PDF files, plus the
> W3C CSS and (X)(HT)ML validators (note: I didn't list a browser there). By
Well there are other things to consider. For example is you don't have
a good noframes page and are using them, some search engines don't like
that.
But if you look at some sites you'll see a ton of Javascript trapping
and redirecting some browser versions. Those are professional high
traffic site, usually commercial and they don't want to lose a single
page hit because of compatibility issues.
For my humble little site, as long as it's readable and not too gawd
awful oogly in some browsers, but shows up fine on the big 3-4 I'm OK
with that.
> I know, I know.. It's not realistic to follow standards today, especially not
> on the Web. Let's just call it a philosophical thing. :-)
Huh! You should see some of the pros grumble in alt.html. They really
are hard headed.
> So far, only IE users have complained about two tags being rendering funny.
> Though since it is IE that is broken, I'm not going to change my document.
> (For the record, it is a 3D border on an <hr /> tag, and a background image
> in a <tr></tr>-pair).
IE 6.0 sukz. Some are threatening to drop support on it. I don't even
test it myself.
But I imagine MS will soon correct that as they have taken a pounding
in the public eye and court.
> >For a hobbyist page (and I'm a hobbyist) if it validates, looks good
> >with Netscape 4, Netscape 6, IE 5 (6.0 is a dog) and Lynx, I'm happy.
> I hope you do work professionally with web pages some day. Quality testing
> doesn't seem to exist among the self-proclaimed "professionals". If someone
> would hire me as a web desiger, then I'd do exactly what you are doing. But
> since I'm not, I'm playing my little "just follow the specs" game. :-)
Oh I might do a little sideline work, but it really is more of a hobby.
Ron Gibson
> If you are into generators, that's OK. Unfortunately, generators tend to
> insert too much unnecessary code that end up generating a terrible
> experience for end-users. I still think the KISS approach is best when
> designing web pages and still have to find a better approach for high
> maintenance pages than Apache, PHP, Jakarta and an underlying database.
> Just like application generators, HTML generators produce highly
> unoptimised code that still would need hours of work to streamline.
True, but when you get *really* complicated pages it can become a
really time consuming process. Just for giggles run a site like a
major newspaper through a validator. You'll see a ton of errors.
Now it might not be "clean" or "valid" but these guys are good enough to
write stuff that works even if it's invalid, in some cases better that
the "valid" code.
PS: I'm not one of them :)
> CSS is not difficult at all to master and it even makes manual editing
> faster. Once you define your set of stylesheets for your specific needs,
> they will allow you to optimize your HTML even further.
Oh I love them. Tremendous time saver. Helps you organize your layout
better and maintain a consistent design theme.
> > I have Front Page also, and I tell ya, I never would have learned CSS
> > with it. I haven't tried with Mozilla but I'd bet it's tough.
> The Mozilla editor has an option to allow you to use CSS instead of
> standard HTML attributes when editing your pages. That *could* be useful
> when learning CSS. Personally I think nothing beats the CSS
> documentation at w3c.org.
I gonna have to look at Mozilla's CSS implementation. I've used it (or
Composer) several times for a quick task but never looked very deep.
Yes, W3C is a great resource. I've solved several problems with the use
of their information.
> Or you can go a step further with PHP instead of JavaScript and produce
> a set of pages that will be rendered by *ANY* browser.
PHP is next on my agenda.
> I have found that pages that attempt to circumvent this rule are the
> ones that take longer to render in any browser. Editors try to make so
> many formatting decisions in their pages and stylesheets that they bog
> down the browsers. Unless you are a Flash developer looking for examples
> on how to waste bandwidth, the first thing that is done is clicking on
> the "skip intro" option on those Flash-enabled pages.
I agree 100% and my pages are mostly set to load fast. Nothing annoys
me more than to have to look at some silly animation when I need to get
in for some real information.
The way I look at it there are two types of pages (My perspective) -
Those for entertainment and those for information or tasks. I don't mix
the two in general. If I add some graphics they are lean and fast
loading.
> Please don't get me wrong. I understand that formatting is an important
> concern for most of us. But the restrictions of the media must be
> correctly understood in order to provide the users with a pleasant, if
> not painless, as possible experience when browsing the pages we produce.
> Otherwise we will be just pouring a tangle of JavaScript code into every
> page produced.
Frankly, I don't like JS. There are some things it is handy for, but is
way overused, IMO. Like you said PHP can do the same in most cases
faster and better.
Ideally I stick to tables, CSS and a minimum of JS. Currently the HTML
gurus all hate frames, but I dunno. I've found many JS menuing systems
that are slow and a PITA. Hopefully I'll find my way soon enough to PHP
and can dump the frames for that. My Host has all the latest server
side PHP stuff.
Ron Gibson
> Yes, and it finds errors on Web pages of big-name companies, which one
> would have expected to be models of accuracy. E.g., www.chrysler.com
Tons of errors. I just discussed that in a previous post. The guys
that are doing those sites know all the tricks, some "illegal" :)
Ron Gibson
> ŻOne other possibility is have you checked the link and make sure it's
> Żnot pointing to the style sheet on the HD? I know that sounds dumb but
> Żit's happened to me. Also if you use Dreamweaver recreate the site cache
> Żafter every change just in case.
> I'm sure it's not doing that - I use relative links so that
> the links work no matter where the pages eventually end up.
> I don't use anything but a text editor (with an add-on for
> tagging), so I am sure it is not a case of the composition
> program inserting things that get misinterpreted.
Well one last idea, I have. If you've ever written a FORTRAN or a
BASIC program you prolly used breakpoints to debug the program.
Perhaps you can split the page into sections and upload a "test.htm".
Add a section at a time until you get the problem. That ought to
narrow things down.
I tell ya, I'm sure someone in alt.html can help you. There are some
really sharp guys in there.
Wish I could help more other than to say, "Yeah, that's happened to me
too".
Frodo Baggins
Jack Troughton wrote:
[...]
> Hmmm... I was under the impression that mod_* was for changing the
> http headers sent to the client... which would be very useful for
> cookie manipulation and the like, but not too useful for
> auto-generating html in the page itself.
[...]
Not at all. mod_rexx is a full Rexx environment for Apache that lets you
use Rexx as your server-side scripting language... If you know Rexx,
that would be the natural way to go...
BTW, it is available for OS/2, Linux, and Windoze.
Regards,
Jack Troughton
>
>
>Jack Troughton wrote:
>[...]
>> Hmmm... I was under the impression that mod_* was for changing the
>> http headers sent to the client... which would be very useful for
>> cookie manipulation and the like, but not too useful for
>> auto-generating html in the page itself.
>[...]
>
>Not at all. mod_rexx is a full Rexx environment for Apache that lets you
>use Rexx as your server-side scripting language... If you know Rexx,
>that would be the natural way to go...
Hmmm... so does this do inline scripting, or do you need to #exec
the script? Does it use system services, or is it its own
implementation... will I be able to use object rexx if I have orexx
set up on the host?
>BTW, it is available for OS/2, Linux, and Windoze.
Yeah... :)
Frodo Baggins
Jack Troughton wrote:
[...]
> Hmmm... so does this do inline scripting, or do you need to #exec
> the script? Does it use system services, or is it its own
> implementation... will I be able to use object rexx if I have orexx
> set up on the host?
[...]
Works with both Classic and Object Rexx. It adds the extension .REX to
the ones that Apache can handle and automatically runs it as a Rexx
script as it would run a PHP script. Completely transparent. You can
have things like the following snippet:
/**/
parse arg r
say "<html>"
say " <head>"
say " <title>Rexx Test</title>"
say " </head>"
say " <body>"
say " <p>This is a test</p>"
say " <p>You are calling from: " || wwwremote_addr
say " </body>"
say "</html>"
return 0
Your script has full access to the Rexx environment being able to load
libraries and use any available Rexx function or command.
Sounds fun, doesn't it?
Regards,
Trevor Hemsley
<jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> wrote:
> Other that that, I have never even seen an HTML
> editor (apart from MED for Windows, which highlights HTML tags).
vim with set TERM=os2ansi does a reasonable job if a little garish!
--
Trevor Hemsley, Brighton, UK.
Trevor-...@dial.pipex.com
Ron Gibson
Hemsley) Noted:
> > Other that that, I have never even seen an HTML
> > editor (apart from MED for Windows, which highlights HTML tags).
> vim with set TERM=os2ansi does a reasonable job if a little garish!
Dreamweaver uses several levels of raw code highlighting. It also lets
you know loud and clear if you edited by hand and failed to close a tag.
vim - ((((((SHUDDER))))))
:)
peter volsted
> Trevor Hemsley wrote:
>
> On Wed, 1 May 2002 13:46:30 UTC, "Jan Danielsson"
> <jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> wrote:
>
> > Other that that, I have never even seen an HTML
> > editor (apart from MED for Windows, which highlights HTML tags).
>
> vim with set TERM=os2ansi does a reasonable job if a little garish!
>
also try Eduardo Areitio's htmepm99.zip on Hobbe's
--
good luck
peter
Ron Gibson
I looked at Mozilla composer a little harder and found it didn't
generate these style sheets for you so I assume you are doing them by
hand.
Below is a style sheet which has subcategories that can be applied.
Perhaps it will help you, as I know this one works properly. It's a
pretty basic one as I don't do a lot with layers, or some of the
possible uses. Mainly mine are for text and page layout options.
If you want to see how the subclasses are applied go to my home page
and look at view source. I use this same sheet on every page.
Note: .text-std, .heading, .text-top, .margins, and .smallmargin are all
one line
and wrapped in the reader. I can email you a zipped file if you'd like or
easier is
to just open http://rsgibson.com/basic.css and grab it from the site.
basic.css stylesheet...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
b { font-weight: bold}
text-std { font-family: Arial, Courier, Georgia, sans-serif;
font-size: 12px; color: #99CCFF; font-style: normal; font-weight:
bold; font-variant: normal; vertical-align: middle}
heading { font-family: ChevaraOutline, Arial, Helvetica, san-serif;
font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-weight: bold; color: #99CCFF}
text-top { font-family: Arial, Courier, Georgia, sans-serif; font-size:
10px; color: #99CCFF; font-weight: bolder; vertical-align: middle }
a:active { color: #ffccff}
a:link { color: #33ff00}
a:visited { color: #FF00FF}
margins { margin-top: 40px; margin-right: 40px; margin-bottom: 40px;
margin-left: 40px}
image { float: none}
smallmargin { margin-top: 10px; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom:
10px; margin-left: 10px}
----------------------------
Jack Troughton
>Wed, 1 May 2002 19:50:19, Trevor-...@no.spam.dial.pipex.com (Trevor
>Hemsley) Noted:
>
>> > Other that that, I have never even seen an HTML
>> > editor (apart from MED for Windows, which highlights HTML tags).
>
>> vim with set TERM=os2ansi does a reasonable job if a little garish!
>
>Dreamweaver uses several levels of raw code highlighting. It also lets
>you know loud and clear if you edited by hand and failed to close a tag.
>
>vim - ((((((SHUDDER))))))
>
>:)
Editor Holy Wars!!!
I love vim. It is a _great_ text editor... and it works via telnet
very well in os/2.
Vim is pretty good at letting you know if you've failed to close a
tag... but it doesn't hold your hand either, which is more to my
taste.
Yep... vim rocks, imho.
Ron Gibson
Noted:
> >Dreamweaver uses several levels of raw code highlighting. It also lets
> >you know loud and clear if you edited by hand and failed to close a tag.
> >vim - ((((((SHUDDER))))))
> Editor Holy Wars!!!
> I love vim. It is a _great_ text editor... and it works via telnet
> very well in os/2.
Good for you :(
Thank God my host has joe and pico binaries available :)
> Vim is pretty good at letting you know if you've failed to close a
> tag... but it doesn't hold your hand either, which is more to my
> taste.
Actually the best one I've ever see for highlighting (not to say there
aren't better, I avoid writing ANY code by hand these days if possible -
PTSD from the days of keypunch cards), is jed. But it's kinda big, not
very portable.
In fact once upon a time I had jed running under OS/2.
rj friedman
Gibson) wrote:
»I looked at Mozilla composer a little harder and found it didn't
»generate these style sheets for you so I assume you are doing them by
»hand.
Yes - I have been doing them by hand for a long time - much
cleaner source pages - hierarchically laid out so that I can
find whatever I need to get at at a glance. And with CSS I
can get the look of the page exactly the way I want it
quickly and easily. Whatever I need I just make a custom tag
for.
And then I can reuse the style sheet for dozens of
'original' projects by making a few subtle changes in the
tag attributes.
I have never had a problem with the stylsheet not being
seen. What I have had a problem with is these latest
Warpzillas refusing to update pages after I have made
changes to them - not stylesheet changes, text changes.
Jack Troughton
>In article <gjxI70UYBlcC-p...@trevor2.dial.pipex.com>,
>Trevor-...@no.spam.dial.pipex.com (Trevor Hemsley) wrote:
>>On Wed, 1 May 2002 13:46:30 UTC, "Jan Danielsson"
>><jan.dan...@falun.mail.telia.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Other that that, I have never even seen an HTML
>>> editor (apart from MED for Windows, which highlights HTML tags).
>>
>>vim with set TERM=os2ansi does a reasonable job if a little garish!
>
>Where can I get vim for evaluation?
Should be on Hobbes.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca *
* http://consultron.ca irc.ecomstation.ca *
* Laval QuＣec Canada news://news.consultron.ca *
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Trevor Hemsley
wrote:
> Where can I get vim for evaluation?
Same place as 95% of the rest of OS/2 software...
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu then search for what you want.