Writing for Lynx
Maury Markowitz
use tables for layout and some use of the FONT tag. All my pictures have
ALT's, the page is readable on 640, I use <EM> and <STRONG> instead of <I>
and <B> and include a number of header tags.
Now my question is what to do to make my pages Lynx-friendly? I know that
Lynx uses some LINK tags for additional info, but does anyone actually use
these? What should I know? I also find these tags hard to maintain, none
of the popular editors seem to include support for them, so every page's
"next" link means going in and editing the headers by hand.
Also, I have the sort of "standard" head tags, but what about the DC tags?
Should I even bother with these? If its worth it, does anyone have a good
guide on them?
Maury
Philipp Lenssen
Newsbeitrag: 96474506...@nnrp.gt.ca...
> As it is I try to be a good net-citizen and the most advanced I get is
to
> use tables for layout and some use of the FONT tag. All my pictures have
> ALT's, the page is readable on 640, I use <EM> and <STRONG> instead of <I>
> and <B> and include a number of header tags.
I wouldn't think so much of optimizing for Lynx, but in general writing good
HTML, which then shows up fine in Lynx, Netscape 1, Text-to-speech etc.
If you think of browser-optimization, the question is: how many of these can
you test, and how big is the target audience? However, Lynx is a nice way to
test an "alternative" rendering of the page. Amaya at the w3.org also has a
"text view" option or something.
Probably one thing you should do is not use tables for layout. I think you
give up controlling the basic linear text flow of your pages content. I
think a page should be able to give up on everything (CSS positioning,
sounds, pictures, fonts), but not the textual content, this should be the
fall-back on any system.
Using <font> will probably not harm any browser, it's just not very useful
unless you specifically target browsers like Netscape 3. Better go with
stylesheets, and if Netscape 4 doesn't understand your selectors, then just
select more broadly (like not only define a font for the body, but for
different elements too).
The only Lynx-Optimization I do is putting a <noframes> above the
<frame>-elements instead of below, so if a framesetting HTML document is
viewed, the first thing showing up is not something like "FRAME:
Navigation.html" (I don't think Lynx does anything meaningful with a
frame-elements title-attribute). I don't think showing these makes much
sense if <noframes> is provided (well, in a perfect world it wouldn't,
however many <noframes> actually only contain a "wrong browser" warning).
--
Philipp Lenssen
M+R infosysteme
http://www.mplusr.de
Maury Markowitz
news:8lpncr$8cp$14$1...@news.t-online.com...
> I wouldn't think so much of optimizing for Lynx, but in general writing
good
> HTML, which then shows up fine in Lynx, Netscape 1, Text-to-speech etc.
> If you think of browser-optimization, the question is: how many of these
can
> you test, and how big is the target audience? However, Lynx is a nice way
to
> test an "alternative" rendering of the page. Amaya at the w3.org also has
a
> "text view" option or something.
Yeah, Ill get Amaya for other reasons too...
> Probably one thing you should do is not use tables for layout.
I just donloaded Lynx and I ave to say that my pages are unreadable. Even
my home page, which contains no tables at all (straight text!) doesn't show
up at all, I get a blank page. By randon hits of the arrow keys I managed
to get to one of my articles, of which it manage to display two pages out of
about 20, seemingly selected at random spots inside the document!
> I think you
> give up controlling the basic linear text flow of your pages content. I
> think a page should be able to give up on everything (CSS positioning,
> sounds, pictures, fonts), but not the textual content, this should be the
> fall-back on any system.
Well then perhaps you can suggest an alternate solution for me.
I use a three-column table to postion pictures inside my text. That might
sound odd, but the reason is that I want the caption for the picture to
appear to the side of the main text, that gives me more room to work with.
Check out www.heavytech.com/~maury and go to "Games of Fame". This system
makes me brea the table into columns at every image - which is annoying
enough actually. Can you suggest another way to accomplish the same thing?
> Using <font> will probably not harm any browser, it's just not very useful
> unless you specifically target browsers like Netscape 3. Better go with
> stylesheets, and if Netscape 4 doesn't understand your selectors, then
just
> select more broadly (like not only define a font for the body, but for
> different elements too).
So you would actually recommend styles over FONT's?
Thanks for the help!
Maury
Michael Hamm
> I just donloaded Lynx and I ave to say that my pages are unreadable. Even
> my home page, which contains no tables at all (straight text!) doesn't show
> up at all, I get a blank page. By randon hits of the arrow keys I managed
> to get to one of my articles, of which it manage to display two pages out of
> about 20, seemingly selected at random spots inside the document!
Then there is something seriously wrong with the pages, or there is a
serious bug in the version of Lynx. Use http://validator.w3.org/ to check
the pages. Also, I'll have a glance at the page at the URL below in one of
my Lynxes so I can see whether the same problem appears (and perhaps why).
> So you would actually recommend styles over FONT's?
Definitely.
Michael Hamm | NB: This e-mail address will be | In alt.*, please
BA, Math, Sept. '00 | active not much longer than two | email me a copy;
msh...@nyu.edu | months. More info as available. | the server drops
http://www.crosswinds.net/~msh210/ (But URL'll last.) | them too quickly
Michael Hamm
>> I just donloaded Lynx and I ave to say that my pages are unreadable. Even
>> my home page, which contains no tables at all (straight text!) doesn't show
> I'll have a glance at the page at the URL below in one of my Lynxes so I
>> www.heavytech.com/~maury
Looks fine[1], and I don't see anything wrong with the code.
[1] Note, though, that the escaped characters you used (the curly
quotes) came out wrong in Lynx (and, my guess is, many other browsers); I
suggest you use ASCII quotes.
Alan J. Flavell
> I just donloaded Lynx and I ave to say that my pages are unreadable.
> my home page, which contains no tables at all (straight text!) doesn't show
> up at all, I get a blank page.
If you're talking about the pages cited below, I don't see any major
problem with them on Lynx. Sounds to me as if you've got problems
with your installation or configuration.
"tables for layout" needn't be a problem for Lynx. You just need to
be aware how Lynx handles them. The _real_ problem that Lynx has with
tables is when they are used in earnest, i.e for presenting tabular
data. Recent Lynx versions are better, but even the author of that
code says that it's far from ideal.
> I use a three-column table to postion pictures inside my text. That might
> sound odd, but the reason is that I want the caption for the picture to
> appear to the side of the main text,
You seem to have overlooked the simple solution, IMG ALIGN=LEFT/RIGHT
to float images alongside running text (and BR CLEAR=ALL to define the
end of the float).
> So you would actually recommend styles over FONT's?
In the medium to long term certainly. But neither of them are of any
concern to Lynx. Use them for decoration, but not for purposes that
are meant to imply content/structure.
I think the bottom line is this. Don't go to a lot of unreasonable
contortions to accommodate Lynx. Give it a reasonably-designed WWW
page and it'll do the best it can, which is usually fine. Lynx users
aren't looking for beautiful presentation, just fast and convenient
access to content. BUT, a lot of the contorted techniques that authors
are inclined to use to specifically accommodate the Big-Two browsers
_can_ have some fairly horrendous results in Lynx, if used
unsympathetically. (And can impair other non-mainstream browsing
situations too, by the way, this isn't Lynx-specific).
I would prefer to avoid talking about "designing _for_ Lynx" (or for
any other individual browser, for that matter). Rather, design _for_
the WWW, with a wide range of browsing situations in mind, using the
principle of "graceful fallback" to get the best that one (reasonably)
can out of each and every browsing situation.
Your left-hand navigation column paradigm is (sadly) all too common on
the www, but represents a challenge in terms of accessibility, quite
apart from the rather wasteful way it displays in Lynx. Think about a
speaking browser having to noodle its way through all this boilerplate
before it can get to the significant content. When a page is
primarily a navigation page, this isn't such an issue; but on pages
that are primarily there for content, the navigation column is a
visual distraction that becomes a real nuisance in other kinds of
browsing situation. Readers _should_ be on this page for your
content, i.e that's should be your priority. I'd suggest breaking the
mould, and at least putting the navigation at the right instead, if
not at the foot of the page. If you're totally wedded to top or
left-side navigation, then the WAI has some "techniques" that may
help.
cheers
Maury Markowitz
news:x0_f5.2$Hg7...@typhoon.nyu.edu...
> Looks fine[1], and I don't see anything wrong with the code.
Nor does the validator. Dunno, must be my copy of Lynx, I don't know what
that would be though.
BTW, is there a way to type in an URL in Lynx once you're up and running?
I did it from the command line, but couldn't see any way to do it once the
app was running.
And I also got Amaya, what a hunk of junk!
Maury
Tim Larson
[snip]
> Now my question is what to do to make my pages Lynx-friendly? I know that
> Lynx uses some LINK tags for additional info, but does anyone actually use
My site uses them throughout. I recently built version 1 of my first
personal CGI app, and it supports LINK navigation also. Using it with Lynx
or iCab is quite nice.
> these? What should I know? I also find these tags hard to maintain, none
> of the popular editors seem to include support for them, so every page's
> "next" link means going in and editing the headers by hand.
Start using them. Write to the vendors and complain about their software's
lack of features.
> Also, I have the sort of "standard" head tags, but what about the DC tags?
> Should I even bother with these? If its worth it, does anyone have a good
> guide on them?
Sander's page is a good starting point for learning about the LINK tag.
<http://www.euronet.nl/~tekelenb/WWW/LINK/index.html>
--
Tim Larson - web programming guru
Red 5 Interactive, Inc. - www.r5i.com
4549 Fleur Dr. Des Moines, IA 50321
Tim Larson
> BTW, is there a way to type in an URL in Lynx once you're up and running?
> I did it from the command line, but couldn't see any way to do it once the
> app was running.
G or g will do that. Type h to get to the help screen, where you should
see a link to the keystroke command list. I have this printed out and
hanging to the wall of my cube.
BTW, anyone know if there are any definite plans for Lynx 3.0? I've read
some of the stuff linked from the Lynx resource pages, but it doesn't seem
like anybody's actively doing anything. Some of my comments from over a
year ago are still just sitting there, not yet merged into the idea list.
Alan J. Flavell
> BTW, is there a way to type in an URL in Lynx once you're up and running?
With the 'g' or 'G' keycommands.
'k' presents a summary of the available keycommands.
Maury Markowitz
news:Pine.GHP.4.21.000727...@hpplus03.cern.ch...
> You seem to have overlooked the simple solution, IMG ALIGN=LEFT/RIGHT
> to float images alongside running text (and BR CLEAR=ALL to define the
> end of the float).
No, this is what I use. What I need is a column of text with other text
"outside" the column that is aligned, vertically, with something in the
center.
As an easier example, consider that I have a "keyword" in a column of
text, and I want to put an arrow pointing at it from the right. As far as I
can tell the table is he only way to do tihs.
> I think the bottom line is this. Don't go to a lot of unreasonable
> contortions to accommodate Lynx. Give it a reasonably-designed WWW
> page and it'll do the best it can, which is usually fine.
Well as long as you can see my pages, then I'm happy. I wonder why I
can't then?
> not at the foot of the page. If you're totally wedded to top or
> left-side navigation, then the WAI has some "techniques" that may
> help.
I'm not at all, but this was my third attempt at a good layout and the
first that seemed to work. Not that I'm terribly happy with it either, but
it is getting better. What I really don't want is the caption "under" the
picture, I tried that and the results were terrible. So I went three-column
and liked the results, and that left a hole that seemed to be filled nicely
by the nav bar.
Hey if someone out there wants to mock up something for me that looks
better for this sort of display (lots of text with embedded pictures that
have large captions), pass it along!
BTW, got an URL for the above?
Maury
Alan J. Flavell
> As an easier example, consider that I have a "keyword" in a column of
> text, and I want to put an arrow pointing at it from the right. As far as I
> can tell the table is he only way to do tihs.
That sounds like a description of a visual design. The ideal WWW way
is first to ask what logical structure you're trying to produce, and
then think about ways in which that logical structure can be presented
in different situations, having regard to what will happen when this
or that aspect of your design degrades[1].
I'm not sure if I've interpreted your intentions right, but it sounds
as if you want a word to be highlighted in running text. All sorts of
possibilities, such as <DFN> markup, linking the word to a glossary
entry, and I don't know what else. And with a stylesheet you could
enhance the effect by defining, say, coloured marker to point up the
location of the keyword. Such a stylesheet would do absolutely no harm
in Lynx (do no good either, but that's all part of the plan!).
[1]and that's where the discipline of thinking in terms of extreme
browsing situations, like braillers, speaking machines, Lynx, indexing
robots etc. - where visual juxtaposition simply cannot work in the way
it would in a traditional graphical browser - can be a useful WWW
authoring technique.
> BTW, got an URL for the above?
Was that asking about the WAI techniques? Sure,
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#navigation
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#links
specifically 4.6.1 Grouping and bypassing links.
If you're not familiar with the WAI, you probably want to read the
introductory material too, to understand the context.
(Except where mandated by local legislation) it's obviously up to you
whether you want to attempt conformance with their accessibility
levels, but IMHO there are lessons that can be learned from their
advice which improve web pages for all kinds of users, no matter how
keen you might (or might not) be on making them accessible to those
with particular disabilities.
cheers
Maury Markowitz
news:Pine.GHP.4.21.000727...@hpplus03.cern.ch...
Indeed.
> I'm not sure if I've interpreted your intentions right, but it sounds
> as if you want a word to be highlighted in running text.
No, I must have explained this poorly, let me try again with a much
simpler way...
How to I "attach" large amounts of caption text to an image without
impacting the readability of the rest of the surrounding text?
I used this "callout" method (where the caption appears to the left or
right of the image "outside" the body of the page) because it gave me the
best results. The caption text can be fairly long, yet the body continues
to read just fine. I want to have this detailed caption text because some
of the pictures are complex, yet I don't want to refer to them directly in
the main text specifically for accessability issues!
> Was that asking about the WAI techniques? Sure,
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#navigation
> http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT-TECHS/#links
> specifically 4.6.1 Grouping and bypassing links.
Thanks.
Maury
Michael Hamm
> impacting the readability of the rest of the surrounding text?
<a href="imagecaptions/foo.jpg.html"><img src="images/foo.jpg"
alt="blah"></a> Hth.
Simon Brooke
> And I also got Amaya, what a hunk of junk!
Pardon? Amaya is the only pseudo-WYSIWYG web authoring tool I would
consider using. It crashes a bit too often, but other than that it's a
very useful tool. What did you dislike about it?
--
si...@jasmine.org.uk (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
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M- !d- PS++ PE-- Y+ PGP !t 5? X+ !R b++ !DI D G- e++ h*(-) r++ y+++
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Stan Brown
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
> As it is I try to be a good net-citizen and the most advanced I get is to
>use tables for layout and some use of the FONT tag. All my pictures have
>ALT's, the page is readable on 640, I use <EM> and <STRONG> instead of <I>
>and <B> and include a number of header tags.
You have the right instincts, but the details might benefit from a
bit of refining.
While "readable on a width of 640" is a good goal, far better than a
lot of commercial web sites, it excludes WebTV users (max 553 if I
recall correctly, but listed in the FAQ). It may also be sub-optimal
for people with big screens. Graphical browsers are good at scaling
HTML to whatever size window the user selects, if the author doesn't
get in the way with fixed-width elements and too much layout via
<table>.
<font> has some dangers and is usually better not used. Again, see
the FAQ.
> Now my question is what to do to make my pages Lynx-friendly?
View them yourself in Lynx, and look for usability issues. In
particular, make sure you can see all the text, that it's not
garbled or arranged funny, and that you can navigate to every page.
You can download a free Lynx from <http://lynx.browser.org>.
If you haven't already done so, validate your pages. "Lynx friend;y"
is not so much a goal in itself as it is a marker for "rendered
decently by pretty much any browser". In other words, the real goal
is not to design for Lynx specifically, or as an alternative to a
graphical browser. Rather, a page that is readable and navigable in
Lynx will probably be r&n in any other browser too.
>I know that
>Lynx uses some LINK tags for additional info, but does anyone actually use
>these?
One of the nice ones is that with a single 'c' keystroke the Lynx
user can send comments to the author of the page. Lynx uses one of
the two <link> tags below to determine the page's author. I can't
remember what the other one is for, and in a fast scan I couldn't
find the answer in the Lynx docs. I infer from what the WDG site
says about <LYNX> that it's "made" that is the essential one.
<link rev="made" title="your name" href="mailto:yourEmailAddress">
<link rev="owns" title="your name" href="mailto:yourEmailAddress">
> What should I know? I also find these tags hard to maintain, none
>of the popular editors seem to include support for them, so every page's
>"next" link means going in and editing the headers by hand.
I would not rely on <LINK> for essential navigation, since not every
browser supports that feature. (I was unaware that Lynx does, as you
seem to be suggesting.) In the WDG's words: "Many browsers lack
support for LINK, so authors should not depend on the browser making
the links available to the user."
As for "made" and "owns", you'll put them in every document once and
never have to change them unless your e-mail address changes, so the
editing burden is a one-time thing.
> Also, I have the sort of "standard" head tags, but what about the DC tags?
There's no <dc> tag in HTML 4.0.
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
http://oakroadsystems.com
WDG Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.htmlhelp.com/faq/html/
Choice HTML resources: http://oakroadsystems.com/tech/htmllinx.htm
more FAQs: http://oakroadsystems.com/tech/faqget.htm
Stan Brown
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
Corrected URL: http://www.heavytech.com/~maury/
My copy of Lynx seems to read that, and the "Space Games of Fame"
page, just fine. Can you post the specific URL for a page that
you're having trouble with, and let us know specifically what you
see and what you expected to see?
Stan Brown
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
>Maury Markowitz wrote:
>[snip]
>> Now my question is what to do to make my pages Lynx-friendly? I know that
>> Lynx uses some LINK tags for additional info, but does anyone actually use
>
>Red 5 Interactive, Inc. - www.r5i.com
I visited the above URL, and found no <link> tags at all. There were
also no alt attributes for the images, so I didn't know how to
navigate any further. There *was* a lot of what looked like
Javascript, hardly Lynx friendly.
Am I missing something? When you referred to your site, did you
perhaps mean one other than the one in your sig?
Michael Hamm
>>I know that
>>Lynx uses some LINK tags for additional info, but does anyone actually use
>
> One of the nice ones is that with a single 'c' keystroke the Lynx
> user can send comments to the author of the page. Lynx uses one of
> the two <link> tags below to determine the page's author. I can't
> remember what the other one is for, and in a fast scan I couldn't
> find the answer in the Lynx docs. I infer from what the WDG site
> says about <LYNX> that it's "made" that is the essential one.
>
> <link rev="made" title="your name" href="mailto:yourEmailAddress">
> <link rev="owns" title="your name" href="mailto:yourEmailAddress">
>
>> What should I know? I also find these tags hard to maintain, none
>>of the popular editors seem to include support for them, so every page's
>>"next" link means going in and editing the headers by hand.
>
> I would not rely on <LINK> for essential navigation, since not every
> browser supports that feature. (I was unaware that Lynx does, as you
> seem to be suggesting.)
Yes, Lynx uses made, not owns. And it has a "banner" (I believe that's the
term the Lynx documentation uses) of <link> links at the top of each page,
at least in newer versions of Lynx. See
http://www.crosswinds.net/~msh210/crusade/suicide.html in Lynx for an
example.
>> Also, I have the sort of "standard" head tags, but what about the DC tags?
>
> There's no <dc> tag in HTML 4.0.
I believe the reference was to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative <meta>
tags.
R Gormley
<fla...@mail.cern.ch> wrote:
>"tables for layout" needn't be a problem for Lynx. You just need to
>be aware how Lynx handles them. The _real_ problem that Lynx has with
>tables is when they are used in earnest, i.e for presenting tabular
>data. Recent Lynx versions are better, but even the author of that
>code says that it's far from ideal.
Using something for what it's intended is "in earnest"? :-)
Philipp Lenssen
>..
> How to I "attach" large amounts of caption text to an image without
> impacting the readability of the rest of the surrounding text?
>
> right of the image "outside" the body of the page) because it gave me the
> best results. The caption text can be fairly long, yet the body continues
> to read just fine. I want to have this detailed caption text because some
> of the pictures are complex, yet I don't want to refer to them directly in
> the main text specifically for accessability issues!
When I want to connect text and pictures I use something like:
<div class="text">
<p>This text is not connected to any picture</p>
</div>
<div class="picAndText">
<div class="pic">
<p><img src="..." alt="..."><br>Short comment/ title etc.</p>
</div>
<div class="text">
<p>This text is loosely connected to the picture</p>
</div>
</div>
<div class="text">
<p>Again no connection to a picture</p>
</div>
You may also call these classes "illustrational" and "textual" or something
along the lines to abstract even more.
The rest is just stylesheet, now you can let the pictures flow to the side
of the text, or put a box around the combo, or give it a different
background color. Or decide to hide all pictures in print. Then it becomes
important you didn't put any pictures that contain real data (of textual/
data type, like bar charts) in the "illustration"/ "pic"-classed element.
These I put in the normal text flow within paragraphs. As side-effect these
will not have to be like 200 pixels width (or whatever limit you put on the
"illustration"-classed element). Rather, think of what you put in
"illustration" (or "illustrative", "picture", "imagery" etc.) of having the
function to set the mood or context of the text.
With the following, I didn't get any good results in Netscape (I think it
was the lack of "clear: both" support in Netscape CSS):
<div class="pic">...</div>
<div class="text">...</div>
<div class="endOfPicTextConnection"> </div>
It's resembling the <.. align="..."><p>....</p><br ...> approach.
However, you can make it work in IE4+ (and probably Netscape 6).
Once you got such a pic-text construct to work, you may try to nest it to
get other results. Like, to have a picture with a comment below plus some
annotation to the right, all floating to the left of your main text.
Alan J. Flavell
> I used this "callout" method (where the caption appears to the left or
> right of the image "outside" the body of the page) because it gave me the
> best results. The caption text can be fairly long, yet the body continues
> to read just fine. I want to have this detailed caption text because some
> of the pictures are complex, yet I don't want to refer to them directly in
> the main text specifically for accessability issues!
There seems to me to be a justifiable defence for using TABLE markup
to associate an image with its caption, since the two are logically
related and there's no more-precise HTML markup for achieving it.
But instead ot trying to clamp a whole page in a TABLE that uses
fixed-sized cells to format it, I'd prefer to use simple structural
HTML markup for the page as a whole, use stylesheets to suggest an
appropriate formatting, and supply the captioned images as small
floating two-cell TABLEs, i.e <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT/RIGHT ...> set into
the running text. With the stylesheet you could suggest the negative
indent (Out-dent?) that you had in mind. There's some frustrating
bugs in existing browser versions, but I believe this can be usefully
achieved, without causing pain to less-capable browsers (it's more a
topic for the stylesheets group).
(Sure, none of that detail makes any particular impression on Lynx.)
The one remaining worry with this kind of caption is that when your
page is displayed without images, those "disembodied" captions may
read rather strangely. Minor adjustments to the wording can usually
cope with that, though. The clue seems to be to write a narrative
about the picture that makes sense in its own right; when the picture
is there, the reader can se for themselves how the narrative and the
picture tie-up, and when the picture isn't there, the narrative can
stand on its own feet.
You could, as another has suggested, put IMG and caption into a DIV
and use the stylesheet to format that. But the effect on
non-stylesheet-supporting browsers is less effective IMHO than using a
TABLE. OK, YMMV, this is just a pragmatic suggestion.
Maury Markowitz
news:m27la7u...@gododdin.internal.jasmine.org.uk...
> Pardon? Amaya is the only pseudo-WYSIWYG web authoring tool I would
> consider using. It crashes a bit too often, but other than that it's a
> very useful tool. What did you dislike about it?
Practically everything.
1) the icons and various controls are butt ugly and due to their high
contrast and small size, basically unidentifiable.
2) you can't tell links from non-links, and you can't see which ones you've
visited
3) you have to double click links to follow them
4) if you type in "news.com" it will return a cryptic error, you have to
type in "http://" as well
5) there are any number of "crash to desktop" bugs
6) pictures flash when scrolling
7) screen updates show massive "flicker"
8) it can't update while downloading
9) selection flashes, and does not support most selection gestures (like
double click to select "by words")
10) even simple image placement tags don't work
11) it doesn't appear to have any "favourites" system
12) basic styles are "wrong", DFN's come out as bolded for instance, rather
than italics
13) P's are sometimes rendered "run together"
It simply shows no polish. It's the kind of thing I would expect from a
one man Windows firm who just doesn't "get" GUI's. I suppose as an editor
it may have some charms, but considering that it appears to have no site
maintenance features, I'll be sticking with DreamWaever, thanks!
Maury
Maury Markowitz
> <a href="imagecaptions/foo.jpg.html"><img src="images/foo.jpg"
> alt="blah"></a> Hth.
Link to it and go to another page? No, sorry.
Maury
Maury Markowitz
news:Pine.GHP.4.21.000728...@hpplus03.cern.ch...
> But instead ot trying to clamp a whole page in a TABLE that uses
> fixed-sized cells to format it, I'd prefer to use simple structural
> HTML markup for the page as a whole, use stylesheets to suggest an
> appropriate formatting, and supply the captioned images as small
> floating two-cell TABLEs, i.e <TABLE ALIGN=LEFT/RIGHT ...> set into
> the running text. With the stylesheet you could suggest the negative
> indent (Out-dent?) that you had in mind. There's some frustrating
> bugs in existing browser versions, but I believe this can be usefully
> achieved, without causing pain to less-capable browsers (it's more a
> topic for the stylesheets group).
This sounds like an excellent solution actually. I'm pretty new to styles
(I know the basics, but that's it), does anyone have a sample that would be
helpful here? How about the simple case, just having the text run down the
"middle" of the page - basically with a margin on either side and the width
fixed.
I get a lot of comments on the later point, but I've read a bit on this
and even though they may complain users are more likely to read your words
if they are in a fixed width column that's not too wide. That made the
table "instantly" at which point the three-column layout seemed like a
natural.
Maury
Maury Markowitz
news:MPG.13ea86749...@news.mindspring.com...
> My copy of Lynx seems to read that, and the "Space Games of Fame"
> page, just fine. Can you post the specific URL for a page that
> you're having trouble with, and let us know specifically what you
> see and what you expected to see?
When I go to that page, I see nothing. Yes, nothing, just the default
grey background. There's text there I can tell, because the curso keys
follow the links fine.
Maury
Maury Markowitz
> While "readable on a width of 640" is a good goal, far better than a
> lot of commercial web sites, it excludes WebTV users (max 553 if I
> recall correctly, but listed in the FAQ).
Ahh, I'll have to try that.
> It may also be sub-optimal
> for people with big screens. Graphical browsers are good at scaling
> HTML to whatever size window the user selects, if the author doesn't
> get in the way with fixed-width elements and too much layout via
> <table>.
But there are competing problems here. When people scale to large widths,
they stop reading the contents and scan only the left few words of every
time.
> There's no <dc> tag in HTML 4.0.
Dublin Core.
Maury
Philipp Lenssen
Pine.GHP.4.21.000728...@hpplus03.cern.ch...
>..
> You could, as another has suggested, put IMG and caption into a DIV
> and use the stylesheet to format that. But the effect on
> non-stylesheet-supporting browsers is less effective IMHO than using a
> TABLE. OK, YMMV, this is just a pragmatic suggestion.
Yes agreed you could use a table for that. But, you could also find defense
for using a table for global page layout as well.
Here's from the new XHTML homepage at http://w3.org :
<table
summary="Layout table: The first cell contains the body of the page, the
second a navigation bar."
...>
How can they promote stylesheets on the one side and do something like that
on the other?And it's not that the construct they used couldn't be
implemented via CSS2 (and be working fine in Netscape 4/ IE4).
Anyway, a pragmatic reason for not using a table would be, in an intranet
(in case pages are not dynamically created from like XML/ XSL to HTML): the
style guide could change, and maybe the new version doesn't want "picture,
break, text below", but "picture left, text right". This was with the case
of an intranet I did where I used the <div> construct. A table would've
caused some headaches, but the <div> construct allows me to order pictures
to the left, right, or top of text.
Alan J. Flavell
> This sounds like an excellent solution actually.
There's something vaguely like we're discussing here, in my page
http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/iso8859/iso8859-mac.html
(except that the floated table contains only text, but I think you get
the idea).
To see this as intended, you'd need a CSS-capable browser. But
without CSS it's still entirely usable.
cheers
Maury Markowitz
news:Pine.GHP.4.21.000728...@hpplus03.cern.ch...
> http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/iso8859/iso8859-mac.html
I agree, this is rather nice. Some playing with the values should do the
trick. How to get the text "outside" the pictures though - or in this case
to the right of the table?
Maury
Maury Markowitz
news:8ls72r$7vp$13$1...@news.t-online.com...
> Here's from the new XHTML homepage at http://w3.org :
> <table
> summary="Layout table: The first cell contains the body of the page, the
> second a navigation bar."
> ...>
There's some interesting lessons here...
1) the nav bar is on the right. That seems just as good as the left side
where I have it now, but it comes out at the "bottom" of the page when
viewed in lynx. That's likely a good idea.
2) I'm questioning the use of the "nav buttons" at the top and bottom of my
pages. Perhaps that could be placed right in the nav bar instead.
> Anyway, a pragmatic reason for not using a table would be, in an intranet
> (in case pages are not dynamically created from like XML/ XSL to HTML):
the
> style guide could change, and maybe the new version doesn't want "picture,
> break, text below", but "picture left, text right".
Yes, this is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve. What if I want to
do this, should I use a DIV? Will this work on other browsers like Lynx?
Maury
This was with the case
>
Alan J. Flavell
> > There's something vaguely like we're discussing here, in my page
> > http://ppewww.ph.gla.ac.uk/~flavell/iso8859/iso8859-mac.html
>
> I agree, this is rather nice. Some playing with the values should do the
> trick. How to get the text "outside" the pictures though - or in this case
> to the right of the table?
I feel now it's time to decamp to the stylesheets group for further
discussion. See you there?
cheers
Andreas Prilop
"Philipp Lenssen" <ph...@mrinfo.de> wrote:
> Using <font> will probably not harm any browser,
Probably you don't know <http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~mudws/font.html>.
--
Change "invalid" [RFC 2606] to "de" in e-mail address.
Tim Larson
>
> I visited the above URL, and found no <link> tags at all. There were
> also no alt attributes for the images, so I didn't know how to
> navigate any further. There *was* a lot of what looked like
> Javascript, hardly Lynx friendly.
Unfortunately I have no say in the design of my employer's corporate site.
> Am I missing something? When you referred to your site, did you
> perhaps mean one other than the one in your sig?
That would be correct. _My_ site is www.christtrek.org.
--
Tim Larson - web programming guru
Red 5 Interactive, Inc. - www.r5i.com
Stan Brown
>Yes, Lynx uses made, not owns. And it has a "banner" (I believe that's the
>term the Lynx documentation uses) of <link> links at the top of each page,
>at least in newer versions of Lynx. See
>http://www.crosswinds.net/~msh210/crusade/suicide.html in Lynx for an
>example.
Does anyone have a URL for a definitive list of what Lynx treats
specially by way of <LINK> tags? The various examples we've been
pointed to don't all agree, and I'd feel better if I could see a
document rather than have to guess what's effective and what's not.
I checked in Lynx help, but both "Al's FAQs" and "Lynx Links" got
"404 not found".
Alan J. Flavell
> Does anyone have a URL for a definitive list of what Lynx treats
> specially by way of <LINK> tags?
The source code! :-)
> The various examples we've been
> pointed to don't all agree, and I'd feel better if I could see a
> document rather than have to guess what's effective and what's not.
Ah, but Lynx supports a lot of odds and ends for historical reasons,
and additionally it supports some non-standard usages just to help its
users out. I wouldn't use the _mere_ presence of support in Lynx as
a motivation to use it in WWW documents.
Go to http://lynx.isc.org/current/lynx2-8-4/src/HTML.c
and search for the first appearance of HTML_LINK_REL
Scroll down a couple of screens and you'll find a list of supported
values, with a few lines of comment explaining why.
I checked a somewhat older version of the source that I have; it
doesn't seem to have changed materially.
Does that answer your question?
Cari D. Burstein
bra...@mindspring.com (Stan Brown) wrote:
:Michael Hamm <msh...@nyu.edu> wrote in
:comp.infosystems.www.authoring.html:
:>Yes, Lynx uses made, not owns. And it has a "banner" (I believe that's the
:>term the Lynx documentation uses) of <link> links at the top of each page,
:>at least in newer versions of Lynx. See
:>http://www.crosswinds.net/~msh210/crusade/suicide.html in Lynx for an
:>example.
:
:Does anyone have a URL for a definitive list of what Lynx treats
:specially by way of <LINK> tags? The various examples we've been
:pointed to don't all agree, and I'd feel better if I could see a
:document rather than have to guess what's effective and what's not.
:
:I checked in Lynx help, but both "Al's FAQs" and "Lynx Links" got
:"404 not found".
FYI, Lynx isn't the only one that takes advantage of these. iCab (a Mac
browser) makes a lovely toolbar with the LINK tags. I find it very
useful for browsing the PHP documentation. http://www.icab.de/ is the
site- there is a list of supported names there.
--
|Ye have enemies? Good, good- that means ye've stood up for |
| something, sometime in thy life.... -Elminster of Shadowdale |
|---------------------------------------------------------------|
| Cari D. Burstein http://www.anybrowser.org/ |
Stan Brown
>On Mon, 31 Jul 2000, Stan Brown wrote:
>> specially by way of <LINK> tags?
>
>and additionally it supports some non-standard usages just to help its
>users out. I wouldn't use the _mere_ presence of support in Lynx as
>a motivation to use it in WWW documents.
>
>Go to http://lynx.isc.org/current/lynx2-8-4/src/HTML.c
>and search for the first appearance of HTML_LINK_REL
>Scroll down a couple of screens and you'll find a list of supported
>values, with a few lines of comment explaining why.
Got it; thanks!
>Does that answer your question?
Yes, and it shows me that I asked the wrong question. :-)
What I should have asked was for the list of <LINK> tags that I
*should* be including in my document. What you say made me realize
that there's no purpose to trying to put in one for each of that
whole long list.
(Apologies for long quoting; I trimmed as best I could without
losing context.)
--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cleveland, Ohio, USA
http://oakroadsystems.com
My reply address is correct as is. The courtesy of providing a correct
reply address is more important to me than time spent deleting spam.
Alan J. Flavell
> Yes, and it shows me that I asked the wrong question. :-)
>
> What I should have asked was for the list of <LINK> tags that I
> *should* be including in my document.
Well, that's more a matter of your choice - there's plenty to choose
from in the HTML4 spec,
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/types.html#type-links
and I don't know anyone who's saying you _should_ offer them all.
It might also be handy to take a look at what iCab supports:
One thing that I miss is something like "More", i.e when I want to
offer an overview page connected to a supplementary page that offers
additional detail. This seems to be rarely supported (except by
browsers that support arbitrary author-defined link types).
Both iCab and Lynx support "Up", which however isn't in the HTML4
list: again, this can seem appropriate when there's an overview page
linked to paeg(s) that cover the ground in more detail.
Sure, in the final analysis the "web" is supposed to be an
interconnected web, not a fixed hierarchy. But it can help readers to
maintain some kind of orientation if they're guided by the author's
mental picture of a local page hierarchy.
cheers
Philipp Lenssen
> "Philipp Lenssen" <ph...@mrinfo.de> wrote in message
> news:8ls72r$7vp$13$1...@news.t-online.com...
> > Anyway, a pragmatic reason for not using a table would be, in an
intranet
> > (in case pages are not dynamically created from like XML/ XSL to HTML):
> the
> > style guide could change, and maybe the new version doesn't want
"picture,
> > break, text below", but "picture left, text right".
>
> Yes, this is exactly the problem I'm trying to solve. What if I want to
> do this, should I use a DIV? Will this work on other browsers like Lynx?
As I said, one solution would be a div-construct like I mentioned.
I uploded a sample:
http://www.mplusr.de/positioning
This should work in any browser ignoring CSS (like Netscape 1 to 3, Lynx,
etc.), plus in Netscape 4+ and Internet Explorer 4+.
(In Explorer 3, Opera, Amaya etc. it probably needs some adjusting.)
Alan J. Flavell
> As I said, one solution would be a div-construct like I mentioned.
> I uploded a sample:
> http://www.mplusr.de/positioning
(It's really http://www.mplusr.de/positioning/ )
This is interesting (though I hate the setting of font size in px);
but in NS4.* your version seems to be suffering analogous problems
with the text margins, that I was getting with the example I posted to
the stylesheets group a couple of days back.
Since this is chiefly a stylesheets issue, I do think it would be more
appropriate to move the discussion there, no?
cheers
Philipp Lenssen
> On Wed, 2 Aug 2000, Philipp Lenssen wrote:
>
> > As I said, one solution would be a div-construct like I mentioned.
> > I uploded a sample:
> > http://www.mplusr.de/positioning
>
> (It's really http://www.mplusr.de/positioning/ )
When the server can't find the file, it checks if a folder exists (and gets
the default file in it)... I usually like to give the shortest address.
>
> This is interesting (though I hate the setting of font size in px);
> but in NS4.* your version seems to be suffering analogous problems
> with the text margins, that I was getting with the example I posted to
> the stylesheets group a couple of days back.
>..
Font-size as pixel is the only way I can get the results I want (with
relatively similar sizes in Win/ Mac IE/ NS). Everything but percentage is
just a workaround to me anyway, and percentage inheriting won't work
correctly in Netscape 4 (as we all know).
Alan J. Flavell
> > > http://www.mplusr.de/positioning
> >
> > (It's really http://www.mplusr.de/positioning/ )
>
> When the server can't find the file, it checks if a folder exists
I'm well aware of how these invalid URLs are conventionally handled
> (and gets the default file in it)
Wrong. The server must send the client a redirection transaction in
order to fix up the error. The client responds by initiating a fresh
request for the corrected URL.
> ... I usually like to give the shortest address.
Thus wasting network resources, and increasing the delay before the
reader gets the real page.
> Font-size as pixel is the only way I can get the results I want
Then you're wanting the wrong thing, in a WWW context.
> (with relatively similar sizes in Win/ Mac IE/ NS).
The reader could not care what they are relatively similar to. Their
criterion is whether they are comfortable to read, on their particular
browser and display at their chosen settings. To be frank with you:
you tried to fight the reader on that point. Many won't notice or
care, but when push comes to shove, this is a fight that an author
cannot win.
cheers
Philipp Lenssen
Pine.GHP.4.21.000802...@hpplus03.cern.ch...
>..
> > (with relatively similar sizes in Win/ Mac IE/ NS).
>
> The reader could not care what they are relatively similar to. Their
> criterion is whether they are comfortable to read, on their particular
> browser and display at their chosen settings. To be frank with you:
> you tried to fight the reader on that point. Many won't notice or
> care, but when push comes to shove, this is a fight that an author
> cannot win.
>..
Do you realize that some of us have to work with designers (read: clients)
that originate from print, and when you can't get really close to their
font "as given to you in photoshop", they will make you use a picture of the
text instead? We agree text with pixel-sized style is still more flexible
and adjustable then text as text?
Again, everything but percentage is a workaround to me, so I won't defend
pixels. When I see that percentage works in a reasonable amount of browsers
(supposingly when Netscape 6 is official and in use), I will start to use
what I use now on like IE4+ Intranets anyway.
Philipp Lenssen
8mbbip$351$18$2...@news.t-online.com...
>..
> and adjustable then text as text?
=text as pictures
Alan J. Flavell
> Do you realize that some of us have to work with designers (read: clients)
> that originate from print,
So teach them.
> Again, everything but percentage is a workaround to me, so I won't defend
> pixels.
Excellent.
Michael Hamm
> I checked in Lynx help, but both "Al's FAQs" and "Lynx Links" got
> "404 not found".
If the "Lynx links" page is 404, you're probably looking for it on an NYU
server. It's moved, but still exists, last I heard; search the Web for it
if you want it.
Michael Hamm | NB: This e-mail address will be | In alt.*, please
BA, Math, Sept. '00 | active not much longer than one | email me a copy;
msh...@nyu.edu | month. More info as I have it. | the server drops
http://www.crosswinds.net/~msh210/ (But URL'll last.) | them too quickly